Blood and Blasphemy

by Gerri R. Gray

  My father is a good man; the Father very much is not. My father is my entire world. I love him most dearly. He is a simple and brilliantly clever man. But he is old and was quite some years older than my mother when she died.

  When I killed her.

  As she strained and cried out and pushed me into this life, I pulled along with me a large pulpy strip from the wall of her womb. She ejaculated me into this life and I spat her back out of it. It was not my fault but we blame ourselves over things toward which we have no control. Guilt, it is all that I am.

  I know he tried not to blame me, but I think he always did. I remember snuggling into him and wrapping my tiny body in his drunken arms as he’d fall asleep in front of the midnight television. And I’d watch great stories about vacuum cleaners and non-stick frying pans and fat people who shrink into wisps as he mumbled about my mother and of blood and of me in the pit of his quivering dreams.

  On the eve of my ninth birthday, I was ushered into the oak-lined study that sat atop the great staircase that plumed up from the entrance hall of the St. Quiteria Home for Girls. Like a great flowering uterus, it branched into long passages that led off to the left and to the right.

  To the left were the halls and rooms of residence for the girls. To the right there was a huge and ornate carved door, and behind it the study, and behind that still the private rooms of the good Father and his even goodlier wife. I was never once to venture to the left.

  I remember that his eyes seemed kind and that when his wife stooped down and took me gently by the hand and led me into an adjacent annex, I felt not the least bit hesitant.

  She muttered to me in partially heard sentences laced with things like safety, comfort, Jesus and chocolate. And, within the annex, which was actually more like an entire room all unto itself, there was a trolley. A layered table upon wheels, the likes of which my rapidly expanding eyes had never once seen. Plate after plate of treats, delicate and lovingly formed, oozing with chocolate and cream.

  “Dip in your finger, child, and taste. It’s real, freshly scooped from the pails of our own dear cows. Nothing is fake around here,” she’d said.

  And I dipped and I licked and I smiled and then, with the flat of her thick fingered hand at my back, she gently coaxed me to push the trolley back into the study like the big strong girl that I was.

  I took a china plate full of lush puffy angel winged cup-cakes and, with my hand quivering from the initial fear that sat contracting and stinging at my thigh and the weight of the plate in my tiny hands, I offered one to my dear father.

  “Thank you, my little noodle,” he said and he grinned and his grin became a long forgotten smile and we laughed as the sugar rained down through the white of his beard.

  The abuse started the moment my father left. The very moment, as I stood atop two huge volumes of scripture and I waved to him through the tears that streamed down the pane and the Father, he rubbed at my ass.

  I was special. The chosen one, and I moved into a small cot that wedged behind a curtain in the farthest corner of the Father’s voluminous chambers. I wasn’t to socialize with the other girls and, save for my lessons, I never got to even see them. He told them I suffered from a rage, that beneath my pretty little face loomed a beast. Best for all that I am kept alone to myself.

  They weren’t always cruel. And, sometimes, I even looked forward to the Father or his wife sitting down at the end of my bed and reading to me from the book. They didn’t always touch me. But, sometimes, they did.

  It was the day after my eighteenth birthday that I ran away. I’d been laying my plans for years. I took to looking at Mr. Leonardo, my English teacher. I looked at him and I chewed my pencil and I saw how he shifted his belt and how the blood bloomed into his cheeks. Mr. Leonardo was married to Mrs. Leonardo, who worked in the school kitchen. Or so I’m told; I never eat there. So, anyway, I planted the seeds with my eyes and, though it was cold, I unbuttoned the top of my blouse and I waited for him to pounce.

  “Come with me. Directly after class. I’ll take you far, far away. Across the border and into the desert. I know of a motel. Then, I’ll find for us a home,” he whispered through the quake in his lips.

  “I’ll fuck you in half,” I purred.

