“God in Heaven have mercy on me, a sinner. Mercy, Father, mercy—”
He finally hurled the loose tincture to the floor.
“Mercy it is, handsome,” the nun said, and faced the monk again. She pulled the hemline of her robe up. The white of her legs stabbed the monk’s heart like a heavenly vision. The third heaven opened and thousands upon thousands of angels with brass trumpets and spread-out wings descended on a cascade of hallelujahs.
He lifted his cassock and pulled down his pants, then grabbed her waist and drew her in. He grunted as he found his way inside her. She gasped and bit her lower lip. His breathing quickened and soon turned into the heavy painting of an animal in heat—lost, enraged, chasing its mount in the dark. He kept thrusting and heaving and thrusting again.
“God almighty!” He coiled his arms around her waist. Moaned.
The nun flung her arms around his neck in an embrace devoid of any tenderness, her fingers barely touching his hair. She turned her face away, and this time she glanced outside at the ocean sunk into the night, the position lights of the carrier reflected in the cabin’s windshield dancing before her languid eyes.
“Now, easy, handsome, easy…”
With a growl, the novice monk smashed himself into the nun and the two tumbled onto the floor. He groped at her buttocks with one hand, covered her face with the other, bit her neck, and groaned in a hasty orgasm. She stretched out her arm, her hand gripping the side handle on the copilot’s chair. She held fast onto it, while pacing her breathing to that of the man crushed on top of her. On her uncovered wrist, a string of numbers scarred into her pale skin came into view: MM-13-RPK091-Z&Q.
Heaving, mumbling incoherent words about Heaven and Hell and the cleansing blood of the Lamb, the monk buried his face in her hair.
From the creased TIME photograph cast nearby, the woman with the gust-blown dress and the innocent face of a doll kept staring at the two collapsed bodies rattled by sudden spasms, clinging to each other in a quiet desperation. Her bedroom eyes were open in wonder, her mouth curved in a tired yet inviting smile holding both a promise and a curse.
6
Nautilus finally arrived one hour past midnight.
She brought back from the island ten replikas: two Freuds, two Churchills, one Hitler, and five Cannies. The Cannies were in bad shape—tripping in and out, fighting epileptic seizures, vomiting blood. All five died within half an hour of reaching Domus Mariae. Father Micon rushed to their side, but only one slipped out of his coma and regained consciousness long enough to accept the last rites.
Flesh from the flesh of men, souls robbed from on high…
The last Canny, a young woman with piercing purple eyes and orange hair, had a hard time letting go. She kept lashing at the monks and nuns gathered around the bed, jerking her head, foaming at the mouth, trying to bite. Her eyes about to snap out of her ravaged sockets, she kept yelling guttural words in a strange idiom, a language dark and coarse. It took three hulking monks to keep her down. Her lacerated body let out a putrid stench that reeked of hidden tumors and puss and only God knew what cohort of worms rioted her flesh. Or maybe He didn’t... Micon had never thought that God’s knowledge extended into the recesses of Hell, so it was more likely that He himself was watching the Canny’s torment with nothing more than a sentient detachment. The Franciscan priest tried to exorcise the dying Canny, but gave up halfway through the invocation prayer. Behind the replika’s desperate struggle to hold on to life, Micon recognized fear—the fear at the threshold between life and eternity—and not a cohort of demons. He sprinkled her with holy water, then ordered for her to be restrained with ropes. They all watched her agony winding down, the blood and spittle drying around her mouth, her raging utterances ascending toward Heaven in less and less fervent outbursts. When she finally died, the ropes had cut into her self-mutilated arms, pulling both skin and tissue aside to expose the white of her tibia.
God’s grace rules over Heaven and Hell, high in the boundless sky and down into the darkest depths of the ocean. No flesh is ever hidden from His eyes…
Father Micon watched as the five corpses were wrapped in burial shrouds. All in God’s good time, he thought as he traced the sign of the cross over the Cannies’ heads, their long fangs protruding from between death-frozen lips, clenched tight over their chins. He never looked at them as DNA-mutated creatures whose chromosomes had more in common with those of cave lions than with the humans they outwardly resembled. To him, anybody who left Harlequin Island on his own accord was a soul God had called unto Himself.
