A Sanbenito for Sister Mike!
A Fr. Dan Kelly™ Online Serial Novel
Chapter 4
This Is My BLOOD!
Once his enormous taper was burned down to a mushy stub by the liquid nitrogen shower, Fr. Dan could once again concentrate on the peril at hand. Masons! As he nursed the black eye formed when his lone soldier stood at attention, Fr. Dan felt a wave of exposition molest his long-term memory. He remembered... OH how he remembered. He remembered mostly to offer a little historical perspective for those who might fail to see the hilarity inherent in Fr. Dan's adventures, which plainly satirize a fusion paranoiac/conspiratorial Weltanschauung.
Anyway, ever since the Papal Bull "Eminenti Apostolatus Specula," was issued in 1738 by Clement XII, the Mother Church had waged war on the freethinking menace of the aproned daemons. Where the Church sowed salvation, hope, sexual hang-ups, and far too many babies, the Freemasons filled the ears of the fallen with furry and ticklish promises of world power, unlimited sexual adventurism, Tuesday night poker games, and pork. Fiendish demon burghers! When dangled before the hungry or those just wanting to get the hell away from their wives for a few hours, the sight of freshly barbecued spareribs and butt steak was a siren's call to the Abyss. Sweet did the tangy BBQ sauce taste upon their tongues, but all the tears they would eventually cry in perdition for their weakness would not wash away the barbecue sauce of HELL from their smarting tongues. Thrice bedamned the followers of Hiram Abiff, with their secret nude wrestling rituals and wicked "keggers." How many reaching the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite knew that 33,000 tortures, each worse than the last—with the exception of the 23rd, which was more a breather for the tortured and the torturer—awaited them in The Devil's Own Arse Hole! But they had one horrible hope: Fr. Dan. Fr. Dan would save them, even if he had to kill them 20 times over.
"Grrrrowwwwwlllll!" growled Fr. Dan, slapping his hairy chest in apish warning to the enemies of Il Papa! He leaped for the ceiling 40 feet above, and began the treacherous jungle gym swing to his private armory. Only one with the magnificent acrobatic skill of he—or is it him?— could reach the armory through a series of explosively tripwired swinging bars, trapezes, and trampolines. Indeed, only Fr. Dan, or perhaps his mother at peak strength, could negotiate this elevated maze perilous. As he punched his way through the angry squirrel robots with ebola-tinged fangs guarding the final length of trapezes, Fr. Dan made his final swing across 100 feet of floor covered with steak knives—all with their pointy sides sticking straight up! But that, goddammit, was not all! The knives stabbed upwards from a foot of sulfuric acid, inhabited by acid-resistant piranhas made insane by hours of grotesquely violent video game play! They jumped from the acid, eager to be the first to sup upon priestly sinew!
"Uroooooooooooooo!!!!" Fr. Dan vociferated like a wounded hippo in a cry of farting defiance hurled from his Celtic soul! Spiralling over the steak knives, he eyeballed the nine-inch rod of hardened rubber that was to be his only protection against the surf and turf crevasse of decimation yawning beneath him! Fr. Dan opened his jaws wide, chomped down, and deep-throated the rod, holding firm with his Lancastrian teeth yet feeling his heterosexuality in no way compromised. He peered downwards as he swung up onto the platform leading to the armory. The piranhas and steak knives angrily fidgeted and chattered in their frustration—mostly the piranhas, though the steak knives too felt mild discomfort. "Some day, priest," they gabbled, "SOME DAY!"
Fr. Dan knew that his final hour had come and that he would defeat it, like all the other final hours of the past week. Goosestepping in a non-fascist way to his armory, he burst through the doors and hit the light switch. The gleaming of the metal of the multitudinous guns, blades, grenades, rocket launchers, bazookas, flamethrowers, shurikin, long swords, and more, DEAR SWEET GOD, MORE HORRIBLE WEAPONS gave off a cold light that would warm no one. Every weapon known to humankind was displayed in this room: from simple Colt revolvers to diamond bullet shooting platinum Kalishnikovs to Magnum Automags made of mint chocolate. Fr. Dan caressed a nearby howitzer cannon that had saved his life while combatting Shintozilla, the immense radioactive robotic dragon that sought to destroy Tokyo then raise the Land of the Rising Sun to its former glory. A clever disguise that made Our Priest resemble wizened Emperor Hirohito distracted the reptile long enough to bow in obeisance so that Fr. Dan could shove the barrel-end into his lizard butt and blast his non-absolute-believing scales all the way to Okinawa.