  So I left St. Quiteria Home for Girls and we drove and, as we sped through and beneath its wrought iron arch, I kissed Mr. Leonardo on his cheek.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We arrived at the motel well after the desert sun had sunk beneath the low plain hills. Its heat, though, still leached and my white school blouse clung to my body and I felt bad about how it clung and scooped at my breasts. Poor Mr. Leonardo.

  “Do you have protection?” I asked as I collapsed backward and onto the hard bed and gazed into the piss-like stain on the ceiling.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Damn, I thought.

  “Do you have lactose-free white chocolate with peanuts?” I asked.

  “No. But I can get some, and something strong to drink as well,” he smiled.

  “Excellent! Make it so, my good man!” I giggled and then, moments after he left, I pulled on my school blazer and I walked out and into the night.

  It’s strange but I never once worried about the Father or his bat-shit crazy wife. I never saw them in the shadows and I never expected them to suddenly appear and drag me back into their lair. I had escaped. And escape smelt wonderful and it set upon my face the most ridiculous of grins. A grin that I still had as I walked up to my father’s home and I fell into a heap at his door.

  My father is an old man, as I said. But he had gotten so much older, as in the morning I could feel the creak in his bones as he lifted me, and with the smooth pad of his thumb, he wiped the tears from my eyes.

  I cried a lot over those next few weeks. I called out in the night and I plucked out my hair and I held my father’s lit lighter until its top glowed red and the end of my thumb blistered, and I branded it into my arm. Did you know if you line them up just right they look like smiley faces? Such fun.

  On the day that Father De Lellis showed up at our door, it was raining. I heard the knock, and I knew. I heard the knock and I looked into the sunken hollow of my father’s eyes and I wanted to go back. I wanted to sink back down into the abuse and I wanted for my father to smile.

  Father De Lellis spoke to my Dad and he lied and he lied and he lied. He told my father I was a whore. A promiscuous slut. But that he could save me. That Jesus could hold me. And I looked at my father and my chin dropped down to my neck.

  “I’m so sorry, Dad,” I said.

  ‘And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by whoring, profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire.’ (Leviticus 21:9)

  This time, Father De Lellis did not touch me as my father and my home stretched out to a point behind the surging purr of his big black sedan. But his eyes did. I could feel them at my neck and at that place where my lap falls down between my legs. It was hours before he spoke.

  “Tonight we reside in a true house of the Lord. Behave!”

  I nod and I sleep the most soundest of sleeps with my head flat to the glass and I think and I dream about nothing.

  I awaken as the car begins to climb. As it crawls through the hairpins, as it scoops around the immovable boulders and it strains up to the very peak of the mountain. The holy palace of St. Michael. A magnificent abbey that rises up out of the granite like an extension of the mountain itself.

  “It is magnificent,” I whisper.

  An ancient priest, who disturbingly reminds me of my own father, greets Father De Lellis with the hug riven with warmth.

  “It has been far too long, little brother. Come, festivities await. And wait until you see little Grace; she’s such a big girl now.”

  I feel like a princess as I ascend the stairway of the dead with its long empty compartments once filled with the bones and the rotting remains of saints, but now just shadow and dust.

  The table is laden with lusci
ous lashings of meat and huge wheels of bread and olives and countless other lovingly marinated things. And a young man, a seminarian with stringy scars of melted skin at his face, places food on our plates and pours wine for the men as they chat.

  Grace is much younger than I hoped she would be. I feel like I should be asking her to go outside and run and laugh and play. But all I can do is look at her and offer what’s left of my grin. She does not look back at me. She looks at her food and she looks at her feet and she twists at the ends of her hair.

  “She is a virgin. A good girl. A clean girl. Unlike others I’d have at my table,” the old priest sneers at the Father as he casts the sharp flick edge of his eye at me.

  “Mine will become pure once more. She will arise. You just wait, big brother. You just wait and see.”

  The seminarian, who I had not even noticed had left the room, enters and hurriedly approaches the priest. He leans and, with his hand covering his lips, he whispers.

  “Cars are approaching, Father. Twelve cars. Do you think it is them? Could it really be?”

