The Whipping Christ

I

So after she had left the 1st Church of the Holy Trailer and The Whipping Christ out in the woods near Se Haute, Indiana, I found her at Kozy Kountry Kitchens off the Interstate highway where, with a calm and mild smile, she offered me coffee.

"Do you take cream?" she said.

"No, keep it black," I said. "Oh, and could you bring me a newspaper to read?"

"Happy to, they always have them behind the counter."

"Thanks. Speaking of newspapers, haven't I seen you in one?"

"People always look at me like they want to ask me that question," she said.

"Questions are my business."

"You write for the papers?"

"No, a magazine sent me here to get your side of your story." I cleared my throat.

"I mean, everyone wants to know how … I mean … are you doing okay now that you left the 1st Church of the Holy Trailer?"

"Why, I'm fine," she said. "Thanks be to …"

Here, I was expecting the blessed Name of the J to cross her lips. But nothing.

Then all of a sudden, she said: "Would you like me to tell you about my new life in Jesus?"

"Of course I would," I said. "Who wouldn't, after what you went through in the 1st Church of the Holy Trailer?"

Then I took out my notepad and pen and I said: "Now what about this guy and his Whipping Christ?"

II

She said, "We had this trailer home we found on three acres of lawn property in the woods, kind of away from everything but still not too far from the fur shed."

"Fur shed," I said.

She nodded. "Where my husband Biff and brother Lester were working at, where they skin animals for the fur. That's where it all started."

From a pocket underneath her apron, she took out a little comic book and handed it to me. I read TRICK, NO TREAT. I opened it. Inside, a clean-cut suburbanite couple were greeting three children in costume at their door on Halloween night: a little devil, an angel, a rabbit. "Oh, you are such cute darlings," the woman says, as she fills all their sacks with candy. The man smiles wide and says, "Don't eat it all in one night, kids."

Next frame shows the kids doing just that at home, emptying the sacks, cramming candy into their mouths and cheeks. Then they start making jack-o-lanterns, until the eyes of the little devil roll back in his head, he raises a dagger with the head of Baphomet carved in the handle, and stabs-chops his friends into bloody hell.

Final frame: the suburbanite couple tear off their costumes to reveal they are really demon trolls. "Should have never put those marijuana gummies in there," says the man troll, guffawing hysterically. Holding her sides with laughter, the woman troll says: "Oh, what a rush".

"Interesting," I said, "though technically the kids would have been making the jack-o-lanterns before they …"

"Some Christian folk from the fur shed who worked with Biff and Lester gave it to us," she said, looking away from me to gaze at the ceiling. "See, Mikey … you know, my son, Mikey? … he wanted to go Halloweening with his friends from school, always talking about the costumes, the candy.

"Well, the fur-shed Christians sure showed us that Halloween was Satan's Christmas. Course, we told Mikey we weren't about to send him out there, and he gets all crazy. Screaming and yelling for pop and candy. And after Halloween, it only got worse, with him banging his head on the floor and the wall. All that sent us straight to Vyrgl. You know Vyrgl?"

"A few houses, mostly farms, one church."

"The church the fur-shed Christians went to. Where we all got our baptism by immersion, like they said we should; but even the day we did, Mikey was all wound up, shaking all over, said he wouldn't go into the water until we gave him a candy bar or something."

Under my breath, I said to myself: "Mikey, he likes it."

She takes her eyes down from the ceiling and her smile back to me. "It used to be the nicest little white church," she said, "as white as white can get. We enjoyed going to it, with its fellowship and all. The pastor there, Pastor Zim, was full of the spirit. Pastor Zim did our baptizing and he gave the most friendly and warm sermons."

But now the smile fades. "How," she said, "could anyone ever find something wrong with Pastor Zim?"

"Bad business in the white-on-white church?"

"Discord," she said. "Shep, he knew."

III

She first saw him on the gravel parking lot of the Vyrgl church, coming out of a red school bus with all the windows open on the hottest day of the year. A young man with a blonde flattop crewcut above a face smiling big and wearing a starched light blue dress shirt, neatly knotted deep red tie, black pants pressed clean.

