inthewildwood | Fic: Hagiolatry (Chapter Four) (Reply)

After the meeting at the church, Frankie went home by herself. Nothing personal, she explained to Andrew- she just hadn’t been back in her own apartment for a full day, and she needed time to unwind before she could do anything else. He offered to drive her back- apparently he owned, or rented a car, which was pretty impressive for Pittsburgh- but she turned him down. She was comfier on the bus, she explained with a smile, though she did give him directions to her place for when he did come over. It was only a few blocks away from the church, after all.

She didn’t go straight home, which was another reason she’d opted for the bus instead of getting a ride. She rode over to the library instead, ignoring the stares of the other passengers, and headed in to load up on books about Jesus and the crucification. She was sure Andrew would have answered her questions, but she didn’t want to have questions, and it seemed kind of insulting to say as much to his face. Like, “I’m really glad you decided to help me and all, but I’m not sure how much you actually know, so I’m going to go check out what other people have to say just so I can confirm that you know your shit.” She’d be offended, and she wasn’t even God’s Chosen Tragically Virginal Servant.

Okay, probably there was a better way of putting it. But she was too worn out to think of one. So she hops a bus over to the library, headed to the religion section (after asking a librarian for directions- she’d never been there before) and walked out with an armful of books with titles like “Virtuous Magic” and “They Bore the Wounds of Christ.” The books earned her more strange looks on the ride home, but she tucked the books under her arm and ignored them. They didn’t know shit.

As soon as she got home, she dumped the books on the armchair in the main room and headed for the bedroom to shuck off her bloody clothes. The phone was sitting next to her bed, and the red answering machine light was blinking. Frankie hit the button with her thumb, then turned around to rummage for towels.

“Frankie?” It was Donna’s voice. Frankie scrubbed a hand through her hair with a sigh. She hadn’t forgotten the conversation with Patty, though the everything else that had happened had pushed it out of her mind, and now she had to start thinking about it again.

“How are you feeling?” the message continued. Donna’s voice sounded tinny on the machine, and it echoed against the ceiling. “I had to leave around midnight, but Patty got home an hour ago and she said you woke up. Call me when you get this, okay? I just want to make sure you’re feeling better.” Click.

Frankie slumped heavily against the bed, feeling suddenly too tired to stand up. Donna was over at Patty’s place, so if she called, Patty would probably either overhear the conversation or pick up the phone. On the other hand, Patty had also probably been there when Donna called, so it wasn’t like she wouldn’t be expecting this. On the other other hand, if they’d argued over this- and knowing the two of them, they probably had- calling now would just make everything worse, which she definitely didn’t want to do. She stared at the phone in her hand, turning her options over in her head. Fuck, she was too wiped out for this.

In the end, she hit redial and leaned back against the bed as the phone rang. Maybe she’d get lucky and nobody would be home, so she could avoid the whole conversation.

Click. “Frankie?”

Dammit. “Yeah,” Frankie said, rubbing her wrist. “It’s me. I got your message.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Her forehead was itching again. “I got home a few minutes ago.”

There was a relieved sigh from the other end of the phone. “Patty said you’d woken up by the time she left, but she didn’t know if you were planning on going to the hospital. Did you?”

Frankie laughed hollowly. “Are you kidding? They’d just try to commit me.” She stretched her free arm out in front of her, examining her wrist. The wound still looked raw. Felt raw, too. “I came straight home from the church.”

“Frankie-” Donna paused. “Are you sure about not getting checked out? I mean, last night- you looked pretty bad.”

Frankie’s fingers tightened around the phone. “I told you, they wouldn’t believe me.” There was a long pause. Frankie felt her stomach drop. “You believe me, right?”

“Of course I do!” Donna said, a little too quickly. “It’s just- fuck, Frankie, you were bleeding all over the place and talking in some weird language nobody understood. You know what the nuns used to call that? Speaking in tongues. It was like something out of the Exorcist or some shit.”

Frankie laughed hoarsely. “Well then I guess you’ll be happy to hear that I’ve got a priest working me over now.”

There was a clattering noise, like Donna had knocking something over. “Shit, seriously? You mean that guy who picked you up at the Jackpot?”