  The priest excuses himself from the table and disappears through a small door that leads out onto a rampart that looks down upon the road and down to the vast splay of the valley floor below.

  “Damn!” he exclaims as he returns. “Today, why today? I must prepare!”

  “What is it, brother?”

  “Opportunity, John. It is great opportunity that calls. You must wait here,” he says as he downs the last of his wine and he leaves.

  Grace and I watch as Father De Lellis nonchalantly continues to eat and he dabs the dribbling red wine from his lips. We watch and I am ashamed. I am ashamed of this disgusting man and I am about to speak when the door swings open and the old priest returns with an unnaturally tall man at his side.

  “Tonight we crave Adam; we will take this one and we will know him,” says the man as he points and he looks into the eyes of the Father.

  “This is an outrage. It was I who summoned you here. I sent out the call. This man is my brother and my guest; he is a man of the cloth, as are we. Take her, take Grace; she is a fresh lush virgin. Take her and do as you wish,” says the old priest, his face flushing in red.

  “No!” shouts Father De Lellis, suddenly standing and planting his finger into the table. “Take this one! She will offer you so much more of a challenge. Take this wanton whore, I gift her unto thee.”

  I am led down and into the belly of the ancient sacred mountain. The staircase is hewn and it pulses beneath my feet from the chanting and the flicker of the fire that burns down below.

  I enter a chamber and I am cast to my knees within a semicircle of gently swaying depravity. Eleven masked priests naked but for their open fronted chasuble, and they grind and they pump at their cocks. And a woman wearing nothing but the veil, bandeau and coif of her habit, she stabs into her sex with a cross.

  I am patient and I wait for the chants to change into groans and I wait for them to finish before I push myself to my feet. I, too, sway and I all but fall but for the tall priest grasping and steadying my shoulder.

  Steady. Steady. Then, with his other hand, he slams his fist into the sticky filth that drips from the side of my face.

  The hit stuns and I drop back to my knees and hands rip and rip and rip at my clothes and, then, they rip at me. I don’t call out and, through the swelling puff of my eyes, I see twisting horns and I smell my flesh as they burn it and I see sloshing jewel rimmed chalices held high and I feel them inside of me. I feel them claw and jab and cut at my cunt and I fold down inside of myself.

  I love the rain. Especially thunderstorms. I love to watch as the streams on the glass join and swell. I love the rain, for it cleanses.

  The following morning, I awaken and they are gone. I can smell their sweat and I can smell my own piss and blood. My fingers are snapped and broken and my legs don’t work as they should, but I drag and I drag and I drag myself back up and I collapse at the top of the stairs.

  And I wait and I gurgle blood and bile and it bubbles and oozes from the puffed ripped corner of my lips and I close my eyes and I dream about nothing at all.

  Nothing.

  Father De Lellis hoists up my body; he is much stronger than he seems, and gently he lays me in the back seat of his big black sedan and he takes me back home to the school.

  So here I lay on this cold, cold slab and the good Father has just peeled himself from the sagging folds of my waxy blue corpse.

  Mother Tessa hands him a knife and Father John puts it to my skin. First he hacks and then, ever so gently, he glides its edge around bone and gristle and then, together as a couple, they seal my twelve parts in plastic.

  Packed tight and addressed and licked and stamped: my head to Rome, my arms to a Cardinal in Kalmthout and a retired Archbishop on the isle of Rab; my left tit to a Bishop in Seine et Marne and the other to a Priest in Kremsmunster; my torso to a Deacon in Regensburg and my belly rolled up and passed on to a Chaplain in Pennsylvania; my cunt to the Curate at the school for the deaf in Verona and my legs to the Dean in Płock and the Father in Belle River; and to the Rector in Dunedin and the Vicar in Karala, to them each a foot.

  Such fun, this game. Such glorious fucking fun.

  ‘Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us–he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks’ (Psalm 137:9)

  THE END

  JUDAS ISCARIOT - VAMPIRE SLAYER

  By Daryl Marcus

  It wasn't dying fast enough.

