No lyrics this time. And this is where it gets fucky, P.S.
"You think you're so sly
You tried to roll by
You played the safe side."
- James Brown – Cage the Elephant
The Corrupt Priest
Aunt Sam begged me to stay behind for the funeral. Of course I would stay. I couldn't just leave her like this. She was falling apart. Maybe I could take her with me to Seattle. Then again, I lived in a hole in the wall. She probably wouldn't want to leave anyway. This had been her home since she'd been born.
She called the family priest immediately the next morning. I'd tried to clean most of the carnage up before Aunt Sam woke up, but she heard the gunshots. She came flying down the stairs, her own shotgun in her hands, looking wild. Then she saw the bodies and she let out a keening cry, fainting soon after. I let her lie there. Maybe I'd finish cleaning up by the time she was awake again.
It was lunch by the time I'd washed all the blood off the porch and got James and Alice onto the porch. Bodies were so much heavier once they were dead. I took one of the cigarettes out of the pack that Alice had left on the porch and lit it up. I wasn't much of a smoker, but this situation called for one. I inhaled the toxins deeply, revelling in something that I could actually control feeling. I hadn't broken down yet, not even after watching Alice's skull crack from the shards of the bullet and seeing some of her brain leak out of the holes.
No, I was still fine.
Aunt Sam came around soon after, completely dazed.
"What happened?" she croaked, refusing to look at the porch.
"James came here. I think he wanted to kill Alice, because he had a gun, but Alice beat him to the punch. She shot him, and then realized what she'd done and shot herself." I said all of this rather stoically. I was still in shock, I think.
"Sweet Jesus," Aunt Sam gasped.
I nodded and walked into the kitchen to get her a glass of water and some Advil.
"Here, take these," I murmured, handing her the cup and the pills. "Who should we phone?"
"Father Carlisle," Aunt Sam answered before gulping down the pills. "He's our priest. He'll know what to do." Then she stood up, not even wobbling for a second, and went to the phone. She talked quietly with the priest for ten minutes. She sobbed and wailed, and nodded, wiping her tears away.
"He'll be here in twenty minutes," she announced as she hung up the phone.
Once again, I nodded and went into the kitchen. I sat down at the table, twiddling my thumbs and bouncing my leg. I needed to do something. I needed to get out of this house and away from these bodies. Aunt Sam began cooking and the smell of bacon filled my nostrils. I couldn't take it. I stood up and headed upstairs, opening the window and sitting on the bed. I grabbed my notebook and scribbled furiously, writing down everything I knew about James and Alice. It was refreshing. I could feel the rage and the guilt leaving my body with every word I wrote down.
This exercise had only just begun when I heard a truck rumbling as it entered the yard. It had to be the priest. I watched from the window. An elderly man stepped out of the truck, wearing black. His hair was somewhere between blonde and white and his face was wrinkled. He looked sadly at what I assumed would be Alice and James on the porch. Aunt Sam burst through the door soon after, throwing herself at the man. He hugged her tightly, smoothing her hair down and whispering in her ear. He didn't look terribly sad, but he probably didn't know Alice very well.
"Edward?" Aunt Sam called, looking directly at me in the window. "Come down and meet Father Carlisle."
The bed groaned as I stood up. I slowly made my way down the stairs and outside. I glanced at the bodies on the porch. They were turning gray already.
"Hello, Edward," Father Carlisle greeted, holding out his hand to me. I grasped it with a nod and a grim half-smile. "Samantha tells me that you're her nephew."
"Yeah," I replied, letting go of his wrinkly hand and shoving my fingers in my pocket.
Father Carlisle nodded, smiling. "Well, Samantha thinks we should just bury the bodies here. No one really knew James or Alice here."
"Sure," I breathed. "Let's get this over with then."
"Can you begin digging the graves then?" He smiled at me again.
I shrugged and went to grab a shovel.
Three hours later, I was finished digging both graves. They were going to be buried beneath the big oak tree in the backyard. Father Carlisle and Aunt Sam had been watching me the whole time, sipping on iced tea and talking. Aunt Sam seemed troubled. She brought Father Carlisle a cheque and they continued talking. She had to pay him for this?
I brought Alice and James to their graves and threw them in. No use in handling them gently anymore. Their bodies were vacant.
"I'm done," I announced, coming into the house.