His love relentlessly chases everyone, whether born from a woman or molded inside a vat—the misbegotten ones, those with no mother. And no father but God Himself…
The five Cannies were buried hastily at sea the same night.
Right before the gangplank lowered them toward their watery grave, the curtain of clouds pulled aside for a few swift moments and the moon shone upon their veiled bodies.
A stubborn, jealous God, the Maker and Finisher of this world.
By sunrise, Domus Mariae braced the ocean gracefully, her massive keel crushing the giant waves in her way. Deep down in the ship’s belly, inside a reactor shielded by a hundred tons of lead, a core of uranium the size of man’s fist turned water into steam and pumped it into the twin engines that made the steel floating abbey slide effortlessly across the rimmed face of the sea and away from Harlequin Island.
7
A carpet of dusky clouds was slowly unfolding over the continental shore. Once in a while, lightning shimmered through, painting the advancing dark mantle with strokes of purple and orange, yet still too far in the distance to be heard. To the East, the ocean looked laden with molten steel, with no horizon line to separate the sky from the waters below.
Black smoke chortling from the engine’s exhaust, rotors tirelessly slashing the air, the old Huey chopper banked tight on a loop around the imposing statue. From before the controls of the helicopter, Elano and Ulf took their eyes off the incoming storm and gazed out the cabin’s window at the massive restoration work in progress on the grounds below, where Our Lady of Sorrow of New York was slowly reborn from the rubble of a defunct world.
Elano had seen the Church-sanctioned blueprints a year before, during the last meeting of the Curia he’d attended, but, watching the colossus that once stood as a symbol for freedom transformed into the ultimate effigy of the Catholic faith, he was at once awestruck. A giant cross had replaced the torch; gone was the tablet from her left hand, and now scaffolds and pulleys surrounded the vacant space inside her coiled arm awaiting the Holy Infant to be laid.
2097 A. D. was the year Inocentis III had chosen to dedicate once and for all the land of Amerikania to the sacred heart of the Virgin. Thirty years after the seven fiery rocks hurled from heavens had left the human race in no doubt about God’s displeasure with his prodigal planet, Our Lady was finally adorned for the ceremony. But there was still work to be done, and it looked like Passover—which was one week away—was a deadline the Church would not be able to meet, Elano thought, even if all the masons, engineers and builders were to work around the clock.
On its second pass, Elano brought the helicopter low enough to discern more of the frantic toil going on below: teams of masons were putting the finishing touches on the giant sculpture of a reclined infant, naked and chubby with his feet up in the air and hands stretched out in adoration. Atop a small scaffold, a group of priests, engineers, and architects pored over rolls of blueprints. Heaps of sand and carved stone, pilling, bags of concrete, and stacks of long, steel pipes littered the grounds.
The last thing Elano and Ulf caught a glimpse of before heading inland was a friar leading a team of donkeys harnessed to a cart loaded with a huge hydraulic pump. Half a dozen workers walked on either side, keeping their eyes on the clunky mechanical concoction, supporting it with their hands, as the friar guided the cart toward the entrance to the base of the statue. Alerted by the thumping of the helicop
ter’s blades, the workers turned their heads toward the unexpected visitor swooping above. A few waved; from behind the cockpit’s windshield, Elano waved back.
Leaving the statue behind, the helicopter continued its journey flying low over New York City—a grim panorama made of acres upon acres of nothing but heaps of corroded steel frames, crushed blocks of concrete, and gutted buildings. Patches of wild vegetation spread in dense leaf canopies covering the rubbles in myriad hues of green. An abandoned highway winded its way through the emerging jungle of ailanthus trees and onion grass, its cracked asphalt plates overrun by thick shrubbery. At a junction where multiple roads crisscrossed like a toddler’s poorly tied shoelaces, the overhead passes had collapsed and now red-tailed hawks were nesting atop the still-standing abutments. Scattered haphazardly, makeshift shelters—chunks of wall covered with roofs made out of sheets of scrap metal or tent canvases—peppered the ruin-laden landscape like the crude huts of a medieval shantytown.
