The Bighead

by Edward Lee

  “Miss Jerrica?”

  Goop slid out of the shadows with caution. He didn’t want to scare her like he done the other night. She was traipsin’ about in the moonlight, back by the kiosk in the garden.

  But she didn’t seem startled at all when she turned. “Goop? Hi!” she greeted as thought she were really glad to see him. “I haven’t seen you since yesterday!”

  “I knows,” he said. “I hadda go ta Roanoke, spend the night there inna motel, an’ git some trim’n stuff fer Annie. But—”

  She wasn’t herself, her could see that. Them drugs, he realized. It’s them drugs she been sniffin’ upper nose.

  The sight’a her, though, seemed to lock in his head: her standin’ there in the dark, that big bright smile’a hers, an’ that body livin’ an’ breathin’ beneath that nightgown.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, her voice just as soft as the color’a her hair. “I missed you.”

  Missed me. Keee-riiist. Goop doubted that he’d been missed by any gal he’d ever knowed, not that there’d been many. But here was Jerrica, sayin’ just that, an’ lookin’ sweet as ever.

  “I—I missed you too, Miss Jerrica,” he said, tryin’ not ta tremble. “I’se been thinkin’ ’bout you a lot.”

  Her nightgown fell to her feet, and then— There it all was, all that wonderful, tanned city body, them hooters onner, all pure white against the tan, an’ nice hard-lookin’ nipples stickin’ out the color’a radishes… Then her hand reached out, cupped his crotch.

  “Awwwww, Miss Jerrica,” he nearly stuttered. “There’s somethin’ I gots ta—I gots ta—talk ta ya about—”

  “Talk later.” Her voice was like a warm breeze, her smile lighting up the dark flower garden. Above them, the heat lightning flashed, lighting her up ever more so. More fer him ta see. More fer him ta love.

  “I need you real bad,” she whispered, and squeezed harder.

  But this weren’t right, was it? Them drugs, he thought, thinkin’ agin ’bout the evil of ’em. I gots ta talk ta her ’bout them drugs…

  She was kissing him, working her hot tongue into his mouth, and working her hand into his pants. “Christ, I missed you,” she whispered even more faintly. “I want that big farm-boy cock in me so bad—”

  Keeeeeeee-riiiiiiist…

  She grabbed his hand, placed it right into the middle of her soft, blond pussy, She pressed his finger into its wetness, then retracted it. Next thing, she was sucking his finger.

  “I’m gonna suck your come out into my mouth,” she breathed. “Would you like that, Goop? Hmmm? Would you like that?”

  What could he say? What would any guy say?

  “I— I shore would, Miss Jerrica. That’d be a might—”

  She didn’t let him finished. She was rubbing her body against him now, embracing him. Her thigh raised up, rubbing the bottom of his crotch. Aw, aw, he thought. He were about ta come right then’n there!

  “I gonna sit on your face and suck your cock at the same time…”

  She tried to haul him down to the ground, just like the other night, her tits pressing, her pussy leaving a warm wet spot on his pants leg. It was all Goop could do to steady hisself. Somethin’ weren’t right, that was fer shore. She weren’t herself.

  Them drugs, he thought. Them drugs…

  “Miss Jerrica, I gots ta tell ya somethin’.”

  “Tell me later.” Her fingers gently encircled his balls, gently squeezed them. “I want your come in me first, then you can tell me anything you want.” Then she squeezed his shaft, and again he almost came. “I want you to fuck me, Goop, and squirt all that hot come right up into my pussy. I wanna feel it…”

  “I saw what you was doin’,” he flinched and finally said. “But I wants ya ta know, it’s all right. I’ll’se help ya.”

  “What are you talking about, Goop?”

  “I saw…” He clenched his eyes close, swallowed. “I saw ya doin’ them drugs.”

  Her kisses pulled back. Her hand slipped out of his pants. “What…do…you mean?”

  He grit his teeth. He hadda tell her! “I saw ya, Miss Jerrica. Don’t ask me how—that don’t matter none. But I saw ya doin’ them devil-made drugs an’ they ain’t no good fer ya. I wanna help ya.”

  In the moonlight, her face seemed to twist up. “You—what? Why you— You were peeping in my window?”

