2004-2005-- a few scenes
You wake up and your head pounds.
You wake up and your throat is dry and the air sticks to it as you breathe.
You wake up thirstier than you've ever been in your life. And nothing-- water, wine, wine is what's around but it doesn't help-- nothing makes it stop. Like you've eaten spicy food, Indian maybe, and you don't have any milk to cool the burn. You wish you had milk. You wish you had steak-- not even to cook, you don't care, you'd have it raw and lap up the juices--
People are walking now. There are shoes, shoes with their neat tappings against marble, fading off as they come close. That must be down the aisle and the soft carpet. Voices, too, you recognize them-- it wasn't entirely as you told Luke, people still come here, a few of them-- you're too cynical, you're being punished--
"Father?"
Not your voice. Not God's either, which you may have been wondering.
"Jesus-- Taylor, get some help--"
Voices receding and coming near again, swimming in and out of focus, and you realize you've actually had your eyes open for some time but can only seem to make out the smooth grainy surface of the pew in front of you.
You've cut your lip against your teeth, which are strange and clumsy and too large in your mouth. Too sharp.
You wish they'd come take you out of here. You need something to drink.
***
And they do. None of you is wholly unacquainted with this new phenomenon, and when they see you with the puncture marks in your neck and your brand-new fangs that itch and ache like anything, out of pity or familiarity or stupid misguided hope, they don't leave you.
There's a butcher somewhere. Or an animal. At any rate, the blood comes from a plastic bag and someone's propping you up and muttering, "Come on ..."
It's when you smell it that you know in your bones and your body, all its screaming nerves and atoms, that this is what you crave.
"Come on, Father ... it's okay ..."
You shouldn't have taken them for granted, is what you think.
***
Even so, you don't stay in Chicago much longer after that. The city's going downhill fast, and you're not much of a survivor. You didn't even like to watch zombie movies.
If that's what they even are; you're reserving judgment. It's easier to reserve judgment, you think dryly, when you're far away. Which is where you're headed.
***
There's a first time. No matter how you wish you could erase it from your mind, no matter how you should have received forgiveness for it long ago, it is still there.
It was consensual.
Purely consensual.
There's a logic, like there is to everything-- the Church made a science of war, you can at least puzzle your way through this. It isn't wrong if they say yes, if they offer; then it's a sacrifice. This is my body, this is my blood.
There's scriptural precedent.
The first time it's in a town so small you didn't know it existed, tucked away in backwater Illinois, and she says, "Father, please."
Says, "You're going to die."
Well. Aren't we all?
But she is insistent; she knows what must have happened and she knows it isn't your fault. She has seen it before. She cuts her arm and presses it to your lips, soft flesh and hot blood.
Her name is Rose, and you don't kill her. But not because you're responsible. You don't know how to be that, anymore.
(And it's later that you find the formula, as you're wiping your mouth again and thinking about the dusky brown of the inside of her arm with what isn't revulsion and should be. It's later that you find the sin of it: The sin is looking at her and thinking blood, looking at anyone and thinking blood. There isn't anything more carnal than that; that's lust in its purest form. Incarnate is the flesh, carnal is the deed. I could just eat you up.)
There are rules.
***
You don't only take-- it will always be more than that, with you, because regardless of what's happened you remain very much who you were. You like to help, when you can. You bury corpses so mangled you can hardly tell what they are. You hear confessions that are shocking, gruesome, perverse. And you pray, oh how you pray.
The first winter you're in Dawson, Illinois, where they know you and keep you on anyway, they need a priest and you swear up and down you'll be fine if they let you at a few of their horses and cows. In Dawson they've always got one eye watching you. You hold services for Christmas, as non-sectarian as you can make them; only a handful of families shows up.
It's not you they don't trust. It's the teeth.
Still, they're kinder than they have to be, than maybe they ought to be. They share their food with you, and a tough, childless, thirtysomething couple-- Liz and James Bryant-- say they'll put you up. The Bryants are devout. Crucifixes in every room. You feel almost like you should be performing tricks, or working miracles.
"Don't trouble yourself, Father," Liz says about the dishes, and the laundry, and the food. James does not say the same when you offer to help care for the animals, though he watches you like a hawk while you do it. No drinking on the job. In the evenings there's dinner by candlelight, curtains drawn; everywhere's far off from everywhere else, no sense drawing attention. You don't know who's coming out of the woods.
Eventually they do trust you, or something like it. "You're a good man, Father," Liz says (though she still doesn't let you help with the dishes). James nods curt agreement, doesn't watch you so close when you tend to the animals. Little by little, dinners aren't as quiet as before.
You wake up in this stranger's house one morning, in this stranger's bed, and are surprised to feel somewhat normal.
