The Bighead

by Edward Lee

  I love you so much, my precious bitch.

  He pulled his musky cock out, jerked it, squirted his semen right into her eye where the sharp stinging sang to her heart. She drooled out of her mouth, coming like a tap—swallowing demented pleasure like a snake swallowing goose eggs.

  Suck it up.

  She sucked it into her mouth, sucked out the final, finest drops—wicked salt on her tongue.

  But then the dream changed again, a noxious deception. It wasn’t the priest at all lying atop her. It was someone else, someone so dark he nearly wasn’t there at all. Someone hideous.

  The malformed teeth glinted in moonlight.

  The giant hand stroked Annie’s cheek.

  I love you so much, my precious aunt…

  (IV)

  Charity dreamed as well, just as she had last night. Her skin felt lit with pleasure, anticipation. She parted her legs for any number of the lovers of her past. Her nipples kindled, her face flushed with heat that spread like a lance to her sex. Her sex oozed…

  The cock dipped into her, her suitor’s body pressing her down. She didn’t feel much but she didn’t need to. All she needed was the contact, the passion, the vivid idea that a man was excited over her.

  His hips thrust several times, eager at first, then faltering. Even in the dark, she could see the capitulation on his face.

  “I’m sorry. This just…isn’t working.”

  Charity’s passion turned to compost.

  She watched him climb off, put his clothes back on in haste, and leave.

  (V)

  And the priest dreamed too, though not quite so deceptively. My violence! My sin! he thought, tears in his dreaming eyes. God Almighty. Forgive me.

  Those two punks, those two assholes. He’d beaten them, thrashed them. Jesus was standing in the middle of his dream, frowning, and—yes—smoking a cigarette. “‘Ye who smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,’“ Then: “You fucked up, priest. I’m so pissed at you, I could puke,” Christ the King told him. “What the hell is wrong with you? I oughta rip that fuckin’ collar right off and shove it down your phony throat, ’cos you ain’t fit to wear it, brother. And that ain’t just a dream talkin’. That’s the King of Kings. That’s Jesus Christ talkin’, pal, and you better get your shit together ’cos if you don’t, even I can’t save your rag-tag over-the-hill Viet Nam ass. The Morning Star will bury you so deep in primeval shit, even God Himself ain’t gonna have a shovel big enough to dig you out. And keep your goddamn eyes off that blonde, you pious hypocrite. You got any idea how that makes us look? You ain’t some army grunt anymore, boffing Saigon whores on Tudo Street and pulling out your pecker for quickie blowjobs in some goddamn alley! You’re a priest! You’re a priest!”

  Alexander wept openly. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry, Lord! I shouldn’t have beat those guys up! I’ve disgraced you! I’m ashamed!” He choked on his own snot. “Forgive me, Jesus, I beg of thee…”

  Jesus flicked his butt, shrugged, lit another. “I forgive you.” Then he leaned abruptly forward. “Asshole! Shithead! But hear me out, ’cos I ain’t fuckin’ around with you no more. If you don’t get your shit together, killer, the devil’s gonna step on your dick a hell of a lot harder than I can! You wanna drown in blood and sperm and steaming shit every night for eternity? It can be arranged, and you’re doing a dynamite fucking job arranging it right now!” Then Jesus’ mean-spirited cast turned clement. “I cannot take you into the Kingdom of Heaven unless you are worthy.”

  “I know!” Alexander screamed so hard his throat erupted blood.

  “Wear that monkey suit like you gotta pair.”

  “I will!”

  The King of Kings, then, grit his fine, white, perfect teeth in exasperation. “And keep your goddamn eyes off that blonde! You wanna save her, then save her, ’cos we got a lotta room. But quit looking at her like she’s some goddamn ten-buck trick, ’cos if you don’t I’ll put My foot so far up your ass you’ll be able to give me a pedicure with your teeth!”

  Alexander bit the tip of his tongue off, to prove his resolve. “I will do as You bid, my Lord. Save me.”

  Jesus frowned at the cigarette, as though it were too weak. A Doral, a Kent Ultra Light. “I can save you, if you fit the bill, paisan. All that Calvinism shit is bullshit—we don’t know. But I gotta good feeling about you, dickbrain.” Then Jesus’ face lit up, like white neon. “I can save you.”

