.-----------------.
| ← Short Stories |
'-----------------'
         |

The bells were electronic and so did not fall down on the church goers ears but tore into their heads through canals that just happened to be open. Probably they would have gone through any orifice had they found those first two closed or even ground through chalky skull singing it is time for you to leave. The ringing did not dull the peoples outward flow nor did it guide them any way. Had the bells been real one could have watched from above their scurry outwards, eager to turn the radio on (once the waves have groped you you crave to hear some more), but they were not and so there was no way to tell if they went back to where they came from. Only the man on the corner who never left but stuffed cotton in his ears to bear the chimes stayed fixed in place. Another man in a thick un-ironed shirt too warm for summer weather walking by him, stopping at the church doors in this half empty strip mall off the highway seventy five, pausing briefly to take down a brochure posted to the putty before tucking it into his left pocket where the sweat would run it beyond reading. “Do not bear false idols within you” the crazed man screamed but the wrinkled one did not reply.

“How much more prayer do you need?”

Inside the church two men walked through the threadbare aisle. One was tall, and had once been strong. Tendons pressed against sagging, weary skin which in turn pressed on a clean suit now a decade old, but well maintained. He bore the mark of a pastors son that had skipped his father, who had chose to follow industry and, finding the required skills to be the same, made well for himself. His tithes giving breath to his own sons church who had picked up this birthright, and now walked with tired shoulders to closet-made-office in the back of the church. He still did not answer the man paced beside him.

“I’m a man of God myself. I would not interfere with your congregation. I just need two nights a week for my trials.”

This second man wore khakis lined with silicone to a crease that never dulled and a plain, grey polo shirt with a magnet tag hung on his breast that read his name too small to see but had Doctor, clear and large, set by a serpents rod. TM next to it even larger, for the snake was short enough to own. He was not a short man, but had a way of peering up his own brow when speaking that gave the impression of one. The Pastor had still not replied.

“You’ve seen my paperwork, this has all been approved.”

“But it has not been sold” The air grew busy because for all his weary the Pastor still spoke with weight that was not his own drooping folds.

“And that should ease your fears. I am not salesman you would have to expulse.”

“God’s house is not one of experimentation.”

“Do you not spend each week praying for new ways to show your flock old truths.”

The Pastor sat down behind an old oak desk too large for the room so that it was pushed up against the far wall of the closet and when he was seated he faced it as well. A small safe pushing too into the corner with the morning collection he did not need to count to know would not stave off the collectors that demanded their own tithes be given each month.

“I pray only that their eyes are made new.”

“Did you read the pamphlet I left you.”

He had tried but not understood much of the thick bind left at his door each morning since the first time ten days prior the Doctor had approached him. De-schematization: a Novel Method for Cleansing the Mind”, its paragraphs of scientific text not meaning more than the scriptures had lent him of late.

“It’s more simple than the pamphlet suggests. Built on Weissman and Haddox’s theory of pseudo addiction which was poorly contrived to be sure, but asked a question that still demands answers. Is addiction a part of our chemical selves, or programmed into the weakened mind by the very forces that then want to heal it. The unceasing assault of images the modern spectacle provides that seeks to give names to every deficiency as if they are facts of science. The original scope was too small. The clock watching, the suspended state of the addict is too deeply enforced by everyday exposure to the storm of society to be mitigated by simple dosage management. What is needed, no required, is a total washing of the mind so that its energies can be better focused. On even the church. Surely you’ve noticed the state of your most afflicted. How they leave your sermons invigorated but still unequipped to resist the urge to medicate their ailings. And the medical doctors say its all because of the drug, or the psycho-therapists tell them it’s their natural surroundings that force them into this self mutilation. Both rooted in truths but the rot of their minds are still too complete to be treated.

“The scripture is not so trivial.”

“Of course it is not. But even the scripture can require translation. And language is not the only way we learn.”

The Pastor was silent again. He hated this man. He hated his smallness, the way he smelled of chemical soot. He was a meddler, as all scientists were. And he would meddle here in God’s church. But the Pastor was also tired. Of seeing sheep being slaughtered. The man outside on the corner who had shown up last week only screaming one sentence: Do not bear false idols within you. And here was a man who bore idols. But he was more tired still of the battle for manna, the asking for tithes that the scripture proclaimed. Of becoming yet another creditor for One had not shown his face in the city for some time while the jackals around him were pressing, the weight of their greed spilling sweat in his eyes. And this meddler had manna. Enough to fully dam the tide.

A knock on door of the church interrupted his thinking, both Pastor and Doctor turned to see a man abject in wrinkled clothing standing outside.

