by Edward Lee
He was humpin’ her so fine’n dandy, pluggin’ his 14 inchers’a cock in an’ out that big slippery red-hairt puss, whens she just started ta bust up, just like the rest’a ’em. His dickknob felt her insides startin’ ta pop, an’ things breakin’ inner, an’ he could’a swored he felt his big pecker pop that baby right in the eye, an’ thens she broke her water, which Bighead cupped in his hand and dranked, an’ it were warm an’ good, but it were no con-ser-lay-shun. With all the gals Bighead’d fucked, not one of ’em hadda poon big enough take alla his meat, not even this red-hairt with the biggest poon he’d seed yet. She started bleedin’ like the time he bit the head off that weasel, she did, only she weren’t bleedin’ out her neck stump. Turnt the water red, it did, all that blood, gushin’ out her like a tap, an’ she just murmurt with her green eyes flutterin’, an’ she died.
Bighead were depressed, he were. Once—just once—he wished he could finda gal with a poon big enough fer him ta come proper. He’s comed right in that baby’s face, he supposed, thens pulled out, an’ he figgurt he oughta bust her noggin’ open an’ et her brain, but then he’s got another idea.
See, this gal was preggered, as in real preggered, like she were about ta drop that crumb-snatcher any day. So’s he just got back right down on that bloody red-hairt pussy’a hers, ands he started suckin’ The Bighead sucked hard, he did, and ’ventually he started hearin’ somethin’ tear inside’a her, ands he sucked an’ sucked an’ sucked till—damn!—that baby inner belly started comin’ out.
Bighead, in his mind, began ta rejoice, he did.
He hauled that baby outa there an’ held it upta the sun…
It begun ta cry, it did.
Ands Bighead smiled.
‘Cos although he’d et a lotta ay-dult brains in his time, never once had he ever had the opportunity ta et a baby’s brains.
No sir!
««—»»
Them baby’s brains?
He bit a whole in that soft skull, an’ he sucked them brains right out that baby’s l’il head, he did, like suckin’ a duck egg the way Grandpap’d taught him.
An’ they was good, they was.
Yes sir!. Them baby’s brains was real good.
They hadda tang’a salt, like a ay-dult’s, but they was real warm too, an’ had somethin’ of a sweet taste along with it, likes they’se had sugar in ’em…
(IV)
“The administration office was sealed,” Alexander said, peering at a photocopy of the first-floor blueprints. Upon arriving at Wroxeter Abbey, he’d immediately knocked the boards off the windows on either side of the long central hall, to let in light.
“They sealed it?” Jerrica didn’t understand. “Isn’t that strange?”
“No, not really,” the priest replied. “Diocesan laziness. Wroxeter was a hospice for dying priests, like I was telling you and Charity this morning. Obscure, out of the way. The in-patient records weren’t deemed critical, so the Church decided to just leave them here rather than go to the expense of transporting and filing them in Richmond. The chances of those records ever being needed are a million to one. So they simply transferred the few remaining in-patients and had the office sealed.” Alexander peered up from the blueprints. “And I’d say that the office has to be somewhere along this wall.”
Red, mortared bricks—surprisingly unfaded—composed most of the north interior wall, while half-paneled sheetrock formed the south wall. A strange design, but then, Jerrica noted, so was the entirety of the building itself. Inside and out, it completely defied what she expected. Abbeys brought with them a certain connotation; in her mind she pictured a great edifice, slate-roofed, made of stone, something medieval and churchlike. Wroxeter, instead, proved to be more akin to an lodge, centuries old, or a vast cabin. A bell tower, bereft of bell, reminded Jerrica of something headless.
But the diversity of building materials were plain; the outer walls, she saw with astonishment, were made from long, stout trees stripped of their bark, stained, and lain lengthwise, seamed with mortar, and ancient cedar shingles crusted the slanted roof. An old Colonial design, which Alexander verified upon arrival. “The abbey was built in the late 1600’s, in case you’re curious about the logs. But the interior is totally different, due to several overhauls. Wroxeter is actually one of the oldest Church properties in the state.”