  “Please, Son of God! Save me!”

  “I probably will. I can save your soul. Heaven ain’t a bad crib, lemme tell you. You read the Bible. The Book of Daniel? Heaven is 1500 miles long, 1500 miles deep, and 1500 miles high, with a river running through it and lots of fruit trees, so there’s always grub, and it’s gotta 150-foot-high fence made of pure jade encircling it. Beats the shit out of some waterfront condo or a suite at the Mayflower, no lie.” Jesus inadvertently stroked his beard, nodded. “Yeah, man, I can save your soul—” Then, viciously, the Son of God grabbed Alexander’s throat and shook his head like a ball on a fuckin’ spring. “But I can’t save you from your dreams!”

  Alexander blinked, swallowed more snot. Jesus is telling me I’m on thin ice. I better quit fucking around… But— What else did He say? Something about…dreams?

  Jesus, then, very quickly, turned into Steven Tyler, his hand wrapped around a multi-colored kerchief cloaking a microphone.

  “Dream on,” He, or he, said. “Dream until your dreams come true.”

  Forgive me for my sins, God, forgive me for my sins, God, forgive me for my—

  The nightmare popped, like the head of a pus-filled boil.

  Suddenly, Father Tom Alexander, ordained Catholic priest and deputy psychologist of the Richmond Catholic Diocese, found himself again staked down naked to a dirty cement floor. But unlike the first perverse dream, he was this time bound on his back. Candles flittered from afar in dusty darkness, humid heat rose. His penis seemed so shriveled it felt like a bloodworm died in the sun.

  Wake up, he pleaded with himself. Somehow, he knew who would appear next. Wake up and get out of this fucked-up dream. But, indeed, there was no relent, and in only moments she did appear. The nun, becloaked in heavy habit, wimple, and veil, walked barefoot to where he lay on the cold, bare floor.

  “Father, I beg thee,” she said.

  Alexander smirked, wrists and ankles lashed to iron pegs sunk into the floor. “Beg me what?” he testily asked.

  She said nothing just then in response. She hoisted the skirt of her black habit, brandishing, again, the plenteous pubic mound, bristled thick and clean as slivers of coal. “I’m the nun who pissed up your ass last night.”

  “Believe me,” he countered. “I remember!”

  “But before you can be purged, you must first be filled.”

  Alexander wished for a cigarette. “I think you did a pretty good job of filling me up last night.”

  “Not good enough,” she said in her gentle southern drawl, and smiled with a blinding innocence. It was only then, though, that the priest noticed the plastic tube, clear, like an air-line for a fishtank, tweezed daintily between her thumb and index finger. She smiled again, and then—

  “No!” he yelled. “You sick bitch!”

  —lubricated its end with saliva and began—

  “NO!”

  —to insert it into his urethra.

  Down and down it slid, Alexander’s nude hips jerking at the blade-sharp sensation. “In you go,” the nun proclaimed, “All the way down…”

  Alexander’s eyes felt like they’d launch from his head. But what could he do? This was a dream! “I’ll kick your Epiphanist ass if you don’t stop that!” he warned.

  “You’re not going to be kicking anything, Father. You’re paralysed. You’re staked to the floor.” Then she reimmersed herself in her current duties. “Yes, yes,” the nun remarked, working the tube ever deeper. “That’s a good boy.”

  Alexander felt something give, way back near his bowel—the tube-end p
opping through his urethral sphincter.

  “Yeah…”

  Squatting, still, the nun leaned back with a cast of deep satisfaction on her face, and only then did the priest notice exactly where the other end of the tube went. The nun had already previously catheterized herself…

  “Ahhhhhh,” she moaned, eyes closed, face toward the ceiling.

  Alexander felt the hot flood entering him. He squirmed.

  “Ahhhh, yeah. Last night I pissed up your ass, tonight I’m pissing into your bladder…”

  Alexander reeled at the sensation, his eyes clamped closed so hard he thought the seams might heal together. She’s pissing into my dick! he realized quite grimly. What kind of a dream is this?

  But that thought caused him to think. Jesus had told him He couldn’t save him from his dreams, hadn’t He?

  And my dreams, the priest thought, come from …me.

