Screaming to Get Out & Other Wailings of the Damned

by J. F. Gonzalez

  This was affirmed one day after church. Mary Beth was heading to her car when she stopped to talk to Amos Stoltzfus, an elder of the congregation. After trading pleasantries, he asked her how things were. “My life is good,” she told him. She caught a glimpse of her mother out of the corner of her eye; Amos noticed and waved. Mary Beth waved, too.

  “I detect Mom and Dad are upset with you because of your new boyfriend,” Amos said.

  “Yes.” Mary Beth said. The instinct to be ashamed of this was strong, but it was ebbing fast.

  “Don’t be,” Amos said. “In time, your family will see that God has called you to do something most Christians would not understand, let alone have the strength themselves to do.”

  Curious, Mary Beth turned to Amos. “What do you mean?”

  Amos avoided the question. He took her hands in both of his rough calloused ones. “Continue to serve the Lord. And God Bless you.” He gave both her hands a squeeze, then turned and headed back to the church.

  Mary Beth watched him leave, wondering what that was all about. Amos was getting up there in age. He never would have given her that kind of advice a few years ago; she’d always known him as being ultra-conservative. The entire congregation held conservative values, and things like adultery were deep sins (which Mary Beth was clearly guilty of...one need not be involved in an extra-marital affair to be guilty of it; adultery was defined as engaging in sexual relations outside of the confines of marriage). Surely she should have been kicked out of the church by now. Amos should have chastised her for her indiscretions. But no, he had practically praised her for the life she was leading, told her that what she was doing would not be understood by her fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

  Mary Beth thought about what Amos said on the drive home, trying to make sense of it. And try as she might, she couldn’t. The closest analogy she could come to was that Amos saw that her Christian beliefs were still strong and that eventually her parents would see this. Perhaps he also saw that by living a life in the world she could touch others and, in turn, bring them closer to God’s loving touch, which was something her parents could never accomplish due to their more insular way of life.

  She mentioned this to Victor that evening. While they weren’t officially living together yet, he was over a lot. Victor shrugged, seemingly indifferent to the exchange. “Maybe. It’s not the first thing I would have come up with, but then again I do not share your religious faith.”

  “What kind of religious faith do you keep?” Mary Beth asked him, wanting to know. Surely he had to believe in something.

  Victor looked at her and grinned. “I am what I am and that’s about all there is to it.”

  “So...you don’t really have a spiritual side?”

  “I do.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s a lofty one.”

  “What is it?” Her tone was more insistent.

  Victor approached her, touched her. “To be your man....”

  And once again, she lost herself to him, even though this time she tried to resist, putting up a harder fight against giving in to him. Part of her was angry with herself for letting her carnal desires take over again, so she fought her urges. She pushed him away, told him “No, I can’t,” and he would counter with, “But you can, Mary Beth! You can and you will!”, and she struggled and resisted but he was so strong, her attraction and lust for him was stronger than her desire to get back on the straight and narrow path. She felt she had no choice, that to resist him was futile. His power was so strong that she didn’t want to resist.

  But still, something about this bothered her, especially in light of their bedroom antics. Their foreplay was rougher, more intense than it usually was, and she surprised herself by pushing the envelope further than she would have traveled in the past. She surprised herself so much that she wondered if by doing so she was crossing into another realm entirely—she’d been raised to believe standard missionary style sex was for procreation first, enjoyment between a married couple a distant second. Missionary style sex had been quickly replaced by multiple positions to the point that Mary Beth felt herself asserting her dominance over Victor. Tonight was the beginning of this. The hot dripping candle wax she applied to his bare chest was the start of it, something she didn’t even know she had in her, but she must have done something right because he loved it.

  The following morning something was different. She realized what it was halfway through the workday. I never said my morning devotionals, she thought. For a moment, panic stepped in. She looked at herself in the little mirror she kept in her cubicle. Her prayer cap was in place out of habit, but already her clothing was becoming less plain, more colorful, attractive. In fact, the prayer cap didn’t match her outfit at all. She took it off with one fluid motion and tucked it into her purse.