Frankie shook her head, then realized Donna couldn’t see her. “No, some friend of his. He says he’s from something called the Congregation of the Saints, I don’t know-”

“Congregation of the Causes of the Saints,” Donna corrected her. “We covered it in school.”

“Seriously?” Frankie brought her knees up to her chest, tucking them under her chin. “So you can confirm that they’re not just perverts out for my nubile bleeding flesh, right?”

Donna laughed. “They’re part of the Vatican, Frankie.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

Donna made a muffled snorting noise, like she was trying not to laugh. “They’re the branch that checks up on people who say they found Jesus on a piece of toast or whatever. If they think you’re legit enough, they fill out the paperwork to have you declared a saint.”

“A what?”

“Only if someone’s nominated you,” Donna said quickly. “Most of what they do is miracle investigations, and-” She paused. “What about you is he investigating, exactly?”

“That’s what I asked him,” Frankie said. “Apparently I have stigmata. Or something.”

“Oh.” Frankie couldn’t tell from her voice how she was reacting, but anything less than incredulous laughter was worrying. Or comforting. It meant Andrew and Father Derning weren’t actually full of shit.

“Have you ever heard of it?” Frankie said, curious. She’d never heard of it, but then she’d never been to Catholic school.

“Yeah,” Donna said. “Yeah, it-” There was a jingling noise in the background, and then the sound of a door opening and closing, and a muffled voice. “Hey, who’s on the phone?”

“I should go,” Frankie said quickly.

“No, it’s fine- it’s Frankie,” Donna’s voice was muffled, so Frankie assumed she’d put a hand over the speaker. She could still hear her, though. “You want to say hi?”

There was another clattering noise, and then Patty must have picked up the phone, because she said “hey, how’re you doing?”

“Fine,” Frankie said, shifting uncomfortably. “Look, I know you said not to call and everything, but Donna left a message and I didn’t-”

“It’s fine,” Patty said quickly. “It’s all fine. Look, just- forget what I said earlier, okay? It doesn’t matter.”

“What did you say?” Donna said in the distance. Patty said something Frankie didn’t catch.

“I’ve gotta get off the phone anyway,” Frankie said. “I need to shower. I’ll call you guys back tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah!” Patty said, sounding relieved. “We’ll talk to you then. Feel better soon.”

“Thanks. Bye.” Frankie set the receiver down and tilted her head back against the bed, closing her eyes. That had, all things considered, gone better than expected. Okay, Patty and Donna would probably have it out over Patty telling her to stay away, but there wasn’t much she could do about that; relationship counseling wasn’t in her job description. She’d done all she could, now.

Her back and shoulders ached, and she felt sluggish and heavy, but she still badly needed a shower, so she heaved herself up off the floor and went to work shedding last night’s clothes. Probably she shouldn’t put those down the laundry chute either without a good soaking, but she’d deal with that later; besides, if they were stained, they were probably already stained for good. She shrugged her shirt off and stretched her arms over her head, wincing at the sounds of her muscles creaking. Wasn’t twenty-two too young to be getting stiff from sleeping on a cot overnight? Maybe she should ask Andrew whether or not stigmata also caused premature aging.

Grabbing a towel from beside the bed, she walked through the bedroom door to the bathroom. Her shower door was still hanging half-open from the day before yesterday, and the faucet was dripping, like it had been for months. She dropped the towel on the floor and hopped in, not bothering to wait for the water to get hot. She just needed to feel clean.

Water streamed down her face and pooled on the shower floor in reddish-pink puddles. She probably looked terrifying with blood dripping all over her face, but she didn’t care. She tilted her head back into the stream, letting out a long sigh as the water massaged the tension out of her shoulders and back. Maybe things weren’t so bad. She had someone on her side now who seemed to know what he was doing, and she’d more or less made up with Patty. Everything could still work out. She just had to calm down a bit and focus on finding a solution. Everything would be fine.