"It was like his feet weren't touching on the ground after he came out of that red bus," she said. "And the first thing he did, he shouted out to everyone: 'Praise God, at last, I am here.' "

Shep was one of the missionary group that had traveled hundreds of miles in the bus north from south Florida to do God's work around Se Haute, Indiana. She and her husband Biff had volunteered to house one of the missionaries during their stay, but did not know the name of their guest, at least, not until the young man walked over to them, dropped a red duffle bag onto the gravel, and, smiling big, said: "I am known as Shep," And you must be my family."

Shep then walked over to them to give out hugs. When he hugged her tight, she felt the heart and soul of pure and genuine Christian fellowship and, when Shep went to kneel Mikey to hug his jitters still "that's when I thought, this guy, he must be something special. Cause I never saw sweat on him that hot day: not through his clothes, not on his face, nowheres I could see on him."

After he broke off the hug on Mikey, Shep stood up and laughed and then said, "It's been a long trip, my friends. My stomach is telling me I am of the multitudes you will feed today." With that, they headed down to the white-on-white church basement for a communal fried chicken feast.

The congregation of the church brimmed with cheer as they feasted on their chicken wings and thighs and biscuits and honey and corn on the cob, and bonded with the missionaries in zealous fellowship. At least, up until the choir of the church assembled to sing. Then all the notes of harmony went sour.

"Discord," Shep had said.

Knitting his hands together on his lap, he eased back into the purple paisley velour sofa in the living room of the trailer and said, "You could feel it moving in that basement."

"They try to keep it from us," said Lester, "but you know it's there."

"See, there's this man named Konrad," said Lester. "You probably saw him during the breakfast in there, looking like one of those country singers when they used to have all that slicked-over big hair."

"I know of them," said Shep.

"Well, this Konrad, he wanted to start up this choir for the church? So he gets a bunch of kids together, starts teaching them how to sing and all."

"They do sing like angels," said Biff.

"Like angels," said Shep.

"Anyway," said Lester, "this Konrad guy, he starts into telling everybody he wants to practice in the church anytime he wants to and that more church money has to go to the choir, that kind of thing. Didn't sit too well with Pastor Zim."

"You could see that him and Pastor Zim, they could barely stand to look at each other today," Biff said. "And when the choir starts singing, Pastor Zim, he wasn't anywhere near that room."

"Well, it is said … pardon me, I must remove my tie."

Shep unknotted his red tie, lifted it up over his head and off his neck, and set it on his lap. That's when she noticed a braid of leather on the nape of his neck.

"What are you wearing under your shirt there, Shep?" she said.

"That's nice of you to ask," Shep said. "Would you like to see it?" He threw out another big smile, and then he pulled a brown leather neck strap out from under his shirt and placed it carefully on the palms of both her hands. At the end of the strap hung a lenticular hologram card of the head of Jesus Christ in a square, clear plastic holder: the crucifed Christ: holy blood, crown of thorns, torment crossing the beaten face. But when she moved the card back and forth, the crown of thorns vanished into a golden white light bathing the Jesus head, wiping its face clean of scars and blood to bring out kind eyes in a gentle gaze.

"It was worn by a friend of mine, a baby Christian," Shep said. "He was raised strict Roman Catholic but then l I showed him where the Holy Word said he was being fooled by a man-made institution that doesn't care about the real Bible … the King James—translated straight from the Greek, not from that Latin Vulgar of theirs."

She told me: "He said, after his friend got baptized for real by immersion, not sprinkling, he gave Shep the holy Jesus head card so Shep would always remember witnessing to him."

"They call it a scapular," Shep had said.

"This is such a beautiful picture of the Lord," she said. She kept switching from one Jesus head to the other until Mikey jolted her from behind to make a grab for the scapular.

"Mikey loved to eat cereal," she said, with a small sniff. "Must have thought Shep had pulled out a prize toy from a cereal box."

Suddenly, Shep lost his smile, she said. He took to scratching his flattop crewcut with the clean-cut fingernails on his right hand. Then he said: "That's good enough, could I please have it back now? It does mean so much to me."

