Sarrah remained at the window as the others madly ran about looking for Paul in other places of the house. They didn’t know all the things she knew. They couldn’t feel it deep in their guts and loins. How could they? There was no connection there. Not like her and Paul had. Again, she questioned herself. “What is happening?” She wanted to know, but at the same time she didn’t. Sarrah wanted to be carried away by this feeling. Carried away on Paul’s back to another place and time, away from her life of domestic servitude, away from Josiah and his violent hands.
Sarrah gazed longingly across the landscape, and to the edge of the forest. She followed each step Paul had taken, swallowed them whole, slowly down her moist throat. She had a sudden urge to follow him. The love hunt would be glorious, she imagined. But then the others burst into the room and derailed her thoughts.
“He’s not anywhere!” Josiah cried out. “He really disappeared.”
“Get a hold of yourself, Josiah,” Reverend Savior broke in. “I’ve been telling you he did exactly what I said he would do. The little vagrant snuck off with a free meal. Magician my ass. What a con artist.”
“He is not,” Serena growled. “He’s a real magician, and my friend.”
Sarrah scratched at the glass of the window and purred. “He’s more than a magician, and more than a friend,” she said in a momentary lapse of reality.
Josiah’s ears pricked up and he went to her and grabbed her by the shoulder. He jerked her around to face him. “What do you mean more than a friend?” He raised a fist. “Is there something going on that shouldn’t be going on? Do not lie to me, woman.”
“Stop it! Stop it!” the reverend cried out. He pulled Josiah away from his wife. “Let’s go look for the little bastard. It will do you no good to lash out at Sarrah… And, I wouldn’t want to have to report you.”
Josiah grimaced at the thought of being reported. The embarrassment. The shame. Maybe even the thrill of it. He took an over-exaggerated deep breath and released it to calm himself. He looked at Sarrah. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to.”
Her face resembled polished statue stone and then she turned back to the window. She didn’t want her husband’s apology. She didn’t want to see or smell him. Sarrah just wanted him to go away.
The padre grabbed Josiah by the arm and forced him out of the room. The two went downstairs and out the front door. Footfalls annoyingly loud. Sarrah watched through the window as they squirted forth like dark creatures into the all-consuming landscape. Josiah had snatched the rifle he always left propped by the door. They were after Paul for real, Sarrah thought, and she was scared.
“Momma?” Serena said.
Sarrah was unaware her daughter was still in the room and turned wildly around.
“What is it?”
“What’s going on around here?”
Sarrah sat at the edge of the bed and motioned for Serena to come to her.
“What do you mean by that?”
“The atmosphere around here is strange. Is time shifting? Are we all going insane?”
She hugged her daughter and kissed her gently on the top of her head. Her hair smelled like strawberry shampoo. “No, my dear girl. You’re letting that mystical mind of yours get in front of yourself. Catch it and pull it back.”
Serena looked up at her and managed a half-hearted smile. “Momma. Can I ask you something else?”
“What is it you’d like to know?”
“Do you think Paul would like me as a woman? Maybe even love me some day?”
Sarrah leaned back and intensely studied the girl’s face with narrow, smoldering eyes. Something suddenly hurt her deep inside. She was ferociously jealous. Her heart began to thump like a rabid knock on a door.
Serena patiently waited for an answer.
“No. Not ever,” her mother finally said.
Both stunned, they sat there. And there was a great chasm of silence before the canned rabbit suddenly smashed through the window and landed at their feet. They both shrieked and held their arms across their faces. A puddle of broken glass covered the floor. Sarrah reached and picked up the can. It felt warm as if it had just come out of the oven not that long ago. She looked at the label. Easter-colored. The rabbit there was smiling at her. It had never smiled before. And it wasn’t a gentle and happy smile. She went to the broken window and threw the can back outside with as much force as she could muster. “Go away from here!” she screamed. Sarrah and Serena watched as it hovered in the air for a moment before dropping back to the ground and rolling under the house. Now it was hiding. Whatever was inside that can was hiding. Watching. Serena mechanically churned the moment in her brain. What does it want? What will it eventually do to us? She shivered at the thought. The girl glanced at her mother and didn’t say a word. Her young heart was bruised. She left the room and went outside to smoke a cigarette. Sarrah watched her daughter through the busted glass, and didn’t know what to do about her.
Josiah and Reverend Savior were running beneath a bruise-blue and metallic-orange Idaho sky of blossoming dusk toward the forest to find Paul. Full speed. The reverend looked down at his legs rushing through the air like the Six-Million-Dollar Man from his youth. He was too chubby for this, too out of shape, he thought. But nonetheless, there he was doing it. Then the reverend laughed out loud in the warm yet cooling air, remembering how absurd Colonel Steve Austin looked when running across the screen back in 1976. He recalled wearing his funky plaid shirt and brown corduroy pants as he sat on the floor with a glass of grape Kool-Aid watching his favorite show. His older sister and her boyfriend were on the couch behind him. He turned around to look at them because of the noises. They were heavily making out. They had no shame. He watched with a hint of disgust, a hint of fascination. They were too entangled to even notice him.
The reverend recalls standing up and yelling at them, “I’m going to tell dad. You’re fornicating!”