  “Ahhhhh, ahhhhh,” the nun went on, emptying her bladder into his.

  “Why are you doing this!” Alexander, helpless, screamed.

  “Ahhhh,” came her answer, and with that another nun appeared, just as lovely, just as innocent. Oh, no, Alexander thought, though, when he took a closer look. You gotta be shitting me.

  When this second nun raised her habit-skirt, he saw that she too had been catheterized, only this catheter was substantially thicker than the first nun’s. A half-inch thick in diameter, to be exact. Smiling reverently, she squatted over his face, then deftly began to insert the other end of the thick plastic tube into his mouth.

  Alexander remained helpless…

  “Down you go,” the second nun sedately announced. “All the way down into Father’s stomach.” Then—

  “Ahhhhh,” she moaned, just in unison with he first nun: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—”

  They were filling him up.

  They were nuns, and he was a priest, and the were—

  Filling me up with their piss! he thought, since he could no longer actually say it, oh no, not with a half-inch-thick piss-catheter running down his throat.

  His belly and bowel, simultaneously, began to inflate. He could feel the hot water slushing. Filling him up, yes, until he felt like a goddamn medicine ball fit to burst.

  “All right,” the first nun directed. And with that they both—

  “Owww! Shit!”

  —yanked out their respective catheter tubes.

  “It’s your fault,” said the first nun.

  “What you let happen to us,” added the second.

  “What! I didn’t do shit to either of you!” Alexander yelled.

  “We’re…dead.”

  His eyes, once more, widened to slug-size.

  “The Pope sent you back to Africa, for a famine! I can’t help what happened to you there!”

  “We never went back,” said Nun Number One.

  But before Alexander, urine-filled and sloshing, could even reply, the first nun went on: “How does it feel to be purged?”

  Purged? Perhaps Alexander had a misconception of the word. “Purged!” he bellowed. “You two psychos just did the opposite! You didn’t purge me! You filled me!”

  “Of course,” she said, still reverent-eyed, still so sedate her entire form was scarcely a whisper.

  The second nun: “Before you can be purged, you must be binged.”

  The first nun gazed down. “Don’t you know what that symbolizes?”

  Alexander didn’t have a fucking clue, and he didn’t care.

  “Supplantation, Father. Transcension…”

  “Transposition…”

  But when he looked again, they were gone, and so was he. The stone-cold floor and the heavy lashings were gone, and he lay again in darkness.

  And in that darkness, Jesus reappeared. Jesus’ face, that is, dressed as Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.

  “Oh, and dickhead?” Jesus inquired of him. “One last thing I forgot to tell you.”

  “What, my Lord?”

  Jesus cleared his throat, lit a butt. “Listen, Tom, and listen good.”

  “Yes, my Lord!”

  Jesus, for the last time, grinned, and wiped His brow with the multi-colored kerchief. Then He said this:

  “The Bighead’ll get you if you don’t watch out.”

  (VI)

  Aw, man, he’s mad, Dicky thought. This ain’t good, no sir! They’d hidden out down the block, waited, then followed them at a distance. An old white Mercedes it looked like they was drivin’, an’ they’se pulled up at that boarding house on the edge’a town. ANNIE’S it was called, the place with all them ad signs up’n down the Route an’ 23.

  “Come on, Balls,” Dicky pleaded. “Just let’s ferget it.”

  “Ferget it, hail.” Tritt Balls’ eyes looked crossed he was so mad. “Ain’t no man on this green earth gonna whup Tritt Balls Conner, ’specially no holy man…”

  Dicky idled the El Camino just at the entrance. He gulped, then dared ta ask, “So’s…what you figgure on doin’?”

  “I’se gonna kill that there priest, Dicky Boy, I am,” Balls assured from his shotgun seat, his eyes glarin’ up that road like a jackal’s onna big, fat chicken. “An’ that blondie bitch he were with?” Balls made a sound like a chuckle. “I’se gonna fuck her ass so hard my dick’ll come out her bellybutton. Yes sir. I’se gonna bust her hole…”

  Dicky gulped again, sweat tricklin’. Yeah, he knowed Balls quite well, he did, and he knowed how crazy he could git once he were riled. Knowin’ Balls, he’d bust right inta that boarding house right now an’ put a ruckin’ an’ killin’ on ever-one there, then they’d problee wind up gettin’ caught an’ goin’ to the slam fer the rest’a their lifes. Balls weren’t one ta think things smartways whens he were this mad.