Fascinating. Like a log cabin on a larger scale. It sat nestled fully in the grips of the forest, at the end of a long, rising dirt lane. From what Jerrica could discern, the elevated terrain ended abruptly, as if Wroxeter were erected on a wooded precipice which descended shortly past the building’s rearmost limits.
“So you can see,” the priest had gone on, “why the Church wants to use it for a rehab facility. Way out here in the woods, all this peace and quiet.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Well, sort of anyway. “It’s a beautiful area. It’s just that the abbey itself looks so bizarre. I expected something huge, something with turrets and stonework, high windows and all that. But this place is only one story. It just looks so…weird.”
Alexander laughed, hoisting a box full of tools from the Mercedes. “The Catholic Church doesn’t give a squat about what it looks like. All they care about is the price, and the price is right: free.”
Jerrica picked up the supplies they’d bought in town, and followed the priest. Inside proved even more peculiar, an obtuse collision of designs. The entry and vestibule stood tall and dark in tudor stone archways, sconces, and lancet windows which once had no doubt been inset with stained glass, but only lead webbings remained now. A slate floor proceeded to the central hall, carpeted literally by an inch of dust. Rotten rugs, whose original color was anyone’s guess, led down the main corridor.
“Just like Trump Towers, huh?” Alexander joked. Then he’d whipped out his xeroxes of the floor layouts, began to scrutinize them.
“I can’t believe how hot it is,” Jerrica commented, sweating profusely already.
“Yeah? You should’ve been here yesterday, before I had a chance to break out the planks nailed over the windows at each end of the main hall. It was like a sauna. At least now we’ve got a little bit of a cross-breeze.”
A little bit was right. “How did you break the window planks out?” Jerrica asked, for lack of anything else.
“Trusty old twenty-pound sledge,” the priest answered, and hoisted its haft from the toolbox.
Jerrica giggled lightly. “Somehow, it’s hard for me to picture a priest knocking out window planks with a sledge hammer.”
“Well, when I find out where the admin office is, you’re gonna get to see a priest knock down a brick wall with one.” His eyes tarried over the blueprint copies. “This is gotta be it,” he supposed. “Right here. Take a look. Doesn’t this look like new brickwork to you?”
Jerrica felt flattered he’d asked her opinion. Generally, men relegated her as a party host and a bedmate. But when she glanced at the indicated area, she saw what he meant. Newer, darker-hued brick filled a gap between the older work. “I’m sure you’re right,” she acknowledged, brushing sweat from her brow with her forearm. “Why else would that newer brick be there?”
Alexander nodded in ascent, then grabbed the sledge. “Only one way to find out.”
Jerrica started at each steady impact, priest suddenly becoming construction worker, or destruction worker in this case. Alexander wielding the long-handled hammer with something akin to expertise—not exactly what she would’ve expected.
chink-chink-chink!
The hammer smacked on and on as she watched, and it wasn’t long before some of the darker emplacements of brick began to give, sifting powdered mortar from their seams.
chink-chink-chink!
He stopped a moment, to wipe his own brow. “Thank God this is slipshod brick-laying; these bricks are coming out pretty fast. Like they were set in putty.” Then he sighed, wiped his brow again, and slipped out the white Roman collar. “Christ, you’re right. It’s hot as hell in her
e.” Then he took off the black cotton shirt.
chink-chink-chink!
Jerrica watched on, no longer interested in the man’s deftness with a sledge hammer. Instead, she couldn’t take her eyes off his body…
He was nude now from the waist up; Jerrica found him ever more attractive. Tight, modest muscles flexing beneath tighter skin. No body fat at all. He was not possessed of the extended musculature of Goop, of course, but Father Tom Alexander was nonetheless not lacking in physical definition. A faint crucifix of hair crossed his denuded chest. But—
“Wait,” she asked without thinking. A flurry of pocks graced his lower side. “What’s that?”
The priest lit a cigarette, leaning on the hammer’s haft. “Shrapnel scars,” he answered without a flinch. His fingers brushed over the slightly darkened pits. “I was on a LRRP, that’s long-range-reconnaissance patrol; I was backing up the point man, a buddy of mine. Anyway, he tripped a Russian-made APERS.”