  The absence of the prayer cap brought stunned looks from those in the office, but they were quickly followed by positive comments. “I love your hair!” and “You look so...different!” were the most common. Following work, Mary Beth changed into a pair of gym shorts and a tank top, clothes she had purchased on impulse a week ago, and went on a brisk walk through town. It was the first time she’d ever worn the outfit; prior to today, casual attire like shorts and tee-shirts had not been part of her wardrobe, since modesty was a big thing in her faith. To dress in more revealing clothing would be flaunting her femininity and, thus, would turn men’s thoughts away from God and toward sin...

  Then again, she’d managed to do that with Victor without resorting to skimpy clothes. She’d snagged him with her ankle-length dress.

  Regardless, dressing down for once felt liberating, less confining. For the first day or two she felt over-exposed, but then she realized she was not only more comfortable, she was freer, more true to herself. She didn’t feel the need to wear too-revealing clothing—tops that showed off a lot of cleavage, for instance—but simple blouses and tee-shirts were fine. Same with faded blue jeans or a simple pair of baggy shorts. Victor liked her new style, commented on it frequently, and accompanied her to trips to the mall for new clothes.

  She was surprised a week later by a knock on her apartment door. Victor was in the kitchen preparing dinner. Mary Beth answered the door wearing a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt.

  Her parents stood outside her apartment, flanked by Amos Stoltzfus and two other church elders. Her parents looked somber. Her mother looked like she’d aged a decade. Her graying hair was pinned back from her weathered face, held in place by her prayer cap. The church elders looked on impassively.

  “Mom...Dad! Come on in!” Mary Beth opened the door to let them in. When her mother saw Victor in the kitchen, she stiffened.

  “So...you’re continuing on with your life of sin,” Mother said.

  Mary Beth sighed. “Mother...”

  “Your mother’s right!” Dad leaned toward her, his features stern, angry and final. “We’ve let this go on long enough. Look at you now! Dressed like a common hussy.”

  Not that long ago, such strong condemnation would have shattered her. But things were different now. Mary Beth was comfortable with herself for the first time in her life. She wasn’t leading a life of sin; she did not believe what she and Victor were doing was wrong. For the first time in her life she was happy. “Dad...” Mary Beth began.

  “Enough!” Her father shouted. “It’s one thing for you to chase after this...this...heathen of a man. It’s quite another for you to turn your back on your faith.”

  “What makes you think I—”

  “I’m not finished!” Her father’s eyes blazed with righteous anger. Her mother stood behind him, “You know the truth, Mary Beth. You were baptized in it and raised in it. I implore you now to leave this man and come back to the church and your family.”

  “And if I don’t?” Mary Beth was dimly aware of Victor standing in the kitchen, watching the exchange silently.

  “If you don’t come back, if you insist on staying with him...” He
r father practically spit out the words. “...then consider yourself not a part of the family anymore.”

  “You would really do that?” Mary Beth felt the first stirrings of pain settle in her heart. “You would really disown me?”

  “We’ll do more than disown you,” Her mother said. “Stay with him, and you’re as good as dead to us.”

  “You’ll be no daughter of mine if you stay with this man, Mary Beth,” Her father said.

  Through the rising tears, she glanced at the church elders, who remained silent. Amos Stoltzfus met her gaze and did not drop it. “Only the Lord knows what’s best, Mary Beth,” Amos said. “Your parents are hurting. They’re confused and in pain.”

  “Amos!” Her father warned.

  Amos ignored her father. His focus was wholly centered on Mary Beth. “Do you feel in your heart that you were meant to be with him, Mary Beth?”

  Mary Beth nodded, tears streaming down her face. The old family tie was strong and wanted her to renounce her so-called sin and leap into the loving arms of her parents, it yearned for their forgiveness and acceptance, but her new life with Victor was stronger.