  “Naw, Miss Jerrica, but it don’t matter—”

  “You motherfucking redneck slime!” Suddenly her face was a slice of hatred. “You’ve been peeping on me! You goddamn redneck moron piece of shit!”

  “Aw, no, Miss Jerrica! Ya gotta understand!”

  At once she was hauling her nightgown back on. “I understand that you’re a fucking backwoods pervert, spying on people! What gives you the right to do something like that! Jesus Christ, I’d have better luck with that goddamn priest! You’re a piece of shit, Goop! A scumbag, no-account, imbecile piece of shit!”

  Goop stared at the words as if they could actually be seen. Naw, naw, what’ve I done? “Please, Miss Jerrica! All we’se gotta do is talk!”

  “Fuck you!” she shouted. A moment later, the back door slammed. She was gone, back in the house, far away from him.

  Naw naw naw, he thought. She don’t mean them mean things she said. It were just them evil city drugs makin’ her say them things. He knowed full well; there were only one thing ta do. Go up, right now, ta her room, an’ talk. Talk ta her ’bout this thing. And Goop Gooder turned to do just that, when—

  “Hey, cracker.”

  Goop stopped, turned. Didn’t quite reckon who’d said it, but didn’t care. Didn’t like ta be called a cracker by no one. The moon shined in his eyes when he turned. He clenched his fist, fixin’ ta kick some serious ass, blinked—

  Smack!

  Goop went down. Somethin’ hit him so hard upside the head he could barely see a second later. Alls he could do was huff an’ feel the hard ground ’neath his back.

  “Lookit this big cracker! Hey, Gomer Pyle!”

  “We’se gonna kill him right here?”

  “Naw, no way. We’se gonna have some fun first!”

  Goop’s vision struggled somethin’ fierce. Two blobs’a faces looked down, two fellas, but that’s ’bout all he could make out.

  And Goop couldn’t move…

  “Lets me tell ya something, ya big cracker,” the one grabbed his collar an’ said. “That prissy priest-lovin’ city blond ya got yer eye on? We’se gonna ass-fuck her so hard she gonna shit blood. Then I’se gonna jack my dicksnot up her nose an’ cut her skin off real slow like, ya hear? I’se gonna kill me that city bitch, core her ass out like a apple an’ make her eat her own shit an’ thens bury her.” A chuckle in the dark. “An ya knows what, cracker? Ain’t nothin’ you gonna be able ta do about it.”

  Goop heaved, summoned every ounce’a strength his big body had ever called. But that whack on the head—

  He couldn’t move barely a muscle.

  “Drag him back the ’Mino, Dicky,” the voice said. “Hail, let’s do a job on him ’fore we dump his cracker body in the woods,” A thumb and index finger squeezed his face. “Hear me, cracker! We’se gonna do a job on you like ta make the devil puke!”

  — | — | —

  SIXTEEN

  (I)

  “There are a whole lot of people you can piss off and it doesn’t mean shit,” Jesus said in the dream. “But one of ’em isn’t THE SON OF GOD!”

  Alexander trembled. What did I do now?

  “What do you think I am, some kind of an asshole? Some rube moron out of the hills? Didn’t you and I have a big talk last night?”

  “What have I done, Lord? Forgive me in my ignorance, but what have I done wrong now?”

  Jesus took the pack of Lucky’s out of Alexander’s shirt pocket, tapped one out, lit it. But the King of Kings was wearing not only a crown of thorns but a Danzig t-shirt: black, in white letters. He smoked deep.

  “You may be able to bullshit
the little people, priest,” Jesus said, “but you can’t bullshit Me. I’m Hosanna the Highest, I’m the Messiah for My sake!”

  “I’m not bullshitting, Lord,” Alexander spake back. “Please, I beg of Thee. Tell me what’s wrong?”

  Jesus tapped an ash. “You’re still lusting after that blonde and you know it.”

  “I swear to You on high, I WILL NEVER LAY A HAND ON HER.”

  “That doesn’t matter!” Jesus bellowed. “If the sin is in the heart, it’s as good as if it’s been committed! You know that! Didn’t you read the Jimmy Carter interview in Playboy? He wasn’t much on foreign policy or the deficit, but at least the guy had the balls to admit his Christian sins!”

