i could be brave

Monday, June 27, 2005

18 Bullet Holes

Categories: Stories

This is probably my personal favorite out of anything I’ve written up to this point.  It still dwells a lot on the character’s thoughts which is typical of my writing.  However, I felt I went beyond that and much more successfully had a overarching story with a nice and solid ending.  I originally ended the story at this line, “It hadn’t crossed his mind the agent might be an angel.” However, both my professors who graded the story and my proofreader felt that I should go on a bit more. 

I think I’m happy with how that turned out.

18 Bullet Holes

A short story by,
Jamie Poitra

18 bullet holes in the body of a priest
They say he was eating a hot dog when the ammunition was released.
They say he was always fat and lazy but he was an awfully nice guy.
That's just one more death to show you,
You never know when you're gonna die.
You might be facing the beast.
-Don Chaffer “18 Bullet Holes”†

Fat and lazy…

“Always raining!” the priest exclaimed to himself.  He was walking down the aisle of St. Raphael the Archangel; the old stone church echoing with each step, and short ribbons of dust following him.  The priest stopped, scowling up at the ceiling as the rain continued to attack the roof.  The church interior was a beautiful sight.  The architects had wanted to create something with a Neo-modern Gothic revival feel to it, the lines of the vaulted ceiling and the slender columns all strictly gothic yet at the same Time clean and unadorned.  The structure had come out looking very simple and in that was the beauty, or so this particular priest thought.  The intricacies of Neo-modern Gothic architecture, however, were all far from his mind as the priest continued to scowl at the ceiling as if he could turn the rain away. 

“Sounds almost like rocks falling on the roof, not proper rain.”  The voice had a smile in it and was coming from a much younger priest.  In fact if you were able to look at him without seeing the vestments you would come to the conclusion that he was no more than a boy. 

“Ah, but it isn’t proper rain.  You only need to take a look at the roof or the stone of our poor church and that becomes obvious.”

“The news just yesterday said the nitric levels were still at an acceptable number.”  They had had this conversation numerous times.  The young priest was still smiling; now with the joy of torturing someone he knew wouldn’t get him back.   

“Huh.”  The older priest looked at his friend and chuckled.  “You know how much they care about us Mile Downers.  They throw stuff down on us every day that they would never allow in their perfect little world they’ve got up there.” 

“Yes, and hardly anyone in Mile Down even cares anymore.  It has been years since we elected a superintendent.  Besides, our state of affairs is useful to them.  Mile Up needs us here to make their perfection…” the younger priest trailed off upon seeing his elder counting softly to himself and looking at the floor. 

“Do you know why I joined the clergy?”  The elder priest stopped counting.  I joined because of the number three.  It’s a perfect number according to the Bible.  So is the number seven.  Both of them are odd numbers.”  He looked up seeming to notice the church interior again.  “Two is company but three is a crowd.  If that isn’t true I don’t know what is.  However, in God it must be false.  Three parts in one.  One is an under-appreciated number.  But that isn’t the point.  The point is that God doesn’t make sense.  That is what makes him real.  That is a part of what inspires me.” 

“Three persons in the one Godhead.”  The younger spoke as if reciting his lessons. 

“Oh there are lots of ways to explain it.  However, they always rush headlong into pointless arguments of semantics.  And we spend so much Time worrying about this, when I doubt God even counts.  Even Time, I suspect, means nothing to him.  It is we humans who had to give each second a name.”  The old priest stopped and chuckled to himself.  “And I,” he spoke with dry wit, “am just an old man wasting your Time and keeping us both from our Sunday night meal of frankfurters and sauerkraut.”

“I’ll lock up Father.” 

“No, I’ll do it tonight.  I’ll be upstairs in a minute.”  As the old priest spoke he turned and walked towards the front of the church. 

“I’m getting fat and lazy,” the old priest said to himself as he realized he was out of breath from the short trip simply because he had taken it a little faster than normal.  He laughed to himself, opened the door, and stepped outside.

One more death…

And then Time went mad.