His sister scowled at him. “Shut up you little twerp!” She took her boyfriend’s hand and led him to her bedroom. Reverend Savior of the future, his youthful name being Bert, snuck up the stairs a few minutes later. He sat outside his sister’s room and gently put his ear to the door and listened. She was moaning. The boyfriend was grunting. Young Bert thought he was doing something bad to her. He had heard of rape and became scared. He got up and jiggled the knob and forced the door open. It was surprisingly unlocked.
What he saw was his naked sister and her naked boyfriend on top of her in the bed. He had never seen real naked people before, only when he examined his own body in the mirror after a hot bath. His skin was sensitive back then, and he always ended up looking like a boiled lobster. His reflection was crustaceous, solitaire, lost on a beach somewhere or in a pot. Young Bert Savior always made the water as hot as he could stand it. He wanted to wash away his sins, to sanitize his soul completely and painfully.
His naked sister screamed. “Get out of here!”
Bert rushed into the hall and slammed the door behind him. The entire incident was never spoken of after that. In fact, his sister stopped talking to him altogether. She didn’t spend a lot of time at home anymore. Then she went off to college. She got pregnant by a loser and dropped out. Her pastor father disowned her, and her mother just cried. Bert Savior has no idea where she is or if she’s even alive.
Reverend Savior came out of his memory and slowed himself within a sea of sadness and guilt. He stopped, bent over, and put his hands on his thighs. He was looking down at the ground, breathing so hard, spittle falling into the earth.
Josiah stopped beside him and did the exact same thing.
When the two got their lungs back, they straightened themselves up and groaned like old men.
Josiah scanned the landscape, hand to his forehead. “What are we doing out here?” he said. He sounded panicked and unsure of himself. He almost began to cry.
The reverend took a moment of silence, and then with not even knowing why, suddenly blurted out, “I may be a pervert after all.”
Paul was sitting on a large rock deep in the forest. End-of-day sunlight trickled down; trapezoidal rays split by the treetops. He had his knees up and held them together with his arms. He was deep in thought within a veil of mystery. He knew he had to go to the other side, but he did not want to leave Sarrah behind, or alone with that madman Josiah. He’d end up killing her, he worried. “I have to go back,” he said aloud. He turned to look at the portal gate, only visible to him. Was he merely imagining things? “No,” he whispered to the forest all around him. “This is all real.”
Darkness had fallen when he woke from his dream. Paul sat up. He was sore from sleeping on the rock. His burnt-yellow eyes glowed. And then those same sharp eyes caught sight of something in the distance. Paul scrambled off the rock and went down the slight ravine he came up through. He was able to see it in the dark. He stopped and smelled the air. Smoke caressing the moon. Fire giving secrets away.
Josiah and the reverend sat around a campfire near the edge of the woods. Josiah looked back across his land. The house stood on a slight hill far away beneath a gaping moon. A geometric shape in the night, a few lights in the windows. He wondered what Sarrah was up to in there and surprised she hadn’t come calling for him.
He grunted and shook his head. “Women,” he simply said.
Reverend Bert Savior had been staring at the fire. Now he looked up, not completely sure what to say to the man across from him. So, he answered his question with another question. “What about women?”
Josiah poked at the fire with a stick. Granular embers scattered to the darkness. “I’ve never known if she’s truly loved me,” he said. “And somehow, these past few strange weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that she never has.”
The reverend looked at him. He was used to this kind of emotional talk. He was a spiritual counselor, after all. “I think that’s quite a leap of thought, Josiah. Don’t let it weigh down your head and heart to the point of insanity.”
Josiah nodded. Then he asked the question he was burning to ask. “What was that you were saying about being a pervert? Threw me off a bit.”
The reverend tried to avoid his judgmental gaze from across the flames. “Aren’t we all in some way or another?”
“Have you done something you shouldn’t have done, reverend?”
The lump was large in his throat. “No. Not really. But that’s between God and me.”
Josiah chuckled. “It’s okay, reverend. I’m not going to say anything to anyone. I’ve got my own fish to fry.”
“This will be a secret meeting of the minds, right?” Reverend Savior asked, hoping to kill the subject soon.
“Sure, secret,” Josiah said with a sly smile. “Have you ever been married, reverend?”
“No. My commitment is to God and my congregation. It has been since I was very young.”
“So, you just felt something move inside you and that was it?”
“That something was the Lord of Heaven and the glories of all He created.”
“You know I’m a believer,” Josiah noted. “I read the Bible, but I never got a calling like that. There were times I may have looked for it, tried to feel it, but it never stuck. I stopped pursuing and just settled with what I had. What else can a man do?”
Reverend Savior nodded in agreement. “It’s not for everyone. It’s not always so easy to be dedicated to something so ethereal and mysterious, but it is a lifetime commitment.”
“Do you ever regret that, padre? Turning your entire life over like that.”
He sighed and looked up at the stars. “If I’m honest with myself and the Lord, and He understands this… Yes, I do have regrets. Mostly when it comes to the loneliness I encounter.”
Josiah cleared his throat. “So, you’ve never been with a woman?”
The reverend turned away and considered the question for a moment. “Not a real one,” he answered.
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CEREAL AFTER SEX 