Doa Ii Read online

  When we got there the secretary told me the problem was with the baptismal font instead of the kitchen or toilet like I thought. Well, no plumber in his right mind takes on a clogged baptismal drain. That takes the Specialist. We all know who to call, but you won’t find the number in any yellow pages.

  So I says to that secretary that I have to get a Specialist to come out and she gets real upset. Said they were having a private baptism that afternoon. I say, ‘Sorry, lady, no can do.’

  Okay, so I walk out to my truck to dial up the Specialist. But, like I find out later, this secretary goes to work on my son. Now she was young and cute as a button so of course my idiot son decides that’s a good enough reason to take on the job. I know he was hoping to impress her, maybe score a date. Unfortunately, I didn’t figure out what the halfwit was up to until it was too late. When I heard him scream, I just knew by the sound of it he’d tried to clear that damn drain his self.

  I about crapped my shorts right there. I went running into the sanctuary but he was gone. Oh Lord, if we’d only known how far gone. The Lord and I had quite a session that night, I’ll tell you, quite a session.

  The Specialist is the one to blame for all the horrible things that happened after that. There’s supposed to be a regular servicing of baptismal drains. They’re not supposed to get clogged up like that. It’s the Specialist’s God-given responsibility to make sure of that. Yeah, sometimes baptismal pools and fonts get clogged up between cleanings—you got some truly sinful people out there. But for my son to do what he did, well, there just had to be a shit-load, pardon my French, of sins in that drain. I bet if you talk to that cute secretary you’ll find out that drain hadn’t been cleared in months—years even. You go and ask her.

  The Specialist

  Yes, I know I am beginning to sound like them. But then I have to live among them, talk to them, make them understand me. I realize the song of my voice is not what it once was. You can hear it, the misery and desperation of these creatures with which I share my exile has begun to color the otherwise glorious tones of my vocalizations. You are blessed to stay in the heavenly realms where your voice does not get polluted by the constant whining and bickering.

  But I digress. More to the point, I shall never comprehend why the Glorious Almighty thought it prudent to allow humans to wash away their sins. I contend that they are no better than the beasts of the field. Yes, they ostensibly know right from wrong, but do they ever choose the right over the wrong? No. And that, my dearest friend, makes them worse than the beasts.

  Yes, I understand that this kind of attitude is what got me exiled to this forsaken place. That is another thing I cannot comprehend. True, I did not join with the others in support of the Almighty and his pet humans but neither did I join Lucifer. I, like other of my brethren, stayed neutral. And still the Most Holy of Holies exposes us to the viscous sludge humans cast off in their baptismal contraptions. I ask you, is this the optimal way to persuade us that we were wrong in our assessment of his most favored of creations? I think not.

  You probably have no concept of how difficult it is adjusting to linear time when the infinite universe was once yours. Very often I neglect to turn the calendar pages or to note the passage of time. I believe that is the very reason the drain had not been serviced as often as it might have been. If you interview my brethren, you will find this to be a common problem, one that the Almighty failed to consider when he meted out our punishment.

  The Apprentice

  I don’t remember much about what happened at the church. I know I went home and showered. I rubbed my skin raw trying to get all that sin off of me. My dad came to my apartment looking for me, but I slipped out the bedroom window. I just didn't want to hear another lecture from him.

  I was walking down the street when this pretty woman walked by. She glanced over at me and as our eyes met, I suddenly had a vision of her tied to a bed, her breasts bare, nipples staring up at me. I went hard right then and there. I was shocked. I mean, I’m not a virgin or anything, but I'd never imagined anything like that before. That really shook me, but after that, I couldn’t look at a woman without being pummeled by one wicked vision or another.

  Surfin’ the net, hitting all the porn sites, came next. You get some really bizarre pop-ups when you do that, and I somehow wound up at this anthropologist’s site reading about this tribe in New Guinea. The natives there practiced this thing called dermal penetration. For them it was a rite of passage, an initiation into manhood. One of the men of the tribe would make a small cut in the abdomen of a boy who was a candidate for manhood and then insert his penis into the boy’s abdomen. Then he’d do his thing until he got off into the cut. Weird, huh? I guess the semen is supposed to transform the kid into a man or something.

  After that, the visions became really intense. That woman I imagined tied to the bed would have tape over her mouth. I’d rub my cock all over that tape leaving a sticky, wet smear. That’s sick, huh? But they were only thoughts and thoughts can’t hurt anyone. Right?

  Anyway, that’s what I told myself as I washed all that blood off in the shower.

  The Plumber

  My son ain’t no pervert. The wife and I raised him to be a good Christian boy. He don’t always listen to his elders the way he should, but he’s not bad; never had any trouble with you guys before. Look up his record. You’ll see he’s clean.

  That’s how I know he ain’t responsible for those women, no matter what kind of DNA evidence you have. DNA don’t mean squat in this case.

  Now I know that God has forgiven him these murders. Especially since he was under the influence, you know—the influence of all that sin. But you guys, you don’t forgive. That’s our legal system, unforgiving. And most of the time I agree with it. Hell, I believe in the death penalty. If they’re guilty, hang the bastards. Even if it’s not turning the other cheek like Christ taught us.