The first lash caught her so off-guard that she fell, hitting one knee on the tap and slamming her forehead into the shower wall. She screamed, more out of shock than pain, but as she tried to get back to her feet, she was felled by another lash. She gasped, shaking water out of her eyes, looking around frantically for whoever was holding the whip. It couldn’t be happening, not now, not again . . .

“Three!”

Another lash, and she screamed in pain this time. She grabbed for the wall, the spout, anything that she could use to hold herself upright, but the blows came again and again and drove her back to her knees.

“Seven!”

The bathroom tiles in front of her were wavering like a broken TV screen. She could see the tiles, but through them- or on them- or somewhere in front of them- was the wavering heat of a Jerusalem morning and a mass of accusing faces and pointing fingers. With each blow, they screamed, and their screams seemed to push the whip down harder; it stung more with every strike.

“Twelve!”

Her hands were bound- no they weren’t, she could see them in front of her- and her robe was ripped- but it couldn’t be, she wasn’t wearing one. She struggled to her knees, and then to her feet, bracing both hands against the wall, groping for a way out. She had to call for help- Donna, Andrew, Father Derning, someone who could make the blows stop coming.

“Twenty-three!”

She half-stumbled, half-fell out of the shower and onto her hands and knees on the floor. The lashes were still coming, and there was blood in her eyes and on her hands and on the floor and she couldn’t see. She crawled blindly towards what she thought was the door, fumbling for the towel she’d dropped so that she could wipe the blood out of her eyes and see where she was going. She couldn’t find it, and the pain was paralyzing, and the crowd was screaming and she was all alone.

“Thirty!”

The next lash knocked her down, and she couldn’t find the strength to pull herself back up. She pulled her hands up to cover her face, feeling blood trickle through her fingers and down her wrists. Her wrists ached and the cuts on her forehead stung, and the whip was tearing into her skin and ripping her down to the spine. She curled up in a ball and screwed her eyes shut, waiting for it to be over.

“Thirty-nine!”

The noise of the crowd faded away, and she was suddenly aware of her harsh panting and the patter of water against the tiles. She pulled her hands away from her face and waited, but there were no further blows. It was over- for now, at least. Her wounds still stung like someone had poured vinegar on them, but she could sit up and grope for a towel without her whole body screaming in protest. She finally managed to find it, and wiped her face off before pulling herself up by the edge of the sink and staring at herself in the mirror.

She looked like hell. The open cuts on her forehead were red and raw, and so were the holes in her wrists. She twisted around to see her back, then immediately regretted it when she caught sight of the open gashes in the mirror. There was blood everywhere- running down her face, across her back, down her legs, and dripping from her arms. The whole bathroom looked like a crime scene. She couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t. What the hell had just happened?

She needed to call Andrew. She would have called Donna, normally, but there was nothing Donna could do about this besides maybe helping with cleanup, and she needed way more than a clean bathroom at this point. She needed someone to tell her what was happening to her, and maybe lie through their teeth and tell her it was going to be okay. She wasn’t sure how well Andrew would fare on the second, but she was pretty sure he could work on the first.

He’d given her the number she could reach him at, and she’d left the slip of paper in her jeans pocket. She limped out to the bedroom, hissing in pain at every step as the cuts throbbed, and had to crouch down to fish it out of her pocket. When she tried to bend over, she let out a scream as fire licked down her back. Paper in hand, she sank down onto the bed and punched in the number, listening numbly as it rang.

There was clicking noise, and then the rush of air from the other end of the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi,” Frankie clenched a fist in her lap. “Is this Andrew Kiernan?”

“Yes, may I ask who’s speaking?”

“It’s Frankie Paige,” she said. “You spoke to me at the church this morning?”

“Ah!” He sounded pleased. “I actually just finished speaking with a contact at the Vatican, about his dossier of stigmatic occurrences. Did you have a question about your case?”

“I need your help,” she said in a rush. “It happened again, and I-” She swallowed hard, trying to keep a wobble out of her voice. “I think it’s getting worse.”

There was a pause. “I’ll be right there.”

She managed to get on a pair of jeans before he arrived, but every attempt she made at putting on a shirt of a bra led to pain ripping through her back, so she ended up just holding a towel up to her chest and hoping for the best. Her hair was still wet, but she made an attempt at dragging a comb through it- clumsily, one-handed, but she got rid of the worst of the tangles. She was eyeing the blow dryer wondering it it was worth making the attempt when the buzzer went off.