  “Forgive me, Lord.”

  “Keep your goddamn eyes off that blonde! She’s a cokehead and a nympho! And what are you? Christ, man. You’re a priest. That’s My black cloth you’re wearing, My collar of faith around your turkey neck. The Morning Star is laughing so hard at Me, I can hear him all the way from the goddamn abyss! You’re making me look like a schmuck!”

  Alexander croaked, “I will do anything in reparation, my God. Anything. I swear.”

  Jesus’ long dark hair hung in His face. “You wanna do something for Me? Then do this! Stop being a hypocritical dickbrain!”

  “Yes, Lord!”

  The Messiah’s face inclined forward, shaggy hair and beard. “You got any idea what hell is like, any idea at all? I’ve been there, man. And it ain’t no picnic. You should see the shit that motherfucker pulls down there. You want that?”

  “No, my Lord!”

  Jesus took a last toke of the Lucky, jerked His head. “Then get your shit square, brother.” He flicked the butt.

  “Yes, yes! I will, I swear!”

  “Swearing to Me doesn’t mean crap, man, unless you mean it to yourself. You got any idea how many broken promises I hear? Shit, if I had a nickel for every one, I’d make Bill Gates look like a fucking toilet attendant.”

  “Everything I say to You is from my heart.”

  “Then make damn sure it is.” Jesus’ holy face turned clement; He’d simmered down. “Because if you don’t, you’re lost.”

  Alexander nodded with such vigor he thought his neck might become dislocated. “Your will will be done.”

  “Thanks for the butt, man. I gotta book. But—”

  “But what, my Lord?”

  Jesus’ lips screwed up. “The ghosts are back. They want to see you again, and there ain’t nothing I can do. So all I can say is just suffer, like Job, you know? Hack it. Walk it like you got a pair.”

  The nightmare sailed, into blackness. And then—

  “Supplantation.”

  “Ever comes the morrow.”

  “You are such a silly little priest!”

  “Must still be thinking about that blonde drug addict.”

  “Or maybe the old lady!”

  “Unto you, Father, I commend my spirit.”

  “Really, Grace! What you should say is this: Unto you, I commend my fist!”

  Laughter, evil chittering…

  Now two more visitors were at hand. His night-suitors had a face now—faces. Abbess Joyclyn and Sister Superior Grace. “It feels so good to be purged,” Joyclyn said. “It feels so good to transpose…”

  Grace leaned over, grinning. “Shit, you’re a psychologist. Haven’t you ever read Freud or Jung?”

  Alexander moaned, pinned naked now on his back. The voices, and faces, blended together then, like wax under high heat.

  “Where’s that lube?”

  “Right there.”

  “Give it here. I’m gonna fist this pious fucker. I’ve always wanted to fist a priest…”

  `Alexander, pinned as he was, tried to push his mind away, to some other place. He knew that this was just a dream—all the stress of his life building up, added to Halford’s deceptions about the abbey, plus the specific revelation regarding the murders.

  Not simply a child, he recalled the monsignor’s testimony.

  A monster-child.

  A fist glistened in the lamplight, like a hand dipped into glycerin. The priest’s legs were abruptly parted.

  First one finger, then two, then three…

  Into his rectum they wormed.

  Then four…

  Christ Almighty, stop it!

  Then all five.

  The entire fist seemed to fill his bowel like a big fruit. It urged back and forth, twisted around.

  “All priests are actually queer,” one nun said. “That’s why they flee the world for the priesthood, to deny what they know of themselves. They’re really queer. They love to have things stuffed up their asses.”

  “I’m not queer!” Alexander bellowed, snapping against his bonds. “And I don’t want anything stuffed up my ass!”

  “A Freudian contradiction. People always deny what they really are…”

  “Oh, fuck you!” Alexander screamed. “I’m sick of hearing that liberal bullshit!”

  Chuckles. Giggles. “Then how come you’re getting hard?”

  Was he? So what! This was a demented, stress-related nightmare. He couldn’t be held responsible…

  The small, greased fist churned in his bowel, pummeling his prostate. “Yeah,” one of the nuns cooed. “This is great, isn’t it? I’m fist-fucking a priest up the ass. Always wanted to do it, used to finger myself thinking about it. And that schmuck Downing? Shit. I wish I had a dick so I could stick it all the way up his ass and come.”

