Brother Cletus, his top hat slightly askew, stood imperious in front of them. In his left hand, he held a large leather Bible to his breast. His right hand gripped a large staff. Seven feet tall, the upper most third was a simple iron cross wrapped loosely in barbed wire. It was not so unlike their own Bitch-Be Quick Stick held now by the preacher's twin, Cyrus, who stood behind them.
Atop the altar behind the preacher lay their Bigfoot—what the congregation had called The Living Earth. Heady incense filled the room with its thick, sweet smell. Frank stifled a cough, but noticed that it didn't seem to faze the forty plus members of the congregation.
"We have conversed upon thy particular evil," began the preacher, his eyes less than amicable. "There is to be a punishment. There is to be a redemption. The punishment will come first as it had has been foreordained. We have thought hard and well upon this matter. Although we have been told to turn the other cheek, we have also been told that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. Therefore, as children of the Lord, thou shall all be punished."
Punished? They were to be punished?
Frank stared at the wicked barbs upon the preacher's staff. He could barely imagine their bite, the intense pain and the peeling of flesh from beneath the cross's teeth. He had always been somewhat of a wimp when it came to pain, yet if there was to be a punishment, then they were to be let go afterwards. Why else punish them? Who would punish a dead man? Frank reasoned through the logic and couldn't help but smile.
They were going to be punished. And he was thrilled for it.
He turned his head slightly and saw the concentration upon Lukas' face.
Yes, his friend's were thinking the same thing.
"Brother Cyrus, remove their shirts."
"I don't fuckin' think so," Jimmy said.
Frank groaned. No they weren't. At least Jimmy wasn't. He willed his friend to shut up. They had a good thing going here, and if they could only take the punishment like good little children, before they knew it they'd be skipping back towards home. At least he hoped so.
"Thou dost not have a choice in the matter. The congregation has ruled. Thy punishment shall come. And it shall come with thy cooperation or without it."
"You ain't gonna lay that fuckin' Faith-Be-Quick Stick on me," Jimmy said. "My daddy used to hit me with a stick. He used to hit me all the time. Now that I'm all grown up, ain't nobody gonna hit me ever again."
"Shut up," Lukas hissed.
"What?"
"Don't you get it, if they're gonna punish us, then they're gonna let us go."
Frank glanced at the preacher who did nothing to disagree with the determination.
Jimmy stared, blinked twice, and grimaced.
"All right, but they ain't gonna hit me."
Before the preacher could change his mind, Frank stood up.
"Take me first."
He tried to say it loud, meaning to make a grand heroic gesture, but it came out as a slurred squeak. His brazen roar was a kitten's mew as his eyes locked upon what Jimmy had dubbed the Faith-Be-Quick Stick. The wicked curves of barbed wire blinked in the light. He wasn't purely selfless by volunteering to be first. This way he didn't have to wait. If given the chance to see the mean staff in action, and hear the screams of his friends, he seriously doubted he'd be able to go through with it. It would be a simple thing for his heroism to become nothing more than cheap bravado.
Cyrus, pointing with their Bitch-Be-Quick Stick, indicated Frank should place his hands upon the altar before the Bigfoot.
It took incredible mental effort to will his arms to unlock. As Frank's hands gripped the cold granite of the altar, his elbows slowly unscrewed themselves, his arms taking the full weight of his body. He closed his eyes and thought of better places.
As his shirt was ripped from his back, he thought of the warm comfort of an early morning shower. The water cascading, powerful and cleansing, upon his back.
Washing away the previous night's sleep.
Washing away the sticky residue of early morning nightmares.
Washing away the—
Frank screamed as the Faith-Be-Quick Stick hummed through the air and intersected his upper back.
He screamed as the blow's design caused the stick to roll, the barbs of the wire digging and removing the skin in its path.
His bladder released as the symbol of a vengeful God hummed again and somehow found a strip of unblemished skin.
He had planned on thinking of nice things.
He had planned on pretending he was someplace comfortable, someplace safe.
He had planned on thinking how a few moments of pain meant that they would be able to continue living.
But he couldn't think any longer. The intensity of his agony had driven even his own sanity from him as the gale-like screams hurled themselves from his throat in metronomic perfection to the quickening beat of his heart.
Frank arched his back. He didn't mean to, it just happened, and the third blow glanced first off the back of his head. He felt hair tear away. An immediate coldness was replaced by a burning as air met the bloody surface of a scalp that should have still been sitting neatly upon his head. Immediately following was an impact upon the top of his spine, and the tumble-roll of the barbed wire as it bounced and tore along the tops of each vertebrae until he was certain his entire spine had been revealed, a gleaming white exclamation point to his multi-octave testimonial.
No longer screaming, he had forgotten to breathe. His knees buckled and he fell first against the cold hard altar, and then slumped to the floor. He rolled onto his back and howled as splinters from the well-used wooden floor dug into and tore at the ruined mess that had once enjoyed the long nailed scratches of women.
But there is pain and there is
pain
.
Forever, he would know the difference.
Cletus stared down, eyes devoid of humanity. Blood dripped freely from the barbed wire of the Faith-Be-Quick Stick. Frank's hair and skin hid most of the barbs like moss on the rocks of the river.