"Had he made a difference in this world,?" Fr. Dan thought as he began strapping firearms aplenty to his lean form. He tried to remember a simpler time, before he had become hardened, when puppies, kittens, flowers, and a young woman's love were something other than emergency foodstuffs. Fr. Dan stopped packing heat, picked up a shining Malaysian butterfly sword, and gazed at his once-beautiful face in the dangerous steel. Though he was now handsome and sexy in the way an oak tree might be if you were into intercoursing with oak trees, at one time he looked like a young seraphim come to earth. Virtue had taken a hard toll on him. He fingered Frankenstein-like scars across his cheeks, nose, and jaw—each a story about protecting Catholicism from worldy men, women, man-beasts, and multi-breasted femaliens. While he still gained more trim than a barber shop floor, Fr. Dan missed his innocence, the sensation of fresh love, the nervous energy felt entering a strange woman's room, the first taste of a really good cheeseburger eaten in a manner improper to mention in a family tale such as this. Observing some flaking beneath his ears, Fr. Dan realized he could use a good moisturizer as well. Fr. Dan vocalized dumb animal whines as he viewed himself in the cruel metal. "Muh... muh, muh... muhhhhhh..." he mewled, beholding his completely doable ugliness.
Fr. Dan thought some more, the smell of ozone filling the room as his computer brain slogged on through memories of death, death, and more death. And more death after that. Was he just a killing machine? It struck a single note of fear from a clarinet of trepidation in his colon. A tremor began deep in Fr. Dan's great big soul. A feeling of happier times, when he was young and fancy-free, crossing the country by Greyhound bus, carrying a Martin guitar, and loving and living the American Dream as only a young man in a buckskin jacket, shoulder-length hair, and skintight blue jeans could. Many drinks were drank, many songs were sung, and many hearts were broken: his own and those of many young ladies. He remembered how all their faces looked when the morning's first sunbeams trickled through the blinds, warming their faces in the post-coital splendor that made every cheap motel room a palace of love. Even the bedbugs looked beautiful, puffy though they were with their blood.
"I will always love you," he would whisper to each of the 500 women he roughly boffed—ten for every state in the union, because he was superstitious—then he'd dedicate a song he'd written just for them when he sent them out for beer and pork rinds. It always began with a masculine G chord, trembling into a feminine C-sharp, and breaking itself upon the hermaphroditic D-minor. He'd kiss them after the show, their tears staining his collar. Then they'd make love again on the stage. But the wanderlust would seize him at 3:37 a.m. and he'd be packed and on a Greyhound before they arose. He wondered how many motels still had young ladies, now middle-aged ladies, in them, waiting for his return.
No, really. He didn't want to brag, but he was THAT good.
The tremor of the memory travelled up from his heart, through his aortas and ventricles and vena cava, splooging its way through every vein, artery, and capillary like tiny Loch Ness Monsters of regret. As the tremor reached his sensual bottom lip, it quivered like a sorrowful jellyfish eating flan. Juicy salt tears as big as his eyeballs tumbled down his battleworn cheeks, winding through the stubble and gouges and moistening his pores with grief. Unable to help himself, Fr. Dan threw a hand over his mouth, ran to the wall, and pressed a secret button. A door opened where there was no door before, and he stumbled in. Here was Fr. Dan's Sanctuary of Delicateness.
The room had no corners, being spherical. It too lacked the hard metallic firmness of the rest of the Heliorectory, being made of a mushy womb-like substance. Placing his mighty feet in the soft fuzzy Pink Panther slippers beside the entryway, he ran forward like a girl of 13 and threw himself, crying, onto the huge, red, heart-shaped bed. A pride of stuffed lions, bears, and unicorns went willy-nilly into the air and onto the floor as Our Priest's 500 pound hammer-tough body slammed into the satin sheets and goose-down pillows.