“I am here for the treatment” he said, looking neither Pastor nor Doctor in the eyes when they opened the door. In his fist was a pamphlet, crumpled in the place it had been ripped from its post and the sweating of his palm seeped throughout the paper and the paper was thick but not thick enough to soak up the sweat that was dripping down from the corner onto concrete slab that turned it to vapor by the heat it bore from the sun.

“Today’s service is finished, but I’d offer prayer and shade”

“I am here for the treatment”, The wrinkled man repeated. His stink followed his wetness, bodily fluids boiled to fumes.

“I see you’ve found our new pamphlet, please come inside”

The Pastor did not move as the Doctor stepped out around him, leading the wrinkled man in and seating him down on a pew.

“See here a proof, a test, is provided.”

Walking up closely so the wrinkled man could not hear, the doctor looked up past his brow and spoke low to the Pastor.

“I’ll pay six months in advance now, if you’ll let me prove my work’s worth. Reserve the right to say no. But only after. After you’ve seen what it can do. If you still think me then a salesman you can drive me out with cord. And keep the money.”

His left hand slipping an envelope into the Pastor’s right pocket, and the Pastor saw himself as from above immobile. Unable to strain any longer to see God’s direction and so did not object. He watched instead the Doctor approach the wrinkled man, offer him water to drink and then take out the instruments by which to measure him. The wrinkled man with head still down led to the front pew and sat down while a white robe was draped atop his shoulders and the projector which that morning had read psalms was wheeled up with squeaking protestation and set behind the him. Flicked on so that in the center of the white light there was his own head’s shadow. Two pills in a plastic cup drank down and then the Doctor was in front of the Pastor with his hand on his shoulder.

“Please sit as near as you’d like but directly behind. We do not want this man to suppose you. You look thirsty.”

He was and the Doctor gave him water to drink.

“The pills he took, the drug?”

“Apogesic C. Novel in itself but not the treatment. It prepares the mind by abstracting pain so that it is felt but not as deeply. More like observed, as you would a child in need.”

Lights dimmed. The projector humming low and the light flickering as the Doctor changed out the bulb and then jumping out across the room so that the white backdrop extended out the ten foot square into astigmatic starburst rays that each blinked in separate rhythm. Echoes of their light reflecting on every corner of the room, even behind the Pastors head though he did not turn to see. Then words above the shadowed head where the wrinkled man was cast.

DO NOT LET THE WATER BOIL.

From each projected ray in three dimensions played different scenes over the flattened backdrop turned from white to the gapped teeth of an upturned smile. As if old shadows burned off the bent head which was fuzzy on the outlines, heat from a dancing fire. A naked women’s breast hung low and a snuff film clip by a bedside table where a father bent and prayed while a sitcom short played backwards and then each one reversed again so the the clips played true to time time while the breast retracted and the father stood so the mans slit throat was stitched together. DO NOT LET THE WATER BOIL flashing. The Pastor felt sick and tried to drink from the paper cup the Doctor had offered but it was empty so he tore its edges and sucked its pulp as the rays of light from the projector peeled off of themselves and his ears were filled with wailing for the carpet rolled up too or rather bristled with the shuddering gasps of a thousand strands of fiber. Each one a mother wrapped in shawl, bent on knees in fervent prayer. Then the Pastors own knees in pain as his caps dug into ground although he had not meant to be there. Eyes transfixed on the head’s dull shadowed still barely on the wall and then gaining torso, limbs and hands that grabbed for salvation, his own hands tearing flesh with hair from scalp and the wrinkled man was standing on the left of his pew, the doctor unmoved on his right. Great photographed flames licking the outline of his ears on the wall, the heat bubbling from within, he gasped for more water, the air hot in his lungs DO NOT LET THE WATER BOIL blinking again and again, afterimage burned in his retinas so that he read it still though his eyes welded shut.

“Thank you for your patience, the pain will subside”

The wrinkled man who’s bent left his stance, a pin gleaming and the grin of two Doctors with hands on his shoulders ushered him out of the church. And he stood for a moment, the sun beating him down, the Pastor evaporating up with the sweat for the man that was left behind could no longer concile any part of the world he saw into a piece of himself.

The congregation gathers, funneling into the church and they do not see any church bells though the sound of them flows through the air. Into a room full of pews and nothing seated on them but the remains of what used to be men. A serpent on the cross and two Pastors inside hand out waivers with pens. They do not read the words on the pamphlet, nor do they hear the two cries from outside. Two men, one on each corner. Small eyes searching the sky without sight without sight, screaming.

.-----------------.
| ← Short Stories |
'-----------------'
         |