  But then he also said to obey the law. That’s right there in the Bible. Obey the law. My son was raised to do just that.

  You should be checking out the members of that congregation. I mean there must have been some pretty bad sinnin’ going on for all this to have happened.

  The Specialist

  When I arrived at the place of worship, the son, a young male, was gone. The older male, the father, was in a confused state of fear. It manifested as anger. He seemed willing to believe that I was in some small measure responsible for the events that transpired. The young female simply wanted the mess in the sanctuary to be cleaned up.

  I examined the residue that had leaked out onto the floor and knew we had a severe problem. It reeked of fermenting evil. Since you have not had the dubious pleasure of dwelling here among these beasts you will have never smelled such a thing. Even with my extensive experience, I had never smelled anything as wrong as this.

  You may want to look into the members of this congregation. Admittedly, the drain had not been cleared in a while, but this residue was extraordinary. The Holy of Holies should rethink His policy on this one.

  As it was, I negated the immediate danger and then began my search for the young male. I believed I could simply follow that odor of evil, but the task turned out to be much more difficult.

  The Apprentice

  When I look at those pictures now, and I’ve looked at them a lot, I can’t believe I did those things. The memories are more like a dream, or like a show I watched on television.

  That first cut into the abdomen was like the best kind of tease. There’s a smell inside us, you know. Well, you probably don’t, but there is. It doesn’t smell like anything else in the world. And when I made that first deep slice, that smell would come rushing out and I’d almost faint from how good it made me feel.

  The women’s eyes would go all wild with fear, their faces crinkled up around the tape as they tried to scream, their tears leaking down their cheeks leaving black streaks of mascara behind. Man, that was hot.

  When I was done, I’d slice their throats. Cool
thing about that is when their throats were laid open, every one of them made a gurgling sound that was just like a drain clearing.

  The Plumber

  My boy never had much in the way of girlfriends. Matter of fact I was afraid he was a little light in his loafers, if you know what I mean. And that’s against God’s word. I did my best to beat it out of him. Then his mother found these girlie magazines hidden under his mattress. She got her panties all twisted in a knot, but I was relieved. I laid off him a bit after that.

  My point is, my son couldn’t pick up a girl to save his soul. And yet somehow he got all these women to go someplace private with him. I’d be proud if it weren’t for what happened when he got ’em there. But of course, I couldn’t really be proud because fornicating is a sin too. Not as bad a sin as murder, but a sin all the same.

  So I’m telling you that something else was controlling him. Like mind control or body control; like that movie where the pod people take over that town. Only it was a blob of sin that got my boy instead of the pods.

  I hate to admit it but my son isn’t man enough to have done these things. Have you seen him now? Have you talked to him? Do you really think that boy is clever enough to kill thirteen women and not get caught? Do you think he’s someone who could get those women—I’m talking good girls not whores or nothing—to up and go with him? No way in hell.

  The Specialist

  My examination of the site of the first female mutilation yielded little information. I expected to pick up the young beast’s trail there. But there was a startling absence of the odor of sin, absolutely no evidence of the slime having been at the scene. There was literally no scent trail, no dribble of sludge anywhere in the room. That was my first indication this was not a normal case.

  Usually the sin would ride the boy like one of Lucifer’s demons. And since this is a ball of cast off sin, pieces of it are flung off wherever a person goes. Have you ever seen a snail trail? Of course you haven’t.

  My point is the trail of slime and the reek of evil is usually quite easy to follow. But the sin wasn’t riding outside this boy. It had settled deep inside him so that it left no trail. It was as if he had been an empty vessel just waiting to be filled, and the sin from that clogged drain was happy to oblige.

  The Apprentice

  After that first cut, that first magnificent scent of their insides, I’d stick my fingers inside the cut. Every one of those girls was so wet and hot in there. There wasn’t a dry one in the bunch. Some of them would scream, some would whimper, some would moan. It didn’t matter, it all sounded good.

  There’s nothing like the feel of a woman’s blood. And when I knew I was getting close, that’s when I entered them through that slice in their abdomen.

  They took the whole of me. They bucked and twisted on the bed and screamed and moaned and I humped them with everything I had until I couldn’t hold it any longer and exploded inside them.

  But now that I think about it, I never used a condom. Maybe I should get an AIDS test or something.

  The Plumber

  Look, I’d really like to see my son. He’s a screw-up, but he’s still my boy, you know. I guess I love him, though I never really thought about it that way before. I’d hate to see him in prison or worse, some mental hospital. The Specialist baptized him again and did those absolutions and all that sin got washed off him. So he’s no longer a danger to society. Isn’t that what you cops care about: if a person is a danger to society?

  What do you mean he disappeared? I thought he was talking to a shrink?

  The Specialist

  I found him due to Divine Intervention. His voice came to me as in a dream and told me the young man I sought would be at the local mall in one hour, trolling for his next victim.

  An odd thing occurred as I approached my prey that evening. He recognized me for what I was. He saw me.