If only it had lasted.
You wake up and your throat is dry and the air sticks to it as you breathe.
You wake up thirstier than you've ever been in your life. And nothing-- water, wine, wine is what's around but it doesn't help-- nothing makes it stop. Like you've eaten spicy food, Indian maybe, and you don't have any milk to cool the burn. You wish you had milk. You wish you had steak-- not even to cook, you don't care, you'd have it raw and lap up the juices--
People are walking now. There are shoes, shoes with their neat tappings against marble, fading off as they come close. That must be down the aisle and the soft carpet. Voices, too, you recognize them-- it wasn't entirely as you told Luke, people still come here, a few of them-- you're too cynical, you're being punished--
"Father?"
Not your voice. Not God's either, which you may have been wondering.
"Jesus-- Taylor, get some help--"
Voices receding and coming near again, swimming in and out of focus, and you realize you've actually had your eyes open for some time but can only seem to make out the smooth grainy surface of the pew in front of you.
You've cut your lip against your teeth, which are strange and clumsy and too large in your mouth. Too sharp.
You wish they'd come take you out of here. You need something to drink.
***
And they do. None of you is wholly unacquainted with this new phenomenon, and when they see you with the puncture marks in your neck and your brand-new fangs that itch and ache like anything, out of pity or familiarity or stupid misguided hope, they don't leave you.
There's a butcher somewhere. Or an animal. At any rate, the blood comes from a plastic bag and someone's propping you up and muttering, "Come on ..."
It's when you smell it that you know in your bones and your body, all its screaming nerves and atoms, that this is what you crave.
"Come on, Father ... it's okay ..."
You shouldn't have taken them for granted, is what you think.
***
Even so, you don't stay in Chicago much longer after that. The city's going downhill fast, and you're not much of a survivor. You didn't even like to watch zombie movies.
If that's what they even are; you're reserving judgment. It's easier to reserve judgment, you think dryly, when you're far away. Which is where you're headed.
***
There's a first time. No matter how you wish you could erase it from your mind, no matter how you should have received forgiveness for it long ago, it is still there.
It was consensual.
Purely consensual.
There's a logic, like there is to everything-- the Church made a science of war, you can at least puzzle your way through this. It isn't wrong if they say yes, if they offer; then it's a sacrifice. This is my body, this is my blood.
There's scriptural precedent.
The first time it's in a town so small you didn't know it existed, tucked away in backwater Illinois, and she says, "Father, please."
Says, "You're going to die."
Well. Aren't we all?
But she is insistent; she knows what must have happened and she knows it isn't your fault. She has seen it before. She cuts her arm and presses it to your lips, soft flesh and hot blood.
Her name is Rose, and you don't kill her. But not because you're responsible. You don't know how to be that, anymore.
(And it's later that you find the formula, as you're wiping your mouth again and thinking about the dusky brown of the inside of her arm with what isn't revulsion and should be. It's later that you find the sin of it: The sin is looking at her and thinking blood, looking at anyone and thinking blood. There isn't anything more carnal than that; that's lust in its purest form. Incarnate is the flesh, carnal is the deed. I could just eat you up.)
There are rules.
***
You don't only take-- it will always be more than that, with you, because regardless of what's happened you remain very much who you were. You like to help, when you can. You bury corpses so mangled you can hardly tell what they are. You hear confessions that are shocking, gruesome, perverse. And you pray, oh how you pray.
The first winter you're in Dawson, Illinois, where they know you and keep you on anyway, they need a priest and you swear up and down you'll be fine if they let you at a few of their horses and cows. In Dawson they've always got one eye watching you. You hold services for Christmas, as non-sectarian as you can make them; only a handful of families shows up.
It's not you they don't trust. It's the teeth.
Still, they're kinder than they have to be, than maybe they ought to be. They share their food with you, and a tough, childless, thirtysomething couple-- Liz and James Bryant-- say they'll put you up. The Bryants are devout. Crucifixes in every room. You feel almost like you should be performing tricks, or working miracles.
"Don't trouble yourself, Father," Liz says about the dishes, and the laundry, and the food. James does not say the same when you offer to help care for the animals, though he watches you like a hawk while you do it. No drinking on the job. In the evenings there's dinner by candlelight, curtains drawn; everywhere's far off from everywhere else, no sense drawing attention. You don't know who's coming out of the woods.
Eventually they do trust you, or something like it. "You're a good man, Father," Liz says (though she still doesn't let you help with the dishes). James nods curt agreement, doesn't watch you so close when you tend to the animals. Little by little, dinners aren't as quiet as before.
You wake up in this stranger's house one morning, in this stranger's bed, and are surprised to feel somewhat normal.
If only it had lasted.