Frank felt himself swoon as he drew in enough breath for another scream. He bit down hard on his tongue and lip, using the pain to keep from blacking out. Slowly, he rolled to his side. He managed to kneel and used his hands to hold himself up. The cool air and the tickly trickle of blood helped offset what was becoming a consistent and grievous pain.
He forced himself to look at Lukas, the next man in line. His friend stared at him wide-eyed, face white, mouth slack.
"Only three..."
He was having difficulty wrapping his mouth around his swollen tongue and the complication of speaking without screaming.
"Only three. You can do it. Doesn't even hurt."
Frank did his best to lie. If Lukas new the truth, his friend would readily invite death, detailing to the congregation new methods to accomplish the age old task, begging them to end it all. If Lukas knew the truth, he would do anything, anything to get out of being punished with the truly unholy Faith-Be-Quick Stick.
Lukas finally closed his open mouth and blinked several times. It was in a trance that he took up the position. In some far off part of Frank's mind, a place that the pain had yet to discover, he watched his friend and thought of high school and how whenever they got into trouble it was the vice principal who would deliver his own punishment with an aerodynamic wooden and fiberglass paddle. At that point in their lives, the muscle-driven plank pistoning into their asses was the most intense pain in the universe. But their universe had been small then. Absolutely tiny in comparison to the galaxies of agony that had just been introduced from the blows of a holy relic.
Frank watched as Lukas' shirt was ripped away. His fat friend had a thickness of meat upon his back that would either save him from the bone-stripping agony of the harsh metal barbs, or cause an even more tremendous pain as thick strips the size of tenderloins were removed as the Stick cut its corporal swathe.
He couldn't watch.
He couldn't bring himself to witness the willful vandalism of a body.
He stared steadfastly down at the floor, feeling simultaneously sorry for the lie he had bestowed, and strangely jealous as he realized the barbs that would soon introduce themselves to his friend's flesh were still partially hidden by his own hide. Staring into the pool of his own blood and urine, he forced himself to concentrate upon the swirls of orange and red as they eddied against his knees.
He heard the hum first—a thousand-bee harbinger followed immediately by the impact, the roll of the wire and screech of his friend who now understood the uncharted possibilities of the kingdom of pain. The screech
crescendoed
until Frank was certain that the milk glass globes of the oil lamps would shatter, but they had evidently been tempered to withstand such mundane earthly sounds. If Lukas' ear-shattering whine was unable to darken the room, nothing short of a sonic boom would do the sturdy glass harm.
The sound of his friend's shriek had barely died when it was refreshed anew, as the Faith-Be-Quick Stick apparently found a strip of unmarred flesh, correcting the unknowable error.
A third scream never came.
Several seconds passed before Frank recognized the sounds of scuffling. Curses, both holy and profane caught his attention and with incredible effort, he lifted his head.
No lie would ever fool Jimmy. He had been predisposed to ignore them. His father had beaten him with weeping willow branches almost every day of his life. And as if in an effort to recreate the definition of the tree, Jimmy's old man had ruthlessly wielded the branch, Babe Ruth dreams of handpicked homers fueling each swing of his flabby arms. No, Jimmy was unwilling to be beaten, and with a right cross, he proved the point upon the chin of stunned Cyrus.
Reaching down, Jimmy snatched up the Bitch-Be-Quick Stick from where the tall twin had dropped it. He swung it up in a hasty arc and the screech of metal upon metal stopped the descending Faith-Be-Quick Stick as it threatened to rip into his face.
They held there for a moment, Jimmy on his knees and Cletus leaning in. Slowly, the barbed wire began sliding sickeningly down the welded beer cans until it intersected with Jimmy's left hand which was gripping his own Be-Quick staff in the middle. He ignored the tearing and the erupting blood and, with a howl of defiance, stood and pushed Cletus' stick away.
They faced each other, Jimmy's back to Frank and Lukas. The congregation had risen, all eyes intent on the destruction of the evil man who refused punishment.
Frank simultaneously tried to scream for his friend to stop and take the pain, and for his friend to kill the motherfucking preacher. His heart wanted revenge. The blood that still remained within his slashed body begged for Jimmy to give the old man a taste of his own medicine, wedging the cut glass top of the Bitch-Be-Quick into the mouth that had condemned them.
His brain, however, always the implacable voice of reason, wanted Jimmy to do nothing but stop. His synapses sparked the obvious, attempting the impossibility of empathetic telepathy as in unison they warned that no punishment meant death.
His scream, confused at inception, came out as a growl, which both to his dismay and happiness caused Jimmy to glance back and smile.
His friend turned around in time to duck the humming swing of the preacher's Faith-Be-Quick Stick. As he ducked, he used the base of his own stick to slam through the left cheek of Cyrus who had been reaching out to grab Jimmy's unprotected ankle. Jimmy straightened and twirled his own Be-Quick Stick above his head, then using the momentum, lashed out with the bottom end, striking the preacher's elbow.
Cletus let out a howl that brought grins to both Frank and Lukas. Almost dropping his own Be-Quick Stick, he backpedaled, holding it out with one arm. He frantically shook his other arm attempting to banish the seeping
paralyzation
.