After she handed it back to Shep, he placed the scapular slowly around his neck, rebuttoned his shirt, slid the red tie off his lap. Without looking in a mirror, he knotted it around his collar perfectly.

He then cleared his throat and smiled big again. "I have something I must show you now," he said, as he opened his red duffel bag.

"This King James Bible came out that I thought must be the most beautiful in the world," she said.

I can see how this book she describes would impress her. Coal-black leather cover and silvery golden lettering. Thin pages, neatly highlighted, finely underlined words and passages and scripted notations in red ink along the margins.

"I believe I happen to have a passage all about discord in your church," he said. "Yes, here it is … 'When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.' " Then he looked up from the Bible to address them: "They both want to be leaders of this church, this Konrad man and that Pastor Miz."

"Shep, his name is Zim," said Lester.

Ignoring him, Shep went on: "They may believe they are righteous, but they bring discord instead. You know, I believe it would comfort you to pray with a brother in newfound fellowship about the discord."

"Shep, we have been praying on it," Biff said. "We've been doing our praying."

"Not with me," Shep said. "I am not of this discord, so I will bring a new voice to the prayer that you need."

"No other kind of praying seems to be working," said Lester. "Might as well try what you're saying."

As if he were in a scene of a movie in slow motion, Shep rose from the purple paisley velour sofa and bent down to genuflect on the beige shag carpet, thrusting his hands out to them. "Let us pray, shall we?" he said. Moved by his beckoning, they went down on their knees next to him and joined hands to lock in a prayer circle. Shep then closed his eyes firmly and prayed hard:

"Burn up the chaff," he said.

"Thoroughly purge.

"Gather wheat.

"Set an unquenchable fire to come to us. Lord, let it burn. Let it burn."

Then, all of a sudden, Mikey burst into wild giggling and rushed headlong into the circle, knocking apart the linked hands. "Pray, pray, pray," he said. "Pray for candy, pray for pop."

Shep drew open his eyes, very slowly. Sniffing, he poked the middle finger out from his right hand to scratch it over the tip of his nose.

Then Shep forced out a grin and extended both his hands with stiffened palms up toward the boy. He said, "Why, little brother, haven't you heard my favorite great old-time gospel hymn? Place your hands onto mine and I'll teach you it."

Mikey hesitated a moment before coming to Shep to lay his hands on the palms. Shep closed his eyes and sang:

Will the circle be unbroken

By and by, by and by?

Is a better home awaiting

In the sky, in the sky?

"Gimme Chocolate," Mikey said.

Shep winced, severely.

IV

During his first days there, Shep was the perfect guest, she said. At dawn, he would get up from the floor where he insisted he sleep, to work all over their home: briskly humming that favorite hymn of his as he washed and scrubbed and dusted and washed and scrubbed and dusted everything spotless. Then, at the end of the day, he started singing his hymn louder when he was hauling black rubber bags full of trash to the dumpster in the deep woods behind the trailer.

She smiled a touch to herself and said, "Shep used to say, he said 'I work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.'"

"And never broke a sweat the whole time," I said.

"But he'd go to the floor at the end of the night, tuckered out, for sure," she said. "Never complained.

"But then, one morning, all of a sudden I heard lots of growling and snorting from the living room that woke me up. I went in, and there he is sleeping away on the sofa."

"So all along, he coveted that sofa," I said.

She frowns away her smile and whispers: "And that's where he told me about what he said Mikey did."

That day, she found him back in his starched light blue dress shirt, neatly knotted deep red tie, black pants pressed clean.

"Shep, you don't look like you've been looking with us," she said. "Anything wrong?"

"Scripture has been violated," he said

"What are you saying, Shep?"

"Your son, the one you know as Mikey … went to the toilet room with my Word of God."

"Mikey did what?"

Shep looked strictly into her face. "The King James Bible is not bathroom reading," he hissed.

"I know that, but a kid doesn't know that."

"He knows enough how to soil it."

"Soiled?"

"Forever soiled."

"Well let me have a look at it, Shep, maybe I can clean it for you."

"No, no, I buried it, back there where I take the black rubber bags, behind the dumpster."