  “Do you understand what you’re getting into?”

  Mary Beth nodded again.

  “Are you sure? There’s no turning back, child.”

  Mary Beth took a deep breath. She looked at her parents. Her father, with his dark slacks held up by suspenders over a blue plaid shirt, her mother wearing a heavy dark blue ankle-length dress. Looking into their eyes she saw only one thing: conform to what we want you to be or you are not our daughter any more. And in facing that decision she realized one thing; she could not go back to that life. “Yes,” she told Amos Stolzfus. “I’m sure.”

  Amos nodded at her, his features bearing a calm knowing that this was the best for her. The elders beside him, likewise, bore identical expressions. They nodded, turned and left, leaving Amos and her parents at the apartment door.

  “I’d say ‘damn you to hell’,” her father said, his face red with rage, his voice trembling. “But you already are.”

  Mary Beth said nothing as her parents turned their backs on her and walked away.

  Amos was the last to leave. He glanced at Victor in the kitchen with a quiet nod, as if of silent acknowledgement, then he nodded farewell to Mary Beth and stepped away.

  Mary Beth closed the door. Victor stood in the kitchen, waiting. “I did the right thing,” she said.

  Victor nodded. “You did. Unlike your parents and those like them, you see the ability to change what you feel is wrong. Most people remain stuck in their same old ways that don’t bring them happiness, but they feel compelled to stay for the sake of tradition or some false sense of honor.”

  He was right, of course. “I’ve been reading a lot of books about personal relationships,” she told Victor later, over dinner. “And talking to some of the girls at the office...I even engaged the services of a therapist a few weeks ago.”

  “Really? What for?”

  “To get a reality check. Since this ongoing estrangement from my parents, I’ve been going through incredible bouts of self-doubt and shame. Everything I’ve been led to believe....everything that’s been drilled into me since childhood has been to serve the Lord, to only live for God, and that if I didn’t, I’d make Him unhappy and I’d make my parents unhappy.”

  “And your parents are unhappy, but the people at your church don’t seem to think God is unhappy with you,” Victor said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you ever feel that the only reason your parents raised you in such a stifling environment was to simply control you and your siblings?”

  Mary Beth nodded. “Yeah, I do.” She saw that now. When her siblings rebelled, her parents had been disappointed, so she’d stayed on the straight and narrow and they were happy with her. When her siblings returned to the fold, her parents were overjoyed, but unhappy with Mary Beth when she decided to work outside of the church. The man they’d been grooming her to wed since she was in junior high school was now engaged to Katie Martin, a friend of the family. Had she stayed with her family, she would have been unhappy, miserable, not able to enjoy the vast richness of life and all its joys. But her parents would have been happy with her.

  “They think I’m a bad influence,” Victor sighed. “I never meant to take you away from your family.”

  Mary Beth smiled lasciviously. “But you did intend to get me out of that ankle-length dress I used to wear, didn’t you?”

  Victor grinned at her. “Oh, you got that right! And look at you now.” He gave her a brief once over. “Shorts and a T-shirt. No ankle-length dress to be seen anywhere on you.”

  Later that night, after sex, they lay in bed beneath the spinning ceiling fan, cooling the sweat from their bodies. Mary Beth’s mind and body were riding a hallucinating wave of images. Her wrists and ankles burned slightly from the ropes she’d allowed him to tie her up with, but she didn’t care. She’d loved it, had trusted him explicitly to do whatever he wanted with her, and she with him; she’d taken what was hers, had felt she was raping him, but he’d loved it, had told her she could do whatever she wanted with him, any time, and she did.

  And now they were lying together, tangled in each others sweaty limbs, coming down from the intense sex and she felt that she’d crossed another bridge, another barrier. Again, what they’d done tonight was out of character for her, but it felt right. It felt that she was becoming the person she was meant to become.