"Wahhhhh! I so unhappy!!!" wailed the Shock Troop Shaman! Here, safe from the prying eyes, ears, noses, and tongues of both enemies and friends, he could freak out and engage in girly-soft emotional safely. Fr. Dan grabbed at the plate of steaming s'mores beside his bed, eating three at a time of the crackery, chocomatey, and marshmallowy gooey treat without a thought for what it would do to his "love handles" and ass. As he crunched down, the sugary treat coating his teeth with brown muck, the tears came forth, and Fr. Dan did savor his wussiness with gusto. Rolling onto his belly and kicking his now stocking feet back and forth, he pressed another button on the pretty nightstand with the Strawberry Shortcake alarm clock nearby.
A Judy Collins album began to play,and Fr. Dan stopped crying, closed his eyes, and began to sing along with the blue-diamond-eyed earth mother folkie, swaying gently in time with the music and its sensitive Joni Mitchellian ambiance. The thought suddenly struck him. The lyrics were about HIM. He understood it so well now. Why did he not take less time killing and feeling the goopy sensation of blood and viscera squishing between his toes, and more time smelling the pretty widdle fwowers and dandewions along life's pathway? Did the other priests ever look past his brusque and terrifying exterior to see the insolent and horrifying interior within that loved kitty cats, flying kites, and missionary position sex?
"Indeed—boo hoo hoo!—I have looked at life from both sides now," said Fr. Dan between oily black tears that ate through the fitted sheet. He placed a thoughtful finger beneath his granite chin. "But upon consideration... Boo-hoo-hoo! And pondering all the ice cream castles, feather canyons, and circus crowds and whatnot of my life... Wahhhhhh! I really don't know life... AT ALL!" The thought crushed his inner child beneath hundreds of tons of iron ore pellets. "Yipe!" cried his inner child before turning into a blob of bloody ear wax. Fr. Dan snuggled and scrunched his plush killer whale Freddy against his face. The fake whale's fur became saturated with Fr. Dan's manpain, turning a darker shade of black.
"Oh, Freddy! Only you understand! But, old friend, you are but simulated fur and mushy polyester stuffing—an unliving thing that breathes not, yet not a zombie killer whale, as I encountered before on the Serengeti." He squeezed the whale to his chest, "But that makes you the bestest friend of all! YOU would never tell them of this weakness of mine. No, you would not..." Fr. Dan withdrew a Desert Eagle pistol from beneath a nearby crocheted throw pillow and placed it to the whale's head. " IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU!!!" Fr. Dan saw what he was doing, this betrayal of his plush friend, then collapsed to his knees, hugging the whale again and again while begging its forgiveness.
"Oh, Freddy, I am so sorry! I do love you so! I suspect all! I know no peace! None, save for when I am here, in your flippers..." Fr. Dan looked at the plushie lovingly, then lustfully.
"Oh, Freddy, I must have you now!!!" Fr. Dan pressed his full man-lips to the whale's snout. Fr. Dan fondled the whale in a way that was not considered a sin because not one of the Bible's prophets or apostles could have conceived such a perversity. Fr. Dan made sweet love to his killer whale doll, and damn society if it judged them.
Afterwards, Fr. Dan enjoyed a cigarette, gently tousling the chest hair of his whale friend. Theirs was a love that dare not speak its name for fear of encouraging loud snickers and donkey-like guffaws. For Fr. Dan it was a pure love between consenting farcical fictional characters. A smile creeped over Freddy's whale face as his shoe-button eyes gazed up into Fr. Dan's twin hazel orbs. Seeing the smile, Fr. Dan's powerful rhino's heart seized with fear!
"AGGGGGGHHHHHH!!! LIVING DOLL!!! YAGGGGGHHHH!!!" Fr. Dan clenched the plush simulacrum with his triply-muscled hands and tossed it into the air, blasting it into cotton puffs with one shot from the Desert Eagle! A snowstorm of stuffed animule parts showered down upon him.
"Freddy..." Fr. Dan said plaintively, extending a clenching hand of loss toward where the fake beast was atomized. Fr. Dan was overcome with self-loathing and revulsion. "Freddy... I... am sorry," he said.