“APERS?” Jerrica, fascinated, asked next.
“Anti-personnel mine. Not much more than a grenade hanging in the bush. My buddy tripped it, bought the farm—” Alexander crossed himself. “I lucked out and caught a few pieces in the side. Actually it’s the best thing that ever happened to me because I got airlifted out by some pure-ass crazy warrant officer, and I sat in a med-unit while the Tet was going on that year. If that shrapnel hadn’t hit me, there’d be some other over-the-hill priest banging this brick wall.”
“You’re not over the hill!” Jerrica immediately objected.
“Hey, I’m pushing fifty and probably look sixty.”
Jerrica’s eyes rose, a breath stalled in her bosom. “Believe me, you look good.”
Alexander smiled, the cigarette hanging. “Oh, yeah? Well, thanks for the compliment. Hey, how about doing me a favor. See if the access is blocked to the bell tower, for one. And see if there’s a basement. The blueprints aren’t clear on that.”
“Uh, okay,” Jerrica agreed. She knew she would agree to anything he asked. And she also knew this: He cut that off real fast because he knows I think he’s hot. Why else would he thank her for the compliment, then send her off?
Didn’t matter, though. Shit, he’s a priest, she reminded herself. After a few moments of scuttling through dust down the north end of the hall, she found a door which led up to the bell tower. There were several unsealed rooms down this end, dorm rooms they looked like: stripped cots, old wall lockers. The nuns must’ve slept here, she reasoned. A larger dorm contained half a dozen stripped convalescent beds: the in-patient area. All pretty boring stuff.
But next she found another door in the same stairwell leading down to the basement. When she hurried back and reported this to Alexander, she saw that he’d knocked out all the new bricks, which lay now in a sifting heap at his feet. “Shit,” he remarked. “I could lay better brick than that! Let’s go in.”
Another boarded up room, stuffy nearly to the point of suffocation. The priest’s sledge hammer—Ka-CRACK!—promptly knocked out the planks, filling the office with sunlight and fresh air. Alexander’s lean muscles flexed when he yanked open the first of many rusted file cabinets, celebrating, “Halford was right. All the records are still here.”
“That’s great,” Jerrica said, simply just to agree with him.
And her eyes reopened on the man, relishing his hard flesh. Even the darkened pits of his war scars seemed erotic to her…
She leaned against the wall, a hot breath growing hotter in her chest. Her vision shifted to the most treacherous deceit: in her mind, then, she saw the two of them making love, right there in the inch-thick dust on the floor, groveling over each other, licking each other’s sweat. Her eyes widened but she saw the fantasy as if they were closed and she were dreaming. She was desperately yanking down his priestly black slacks, admitting his penis to her mouth. Then she was sitting on his face, going cross-eyed as his tongue tended her clitoris and his fingers entered her sex. First one finger, then two, then…four. It was another of her countless fantasies: to be fisted till her throat felt full, till she couldn’t see straight. And here he was, the goodly Father Alexander, doing just that in the scape of her scurrilous mind… Fisting her. Moaning for her as she sucked him. His muscles clenching. She sucked him harder, felt his penis throb and his testicles draw up. Then all that pent-up come, from so many years of celibacy, jettisoned out to flood the back of her throat. She swallowed it all like warm, salty soup as she came, screaming aloud…
“Hey. Jerrica. Where you at? The Twilight Zone?”
She snapped to, probably blushed. “Oh, I was just…thinking.”
“Thinking, huh?” Did he suspect her forbidden thoughts? Could he tell? His frown melded to half-smile. “Look at this. Isn’t this off-the-wall?” He’d opened all the desk drawers, which remained full of office supplies and even some personal effects: letters, a locket, a monogrammed prayer book, an old bracelet that read JOYCLYN in cursive engraving.
“And check this out.”
Jerrica turned. Along the wall sat a glass-paned metal cabinet. She tried to turn the handle but found it locked. The priest wiped dust off the panes, peering in. “This is amazing. There are still pharmaceuticals in there.”
