Good Sex, Great Prayers

by Brandon Tietz

  Madeline and the pastor exchange a knowing look. During that moment, he notices that the hairs are standing up on Madeline’s arms again. He’s spiking, worried yet again how Sheriff Morgan could arrive in Pratt at any moment. The plague would be but a mere distraction in his efforts to find the two individuals that sent him away, out into exile against his will. Sheriff Morgan will return with pure wrath in his heart, supplementing his current infamy with another tall tale of smalltown justice.

  “Morgan sure picked a helluva time to skip town,” Dr. Keller says. “With everything that’s been going on lately and that hothead deputy of his just aching to throw his weight around, I don’t have a good feeling about the coming days. Could get ugly.” He turns to Helena who’s still shivering under his coat on the couch. He presses two of his fingers to her leg, giving a little nod. The cold is slowly retreating from her skin.

  Madeline smiles, but just barely. Helena’s recovery notwithstanding, there’s still the larger issue of Pratt becoming a ghost town to deal with. People will either begin to starve or take sick. Perhaps not in a way where they’re coughing up fluids and bleeding out of every hole in their bodies, but something more to the effect of what’s happening to the earth and water. They too will sour, deteriorate. Cancer of the flesh, cancer of the blood. Like the trees, bones will dry to a brittle chalk. Hair, skin, and organs—all these things, they’ll deform to ash and flake away.

  Dr. Keller can’t fix it.

  No Craft can be made to stop it.

  Only by cutting it off at the source will it end.

  This is when Madeline feels a fourth presence in the nearby proximity—something not nearly pronounced as Father Johnstone’s anxiety or Dr. Keller’s state of turmoil over how much he doesn’t know. It’s smaller, more subtle, not complex enough to be human. Madeline feels it coming from just beyond the front door: scared by the unfamiliarity of these new surroundings, but brave. Obedient.

  “Mary’s back,” Madeline says.

  Las Vegas, NV

  My departure from Las Vegas isn’t without challenges.

  At McCarren International I’m on the no-fly list. Fortunately, this is information I was able to ascertain before physically stepping foot onto the property. Now that I’m ready to leave, it’s paramount that my exit be as discreet as humanly possible—not only to avoid those who may be looking for me—but to ensure I’m not followed, either. The adage of ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ isn’t always true, especially when you’ve extorted several million dollars from their casinos, tortured their whores, and killed numerous religious figures, regardless of whether or not it was intentional. Las Vegas regales in its celebration of lust and greed, but should one push it past the threshold as I have, Sin City has a well-developed sense of wrath to contend with.

  My face continues to circulate around the city, and so I forgo any attempt to travel by air—both commercial and private avenues. Trains and buses are also a risk; it’s likely my pursuers will attempt to apprehend me before I can board. ‘The word is out’ about me, as they say. My past transgressions in Vegas haven’t been forgotten, and my current ones have brought the city’s hostility to a fever pitch. There’s a bounty on my head now, and without an adequate Secondary, my ability to defend myself operates on a thin margin. Evasion will only carry me so far. Although the lights and general disquiet of Las Vegas have provided sufficient cover, I am but one man in a region of hungry predators. Changing locations and names is of little consequence. They are armed; they know my face.

  They’ve heard the stories, and just like any classic game of telephone, these tales have become marred with rumor and embellishment. I’ve transcended into urban legend, a ghost story the older whores relay to their younger contemporaries in terrifying excerpts: the whore I cooked with a device known as a ‘curling iron,’ the whore I bit, chewed, and digested when she requested I ‘eat her out,’ another few whores that climaxed so hard they defecated in the bed, then a few more that were physically beaten out of sheer boredom or my resentment for Madeline having left me (and in a state of damnation, no less). The ‘Christian fetish’ as they call it went so much further than ordained lingerie and candles. It wasn’t always so cosmetic and polite. Sometimes I’d brand them with the symbol of the savior using tempered metals, or I’d carve into their backs using the sharpened crucifix I had fashioned. Applying the aptitude of taxidermy, I stuffed the vaginal cavity of one whore with pages of the Old Testament, allowing poisoned seminal fluids to soak into the paper. It was yet another ill-fated attempt at prevention. Alas, the disease spread as does the story.