The priest felt a sucking sensation and found himself glued in place facing the typically empty alley.  It was immediately apparent that something wasn’t right.  The rain nearby seemed to have slowed down but everything else had sped up.  He tried to look at the city above only he couldn’t seem to move his head more than an inch or so. 

The sounds of Mile Up filtering down morphed into an adagio chorus of tympani drums.  The drums accompanied by the rain’s staccato snare. 

There were two other people in the street with him the priest noted, a boy and a girl.  “That makes three.  I’ve gone and turned their party into a crowd.”  He tried to step back into the church, his movement again thwarted.  The air was thick with…was it rain?  It was too lethargic to be rain; it was rain that was hesitant to hit the ground, let alone allow an old man through its curtain.

The priest turned his eyes up in time to see the boy turn, look at him, and raise his hand to fire.

The bullets rushed up at him; quickly at first and then exponentially slower.   

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,” the old priest was breathing the numbers, and as numbers often did, they comforted him.  The bullets were now vaporizing raindrops as they slowly continued towards him.  It was so beautiful... 

However, a dull realization that he was going to die settled on him and he started to panic.

“Father forgive me!” The priest wanted to yell it but he couldn’t seem to open his mouth enough to do so.  “Isn’t grace supposed to come to you at these moments?” he thought to himself.  Why am I so afraid?

The priest’s eyes rolled around frantically to see if there were any witnesses to what was going on but he could not move his head; still he was frozen and a mutated expanse of Time remained.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa thahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ellllllllllllllllll!”

The priest’s attention snapped back to the boy and girl.  They appeared to be arguing but it was hard to tell, since they moved so fast it looked as if they were simply twitching.  The girl’s arms also appeared to be restrained somehow. 

As he saw this he noticed that he was no longer afraid. 

“Thank you Father.” His whispered thought was audible only to God.  He hadn’t wanted to die screaming for his life.

He looked down at the bullets headed for his chest.  They seemed to have almost stopped moving although the vaporized rain frozen in place implied they must have somehow been moving quite quickly still.  “God exists outside of Time,” he thought.  I wonder if this is similar to what life is like for God? 

“Eighteen bullets.”  The priest spoke the words carefully as if they were special for some reason.  “It is an awful lot of bullets just to kill a priest,” he thought. 

“Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them--do you think they were guiltier than all the others living in Jerusalem?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”  The words came to him quickly. 

“You don’t die because you are a bad person,” he thought to himself.  Jesus tried to make that apparent but no one ever seemed to understand him when he spoke.  Death often comes without evidence of whim or reason.  You just hope you have some fruit to offer when you are chopped down.  The Bible never said what the response was to the parable of the fruitless fig tree that followed Jesus’ words on the eighteen dead mean, but the priest would have bet money they immediately asked, “But why, then, did they die?”

“Why am I dying?” he thought.  “Will my death end up meaning something?  Will I get to save someone like the savior saved me?”

The priest looked up and realized that something strange was happening on the other end of the alley.  The boy and girl were still arguing but large gauzy white material was stretched out behind the girl.  He observed also that she had her arms outstretched; the restraints were gone.   Then the priest noticed the boy again looking at him.  The priest felt a shiver run through him as he watched the boy suddenly lunge backwards, fall to the ground, pick himself up, and sprint from the alley. 

The girl looked at the priest and he heard her speak with perfect clarity, “It is Time.”

And Time returned to sanity.  Eighteen minutes rushed in at the Priest.  Eighteen minutes of conversation between the boy and girl.  Eighteen minutes of rain, wind, and city air. 

“Shut up!” said a disembodied voice.  Eighteen minutes of life rushed in at him, with eighteen bullets following close behind.

You never know…

The boy tore from the alley.

He had been so scared that he hadn’t even thought to see what had happened to the girl.  His mind relentlessly echoed the scene that had just occurred. “That priest just stood there after I shot him.”  He had emptied the clip and still the priest simply stood there.  Eighteen bullets and the old man hadn’t shown a single reaction.  However, that hadn’t been the worst of it.  The damn girl had sprouted wings.