  He didn’t run away. He simply accompanied me to St. Catherine’s next door and allowed me to baptize him. The sin, however, didn’t wash away as it was so deep within him. Remember, I said he had become a vessel. I think he knew a baptism wasn’t going to work because he looked at me then and smiled this beastly, mocking smile.

  These beasts aren't getting any better—they're devolving. Every last one of them is becoming a vessel for sin and corruption. To have to live among them, to pretend to be one of them, is too harsh a punishment.

  Still, it is my cross to bear. So I forced Holy Water down his throat while chanting a litany of absolutions. He tried to resist, but then a mere human is no match for the likes of us.

  He fell onto the floor, a writhing, choking mess until a great stench issued forth from every orifice on his body. Then he began to ooze the sin-slime through his pores.

  I took some of the priest’s vestments from the sacristy and ripped them into strips. I also grabbed a chalice and splashed the baptismal water all over the boy as he writhed and screamed. The slime tried to slither away from him as I did this but I caught it and wiped it up with the pieces of holy garments that were powerful enough to capture, hold and neutralize it. I continued this until he was washed clean.

  The Apprentice

  One of the priests at St. Catherine’s found me lying on the floor and called the paramedics. When we got to the hospital the cops were waiting for me.

  I told the cops the whole sin in the drain thing. They don't believe me. But as my dad would say, it's the God's honest truth.

  The part nobody knows is that the Specialist is pretty damn mad at God. He and a few others of his kind have had it—they are so tired of cleaning up our sins. And why shouldn't they be? They think of humans as nothing more than beasts.

  You know, Doc, you’re real pretty, even with your mascara running down your face. I bet your insides are wet and hot and smell so good. We'll find out soon enough. We're still in the foreplay stage.

  When the Specialist baptized me and realized that it didn't take, he sat back and just stared. He told me then that he wasn't alone in believing that Hell couldn't be any worse than being forced to live among us. He said he learned to lie from us. Then he reached out and touched my forehead and everything went black. The next thing I knew I was in the hospital surrounded by cops.

  But I can tell you’re dying to know how we got here, no pun intended. Just blink twice if I guessed right. Yes? Well let’s just say, when you’ve got a Specialist on your side, it's easy to give the cops the slip. Even when you're a maximum security prisoner like me.

  This is going to hurt just a little, but you can take it, can't you, Doc? I mean you're a strong, independent woman—a professional. Just think, you're getting a firsthand understanding of sin that none of your colleagues may ever get. But you never know, I've got a feeling there's going to be a rash of plugged baptismal drains going round.

  HOME

  J. F. Gonzalez

  “Gina, it’s time.”

  Gina Peck sighed and picked up her backpack. She slung it over her shoulder. With a sense of trepidation, she rose from the kitchen table and turned to face her father, who was standing in the living room.

  Dad was wearing that old robe grandma had bought him—how many years ago was that now? Three? Five? The robe hung on his bony shoulders, covering his frame like a blanket. His stringy hair dangled in his face and he brushed it away. Despite the severity of their situation, he smiled at her. And, like always, when Dad smiled at her, it made her world. “That’s my girl.”

  “Are you sure you want me to do this?” Gina asked.

  Dad nodded. “We need you to, Gina.” Dad turned to look back at the living room where her mother lay on the threadbare sofa, a blue wool blanket pulled over her. The TV screen flickered in the background, the sound muted. Mom wasn’t watching. She had slipped back into one of her dozes again.

  Gina felt a lump in her throat as she looked at her mother. “I wish I didn’t have to.”

  “I know, honey,” Dad said, his voice soothing. He shuffled into the kitchen, not looking at he
r. “But you know it’s the only way. You’ve got a gift. If it wasn’t for you, we’d be worse off than we are now. I can’t do what you do—the people out there, they ignore folks my age even if I hang pictures of your mother around my neck with signed affidavits from her medical team. But when they see her daughter, a little girl...” He shook his head. His eyes sad, haunted. “Well, that’s the game changer. They’ll help a kid. Even after all the shit that’s gone down, they’ll still find it within their rotten hearts to help a kid.”

  Gina fingered the backpack. She felt uncertain. Nervous.

  “I used to go out there and beg,” Dad said. “You know that. And look where it got us.”

  Gina nodded. “I know.” She hung her head. The last time Mom and Dad had gone out to the streets to beg, the police had rousted the homeless camp they’d set up in and beaten them. Mom’s condition had worsened as a result of the beating. Gina didn’t even remember why they were released from jail—overcrowding, maybe? Regardless, that had proven to be the last time Mom and Dad had taken to the streets to beg. That had been the year Gina turned ten. Now she was twelve; in a few months, she would turn thirteen. Dad said you wouldn’t know it to look at her.

  “Your mother is out of medicine.” Dad leaned against the worn kitchen counter and sighed. “We have very little in the way of food. Rent is due in three days. And winter will be coming in a month. We should have packed up and moved west when we could’ve, but that’s out of the question now. We’re stuck here in this godforsaken part of the country. We’re going to need money for heat or we’re going to freeze.”