  ‘Doesn’t matter if you’re a casino owner, a nickel whore, or a priest,’ they say. ‘He’s an enemy to everyone. He needs to be stopped. Permanently.’

  Exile is no longer an option. There is no apology, no monetary figure that will quell their anger. Through the course of the endeavor, I’ve abused their system, that unwritten rule denoting the function of the whore: fornication, companionship, and a supplement of self-worth. They are borrowed property, and therefore, to be returned in the same condition in which they arrived—not abused and poisoned as I have done repeatedly for the past many months. I’ve tainted the well, and I’m not exactly sure with what.

  Roughly 70% of my genitalia is a dark bruise color, almost black; the remaining surface area consists of splits and weeping wounds. Yellow fluid sponges from my pores. Amber crust scabs over the tip of my urethra. Vacating the bladder has become such a painful affair that I’ve taken to avoiding it, sometimes as much two or three days at a time. I abstain from the act until my torso aches and can no longer endure, usually indulging a bottle of Christ blood to dim the impending sting. It’s never enough. Urine is a honey-brown color, rife with infection, and stinks of rot so potently the impulse to vomit can’t be controlled. I scream. I sweat, hand braced against the nearest wall. Sharp, boiling fluid bursts through the crust and scalds the toilet, poisons it just like all those whores. They too have spread this virus, and it continues to circulate once vacationing men return to their wives and domestic partners.

  What they say is true: I am a walking plague.

  Unfortunately, the application of Craft is not a viable option. Not yet. Even if the correct materials were available to me, I lack their itemization and the procedure on how to combine them. It will have to wait until I have access to the depository of books again, currently being watched by Josephine Paige in the town of Pratt. Thus far, I’ve kept my distance. Startling her would be unwise at this point, especially when she’s in the favor of the Goddess and I’m not. That tide will turn soon. There are many thresholds left to cross, many paths to explore.

  The immediate one lies east of here.

  My Divine path leads to Elk City.

  The Ally

  Mary crosses the threshold of the front doorway, fur flecked with bits of stale corn stalk and petrified wheat seed. Prints of grime stain the carpet of the living room as she paces in, adding to the discharge of black fluid from Helena Wright. Father Johnstone doesn’t mind; all that matters is she’s back. Mary’s home and safe now. Despite Pratt being impaired and the countless other threats lying in wait, Mary’s return allows Father Johnstone to forget about that for the time being. He lifts her up, holds her close as she licks his face. She smells like grime and old ashtray, but the pastor burrows his nose into Mary’s neck regardless, sighing deeply. Then Madeline brings him back to reality.

  “Mary tracked the man from the fire,” she says. “So we should think about leaving soon. The three of us.” Madeline turns to Dr. Keller who is still seated by a slowly recovering Mrs. Wright. “You’ll tend to her…keep her breathing, make sure she doesn’t choke to death,” she orders. “See if you can get her talking.”

  “Madeline, she just got back,” the pastor says, clutching Mary closer to his body. She’s exhausted, breathing shallow. Her coal black nose feels like ice against his cheek and he doesn’t want to let her go again, let alone endanger her. “C
an you give her a minute?”

  “We don’t have a lot of those to spare,” she says.

  “You can’t just have her tell us where to go?” the pastor asks. He knows he’s reaching. If that was an option, he’d like to think Madeline would have offered it.

  “It doesn’t work like that, Johnstone. She doesn’t know the difference between north and south. She can’t write down an address for us,” Madeline explains. “Sorry, but she has to come with us.”

  “Pardon me, Miss Paige, but are you saying you can communicate with that dog?” Dr. Keller asks.

  “Yes,” she says, short. Madeline presses on, explaining, “To her that trail is like an invisible rope. She can’t tell you where it ends or where it’s going. All she can do is follow it,” she says. “And we’ll just have to go where she takes us.”

  “So we’re supposed to follow her with no idea of what we’re walking into,” Father Johnstone says.

  “Correct,” Madeline says. “But if it makes you feel any better, they won’t know we’re coming.”