"I feel so bad. Shep, we'll pay to replace it, I promise."

Again, Shep started rubbing his crewcut, then scratching it as if at a grating scab. "There is no replacing it," he said. "The Bible is gone, but what about your Mikey?"

"Oh my dear Lord, what should we do?"

"First, we must keep Mikey in his room," he said. "Do not let him out until the man of the house returns from the fur shed and we tell him."

"But what if he needs to go potty, Shep?"

Shep shuddered. "He has already been in the toilet room to do his business," he said.

"Business?"

Shep glared at her. "Oh, he went all right," he said. "Went spilling his seed. Your boy was … Onan Genesis 38:9. God saw him touching himself, spilling his seed … doing an Onan … right into the Bible … ONNNAAANNN … sticking it to the Song of Solomon."

V

"A Chosen One of Father Satan," Shep told them.

"I never heard of no Father Satan," her husband Biff said. "How's that any different than the regular Satan they're always telling us about?"

"He's different but the same," said Shep. He shrugged and settled down into the sofa. "There is God the Father, then this Father Satan. An evil father to those children born into Christian families just so they can revolt against the parents, like Father Satan revolted against God the Father."

"I don't know about this," said Biff.

"He's just a child, Shep, our baby boy," she said. "How were we supposed to know he's gone bad?"

Leaning toward her, Shep said, "You were being fooled all the time by the power of Father Satan. I suspect under the appearance of the man who tried to baptize the boy."

"You never did like him, I know it," Biff said.

Shep shook his head once, firmly. "That church of yours actually calls this man its pastor? This Miz?"

"No, his name is Zim," said Lester.

Shep ignored him and said: "He can't even lead his church when it comes to the choirmaster and his choir. No, he has Father Satan written all over him, this, this Pastor Zim of yours."

"Miz," said Lester.

Shep ignored him.

"I don't know about all this," said Biff. "You're talking like he's never been our son, that he's the son of this Father Satan character of yours."

"Why's this all happening?" she said.

Her question sent Shep into one of his thinking moods for several moments, closing his eyes firmly. When he opened them, he breathed out his answer: "Yes, I see it now. Father Satan chose this boy as his son to sow the seeds of discord. And now he wants to abort the birth of the 1st Church of the Holy Trailer."

"What's this Church of the … what?" said Biff.

"Our trailer home church, my brother."

"That set off Biff," she said. "I never heard such language out of him before. He must have heard it in the fur shed; there weren't just Christians in there."

"All of a sudden, you're in here making everything all yours, right?" Biff was saying. "Locking up my son, talking this Father Satan bullshit. I never heard no Father Satan coming out of Pastor Zim."

"Miz," said Shep.

Then Biff stuck his thumb out from his right fist and thrust it back and forth above his shoulder like a mad hitchhiker at Shep. "Well, I'm calling you out," he said. "You find your goddamn red bus and you take your ass back down South or wherever the hell you come from."

Everyone now watched Shep, to hear his answer. When he did, he spoke it in tongues:

The song of kiss me with Solomon's mouth which is Solomon's him kiss me love is wine better savor good ointments thy name virgins with the kisses of his mouth poured forth therefore thy name the song of kiss me mouth for thy love is better than wine because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name virgins love thee kiss my.

"It was kind of like he made it so we had to listen," she said to me. "All of us, just staring at him. Deep, real deep staring. And then … it felt like we had to say something together."

"… 1st Church of the Holy Trailer. Amen."

And with that, she saw Shep smile big.

"Now tell me the name of the man who once led you," he said then.

All three, in their trance, answered to him:

"Miz," they said.

VI

Later, she heard Shep say,

Shep wagged his middle right finger at the bedroom where they had locked Mikey behind the green door. "Now, a real Christian child would obey and be glad not to go off on Halloween," he said. "But a Chosen One of Father Satan? You denied him his night of nights, and now every day is Halloween for him."

They said, "Yes, Shep."

"Well that's ending. What that boy needs is some down home schooling in that old-time religion, like we do it in the South.''

