Communion

Contributed by Matthew Hartwell on 21/04/09

The blood pooled at her feet reflected the light at the end of the corridor, curving around the surface tension. As she strode over the stone floor into the recesses, she couldn’t help but make the obvious analogy to womb-theory, popular with those who would have you believe you could reimprint someone’s personality with anything other than shocking violence, questionable science or hard drugs.

She had seen the hard drugs and shocking violence warp people until they could no longer be recognized as such. The questionable science was still, she laughed to herself, questionable.

A culture of horror could easily rewire an otherwise healthy, stable woman of an age younger than she was now into a reactionary mindset. A rejection of the unfamiliar. The Balkans had been full of situations she would be quick to lump into the horror category. It was, in retrospect, the only place she could have grown up.

When she arrived at the altar, she paused to set her handbag on the ground. She was not struck by awe. She refused to acknowledge the statue as it wept its interminable stream. She immediately extracted her tools and began a search, starting at one corner of the room and working methodically to its opposite. Satisfied, she removed a small drill set and began to carefully, though not gently bore through the statue. Halfway through, she encountered no ease in resistance. She repositioned the drill higher, in the neck of the granite Saint.

Boring completely through in three places, she inserted rods through the holds. Standing on the altar for a better angle, she linked the rods together on either end with a handle, grasped them firmly and gave a sharp jerk, causing the rest of the stone to crumble.

The decapitated Saint continued to weep.

The woman took the head in her hands and shook it roughly near her ear. Satisfied, she set the head down and returned to the floor, and swapped the drill set for a series of small blocks. She shaped the blocks around the statue and the altar, and placed one inside of the channel she had previously gouged into the statuary. She carefully wired them together, as her father had taught her.

She attached a small digital timer. She gathered up her remaining materials and headed towards the door, without pausing even once to look back upon the ruined chapel. As she strode back down the dimly lit passage, it was impossible to tell if she was coming or going. She was tired of doing this, but had promised the old man as hey lay dying. All the real ones had to go.

If people thought there was something bigger and better, they’d stop trying to fix the house they had.