Corn, Cows, and the Apocalypse

Priest

Holy water was an important weapon against the glimmer grim. Although their preserved bodies were already sainted by God, the addition of holy water seemed to keep the demons from rising in them. I always kept a stash of it on hand in case we relocated to a new residence for the evening.

At the beginning of the apocalypse, when people still gave a damn about the bodies that were haphazardly lying around, houses were marked with the number of dead within. Now the numbers stood as a warning. Any house with more than three dead was considered too dangerous to approach, day or night. The last thing you want is to go into an unknown closed space with four or more potential glimmer grim. Houses with two bodies were worth the risk. If they hadn't risen as demons yet, we locked them in the cellar or basement and routinely sprinkled them with holy water.

Our current home only had one resident basement dweller, and I had used up all my holy water to ensure he remained inert. That was why I had to go see Priest. His real name was Matthew Corte and it was a calculated decision to use the last of my holy water, because he was not the most pleasant man to socialize with.

Die a horrible painful death at the hands of a glimmer grim, or go see Priest to get more holy water? I assure you, there was a good, long debate.

How should I describe Priest? He was a loyal and dedicated servant of the Lord, until God left him behind with the rest of us ingrates. For a while, he believed that God had left him for a purpose. His faith transcended to offer the residual population a path into the Lord's good graces, but let's face it, three months of preaching to people who don't want to look at a church, let alone pray in one, can wear you down.

So, Priest did something he had never done in his entire life. He got mad... at God. He rebelled against Him. Priest became a reformed man. Any inkling of his religious reserve was wiped away by drugs, alcohol, and sex. To add sacrilege to sacrament he screwed his endless harem of women on his church altar, while wearing his vestments. He even went so far as to graffiti his own church with heretical symbols—or maybe they were just scribbles.

I couldn't blame him for his anger. I couldn't blame him for his desires either. However, for a man so high on God's chosen list, to fall so far, any respect I could have had for his position was reduced to pure pity. The man hadn't just fallen from his pulpit; he nosedived off it.

Priest sat on a wall, and had a great fall, but all the king's horses and all the king's men... couldn't have given a damn about putting him back together again.

Part of me wished I could fix him. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to about everything that had been going on. As I said, I'm not religious, but given that I was now living the end of days, it would have been nice to know what to expect.

I waited by the door to the church for a few minutes. I had learned the hard way that knocking and/or listening before entering his church was a wise choice. Priest certainly didn't mind the interruption, but there was still something inherently disturbing about pornographic imagery paired with a church background. Someone probably should have told Madonna that.

When nothing of a sexual nature sounded from within, I entered. It was only a small-town church: white wood siding, a steeple with a single bell, and not more than a dozen rows of pews inside. Priest had probably been on a meager income there.

I saw him sitting in the front row of pews with his back to me. If I hadn't known any better I would have thought he was praying, but I was disappointed and disgusted when he let out a satisfied groan. I cursed under my breath and tried to sneak back out the door.

"Lenore?"

I cringed. "I'll come back."

"No need, I'm finished. Come in."

I turned back in time to see a young woman wiping her mouth and scurrying, abashed, out the door behind the altar. I shook my head and returned to the front row where Priest was now lounging in a euphoric haze. I sat down in an adjacent pew. He was all in black, except the white collar that he refused to take off, despite it being significantly irreverent to his new lifestyle.

"I hope you didn't come for my services, I'm afraid I'm all used up for an hour or so."

I didn't give any hint of a smile at his joke. I couldn't tell if he was drunk, stoned, or another form of wasted, but he wasn't going to be fun to talk to. Convincing him to bless more water for me was going to be a debate, if not a full-on argument.

"I didn't recognize her. Is she new?" I asked, trying for the small talk angle.

"They all come to me eventually." He stood up and walked over to me. I was used to the routine. First he would flirt with me, a mock attempt at seduction that he had never and probably never would act on. He seemed to understand that I was too disturbed by him to be attracted to him.

His oily black hair might have been shiny and beautiful if it were combed and trimmed. He was attractive with chiseled cheekbones and hollowed cheeks, but the five-going-on-eighty-day scruff was just too much to look past. Aside from the unhealthy gauntness he had achieved from choosing drugs over food, he also had developed a smell of alcohol that poured off of his breath and sweat.

He leaned into me, bracing his hands on the back of the pew. I leaned back and switched to breathing through my mouth instead of my nose. "They want answers. They want to know why God hates them. I have the answers, don't I, Lenore?"

It was cocaine. I could always tell his cocaine high from his marijuana high. Coke made him mean and hypersensitive. I wanted to fast-forward the process, and get to the end. I was tired of the speeches and the soapbox self-deprecation, but if I said the wrong thing, he wouldn't help me and I'd have to come back again. That was not on my wish-list.

He didn't wait for me to answer. He stood and gestured to the hanging crucifix behind the altar that had become a coatrack for stray bras. "I have the answers because I am one of God's very own foot soldiers." He glanced back at me. "I committed my life to Him, you know? I gave up every vice for Him. How does he repay me?" Priest picked up a half-empty bottle of wine from the chancel steps and threw it at the crucifix. The glass missed the target and shattered wine onto the wall beside it. "He leaves me behind!"

Priest's voice echoed through the arched rafters of the church. It would have been dramatic except that I had heard this speech before. The anger he exploited was no more than a childish fit to me now. As I said, I didn't begrudge him his emotions, but for him to think himself so much higher than the rest of us, that he should have the right to fall so far from his own predetermined grace, made him seem spoiled and arrogant. My sympathies for his situation, which was also my situation, had long since waned.

"You know what I have to say to that?" he seethed through bared teeth. "Fuck God!" He repeated it a few more times before rushing back to me. Desperately needing camaraderie in his rage, he clutched my shoulders and shook me fiercely. "Say it. Say it!"

"Fuck him."

"Louder!"

"Fuck him!" Although I could never bring myself to say "God" at the end of that blasphemy, he either didn't notice, or didn't care. It just felt wrong, even if it was an honest statement to come by at that point in my life.

Priest stared me down. His bloodshot green eyes danced over my face, never trespassing beyond my chin, despite his new hobby of lechery. He released me and knelt down before me, as if the entire scene had wasted his energies. "I'm sorry," he whispered before placing his head on my lap. I couldn't be sure if the apology was for me or for God, but it was something I had never heard before.

Not sure what to do to console him, I stroked his head. His hair was too long and in need of a good brushing, but it was silky—cleaner than I would have expected. After I had my fill of running my fingers through his hair, I tried to talk to him. Unfortunately, he had passed out.

I pushed him off me and gently lowered him back onto the cushioned pew where I had been sitting. He was going to be out for a while, I assumed, so I left without my holy water. I didn't want to repeat the visit, but Priest needed sleep more than I needed blessed water.