When she opened the door, he was dressed in the same overcoat and sweater he’d been wearing at the church, but the scarf around his neck was dangling crookedly, like he’d thrown it on without checking in a mirror. His hair was all over the place, too, and she wondered if he’d been lying on the phone and she’d woken him up from a midday nap.

He had an armful of papers, and he was shuffling through them when she opened the door. “I brought some of my research with me, but I’m not-” He looked up at her and stopped mid-sentence as he took in the towel. “Ah . . .”

Silently, she turned around, feeling, unaccountably, more naked that she would have showing up with no clothes on at all. She heard a sharp intake of breath, and felt a slight rush of air against the cuts, like he’d reached out to touch them and pulled back at the last minute. “That’s- oh.”

She turned back around, hitching the towel up. He looked a bit green. That couldn’t mean anything good. “Have you ever seen wounds like this before?”

“I, ah,” He cleared his throat, still looking queasy. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never actually examined a stigmatic before. That is, I’ve studied the extant cases, and I met with one once, but I didn’t- that is, I never-”

“You never saw the injuries before,” she finished, and he nodded. “Well today’s your lucky day, I guess.”

He laughed faintly. “I suppose you could call it that.”

She gestured for him to follow her, and turned and walked into the kitchen with him trailing after. “When did this happen?”

“About half an hour ago,” she said, lowering herself into a chair at the kitchen table. “I was showering, and all of a sudden it just- it was like someone was whipping me. I don’t know.”

He sat down next to her. “May I take a closer look?”

She shrugged and dragged the chair around so that her back was to him. He made a soft noise of assent and reached for her back, hesitating at the last minute.

“You can touch them,” she said over her shoulder. He nodded like he’d been trying to think of a way to ask and gently prodded one of the gashes with his finger. Frankie dug her teeth into her bottom lip, exhaling slowly through her nose in an attempt not to yelp out loud. Fuck, that hurt. He was being gentle and all, but every touch felt like someone jabbing a hot needle into the cut.

“You said it was like someone was whipping you,” he said, still examining the cuts intently. “Could you describe that any further?”

“It was like the last two times.” She took a deep breath. This all sounded crazy, even to her, but if anyone was going to believe her was the guy whose job it was to study bleeding statues. “I was in the shower, and I felt the first cut, and I heard- I think it was a crowd. I could see them too, but it was like I had double vision or I was looking through a projector, because I could see the wall as well. And there was this guy shouting numbers- I think he was counting the number of times I was supposed to be whipped.”

Andrew paused behind her. “Do you remember how many times?”

“Yeah,” she said, shuddering slightly. She could still hear the voice in her ears. “It was thirty-nine.” She pulled her chair around to face him. “Does that mean something?”

He nodded, forehead creasing. “Thirty-nine is the number of times Jesus was whipped before being crucified.” His frown deepened. “I know I asked you this already, but are you quite positive that you have no familiarity with the Gospels at all? Even childhood teachings you might have consciously forgotten?”

“No,” she said, scowling. “I don’t. I never went to Catholic school, or Sunday school, or whatever school that would tell me how Jesus died. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that, when I started getting used as a holy holepunch.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, gently putting a hand to her back. She shivered. She was still bleeding and gross and probably puss-y at this point, but his hand was warm, and it was cold in her apartment. Her back and shoulders were covered in goosebumps. She leaned back against the touch, letting a tiny sigh past her lips. He froze, and she hunched forward again. “Sorry,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “It’s really cold in here.”

He nodded and got up from the chair. His face and ears were a faint pinkish colour, eyes lowered modestly, and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was blushing. “Those wounds should be cleaned before you bandage them. Do you have any rubbing alcohol?”

“Under the kitchen sink,” she said, and he knelt down in front of the cupboard to rummage around inside. She wrapped both arms around herself, suddenly missing his presence next to her. Not because she was going to faint or something without him holding her up- fuck no- but he was warm, and she was cold, and it was just reassuring to have someone who presumably knew what they were doing taking care of her instead of just making wild stabs at what might be wrong. So she liked feeling taken care of. Fucking sue her.