  The sky held impending darkness, the horizon already blood red and deepening. The soldiers guarding it stood a short way from the crucifix, looking over the picnicking crowd. Some were making moves to leave, packing the remnants of their midday meals and heading home to conclude the day's business. Others were continuing to dig in, pulling second helpings and additional dishes from the baskets they'd brought with them.

  Judas took a breath, inhaling the scents of dust and human sweat heated by a sun that felt no mercy. He smelled a storm in the air. It had to end soon, or else things could go wrong. Its friends might try to help it. Judas couldn't let that happen.

  Stepping forward, he approached the nearest guard, the knots on his shoulders marking him as the highest rank at hand. “They are strongest at night,” he said, his voice pitched so only the officer would hear him. “When the sun sets, he will be able to break himself free. We can't allow that to happen.”

  The officer glanced behind him at the tallest cross. The thing was weakened beneath the oppressive sunlight. Its body sagged, held up by the stakes driven through its wrists and ankles. Reddish-black blood dripped from wounds, down the wood of the cross, and soaked into the earth. The sand hissed for a moment when the blood touched it, then darkened and settled.

  A crown of thorns had pierced its head in many places, drenching its hair with even more blood and giving its pale face a caul. As Judas looked, he saw the thing's tongue flick out in a futile attempt to wet cracked and sunburned lips. As they watched, one of the guards dipped a sponge in vinegar and stabbed his spear through it. He held it up to the dying creature, but it turned away.

  There was only one drink that could help this thing, and Judas intended to see that it had none.

  “Shove off,” said the officer. “Can't you see he's done for? He'll die in his own time and that will be the end of it?”

  Judas's glared. “Have you sympathy for that... that thing? After what it's done to this world, to everything we stand for, you can just let things happen as if he were a mortal? Don't you know what that is?”

  The officer met him glare for glare. He rolled his head on his neck and flexed his shoulders as if preparing for a fight. “'Course I know who he is. But who he is don't mean nothing to me. He's dead on the cross, just hasn't stopped breathing yet.”

  “It's a vampire,” Judas said before he could stop himself. “It's capable of so much more than you can imagine. Kill it now and be done with it, or we will regret t
he delay forever.”

  “And who do you think you are? A soothsayer? Vampires burn in the sunlight, and he's not more burnt than you or me. He's just a man.”

  Lunging, Judas grabbed a handful of the officer's robe. “That's my point. It's the strongest of them all, claims to be God's son. Just the fact that it's still breathing is proof of its power. Kill it. End it.”

  “God's son or a whore's son, it don't make a difference. He's dead and I'll not lay a hand on him. He'll breathe his last soon enough.”

  “That's not good enough.” Judas snatched the spear from the officer's hands and stumbled back, surprised at what he held.

  The officer was surprised as well. He took a step back and gawked. “You son of a—” he began.

  Judas didn't hear the rest. He drew the spear back as he'd seen soldiers do and launched the weapon. He was not a trained soldier and had never thrown a spear in his life, yet something rose from his gut and swiftly filled his arm with strength as he let the shaft fly. His aim was true. His throw was perfect. He stared in disbelief as the spear soared over the officer's shoulder and straight at its target. The creature on the cross screamed, its side sprouting wood like a new limb.

  A shadow fell over Judas and he was on the ground, the taste of blood in his mouth and the officer glaring down at him. He realized a moment later he'd been hit.

  “Get away before I put you on your own cross. You've seen enough carnage for today” The officer stepped toward him, fury on his face, but Judas scrambled backwards on hands and heels. He finally found his footing and stood, staring over the officer at the vampire bleeding even more now.

  “Their kind cannot be allowed to roam. They are evil, no matter their lies. Vampires are not the children of God. We are.”

  “You'll have no children to worry about if you don't leave.”

  Judas stood for a moment longer, hoping to see the light of life leave the vampire's eyes. The officer reached for his sword. He ran through the crowd, preparations for the next step already running through his head.