“Pharmaceuticals?”
“Remember, this place served as a hospice for terminal priests. I’m sure most of them were on some sort of medication or another, and this is obviously where they kept them, in the abbess’ office.”
“That really is bizarre,” Jerrica noted. “Medications, drugs? You would think the Church would’ve taken them all out of there when the abbey closed.”
“Yeah,” Alexander agreed, scratching his head. He shrugged.
“Let’s go check out the basement, see what’s down there.”
She followed him sheepishly. He redonned his black shirt but didn’t button it back up. He knows, she feared, digging her fingernails into her thigh. Why else would he have put his shirt back on? He knows I’m staring at him, he knows I’m fantasizing.
His black priest shoes snapped echoes up into the hollow staircase. She followed him down. Her nipples tingled, she knew they must be standing out like points through her white halter. At least Alexander seemed distracted now, flipping through more blueprint copies.
At the landing, they turned, followed down a dark, hot hall of bare cement flooring.
“Unexcavated,” the priest murmured.
“What?”
“That’s what these plans say. They say the entire basement is unexcavated.”
“I don’t…quite follow you.”
He lit another cigarette, the insides of his pectorals showing in the opened black shirt. “These plans are pure garbage. I can’t believe Halford would do this to me.”
“They must be out of date,” she guessed.
“Fucked up, is what they are,” the priest obscened. “Pardon my language, but this is par for the course of the Catholic Church. What kind of bullshit is this?”
“I still don’t understand,” Jerrica said.
He frowned up at her then, the cigarette fuming. “We’re standing in the basement, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, according to these blueprints, there is no basement.”
Jerrica shrugged. Big deal, they were old blueprints. Her fantasies, though, continued to drag at her, like undertow. More dices of sunlit flesh, more prurient images: Now she lay naked with her legs parted so thoroughly he tendons hurt. But the pain only added to the pleasure. He was on top of her, thrusting into her…
“That son of a bitchin’ Halford,” Alexander remarked.
His cock stuck up her so far she imagined she could feel it bumping her stomach…
“Don’t ask me why I think this, but I’ll bet my benefice pay that that goddamn guy knows that these blueprints aren’t updated. Shit, it says right in the corner frame: 1921!”
Come in me! Come in me! she was thinking, feeling each thrust. That, for whatever arcane reason, was the only
thing she wanted in the world: his semen in her. His come in my pussy, the thought groaned. The fantasy jumbled on. His arms girded her back like iron braces, his mouth sucked her tongue, and that’s when she felt it all pouring into her, like viscid broth, like warm wax.
Oh, shit, she thought. I fucking love you…
“I’d like to kick that wussy’s ass up and down the fucking street,” the priest eloqueneted. “That stick-in-the-mud crusty, lying motherfucker sent me all the way out here and didn’t even bother to get me new floorplans.”
“Father,” Jerrica said, finally surfaced from the dream. “Do priests use language like that?”
“Fucking-A right they do, honey.” He was visibly outraged, tumultuous. “When our superiors treat us like fucking subordinate idiots, you’re goddamned right we use language like. That shit-for-brains lazy motherfucker…”
Jerrica was appalled yet fascinated. She considered it an honor to witness a priest with his dander up, to the extent of profanity. It seemed to break a sacred rule, it shattered what she envisioned as the mold of the priesthood. But then—
Something caught her eye.
She had to agree: the basement seemed bizarre, even useless. It existed as a single corridor, walled by bricks on either side. There were no doors, no rooms, nothing. Only a few broken footing windows offered light. She would’ve expected to find at least a utility room down here, a mechanical room, a fuse closet.
“Nothing,” Alexander griped. “Not one room down here; it doesn’t make sense. There’s never even been electricity in this joint; otherwise there’d be some kind of transformer, and it would have to be down here. But look.” He pointed upward. The stucco’d ceiling seemed filmed with carbon-black soot. “Same as upstairs. For the whole time this place was open, they were using oil lamps, for shit’s sake.”
Jerrica noted the oddity, but still didn’t quite understand the priest’s irritation. Why should he care?