Andrew returned to the kitchen table, a bottle of rubbing alcohol in one hand and a dishrag in the other. “IS this clean? I couldn’t find anything else to apply it with.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said with a small laugh. “I guess it’s a good thing that I remember to wash my dishes.”

He smiled, and sat down across from her. “I’m going to need you to turn around again.” He paused. “It’s probably going to hurt.”

She turned the chair around. “Yeah, because pain’s a foreign concept to me at this point.”

He laughed and wet the dishcloth with the bottle and set it down. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

It turned out that “as I’ll ever be” didn’t quite cover it, because at the first touch of the dishcloth to her back, she shrieked out loud and he dropped the cloth in surprise.

“Sorry,” she said, breathing hard. “Sorry, I was just- surprised. I can take it.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better if you went to the hospital? They could provide you with painkillers.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have insurance. And as soon as I walked in, it would be all you-did-this-to-yourself this and let-me-get-you-a-shrink that, and I just- I don’t want to deal with it.” She took a deep breath. “You can keep going. I’m ready.”

The next touch make her wince and suck her breath in sharply, but she wrapped her hands around the back of the chair and gritted her teeth. It didn’t really get easier, but he was as gentle as he could be and filled up the space with chatter about his work in a chemistry lab before he'd joined the priesthood, and then the Bible and Jesus wandering in the desert. None of it made much sense to her, but she tuned out and listened to his voice instead of concentrating on her back, and it sort of helped. When he was done, she got up out of the chair and went into the bedroom to put a shirt on while Andrew politely averted his eyes.

When she came back out, buttoning up her shirt, he was sitting at the kitchen table with a book open in front of him. “Do you want something to drink?” she asked. “I’ve got water and pop. And beer, but I don’t know if you guys are allowed to drink beer.”

He looked up and smiled. “A beer sounds, nice. Actually, monks are credited with inventing alcohol in the first place, did you know that?”

“Everyone knows that,” she said, plucking two bottles from the fridge and setting them down in the table. His face twitched like he was trying to hold back a laugh. “What are you reading?”

He held the book up for her examination. It was one of her library books, The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi. “I saw that you had a copy,” he said, setting it down. “But I bring this with me whenever I come on cases.” He flushed. “I’ve read it a few times.”

“Mmm,” Frankie said, sitting down and taking a swig from the beer. “So what does it say?”

His face lit up, like it had back in the church when she’d asked about miracles. “It’s a collection of essays about the stigmata phenomena and how the narrative is constructed, culturally speaking. There are some who argue that those who exhibit stigmata do so out of a psychosomatic sympathy with Jesus and His suffering. Others claim that they’re a hoax, much like the display of relics during the medieval period- that the fact that most stigmatics receives only two wounds at the most reveals a reluctance on their part to harm themselves further for the sake of trickery. Of course, neither applies to you, because you don’t have the familiarity with the stigmatic wounds necessary to experience them psychically or fake them.” He wrinkled his nose. “And having examined your wounds, I doubt you would go to those lengths even if you did want to perpetuate a hoax.”

She laughed. “You never know. I hear miracles sell well these days. Just ask Sylvia Browne.”

He frowned. “Who?”

“Nevermind.” She set the beer down, considering her next question carefully. “Are you . . . happy to have found proof?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean,” She paused, considering. “Not that you’re happy I’m in pain or anything, but finding someone whose wounds can’t be explained- it’s a big deal for you, right? For your church?”

He tilted his head, considering. “Yes and no.” He set his beer bottle down. “Ideally, yes, someone manifesting woulds like yours’ would be cause for celebration- proof of Christ’s power on earth. But there’s a lot of paperwork involved. Like most things, really.”

She grinned. “Like most things.”

He nodded. “Stigmatics are often qualified for sainthood, and some are canonized- Francis of Assisi was, and so was Padre Pio.” Frankie frowned, and he waved a hand. “Another stigmatic. But canonization is a long process, and there’s a lot of consideration involved, political as well as spiritual. It needs to reflect well on the Church.”