"So be it," they said together

Then Shep crouched down to his red duffel bag lying on the floor next to him, dug his hand inside, and slid out a thickset, black-lacquered paddle. Wielding it before them, he said, "That boy needs training. From me and what is known as The Whipping Christ here. For it is written: 'And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables.'

"You think Our Lord and Master would ever coddle and spoil children? For it is written, 'Suffer, the little children … thou shall have a paddle among thy weapons; and thou shall use it in the service of thy God.' And that service will be a powerful memorizing of the Song of Solomon that he soiled. All of it, King James Bible English. AND the Original Greek."

"Humble, we obey," they said.

"That's what the Lord likes to hear," Shep said, tapping The Whipping Christ on his right thigh. "Time's running out for that boy Mikey; at this rate, his name will never be entered into the Book of Life for the Day of Judgment. We start him tomorrow in the schooling room, break of dawn."

And at dawn and on the hour, every day after, she made sure to pass by the locked door of the schooling room to check on Mikey. Shep would be in there, muttering verses from the Song of Solomon, first in King James Bible English then in another language she figured was Greek. She wondered: how did Shep expect Mikey to learn that faraway language? Mikey was trying hard, but he kept faltering and slurring the words, and she feared the power and the hand behind The Whipping Christ might soon smite Mikey if he did not do better.

Sooner than she thought:

[Crack Snap Crack Pop Crack]

"Now give me that in Greek, boy … no, no, no that is so wrong."

[Smack Pop Crack Smack]

"Hold your ankles and beg for The Whipping Christ."

[Crack Pop Snap Smack]

"And then day after day when Shep came out of the schooling room, I could see his looks were going," she said.

Never again would he dress in the clean-fitting outfit of the first days of his mission: he now wore his workaday flannel shirt and blue jeans, unwashed, even when he slept, snoring in growls. The scapular he once kept tucked under his shirt now bobbed out in the open, so that the transformation of the suffering Jesus Christ on the cross into the benign and smiling Son of God would repeat itself over and over again on his chest as he skulked inside and outside the trailer home church when he wasn't behind the green door of the schooling room.

In there, for weeks, he drove Mikey on with the sharp, whistling report of The Whipping Christ. Then, one night, while she was preparing the table for dinner, Shep threw open the green door of the schooling room and appeared before the trailer home congregation of the 1st Church of the Holy Trailer, triumphantly brandishing The Whipping Christ above his head.

"Winner, winner, chicken dinner," he announced. He then pointed the paddle at them and said: "For it is done."

"Then Mikey came out all white," she said.

"Like white how?" I said.

"Little white jacket, white tie, white pants, white shoes …"

I press my right hand to my forehead as I look down on my notebook. "How did this guy all of a sudden come out with a white suit for a kid?" I ask myself aloud.

"Must have pulled it from out of his red duffle bag like he did with The Whipping Christ," she said.

Then, she says, he pointed the paddle toward Mikey and said, "Show us what you're made of, boy."

Mikey stood there, speaking passages from the Song of Solomon that he knew by heart, in King James Bible English, then, precisely, in the original Greek.

"I was proud of my baby boy, with him reading all that godly old language like he did," she said. "I started to thinking maybe he could become a preacher after he was over with all of this."

"Maybe even better than Shep," I said.

"Mikey never stopped neither; he just kept on going on and on, till Shep held up his hand and told Mikey he could sit down and eat."

Mikey did as he was told. Now a boy of polite etiquette, Mikey ate all his food slowly and quietly, always refusing her offer of seconds.

"Shep did what he set out to do," I said. "Put Mikey through finishing school to finish him off." It was a hard comment, but I was in a hard mood, hearing all this insane cult talk.

She responded to me by looked up at the ceiling and suddenly came out with: "My chocolate cake is sinful. I make the best chocolate cake you ever tasted. Rich and creamy. It's like the frosting would float off the top into your mouth."

"You say what?"

"I thought … a little slice wouldn't hurt Mikey. He deserved it, didn't he?"

"Give the poor kid a reward already," I said.

"I know the true God forgives me," she said, "for serving dessert."

"Forbidden," Shep shouted at the cake, jabbing The Whipping Christ at it. "It's the Devil's food."