  The night was mild, the window open, letting in a cool breeze. The full moon bathed her room in natural moonlight. The tree outside her window cast long, skeletal shadows on the floor. Occasionally, the headlights of a passing car outside hit the mirror over her bureau, sending sparkling lights across the room. She looked down at Victor, who was lying with his head near her belly, on his right side. His eyes were closed. She thought about all the things that her parents had said about him. That he was wrong for her, that he was too worldly, that he was taking her down a path that would lead to a lifetime of misery, but she didn’t see any of that. Victor had liberated her. He loved her for who she was as a person. He’d helped her to see herself through different eyes, to see herself for the person she was, to see the world as not an evil place but one of incredible beauty. She loved him for that. Her parents would never do that, nor would any of the men in her church. Her discovering who she was, being the person she was meant to be, was seen as rebelling against God.

  Fuck them.

  She watched Victor, thinking about her Sunday school lessons about the devil. In the Old Testament, Satan was the accuser who challenged God to make sure He was doing the right thing. He did not become the fallen angel until much later. The name Satan itself was said to come from the old Hebrew and meant ‘to accuse’. That description was certainly apt. Perhaps her parents were right to dislike Victor. He had challenged their insular belief system. He was no doubt a devil in their mind.

  If Victor was their devil, he was her angel.

  Victor opened his eyes and looked at her.

  Really looked at her.

  Something inside her froze solid, reached icy tendrils deep into her veins, freezing her blood solid.

  From outside, the sound of a car receding in the distance.

  It had to have been an effect from the passing headlights, it happened so fast. Mary Beth only caught a brief glimpse of it, then it was gone.

  The red in Victor’s eyes blazed briefly, then died down slowly as the engine from the receding car faded in the distance.

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment as her skin raised in gooseflesh, the red burned like a fire deep in his eyes and faded with the receding lights from the passing vehicle outside, and then he said, “Will you marry me?”

  And then the icy feeling was gone. Mary Beth felt her heart swell with pride. She reached out and touched his face, marveling at the feel of his skin, the roughness of his unshaven cheek. “Yes,” she said, without hesitation. �
�Yes, I would be honored.”

  Victor’s eyes burned with a sense of knowledge that was challenging. Mary Beth met his gaze, which was deep and penetrating with just a hint of red remaining. “What do you see when you look into my eyes?”

  Mary Beth didn’t hesitate. “I see the man I love.”

  “But you see more. Tell me.”

  Mary Beth looked deep into his eyes. “I see a devil in disguise.”

  Victor grinned back at her. “A devil that has just asked a christian woman to be His bride. How apt.”

  Mary Beth laughed. “How apt indeed.”

  And then they fell together and fulfilled their destiny.

  The world changed that night.

  Story Notes

  "Christian Woman" was written to order in 2009 for a proposed anthology being put together by Kyle S. Johnson and Douglas F. Warrick based on the songs of Nick Cave. The anthology never came to fruition, and its first appearance was in Tim Deal's magazine Shroud.

  Because the stories in the anthology were supposed to be inspired by a Nick Cave composition, I chose the song "Loverman". There are actually two versions of this song, one performed by Cave, which is very effective and moody and has a very sinister undertone, which is what I was trying to achieve with the story. The other version was covered by Metallica for their Garage, Inc. album. I like that version too.

  The lyrics of the song can be interpreted to mean many things. The most common interpretation of the song is about lust, specifically, a man's lust for a woman. Because this was to be an anthology of horror stories, I found a much more sinister meaning in them.

  The Wasting

  JERRY STALEY BECAME concerned when Emily kept their daughter, Hannah, home for a third day that week.

  Third day in a row.

  Jerry stood in the hallway outside Hannah's bedroom as she held their daughter on the bed. Hannah was doubled over, vomiting into the bucket they'd put at the side of her bed. She was crying, her hair hanging about her face and down her back in wet tangles. Her thin nightgown was soaked with sweat. Jerry had never seen her this sick. "I think we should take her to see Dr. Westerman."