In the shadow of a jagged dune of fallen limestone and granite blocks, a marketplace was in full swing. A throng of buyers gathered around wicker baskets full of shriveled vegetables, leftovers from a long winter, or in front of tables laid with jars of pickled fruit and bags of seeds. Smoked meats hung from rafters. Bundles of furs, mostly from small animals—raccoons, rabbits, and once in a while a fox—stood on display nailed onto board planks. Blacksmiths brandished their tools, banging their iron blades against each other, counting the seconds like some out-of-sync human metronomes. From underneath a still-standing façade with the words TRAL STATION hanging under a truce, brewers kept enticing passersby to an early-morning thirst-quencher to get them through another day in the ruins; there was plenty of ale and cider in their kegs, and plenty of souls who needed to forget or were ready to pretend. Strolling in from around slabs of concrete covered in lichens and wild poison ivy, police monks surveyed the crowd with frowning eyes. At their sight, beggars in rags disappeared hastily among the mounds of rubble. So did the vagabond dogs.
As the helicopter thumped low over their heads, everyone stopped and stared at the sky for a brief moment, then returned to the business at hand.
Elano gently pulled back on the cyclic stick. The old Huey vibrated and gained altitude immediately as it prepared to fly over the giant pit five miles in diameter that suddenly emerged before the pilots’ eyes: The Crater of God’s Enduring Mercies… The earth bore the mark of divine justice with silent resignation; to Elano, it looked like an invisible hand had scooped out a giant tumor and left behind a grotesque wound never to close again. A Pilgrim Center operated by the Carmelite nuns had been built on its Eastern ridge, the one close to the city. It was early morning, but a school bus was already pulling up to its entrance for the first tour of the day.
On its farther Western ridge, perched atop a mangled outcrop, stood an imposing edifice fifty stories high: the headquarters of the New Vatikan, an architectural hybrid between the Empire State Building and Notre Dame Cathedral strapped in steel armature and layers upon layers of stained glass. Intricate formations of flying buttresses and spires cluttered its granite façade. Saint-adorned pinnacles poked at the sky on every corner—one halo-accessorized man or woman for every day in the calendar. And crosses; too many to count, some with the gaunt Man of Nazareth sagging in tireless abandon, others still vacant.
The helipad was located behind the main steeple, so Elano guided the Huey around the soaring geodesic dome that hosted the nave of the adjacent Saint Peter cathedral, then handed the commands over to Ulf, giving the young monk a chance to practice his skills.
Ulf took over the chopper and brought it to the ground in a perfect, smooth landing.
Bishop Hurlin was a sullen man in his sixties who wore the golden-buttoned, red Cardinal mantle fastened over his rotund belly with the distinction of a whale strapped in a tuxedo. He waited for the chopper’s rotors to wind down, and for Elano and his companion to climb out. He noticed the Jesuit warriors’ determined step, and the envy of the civilian who never swung a sword, never tasted the rush of adrenaline in the heat of battle, flickered on his face briefly.
“God have mercy,” he muttered under his breath. He caressed his belly, arranged the cross around his neck, and took two steps to meet Elano.
“It’s been a while, Monsignor,” Hurlin said. He grimaced, hesitating to give the young Jesuit Cardinal the customary embrace and holy kiss. Elano ignored the half gesture and headed straight toward the access into the building—a tall, spiked gate at the edge of the helipad guarded by two Swiss guards decked in full regalia.
“What do they feed you here, Hurlin dear?” Elano said, glancing at Hurlin’s bulging gut.
Too taken to react, Hurlin bowed his head and fell into step alongside Elano.
“Monsignor, at my age—,” he mumbled.
“The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit lusts against the flesh. Or, if you would allow me to translate it for you: the more fat, the less Spirit.”
“We all struggle, Monsignor,” Hurlin replied. “The sins that beset one’s soul are not another soul’s struggle. God doesn’t give us more than we can bear—”
“Save your sermons for your altar boys, Bishop. So, are you keeping the Holy Father on the straight and narrow these days?”
“Oh, his Holiness is—thank God for His anointment! May the Holy Father’s name be blessed on Earth as it is in Heaven. Amen.”