When he saw the cake across from him, Mikey's tongue hung from his mouth, he licked his lips, his eyes bulging. He snatched a fork off the table with his right hand as his left hand stretched out toward the cake. Then he lunged off his chair to throw himself onto the plates of food and glasses of water that exploded off the table.

Mikey was crying: he was gabbling: "Gimme Chocolate, Gimme Chocolate, Gimme Chocolate." He started crawling through the mess on the table so he could plunge the fork into the cake like he was spearing a bloodthirsty shark and began shoveling gobs of it into his mouth, streaks of chocolate frosting smearing the white suit.

Breathing heavily, Shep backed away and he howled: "Eat that cake good, boy. Go on stuffing yourself with the Devil's Food. Because we really got our work cut out for us now. You think you saw Bible before? Well, you have not seen the half of it."

VII

"Then everything, it went crazy," she said. "He always had that Whipping Christ with him, giving out orders and pointing it around. Him, letting his hair and beard grow all long and wearing that old flannel shirt, those torn-up jeans, sandals and white socks, never taking them off till he started stinking up the place.

"He kept telling, we kept doing. No more family dinners or prayer circles, just grab a sandwich and get on with it. Then he told Biff and Lester …" she turned her eyes to the ceiling again. "… he told them they were the ones sleeping on the floor from now on, for the good of their body and soul, or something."

"What about you?"

She shakes her sad face back and forth. "He kept me in the bed," she said.

"So, what was happening with Mikey?"

"One night, after Lester and Biff left for the night shift at the fur shed, Shep was really going at Mikey."

"You been sneaking food in here, I knew it."

[Snap, Crack, Snap, Pop]

"Breakfast cereal is not Bible."

[Pop, Snap, Crack, Crack]

"I'm calling you Fatso, from now on, FATSO."

[Snap, Crack, Pop, Snap]

"Well, me and The Whipping Christ here, we're taking you to task, Fatso."

She heard harsher slaps of wood against bone then she had ever heard before coming out of the schooling room. Then she felt the shiver of a tremor all around her. Where was it coming from? The tremor raised her from the bed, and into the living room. Alone in the empty living room, she heard nothing coming out of the schooling room now.

The tremor had ended, so she went back to bed and pulled the covers over her head.

The silence behind the green door lasted all that night, until, in the early morning, she heard the sound of weeping and teeth grinding at the bedroom door. The door was opened, Shep was there. Hands stained with the same blood that streaked the black lacquered wood of the paddle he held fast to his right thigh. Blood clotting his hair, too. His pitch-dark face was like a window to the ground mist drifting beneath the cold blackness of the winter woods outside.

At the door, he broke the silence of her haunted hours, with tears in his eyes:

"When I was back there in seminary school, there was a Father there who caught me whipping it out, whipping it good, after I read the Song of Solomon the first time in the basement of the school. Don't you understand, I had to: naked breasts and gardens and perfume and fruits and honey: I could smell it, I could feel it, I had to do something about it. He stood there, Father, looking at it, my … no, no God, please help me … the woody, but Father did not yell at me or raise his fist to me, no, he smiled unto me and he kneeled as in prayer and he …"

And then, with a moan, he climbed into bed next to her and said: "I will sing the song for you now, sister woman. Like a lullaby for endless sleep."

VIII

"He was growling and snorting like he always did in his sleep," she said to me. "So I got out of bed and went to the green door, because with all that blood all over Shep, I wanted to see about Mikey. But … but I saw something else in there."

"What did you see?" I said.

"That piece of furniture in churches where the pastor puts his sermon and his Bible on," she said. "What, what do you call it?"

"You mean a lectern."

"That. It was painted in red and black with Greek letters in gold on it … and, and … his beautiful Bible was sitting there on it."

"He didn't bury it near the dumpsters then?"

"Never did," she said, with a violent shake of her head as she grabbed a napkin from the table and began twisting it between her fingers.

I fell back into the cushion behind me. "Of course," I said. "Mikey never soiled anything."