• • •

When he had seen her walking towards him he had hoped for a whore.  He should have known that despite her clothing she was too pretty to be a whore wanting in business from someone like him.  Maybe his recent luck had made him think a little too highly of himself?

Instead she had wanted to talk.  “Whatever,” he had thought.  He didn’t mind talking if it had the possibility of getting him something better later.  Talking had turned into a discussion of Time.  Not a topic he typically spent much time on. 

“You think Time is linear?”  She had asked it like a little kid asks a question when they already know the answer. 

He hadn’t been entirely sure how to answer.  It was linear as far as he was concerned.  However, he had gone to college unlike most of the vermin down here.  Time could be slowed or bent in some circumstances.  Black holes and relativity came to mind. 

“Why do you ask?” was all he had said in response. 

“You are supposed to kill someone today.”  The statement had sent a jolt of adrenaline through his body.  Suddenly this conversation had a new dimension.  Before the girl could continue, she had a gun pushed into her stomach. 

The gun didn’t bother her that much. 

“You are supposed to kill someone and I am supposed to try and stop you; although it doesn’t matter too much for you if you do kill the priest.  God will keep after you regardless of what you do.”  She smiled before continuing, “However, the priest would probably appreciate your not ending his life so soon.”

The group in Mile Up that had hired him had said that the Church might send an agent.  They had even given him a name, “Raphael.”  It hadn’t crossed his mind that the agent would be a beautiful, and young, religious fanatic.  Something about the look in her eyes told him he didn’t have to kill her so instead he tied her arms with some restraints and took her with him.  The church was only a few blocks from the run down café they were in.

It had seemed quite convenient that the priest decided to step from the church only a moment after they turned the corner into the alley.  Eighteen bullets later the boy wasn’t so sure it was such a good thing.

“Ask and He will forgive you,” the girl had started talking the moment the clip had gone empty.  “He will forgive you.”

“What the hell?!” the boy’s voice had come out sounding strangled.  A little louder and higher pitched than he had meant for it to be. 

“Time isn’t linear.  He, in one sense, already died.  In another sense he never will.”  She had sounded amused, the freak.

“Always has been, always will be.  Beginnings without endings.  Time only serves the purpose of allowing us to choose.  Choose what?  Choose eternity.  Eternity spent outside.  Outside of what?  Timelessness.  Decision already made.  Choice still needs to be made.  Choose what?  Choose why?  Why?”  She had gone on for what seemed like an eternity.

“Shut up,” he had said it over and over until he finally screamed it at her.  That was when he had noticed the wings.  They dwarfed her as they spread out behind her.  The wings were transparent and didn’t look like proper wings.  He almost wished he had had more Time to look at them.

It was while he was observing the wings in shocked silence, that she had turned to the priest and whispered something.  Then there was a loud crack and the priest fell to the ground, a mass of blood and pulpy flesh.  That had been quite enough.  He ran.

• • •

The boy slowed down.  He was blocks from the church now.  He turned the corner. 

And then Time went mad. 

The boy felt a sucking sensation and soon found himself glued in place facing the girl hovering a few feet from the ground, her wings stretched from one end of the alley to the other. 

“Who are you?” the boy asked, too tired to make any other demands.

“I am Raphael the Archangel,” she said softly.

It hadn’t crossed his mind the agent might be an angel.

• • •

It can be hard to win an argument with an angel. 

He never could figure out how long they had talked in the alley; him, unable to move more than an inch and surrounded by a motionless shimmering curtain of rain.  Her, smiling and perched above the ground, looking like nothing he had ever seen. 

The girl the group in Mile Up had provided him had been tidier, cleaner.  She had been, in his opinion, blatantly perfect and unashamedly willing.  It had all made perfect sense.

He supposed it had been the imperfection that had convinced him.  It didn’t make sense for Raphael to be a dirty beautiful young girl.  Her imperfection was real.  Her imperfection was perfect.  Perfection didn’t make sense.

† From the CD titled, “Sink or Swim” by Waterdeep, Independent Release, 1997.

Posted by Jamie at 09:46 PM