"I forgive you, Fr. Dan," said a voice from behind. Fr. Dan shrieked a shrill girly scream, grabbed the bed's sheet, and held it before his exposed muscular man-boobs in mortification. There stood four Freemasons... each bearing a grenade launcher in each hand, which would make... one, two, three... EIGHT GRENADE LAUNCHERS!
"I forgive you for... your life!" scoffed the scoffing leader, "Let me relieve you of that burden now! By Jabulon! DIE, PRIEST, DIE!!!"
Each grenade shot out of the launcher with a tremendous KA-CHUNK!, and flew toward Our Priest like a swarm of incensed pineapples. Fr. Dan's training kicked in once more, and he deftly swerved and plastically twisted his body into obscene shapes and configurations to avoid the shrapnel of each grenade as it exploded near him. The effect was much like what you may have seen in a certain popular movie, ONLY MUCH COOLER!
Fr. Dan rolled beneath the heart-shaped bed, emerging covered in dust bunnies and bearing three more pistols! Full four guns—Desert Eagle .44s all—he held in his calloused fists. Using his index and ring fingers to squeeze the triggers, Fr. Dan's guns sprayed the unholy horde with white-hot slugs as if he were a Tom Cat pissing bullets and they were living room curtains. As each chamber emptied, Fr. Dan's prehensile toes reached up for, emptied, and reloaded each gun.
"DIE!" yelled Fr. Dan most emphatically and with no dissembling. His Shakespearean voice—reminsicent of the offspring of an unauthorized coupling between Orson Welles and James Earl Jones—bellowed as he strode toward the now ripped to bloody ribbons masons. His words were tinged with acid and carcinogens. "DIE! DIE! DIE!" he debated with his opponents, the argument of their lives crumbling beneath the indefatigable logic of his wholesale slaughter. And so they did die—most horribly and justifiably. Yet, finding his sport sweet, after killing them all he shouted "Talitha cumi!", raising the rancid foemen from the dead so he might have the pleasure of sledgehammering them to death once more. When an hour had passed, and the last bit of Freemason quivered upon the floor, Fr. Dan rubbed the sweat from his brow with his forearm, cutting the skin open with the diamond hardness of his musculature.
"Thirsty work, this," Fr. Dan said to no one in particular. "But how were these ill-humored ninnyhammers able to penetrate my hidden Lair of Softitudedness?" Fr. Dan used his superpowered eyes to look at the floor. With vision slightly clearer than most peoples, he espied upon the floor... a shovel! Fr. Dan grabbed the spade and smirked. He had to give them credit. Deucedly clever these Freemasons, tunneling into his Heliorectory at 10,000 feet! Ingenious! But now they would dig no more, except in Hell! Yet, Fr. Dan felt he must honor these men. Black though their hearts were, they got "the drop" on Our Priest. Aye aye. He would consume their remains in tribute. With that, Fr. Dan recovered his Hello Kitty waffle iron and baked the masonic giblets into tasty puffy griddle cakes, nicely browned.
Fr. Dan consumed the cannibalistic pancakes, drenching them with too much maple syrup and powdered sugar, for he lived on his own now, and no parent could tell him what to do! No! Fr. Dan poured on, then dusted the top of the Free and Accepted waffle-ironed ones with MORE powdered sugar, topping all with a maraschino cherry. Fr. Dan did not like maraschino cherries, but they did please him aesthetically.
"Um! Um!" said the Priest of Solid Beef, happily wolfing his wonderful waffles. Syrup trickled from either side of his mouth, which he licked at ravenously with his cow-like tongue. "Um! Um!," he burbled in his joy. "Taste good! Ver' ver' GOOD! UM! UM! UMMY-UMMMMMM!!!" Fr. Dan kept shovelling down waffle after waffle, eating more and more quickly, until a sick fear assailed him. HE COULD NOT STOP EATING THE DELICIOUS HUMAN WAFFLES! He had been poisoned with a most delicious elixir, no doubt retrieved from the hand of Satan himself!
Fr. Dan kept eating and eating, watching his belly expand with toasty brown evil waffles, each of his shirt buttons popping off, and his cattle skull belt buckle barely holding back his ever growing gut. Fr. Dan began to cry again, but this time from being overstuffed with these airy and flaky flapjack cousins. He took one more bite, and then slid into a fat-assed blackness which had no top, bottom, or circumference.