"And all those belts and chains in there, all that blood …"

Seeing the bedroom torture chamber, she screamed and, turned away, sickened, bending down to heave a clump of vomit on the blood-stained carpet. When she had finished, she lifted her tearful eyes to hear Shep dragging something from the kitchen to the open front door of the trailer.

She ran after Shep, where she saw him outside, panting out clouds of vapor in the cold air as he dragged a black rubber trash bag with leaks along the seams that oozed red in his left hand and The Whipping Christ over the icy dirt in his right. And in the distance, she could see Biff and Lester with pale faces, showing the whites of their eyes without pupils, standing side by side next to a rust-red van with black letters on the side: Mike's Fur Shed.

Then Shep sensed her behind him and dropped his bag. He lifted up The Whipping Christ, wheeled around to wave it at her, and sought to tame her with the words that had put them in the trance: " kiss me with Solomon's mouth which is Solomon's him kiss me love is wine better savor good ointments thy name ".

But she refused to heed them now.

"Mikey, Mikey, Mikey," she screamed.

In the distance, Biff said, dully: "What's this stuff?

Lester answered: "It's supposed to be good for you."

"Did you try it?" said Biff.

"I'm not going to try it, you try it," said Lester.

"Let's get Mikey to try it, yeah, he'll eat it, he'll eat anything," then said together.

"Where are you taking him?" she yelled at Shep.

Shep aimed The Whipping Christ at the van. "Get that fat off, I told him," he yelled back at her, "but Fatso wouldn't fast. So it comes off now. Off his stomach, off his legs, off his arms, off his face … and the real fat too, you know it now, don't you sister woman?"

"No, no, I don't know."

"That cock, it won't be crowing no more."

Quickly, she found herself running on bare feet out of the 1st Church of the Holy Trailer. Shep went to make a grab for her but slipped on an ice patch to hit the ground chin-first. Trying to lift himself up, he yelled at Biff and Lester to get in the van and drive to catch her: she heard that, she ran fast to a clump of bushes where brown leaves still clung on the branches, she hid behind them until she saw the van speed past her. Now how could she escape? Stagger in a run through the forest, find the paved road into Se Haute, Indiana.

She must have run faster than she thought, she said, because, before she knew it, "I saw the sheriff's car parked in front of a church and I screamed bloody murder at it."

Later on, I read in the local newspaper how, once the sheriff had called an ambulance for her, the sheriff and a deputy hauled out to the 1st Church of the Holy Trailer. There, they were met by Shep, waving The Whipping Christ in circles at them and yelling, over and over again:

"He likes it, hey Mikey."

IX

"Well, thank you for trusting me with your side of the story about this," I said to her.

"Thank you," she said. "I needed to get it off my chest. Be sure to send me a copy of your story. Where's it going to be?"

I had never planned to tell her, not after what she went through. But I let it slip:

"Magazine called Modern Cult," I said.

She nods her head and whispers to me: "I'm with good Christian folk in Se Haute now. They take care of me and counsel me. They say Jesus will forgive me for everything, everything …"

"Right," I said.

"But I've had to carry it with me, you know?" With that, she reached around to the back of her head to remove it and put it on the table next to my coffee cup. "Now, you can have it," she said with a smile, and went off to make her rounds.

I looked into the scapular. Golden light bathed the face of a little boy in 3-D. The first holy communion card of Miguel. He, in a white suit, white shirt, white tie. Then, when I turn the frame around, his face drips blood beneath the crown of thorns now on top of his head and runs across his bruised face.

Shep and The Whipping Christ sure got around, I thought. On a Mission from Satan.

THE END

Bio: George Hook is a fiction writer and former editor of the Arts & Letters page of The Wall Street Journal/Europe. He regularly performs at open mikes throughout Chicago and is part of the writing community of the University of Chicago Writer's Studio. His short stories and other fictional pieces have been published by FreezeRay, Flying Island of the Indiana Writers Center, Thrice Fiction, Danse Macabre, The Joe Bob Briggs Fanzine, and The Spectacle of Excess. His other works, including chapters of a novel developing as The Girl With the Hemingway Tattoo, are available in his blog at https://tinyurl.com/25xhnfj7.

E-mail: George Hook

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