  “I was lying on the abbey floor bleeding to fucking death and I swear that asshole was undressing me with his eyes.”

  “All priests do.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t fuck both of us.”

  “Who would’ve known? No one.”

  “Shit, maybe he did and we just don’t remember.”

  “I’ll bet he did! I’ll bet that old crevice-faced motherfucker fucked us!”

  Alexander, though, was missing most of the conversation. After all, it was hard for a priest to maintain much of an attention span while an Epiphanist nun was fist-fucking his ass. He winced as he felt the hand open and close inside of him, stroking the inside of his large intestine.

  “He fornicated with prostitutes in Viet Nam.”

  “Bad boy!”

  “And you know what else he did? He killed people.”

  “A killer priest, oh my! Well how do you like this…killer?”

  Alexander’s stomach quaked; he felt as though some brutal, living thing were inhabiting his bowel…

  “Blow him.”

  The priest shouted, “No!”

  “Make him break those phony vows. Make him come.”

  The fist continued to eddy in and out. The other nun’s mouth descended, engulfed his half-hard penis. It wasn’t half-hard for long though; in perhaps ten seconds it had fully enlivened in the confines of the nun’s mouth.

  “Can you imagine?” the fister queried. “This guy hasn’t fucked in years. Can you imagine how much spunk has built up?”

  “He probably jerks off three times a day,” the fellatrice paused long enough to remark.

  “I don’t jerk off!” Alexander bellowed. “I haven’t jerked off in over a decade!”

  “Yeah, right. Just like you didn’t kill kids in Viet Nam.”

  “I didn’t kill kids! I killed the enemy! I killed NVAs because if I didn’t, they would’ve killed me!”

  “Murder is an impediment to the priesthood, asshole.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone! It was justifiable homicide! It says so in Vatican II!”

  And with that, Alexander’s hips convulsed. A vaguely familiar sensation arose: something rising to escape—

  “Jerk him now.”

  The hand opened and closed inside. Another hand grasped his spit-slick shaft and stroked. When Alexander opened his mouth to moan, hot jets of semen flew into it.

  “Outrageous! We just made a priest come in his own mouth!”

  “I wonder if he’s even awa
re of the existential symbology of that. I wonder if he knows what that means.”

  “He’s too stupid. He’s too hung-up on that cocaine blonde.”

  Alexander spat his own semen out of his mouth, to rebel. “I am not hung up on—”

  “Shut up, asshole.” Then—

  schlap!

  Alexander barked a shout as the fist was quickly withdrawn.

  “Should we shit in his mouth?”

  “Naw, no time. Christ, we’ve only got so much time.”

  “You’re right.”

  “But I gotta pee. And he likes to be peed on.”

  “Let ’er rip.”

  The priest’s head rolled back and forth in the midst of this outrage. One of the nuns hoisted her habit-skirt, bared the ever-familiar pubic bush. And then it came, the amber cascade, spurtling in a gentle arc directly into his mouth.

  Alexander gagged, his face pouring warm liquid. It stung his eyes. I’m going to drown in a nun’s piss…

  The stream moved, forcing itself into his nostrils. He felt the heat jet up his sinuses, as if seeking his brain.

  “Yeah, Sartre would love this!”

  When the cascade subsided, the other nun cackled like a witch, and wiped her smeary hand off on his face, a gelatinous conglomeration of Noxema and his own excrement.

  “We’re ghosts, Father. Did you know that?”

  “I had an idea,” Alexander gasped.

  “You think that because you’re faithful, you’ll go to heaven?”

  “Yes! I know I will!”

  “Stop being so selfish, killer. We were faithful too, and look where we are.”

  Alexander got the point.

  The figures began to dissolve. Alexander could taste hot urine dipping down his nasal passage to his tongue.

  “Watch out for The Bighead,” one of them said.

  The voices drifted, like distant surf.

  The macabre light of nightmare dimmed.

  “Don’t go in the basement, Father…”

  (II)

  “Dicky! Git the strap wrench!”

  Dicky squatted in the bushes, his pants down, his bulbous buttocks jutting like twin moons. “Aw, Balls, gimme a sec, I’se takin’ me a dump!”