Frankie nodded slowly. “And I’m an atheist.”

“And you’re an atheist,” he agreed. “It’s unheard-of, and I honestly don’t know how the Church would deal with the situation. Possibly they’d seek out an exemption. More likely they would leave the case alone. People who are canonized- well for one thing, it’s incredibly rare, and for another, saints are sort of poster children for Christianity. People whose devotion serves as an example. You aren’t that person.”

She took a swig of beer. “Damn right I’m not.”

He laughed a little, and she laughed too. It felt nice, making jokes like a normal person, only the jokes were about what a shitty saint she’d made instead of grumpy customers or some goofy news story. If this was her life now, she might as well have a sense of humour about it.

They sat in comfortable silence for a bit, Andrew turning the pages of his book, then he asked “May I ask why?”

She looked up. “Why what?”

“Why you’re not a church member.” She frowned, and he held up a hand. “You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to. I’m just curious.”

She took a long pull from her beer bottle, considering. “Honestly?” He nodded. “I don’t know.”

His face fell a bit. “At all?”

“Well-” She shrugged. “I didn’t go to church at a kid, so it wasn’t like I was indoctrinated or anything. I have friends who did, but they’re not really religious either. And I never got into it. That’s all.” She set the bottle down and stood up. “So what needs to happen next? Research?”

He nodded, holding the book up. “I haven’t been able to find anything on the healing of stigmatics, but I haven’t read some of those books you have out in the hallway, and they might have something.”

She nodded. “I’ll get the books.”

They spent the next few hours reading, occasionally commenting on something they found or scribbling a note down- he’d brought his notepad with him, because of course he had- but mostly just leafing through the books. It was an oddly companionable experience, Frankie thought- it wasn’t that she didn’t read, but reading wasn’t usually associated with hanging out. When she was with Donna and Patty, they usually went out dancing or drinking; they didn’t stay at home. But it was nice. In a weird sort of way.

“It says here that most stigmatics are women,” she observed, scanning The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism. “Does anyone know why?”

Andrew shook his head. “There are feminist Christian scholars who suggest that women are closer to Christ in spirit because of Mary Magdalene’s devotion in his final hours, but that isn’t a position recognized by the Church.”

“Gee,” Frankie said, “I wonder why.”

He laughed a little, then glanced at the clock and stood up. “I should go.”

She followed his gaze. It was nearly seven o’clock, holy shit. How had that much time passed. “Sure you don’t want to stay for dinner? I make a wicked reheated pasta.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I left messages with my contacts at the Vatican, and they might have called back while I was away. Besides, I told Father Derning I’d be back at the motel tonight if he wanted to reach me.” He paused, as if something had occurred to him. “Do you have anyone you can call to stay with you? Friends, relatives?”

She nodded. “My mom’s out of town, but I have friends who live nearby. I’ll call them if I don’t feel good.”

He paused, worrying at his scarf with both hands. “But you might have another attack while you’re here on your own.”

Frankie gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes, but he had a point. “I’m not going to keel over as soon as you walk out the door,” she said, but she picked the phone up off the counter. “I’ll call them. See? I’m holding the phone and everything.”

He smiled. “Good to know.” He finished wrapping his scarf around his neck and walked over to the door. She got up and followed him, figuring that it was probably good manners to walk your helpful stigmata know-how (still depressingly celibate) buddy to the door. “Should I come back tomorrow?”

Frankie leaned against the doorframe, chewing thoughtfully on her thumbnail. “I’m not sure. I mean, if there’s something you need to be doing here, then yeah. But what else can you do?”

He considered. “In a physical sense-” She felt her face go pink and fervently hoped he hadn’t noticed- “-not much, it’s true. Your injuries should be monitored, but I’m no more qualified to do that than your friends. I should continue my research, of course, but I’m not sure how much more information we can gather. Hopefully one of my contacts will have something to show me.”

Frankie blew a piece of hair out of her face. “So basically we have to just wait until something happens?”

He nodded. “That’s about the shape of it.”

She sighed. “I’m not great at sitting around doing nothing.”

