sacrilege

with apologies / thanks to Fleabag s2. 

Attempting sleep is useless. I throw my blanket back, cross my arms against myself and creep down the corridor. The stone is cool and smooth beneath the soles of my bare feet. Down the high hallway of identical cells, I shove my shoulder against the heavy wooden door, and briefly sink into drifting fog aglow in moonlight. The air is wet, the grass is luscious and bends beneath my careful footsteps. Across the yard to the empty chapel, and I shut its door, step slowly down the aisle lit in long beams of light from the silver shine through tall windows. Alone, alone, alone. 

Christ’s suffering body hangs above me as I reach the altar, the table from which we receive communion, and I light three candles with the matchsticks hidden in the table’s drawer. Descend again, sit on the front pew, and close my eyes, attempting prayer. 

Almost at every hour of the day, I know where she is. When I was on kitchen duty this afternoon, scrubbing potatoes, she entered from the garden to fill a glass from the sink and I smelt cloves and the creamy scent of her skin, and the harsh dirt that remains beneath her fingernails, no matter how much she washes. Though she did not speak I knew she moved past me, her scent slipped like smoke curling around me, then exited once more; I looked to my right where the sun pokes through the windows, the ones which open to the grapevines growing over the terrace where we receive the vicars and rectors for dinner in fine weather. I looked down to my task again, hands wet, starchy, red raw. I felt her shadow pass over me.

She watches me, I know this. I no longer ask God to take this away; the lust that unfurls through my limbs is not unlike the Holy Spirit, the wind that blows through you, lighting up each cell in the desperation of wanting. Sometimes I smell her behind me in prayer, and the sense of waiting on the divine gets tangled with the desire that heats my blood.

A clatter at the rear of the dark church whips my head back from somnolent thoughts; it is after curfew, Mother Superior will chide me, novices have no right to move freely at night and I stand, I turn, I was just going to bed -

Her eyes glow in the gloom. It’s Flor. She walks slowly toward me, a ghost, a spirit, a vision.

I have only seen her without her habit once; the spiked growth of her shaved head shocks me again. The cool voice, Please. Don’t mind me. Stay.

I follow her order, turn back to God, to the Christ that hangs bloodied with a crown of thorns, and sit and close my eyes, miming. Her footsteps come closer. And then her warm body is beside me. 

What to do with this beating heart? I am calamity and terror. The scent of cloves enfolds me. The hand she places upon my thigh is firm. I open my eyes, turn to her, whose own eyes are black before her lids flutter close and she pushes her mouth against mine. 

I have longed for this, tangled thin sheets in my cell, bemoaned the wandering of my mind as Father Donal preaches on Sundays, but never could I guess the soft texture of her tongue, its flickering insistence, the hot tension of her mouth, the exploration that grows more urgent as I turn my chest to lean against her body.

You’re shivering, she pulls back, and her gaze flicks over my face as she strokes my hair. Oh! she clicks her fingers as if something has just occurred to her. She stands with the swiftness, the pouncing, nimble energy that I love to watch, but leaves me for a moment to push open the door to the sacristy. My pulse thuds in my ears, I return to my body, the goosebumps on my bare arms, my aching, cold ankles. One of the candles has gone out at the altar, so I rise again to the sanctuary, find the match, strike it, watch orange flare in black, set it to the wick. 

And then her breath is on my neck, and she lays something heavy and musty-smelling around my shoulders.

I look closely at the fabric and gasp. Father Donal’s vestments! I look up to her in shock.

Don’t worry Evie, her voice lilts in tease, We’re just borrowing it for a while.

She looks at the open drawer beside me. We are between the altar’s communion table and the back wall of the chapel. Iconography surrounds us and her arms are around me. She cocks an eyebrow. Would you like to take communion?

Beside the matches are a box of communion crackers, and a half-full bottle of wine. I know I am not supposed to answer, I just watch her face, her sly smile, and my pelvis leans into her, she presses back in return, until we are pushing against each other with the cosmic force that parted the Red Sea. 

Kneel. 

The priest’s robes around me, I get down on one knee, and then lower the second to the wooden floorboards, my eyes locked on hers. She slowly takes a wafer from its box with a plastic crackle. The deep voice becomes a whisper.

The body of Christ, broken for you. I hear the slow, deliberate draw in of her breath. Open your mouth, Evie. 

