A little something to occupy you until tomorrow night's episode.

The Ceiling's View

Even so, worship continues.

The body lays waiting at disjointed angles while prayers are lifted on voiceless lips to a God equally mute. Stained glass impossibilities hover over a lifeless service being conducted among the faithful, the damned and the dead. The countenance and purpose of the parishioners are varied, suspicion falling to even the old ladies in mandatory hats. Their white shoes step around the blood, remaining as pure and impersonal as confession.

I reflect on the holy and shudder.

The body stares up, surprised either by the death or the location. The cathedral ceiling keeps a lofty eye on this one, as though he taints its view. The golden emblems shine through the cobwebs, spiders feasting on their kills in the elbows of statues. Mother Mary's concrete hand extends, inviting me forward to seek all that won't embrace me. It doesn't look like her, I decide. She was naive in life and frozen unwillingly in the eternity that celebrates such unreachable virtue.

Saints do the dishes and get portraits in rainbow glass. And they're never blonds.

Fair locks are the guise of sinful deeds, an uncle once said. Beneath a head of bleached wheat lives the wicked thoughts of Satan's harvest. It was my fault that my parents' combined genes made me the devil's golden trampoline. Uncle Murray dragged my ten year old body to his altar, set cold hands to my face and threw demons to the plywood floor. That I passed out from fear was chalked up to divine success and I woke sprawled much like the deceased man still trying to stare his way into heaven.

The man beside me is carefully brunette, just dark enough to be exempt from accusation. I feel the fingers of his curiosity weave against my flesh but I will not look. The wheels are grinding in awkward cadence in my head and his stare rivals the dead.

My mysteries entice him.

He can't see them for the merely unspoken truths that they are. The church bells startle us, clanging for the wavering attention of a world moving past the dusty ritual of belief. It should be fundamental and some itching piece of me wishes for trust in a bigger plan. The only plan now involves scooping the entrails and washing the blood. I leave the latter to the pure and impersonal biddies, lips still moving to excise the demons of the trampling intruders.

They'll never get the red off their shoes.

I, like Mary, carry the visage of the upright, the worthy. But we deceive. Her thoughts were never recorded and could have been as vile as mine. Our bodies are both destined for ruin, corporal dust mingling with the rot of sinners and saints along the earth's crust. My funeral will contain none of my mysteries, only praise I can never earn, memories rendering a fonder version of me. Should they commit my likeness to stone, it won't look like me. And thus at the close of day he becomes my confessional because someone should know my particulars.

Unexpected, the way each worsening revelation still entices him, like Dorothy peeking behind the curtain and finding the wizard satisfactory.

What is spoken leaks through my fingers, words withheld so long that they escape my pores. Sinister digits seek belief on his skin. Words aren't enough; I need to etch myself into his muscles, feel them move while we taint the ceiling's view. He kneels, worshipping at my altar and a deity's name falls from my lips, voiceless.

There are bells.

Because he's inside, pressing deep to touch the God in me long forsaken. He is named for a saint and by him, I am sanctified.