“Neither am I,” he said. “But I’m afraid we don’t have much of a choice.” He opened the door and fixed her with a look. “You will call your friends, right?”

She held the phone up. “Count on it.”

He nodded, satisfied, and walked out. Frankie shut the door and crossed over to the kitchen, grabbing a packet of ramen noodles from the cupboard and tossing them in the microwave. She sank back down into the kitchen chair and set the phone down on the table, staring it like it contained all the secrets of the universe. Yeah, she’d promised Donna and Andrew that she’d call, so not calling was like a two-for-one broken promise asshole move. But she really, really didn’t want a babysitter. The day had gone way better than she’d expected- well, after the psychic ass-kicking- and she didn’t feel burned-out like she had before, but she preferred not having to keep her friends on call because she might flip out and go Jesus any minute. Basically, she just wanted shit to go back to normal, but she didn’t think she’d be getting that any time soon.

She picked up the phone and dialed. It rang twice before Donna picked up. “Hey, what’s up?”

“It’s me,” Frankie said, licking her lips. “Uh, this is gonna sound weird, but do you and Patty want to camp out at my place tonight? I can explain when you get over.”

Donna didn’t even pause. “We’ll be there in ten.”

Alameida had been confused when he first woke. Had he ascended to Heaven? Had God taken pity on him after all? He was in darkness, and no longer in pain, but he could see and feel nothing; surely if he was in Heaven or Hell, there would be some sign. Purgatory, then; he had sinned, but not so terribly that he was cast out of God’s light forever. He could yet hope for salvation.

But then the woman opened her eyes, and everything was lost.

He couldn’t- didn’t- understand what had happened, how he could see through this woman’s eyes and hear through her ears, but he soon came to realize that he didn’t care. He only wanted to free himself of this fleshy prison, to somehow tear himself out of her and fling himself to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory or somewhere where his body was his own. The more he saw from this woman’s eyes, the more he felt a seething rage build in him until he felt that he would fly into pieces. Why had he been forced to stay with her? He hated this woman; hated her gaze, hated her laughter, hated every blasphemous, filthy thought that flowed through her mind and into his. For what purpose had he been sent here? To watch her fornicate and rage and take the Lord in vain? He could not believe it- he did not want to believe it- when he saw the stigmata appear on her body. This woman, bearing the wounds of Christ? He had bled in Jesus’ name for years on end, but he had lived in the sight of the Lord. Why would someone like her be visited with the stigmata? It was an insult.

Now, as she slept sprawled against her sofa, he strained to lift one of her arms. He had tried, time and time again, to make her move according to his will, but nothing had come of it; he may have been in her mind, but it seemed that he wasn’t able to manipulate her body. But that had been when she was awake. Now she was sleeping, and intoxicated, and as he concentrated, he saw her hand slowly rise from the pillow. He had done it.

Her legs took more effort, but he had nothing to do but focus, and he had been waiting for so long. As he dragged each leg across the floor, her torso flopped like a rag doll’s. He expounded more energy on holding her upright, and she stayed where he held her, though her head and arms were still dangling loosely. One foot went in front of the other, and he managed to drag her from the couch and into the living room doorway. He thought, when she passed her friends, that the noise might wake them, but they were both asleep, leaning on each other, and neither stirred.

He couldn’t make her legs move as if she was walking; instead he had to drag them across the floor, and her head and arms still drooped. He dragged her over to the kitchen table, waiting every moment for her to wake up. She didn’t. She must have been more drunk than he had given her credit for. If he had still had a face, his lip would have curled.

The kitchen chairs had been left pushed away from the table, and he dropped her into one, letting her chin fall onto her chest. The papers she and the priest- the priest who was helping her sin in God’s name- had been writing on were still strewn across the table, and some were still blank. He focused on her left hand- he had written with his own, when he had been alive- and clenched it around a pencil. It dragged across the table, leaving a streak of grey in its wake, but he managed to maneuver it to the paper, and began to write. The words came out distorted and huge, like a child’s handwriting, but they were there. He took her hand and dragged it across the paper again. If he couldn’t speak, he would pass his message on some other way.

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