Acres and acres, miles and miles, he continued to soar above the wondrous spectacle. Oh, how he prayed that on some great day he, too, would join the harvesters in their divine and hallowed labors.
But even eternal farmers needed reprieve. They needed sustenance. They needed recess. So at the granted time, they set aside the tools of their industry—
Such wonders!
—and began to feast.
Some took their meat raw, others preferred it cooked. Plump organs were plucked from opened abdomens as fruit might be plucked from vines. Eyeballs were swallowed whole like grapes, lungs eaten like bread loaves, intestines consumed like so much robust salad. The living dirt screamed forth. Whole heads were cooked to perfection over open flames, then prized apart and picked clean of their delectable meat. Testes were roasted on skewers, severed breasts fried crisp, uteri and placenta, fetuses and kidneys, human bowels and human hearts—all flamebroiled and lustily munched.
It was a hearty meal, and a well-earned one.
And once the reverent harvesters had sated themselves of the belly, they next proceeded to sate themselves of the groin. Demonic erections rose, to plunder every conceivable orifice, and some not so conceivable. Vaginas were routed with gusto, rectums were sodomized raw by perverse organs sunk to their hilts. Unwilling jaws were pried wide till their tendons tore—the only way the pitiful human mouths could accommodate the tumescent girth of such netherworldly members. Trowel punctures and scythe rents, too, provided fine pockets of release, and such release poured forth in copious volume, gouts of lumpen semen flooding bowels and wombs, stomachs and entrails, emptied eye sockets and cracked-open cranial vaults.
A romp indeed.
Slaked now, the field hands took up their tools and finished the dark work they’d started.
The field was tilled red. Rich, fresh blood drenched the chopped soil, the finest of fertilizers. More attendants followed behind, bearing sacks of strange seeds. The seeds were sewn liberally into the verdant, warm soil, and beneath the light of the caliginous moon, they began to spout at once. Soon stalks rose high, heavy with succulent fruit, and the fruit was then expeditiously threshed and taken away to market.
The harvest was over, only to begin again and again and again…
His vapor siphoned back, wisping fast as light through stone cracks and rabbets, back up the charnel earthworks, back from whence he came.
He didn’t want to go back; he could soar here forever, and revel in these holy sights and many more.
But I must go now, he realized.
He had his own fields to farm…
Back, back, he sailed. Back out of the hot meat of the earth, back to the lackluster terrain of his forebears, back to his wretched human vessel.
Back—
Like blood sucked up by a sponge, his flesh reclaimed his glorious vapor.
Ona. Ona. I give thanks to thee for such sights, such heralds, such righteous and holy gifts.
I live to serve thee…to the ends of the earth.
The Reverend opened his eyes.
And sighed.
««—»»
“Jesus Christ!” Phil shouted. “You scared the—”
“The shit out of you, I know. Sorry.”
Phil, in his shock, had weaved across the yellow line, then veered back over to the shoulder. When the shadow had risen from the back seat, he freaked…
But the shadow…was Vicki.
“I just—I just needed someone to talk to,” she explained. “I’m sorry if I startled you.”
Phil put the car in park on the road’s shoulder. “Yeah, fine,” he acknowledged. “But did you have to hide in the back of my friggin’ car?”
She hesitated. “Well, yeah. I guess so.”
“Why?”
She swept shining red hair off her brow. “Let’s just say I had a bad day.”
Phil gave his heart a moment to slow down—actually, several moments. “I didn’t see you in the club tonight. What, day off?”
In the rearview, he saw her glance down. “Something like that. It’s best if you don’t ask.”
All right, Phil instructed himself, Don’t ask. But he had to ask something. “I was hanging out with Eagle Peters. Do you know him?”
“I know who he is,” Vicki said. “When you’re in my line of work, you don’t really know anybody. You’re not allowed to. It also makes things a lot easier.” Then, as if premonitory, she asked, “You made it to the back room yet?”
“Uh, yeah,” he admitted. “That’s some show. Jesus. Kind of feel sorry for the girls.”
“Don’t bother. No one else does.” She got out of the back and then got into the front. The door chunked closed.
Christ, Phil thought.
She wore cut-off shorts, sandals, and a tight, bright-pink halter top. Coltish, perfect legs inclined. Her hair shined like some kind of rare metal.
“I didn’t see your husband at the club either,” Phil pointed out.
“He’s busy tonight.”
“Yeah?” he queried, though a hundred other questions occurred to him. Like, Busy? Busy doing what? Dealing with a dust distributor? Killing cowboys moving on his turf? Buying your next rail of cocaine? But none of these questions could he ask. Not without jeopardizing his cover. He’d have to deal with Vicki the same as he was dealing with Eagle. Slowly, discreetly, for snippets of information.
“I just wanted to talk,” she said. “Maybe that sounds pathetic, but you don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve actually had a normal conversation with someone. It’s not easy, you know. Under the circumstances.”
Phil could imagine what she meant. A good-sized chunk of her humanity was erased now, or turned into something fairly useless. She wasn’t a real person anymore as much as she was a pretty painting hanging in a rogue’s gallery. Only these paintings you could rent, if the price was right. As a prostitute, and a stripper, how could she ever really relate to anyone anymore? And being married to someone like Cody Natter? It must be hell…
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong?” he said.
She was looking out the window, into the woods and the night’s profusion, but he knew what she was really looking at was herself. “Sometimes I feel like I’m falling apart,” she said more under her breath than to him. “Sometimes I wake up, and I can’t believe what’s happened to me. I can’t understand how I could ever let this happen to me. It must’ve been a pretty big shock for you.”
“What do you mean?”
She laughed cynically. “Oh, come on, Phil. Stop trying to be such a gentleman all the time. The last time you saw me, I was a police officer. Ten years later, you come back to town to find out that I’m working in a strip joint and turning tricks. Probably not quite what you expected.”
“Well, if there’s one thing I’ve taught myself, it’s that I should never have expectations about people. Especially about myself.”
“Yeah? And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Now it was Phil’s chance to laugh. “You’re not the only one who’s taken a fall since the old days. I didn’t exactly come back to Crick City better off than when I left. I came back because there was no where else to go.”
“What happened?” she asked him. “You never really told me. All I remember is hearing bits and pieces. Something about a shooting. Something about a kid.”
This was Phil’s chance. Here he knew he could mix lies with truth and have it work to his advantage. He could win her confidence, like he did tonight with Eagle, by pretending to have turned into a typical town scumbag.