“His name shall be called Blessed of the Almighty, Patron of the Obese,” Elano said.
Hurlin rolled his eyes and crossed himself hurriedly. Together they passed between the two Swiss guards who drew their lances in and snapped at attention. Elano returned the salute with a nod and walked through the gateway.
“Mercy, Monsignor, mercy,” Hurlin mumbled as he trailed Elano inside the building.
“Stop begging. Mercy’s in short supply these days, Bishop,” Elano said. “You of all people should know better.”
The footsteps of the two men echoed from the dark concourse.
8
Holding hands, scores of boys and girls dressed in the sackcloth uniforms of the Orphanages of the Sacred Heart climbed down from the school bus parked at the entrance of the Pilgrim Center. Made out of red bricks neatly stacked around a skeleton of concrete beams and truces, the flat-roof one-story building sat on the very edge of the crater. All the way in the back, a lookout deck—wooden planks atop a steel frame—extended for thirty yards over the precipice of the giant drop.
The children gathered in front of the Center’s closed doors. Shaking the numbness away from their stiff bodies, they proceeded to scuffle, skip around, and pull innocent pranks at one another’s expense. The group of accompanying Carmelite nuns tried to quiet them down, while helping them form two lines. The children kept on chatting excitedly, tugging at each other, jostling to be first in line. The nuns’ patience was endless, the grip on the children’s shoulders firm.
A thunder rumbled high in the sky and all eyes turned toward the blanket of contorted, dirty-grey clouds rolling in from the Atlantic. Like a runaway ghost, a wind gust rustled as it twirled around the redbrick building, caressed the children’s faces, then descended with a sinister shriek into the darkened crevice.
The doors finally opened.
Inside the Center, the children gathered around Sister Deborah, a high-strung nun with parchment-like skin stretched tightly over a face soaked in contrition save for a pair of frigid eyes. She looked frozen at an age that was deemed to remain a forever mystery, just like the truths of the faith she held so dear to her heart. As the Prioress who ran the Center, Sister Deborah always took it upon herself to lead the first guided tour of the day—a duty she’d performed for the past ten years with the unquestionable resignation of a holy penance. Hands folded on top of each other over her heart, a rosary wrapped around her mummified fingers, she waited until the children’s curious murmuring came to an end. Once she had their attention, she pointed toward an exhibit with a dozen floo
r-to-ceiling posters displaying the skyline of Manhattan before the Blessed Collision, the long string of skyscrapers aiming for the sky like a mishmash of uneven volume bars on the display of a musical console.
“They said in their hearts, ‘Let us ascend to the Most High, let us build towers that will reach the Unreachable, let us make a name for ourselves high in the heavens,’” Sister Deborah recited in one breath. There was no intonation in her voice—the sacred quote contained a simple statement of fact, profound and definitive, and sinful lips needed not waste time embellishing it. Her hand remained aimed at the posters like a prosecutor pointing at a culprit soon to be entrusted into the merciful care of the hangman.
Enthralled at the sight of the soaring buildings of the World Before, the children kept panning their prying eyes from one jagged skyrise to another.
“But God, in His ever-abounding mercy, did not let man reach up to Him, since He has already reached down to each one of us in his Son, Jesus the Christ, His Name be blessed throughout eternity,” Sister Deborah said. She lowered her arm and closed her eyes.
“Amen,” the children responded with one voice.
From the wall, the other nuns crossed themselves in silence.
Sister Deborah’s eyes remained closed for a few seconds, heavy with pondering. When she finally opened them, she saw lightning in the East descending from the sky, the fractured jolts of electricity lashing at the earth with a fury. A rumbling thunder followed. The windows of the Center vibrated.
As the nuns guided the batch of orphans onto the lookout deck, a skinny boy, the youngest of the group, tarried behind in front of a giant poster of Central Park. He took a few steps closer and almost touched the laminated surface of the photograph with his nose. His eyes skipped from one detail to another: the hotdog stand, men and women in shorts running on the sidewalks, yellow cabs, a mounted cop on a pitch-black horse, a long row of children walking hand in hand past a clown selling balloons….
Runaway Nun (Misbegotten) Page 4