"Good, good," Father Carlisle murmured. He looked dishevelled. His hair was askew and his clothes weren't as straight anymore. "Samantha? Are you ready?"
Aunt Sam came out the kitchen looking teary-eyed and just as messy as the priest. Had they..? Oh, fuck, I hope not.
"What the hell's going on here?" I asked lowly, my eyes going back and forth between the priest and my aunt.
Aunt Sam cleared her throat, refusing to look me in the eyes. "Nothing, hon. Let's go."
I could feel my nostrils flaring. Something was wrong here. But, we all went out the backyard anyway. I had placed sticks at the heads of the graves, just so Aunt Sam would remember where her baby girl was buried.
Father Carlisle said very few words, but Aunt Sam was still bawling. She clutched to the dirty priest like he was her life preserver in a storm. God, it was sickening.
"Father Carlisle, can I speak to you?" I asked after the "service" was finished. "Alone?"
"Sure, Edward." We began walking towards the large garden that Aunt Sam kept. She walked into the house, probably to break down again. Maybe she'd start drinking again after this.
"What the fuck are you doing with my aunt?" I growled once I heard the back door close.
"It's none of your concern, son," the priest answer smoothly, looking at the garden, his hands behind his back. "I'm just a priest."
"A dirty fucking priest at that. Why did Aunt Sam have to pay you?"
"I need money, too," he replied. "I can't live off the fat of the land like these other priests. I'm realistic."
"Fuck you," I spat. "I can't believe you'd expect someone to pay you for a funeral, even if it was spur of the moment. Aunt Sam just lost her only daughter. I lost my cousin. How can you expect someone to pay you for that kind of pain?"
Father Carlisle shrugged. "Samantha knew what would happen. She's always known."
"So she knew that she'd have to fuck you, too? Or was that just a side deal?"
Father Carlisle chuckled and shook his head. "Edward, you don't know the way things work here. You can't just come in from Seattle, all high and mighty, and expect everything to be how you thought it would be. You're in Texas now."
"I know where I am!" I exclaimed, very frustrated with this man. "And my expectations have nothing to do with this. This isn't normal. This isn't right, and you know it. You can't make people pay you for funerals; you can't make people fuck you while their grieving. It's not moral, and you're a priest."
"This is the way it is," Father Carlisle stated. "This is the way it always will be."
"What else do you do? Steal money from the church? Rape the young boys and girls?"
Father Carlisle just smiled at me. I almost threw up on Aunt Sam's pumpkin patch.
"You're a sick fuck," I growled, storming away from that sad excuse for a man.
He was a horrible person, but he was perfect for my project. I had to talk to him more, as much as I didn't want to.
So, I turned around. "Why do you do all of this? How can you rationalize this?"
He pondered my question. "I can do this because I know I'm capable. People wouldn't report a priest. They all think I do this because I'm helping them on their way to heaven. I can manipulate the people around me with a few words. I tell them this will bring them closer to God, closer to heaven, and they'll do anything I say. It's the perfect crime. They're willing to let me do all of this just because of a non-existent God."
"You don't even believe in God? Why'd you become a priest then?" I couldn't fathom this man's reasoning. He was insane.
"The power. It may not seem like much power to anyone else, but this kind of power is rare, and it's wonderful," Father Carlisle told me. "I can't explain how good it feels to be in charge of an entire congregation."
I walked away then. I didn't need to hear anything more. Usually I was detached from my research, but Father Carlisle made that impossible. He was a person that you just wanted to strangle, to shake around until they just stopped. Someone you'd be willing to kill without a second though just because he was so evil.
My plane left that night for Seattle. I couldn't be around these people anymore. I had to get back to what I considered to be reality. What I considered to be normal.
Father Carlisle had been killed that afternoon, after he left Aunt Sam's farm. Someone had been lost and asked him for directions. Father Carlisle had given them the directions and asked for a few dollars, seeing as he was a poor priest. The person became upset, couldn't believe that he would ask for money for something like directions. The person had a shovel. The person got out of their truck and swung the shovel with such a force that it killed him. The person then stabbed the priest's dead body with the sharp end of the shovel repeatedly until his stomach was nothing but an open pot of bloodied guts.
I couldn't even take a second to say a prayer for the son of a bitch. Instead, a grabbed a beer and held it up to the sky, thanking God for finally getting rid of another corrupt person.