I realise I have been biting the side of my cheek and release it, opening my jaw. She presses the thin wafer onto my tongue. I catch her finger with my lips before she pulls her hand away, and suck its tip. Her breath catches in her throat, a sharp sound in the dark empty chapel. I release her finger, crunch the wafer, swallow. Her eyes glow, and I want to rise, I feel pulled to her, but the ceremony must be completed. 

Carefully, with a scrape of heavy glass on wood, she pulls the bottle from the drawer and uncorks the wine. Open, Evie. I do not need to be told but I like the command all the same. This time I place my hands behind my back, lean my head up with my lips open as far as they can go; she holds the bottle above my head, and she tilts its base up, inching it higher, higher, and I lie in wait below her, she is patient, careful, waiting for the crimson liquid to run from the green glass; her own lips move again, as she utters blood of Christ, spilt for you, and a groan bursts from my chest, and the wine pours in a thin stream, into my mouth, onto my tongue, filling my tastebuds with sharp tannins, I swallow then choke a little, cough, wipe the spatter-spray from my cheek, and she takes a mouthful from the bottle’s neck, slams it on the table, and then her mouth is on mine, her body is on mine, I’m sorry, I’m sorry baby, she croons, we fall to the floor, she straddles me she is above me, her hands on both sides of my cheek, I’m sorry baby, I’m sorry baby, the insistent, needing whisper, the blood of Jesus in my mouth in her mouth with spit with desire with flesh. 

I place my hands beneath her nightdress, smooth my palms up from her thighs to her hips to her waist, noting the roughness of her skin, I am despair and she is the answer, the impossible terrible answer, I keep reaching, reaching, to close the excruciating gap between us, and she unbuttons my own nightdress, her mouth is no longer the controlled discipline I have seen in the sunlight in the vegetable garden, consulting with the sisters, her nighttime mouth is wet and messy against my ear, my neck, my collarbone, my nipples, unruly licks and swallows across the rise and fall of my body; she moves herself out of reach of my exploring touch and kisses and kisses down and down and down, when her face reaches my pubic hair she nestles her face in, rests a moment, moans long and deep, and then her tongue flicks and flashes, and my hips buck, and she pushes into me with her finger, no - fingers, or - I cannot tell but it is a riot within me, and while her hands are busy she rises to lean over me, watches my agony intently, her face close, her breath hot and wet on my cheek. Behind her head, high above, I can see up Jesus’ loincloth, if we were to experience a miracle and his divine blood were to drip down it would land upon this unholy scene and make a sacrament of us both.

She sits with her back leaning against the communion table, her legs flat on the floor, and under the guidance of her hands I lay across her lap, and with a measured hand she slaps the round cheeks of my ass, and the sound rings out, sings out like my voice did during hymns last Sunday, the sting cuts through the gloom of the chapel, and I gasp-moan with every smack, and she is inside me again, God knows what she is doing - He does actually, He is watching us right now, right now, right now, but I mustn’t think of that, no, no, I mustn’t think of that - she is furious in her determination, the vigorous hurried push-pull of her elbow rocks both our bodies together, my face is red with the receiving, what is happening, what is happening, what is happening, I’m an animal a beast I’m splayed across her lap I could piss or shit my legs are jelly my will is lost I’m at her mercy and as I near the edge of the cliff my whole body tenses and I grab her left arm, the arm that is not inside of me, I grab this arm with my claws and I bite down with my sharp teeth and as I fall from the cliff’s height I take this arm with my animal claws and grip on with all that I am and with her flesh still in my mouth I tremble and shake for hours, I shake for days, for weeks, holding on to her to anchor me here in this world. 

The air quietens. Her insistent, knowing fingers slow, then stop. She turns the length of her body and comes to lay beside me, and when her face is close to mine I can see perspiration on her skin, and we smile in some shared triumph, and she shifts onto her back. She lifts her arm to show me the liquid that covers her fingers down to the knuckle, glistening in the candlelight. My mouth drops open. 

That sly smile. She nods, kisses my forehead, and I catch the creamy scent of her skin, the underlying aroma of soil. She circles the liquid on my nipples, and they contract in the cool air. I shift my hips, and realise that my wetness has also spread to the blanket beneath us. 

The robes! I jerk to sitting, squinting in the fuzz of the candleglow, patting to see the extent of the damage.

I twist around to her, and she is laughing quietly at my furrowed eyebrows, her back arching with the pleasure of it. She pulls me back to lie beside her, strokes the dark hair around my face. Sorry baby, she says, still chuckling. Sorry baby. 

xx

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