  “What unnerves me is that he can flip over a two-ton truck,” Father Johnstone says. “In addition to whatever else he’s capable of.”

  “Then pray we don’t wind up in a parking lot.” Madeline stares him down; he’s scared. She can feel it in every hair on her arms and neck, as if they’re being static-shocked.

  “Wait. You two know the person that flipped over those trucks?” Dr. Keller cuts in.

  “Yes,” Madeline says. Again, short. “C’mon, Johnstone, you knew it was going to come to this eventually.”

  “Would this person have anything to do with Helena and Kurt’s condition?” Dr. Keller asks.

  Madeline finally turns around to face him. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “And you’re going to track this person down armed with nothing but your wits?” Dr. Keller asks, scoffing. “That sound like any kind of a plan to you, Miss Paige? Even I know you don’t walk into a fight unprepared.”

  “It’s complicated,” Madeline counters weakly. She looks at the pastor, back to the doctor, unsure as to how much she wants to tell him.

  “Then uncomplicate it for me,” he says.

  Father Johnstone sighs. “She’s right, David. It’s complicated.”

  “Complexity I can handle,” Dr. Keller says. “But if you assume this to be an issue of me not believing you, then I’ll say this: for thirty years, I’ve never seen you do anything remotely remarkable, Pastor. You’ve led the flock well, but I’d hardly call that out of the ordinary,” he says. “Now you’re performing miracles and healing people I know full well can’t be healed. So I ask myself, ‘What’s changed the last thirty years? What’s the new variable?’” he ponders aloud. “When I ask what you are, Miss Paige, I’m doing so with the understanding that you aren’t exactly like our pastor here, and you aren’t exactly like me. Make sense? I’m allowing you to admit that you might not be like the rest of us.” Dr. Keller pauses a moment, smiling at one corner of his mouth. “My singular regret about your aunt’s passing is that the rest of this town never knew how truly gifted she was, and I never discovered the extent of that gift. She too was a complicated woman, if you know what I mean.”

  “What did she tell you?” Madeline asks.

  “She told me that I had cancer, Miss Paige,” Dr. Keller says. “Lung cancer. Never smoked a cigarette in my life, but ol’ Josie came out of the blue and said that I had it and that I didn’t have much time left. There I was, going about my day, rifling through produce at the market and she laid that on me. I thought she was a kook, to be honest. Never showed any symptoms,” he says. “But I did the X-rays anyway. It was there. Stage III,” he says, frowning slightly. “I handled it about as poorly as anyone could. You’re basically dead at Stage III. The cancer is already beyond your lungs, spreading into your lymph nodes and the rest of the body. I had a decision to make: either keep quiet about it or break the news and let the town begin the process of bringing in the next in line. Help out with the transition and the like. Josie reached out before I could do that, said she had something for me that might help.”

  Craft, Father Johnstone determines: the place between religion and medicine, the gray area in which a miracle can be boiled down to formula and ingredients. In the end, everything is ingre-dients: prayer, emotion, and even cancer cells. Cancer of the lungs, cancer of the earth.

  “At three in the morning on a Tuesday, I drove over to her place by the daisy hill per her request. Whole town was asleep,” Dr. Keller says. “Didn’t want any witnesses or neighbors peeping out their windows, I guess. Josie said she wanted people knowing she was helping me just as much as I wanted them to know about the cancer eating me up. Discretion, right?” He gives Helena’s leg a little pat. She’s no longer coughing or struggling to breathe, seemingly in a state of comfortable rest. “We know what happens to people in this town who are considered strange, don’t we?”

  Dr. Keller pauses, allowing that question to sink in. Like the land and the water, people too can sour quickly.

  “Josie sat me down in front of a platter,” Dr. Keller says. “On top of it was a rabbit ripped open at the belly, stuffed with herbs and powders and whatever else. This thing is smoldering and kicking up fumes, stinking like embalming fluid and sweet perfume—she tells me to breathe it in. Any other time, I would have walked out of that house and never looked in her direction again. But I knew what was inside me, knew my time and options were short. I was just desperate enough to try anything, so I did as she asked. Inhaled that stuff until I couldn’t take it anymore. Sucked it down until I was puking in her toilet,” Dr. Keller says. “Felt like my lungs were being twisted like a dishrag. And Josie, she was knelt down on the bathroom floor next to me, patting me on the back and telling me not to make a big fuss about this later on…said I’d never understand anyway, so don’t come back asking a bunch of questions about how this and that worked. Some things are just too complicated to be explained, she told me.”