  “Please, Balls,” Dicky pleaded. “We cain’t just march on in there an starts killin’—”

  “Shore we’se can, Dicky!”

  “But that priest,” he reminded, “he whupped us good, an’ he’s might whups us agin.”

  “Naw, no way, Dicky Boy.” Another chuckle, another leer up the dark road. Then Balls reached under the seat and—

  Awwwwwww, no, Dicky thought.

  —pulled out his dear dead Daddy’s big-ass Webley .455 revolver. He brandished the weapon, weighed it in his hand, keeping that grin’a his. “He may’a whupped us once, Dicky. But he ain’t gonna whup us agin, that’s fer dag shore!”

  “Not tonight, Balls,” Dicky about begged, his fear frantic as a caged field ferret. “Please, not tonight.”

  And then this weird diffusion passed over Ball’s face’n eyes. The bill’a his John Deere cap turnt his face dead black. He was starin’ up that road, to where the boarding house was.

  “Naw,” he whispered. “Not tonight, my man. What we’ll’se do is wait fer the time ta be perfect.” He turned his head. The wicked grin beamed. “Then we’ll’se have us some big fun…”

  — | — | —

  THIRTEEN

  (I)

  In the morning, something seemed strange. Leftovers from last night, Charity guessed. Murders. Heading our way. Not that she herself was terribly concerned—these murders the trooper had mentioned were so far away, she felt certain the killer would be caught soon. The police were working on it fulltime. They’ll catch him…

  But Aunt Annie looked awful. She looked depleted, pale, as she feebly served breakfast.

  “Let us do that, Annie,” Jerrica volunteered, taking the pan of hoecakes and sorghum syrup. “You look so tired.”

  “I am,” Annie admitted and sat down at the table. “I didn’t sleep at all. Kept havin’ awful dreams.”

  The comment reminded Charity of her own dreams: the recurring dream of her own insolvencies in love. It was a cryptogram, or perhaps only a cruel replay of her life. The minute I get into bed with a man, he’s turned off completely. Why?

  “I had awful dreams,” Father Alexander announced, appearing at the dining room entry. “Second night in a row. I feel like I didn’t get any sleep at all.”<
br />
  “You and me both, Father,” Aunt Annie said.

  “Maybe my brain is just having a bad reaction to all this clean air,” he joked. He poured himself orange juice from the iced pitcher, lit a cigarette. “I’m used to Richmond smog.”

  Jerrica’s eyes seemed to go alight at the sudden presence of the priest; Charity duly noted this. But she noted something else. Jerrica, she thought quizzically. Her friend didn’t seem herself. She seemed on edge, wired.

  “And speaking of Richmond,” the priest continued, “I have to drive back today.”

  “What!” Jerrica exclaimed. “I thought you were staying here to reopen the abbey.”

  “I am,” he told her. “But those papers I found in the administration office yesterday? They’re really messed up, can’t make hide nor hair of ’em. I’m going to have to show this stuff to my boss, see what he can make of them. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  And Charity, then, couldn’t help but notice the way Jerrica was suddenly squirming in her seat…

  “Goop, my handyman, should be back this afternoon, Father,” Annie said. “He can drive you if you like.”

  “No, that’s not necessary.” Alexander paused over his orange juice. “Where did he go, by the way”

  “Yes, Aunt Annie,” Charity added. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning.”

  “That’s because I sent him to Roanoke last night, to buy some vinyl trim,” Annie revealed.

  Which didn’t make sense to Charity. “You sent him to Roanoke at night?”

  “Well, I didn’t need to, and I don’t really even need the trim,” her aunt began to explain. “I sent him last night deliberately.”

  “Why?” Jerrica asked.

  “Well, hon, because I wanted to make sure he stayed there overnight. Goop Gooder’s a wonderful, helpful young man, but he can also be quite a gadfly—as far as women as concerned, I mean. I couldn’t help but notice what a likin’ he’s taken ta you, Jerrica. So I thought I’d send him out’a town fer a day, keep him out’a yer hair.”