  Dr. Keller stares at Madeline. “I’m sitting here because your aunt made it so, Miss Paige. You can feel free to confirm or deny what she was—that’s up to you. Either way, I consider myself in her debt and think she’d want me to help you. So beyond looking after Helena here, how may I be of help?” he asks. “Or is it still too complicated?”

  Madeline smiles. “What can you offer, Dr. Keller?”

  “Tools of the trade, Miss Paige,” he reaches over to his medical kit, removing a leather case about the size of a paperback novel. He unzips it along the edges, unfolding the two sides to reveal an assortment of surgical instruments: scalpels and lancets. They’re unscuffed and bright, almost as if they’ve never been used. “Stainless steel, sharp as all hell,” Dr. Keller says, removing one from the case and displaying it. “No pesky wooden or plastic handles to get in your way, if you know what I mean. Take it,” he says.

  Madeline reaches out with her hand, fingers aiming towards the handle of the instrument. Dr. Keller, however, retracts from her. “Problem?” she asks.

  “Take it the other way.” He gives Madeline a knowing smirk, one in which she returns. She takes a couple steps back and extends her arm towards the scalpel, zoning in, plucking it from his fingers. The object glides through the air, landing gently in her palm. “Magnetic manipulation. Impressive, Miss Paige,” he says.

  “Anything else?” Madeline holsters the scalpel in her jacket pocket.

  This time Dr. Keller does not reach for his medical bag, but instead, the blazer draped over Helena Wright who appears to have stopped shivering completely. From the inner breast pocket he pulls out another leather case, although this one is much smaller than the last, about the size of a men’s billfold. He unzips this one along the edges and displays the contents: one syringe capped with a plastic sheathe. “Etorphine,” Dr. Keller says. “Also known as M99. Should knock out anyone needing it.”

  “Beats making something from scratch.” Madeline takes the syringe and places it in h
er own inner breast pocket, plunger-side up. In the absence of Craft, modern medicine appears to be the next best thing that can be weaponized. “And what about my partner here?” she nods towards Father Johnstone who suddenly becomes sheepish at the idea of carrying a weapon.

  “Can never go wrong with a gun,” Dr. Keller shrugs.

  “I don’t own one,” he says. Madeline throws him a look. He can practically hear her thinking, ‘See, I told you we should have kept Shelby.’

  “I’ve got a shotgun with some rock salt shells in my trunk,” Dr. Keller says. “You can borrow that for now.”

  “A little hardcore for a doctor,” Madeline says.

  Dr. Keller grins. “Right to bear arms is practically the eleventh commandment around here, Miss Paige. You’ve lived here long enough to know that.”

  Father Johnstone would prefer not to shoot anyone if he can help it, even those who’d wish harm upon him. He prays his hand won’t be forced, prays Madeline’s abilities serve Pratt and its people as the Lord would see fit.

  “Let’s head out.” Father Johnstone sets Mary back down on the living room floor. She sniffs in the direction of Helena Wright, clearly offended by the odor of rot and stale blood.

  Dr. Keller exits the home with Father Johnstone, Madeline, and Mary close behind. The four of them walk out to the late-model sedan parked in the street, yellow grass breaking down to particles. Barren trees waving their limbs with the wind, and sometimes snapping off completely when their integrity gives way. Dr. Keller pops open the trunk, revealing an old tackle box, some random medical supplies, a spare tire, and as promised, a long-barreled shotgun with cherry-red shells scattered about the interior. Father Johnstone reaches in, grabbing shells and placing them in his shirt pockets and jeans.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Keller picks up the gun and loads it with a couple shells, cocking it closed. He hands it over, explaining to the pastor, “Point and shoot. Easy peasy. Won’t kill anyone, but it’ll put them down quick.”