CW: CSA
Father Richard, the Pithole’s “dial-a-deacon” for any weddings, christenings, baptisms, or other events that took place out of the grounds of an official church, was based in Pithole’s Oil County Courthouse. He’d shown his genitals to so many altar boys over the years that he was known throughout Pithole as Father Dick.
The kids themselves all knew to give the big door to the right of the magistrate’s office——its brassy letters spelling out DEACON——a wide berth. And they knew if they ever found themselves inside the deacon’s office that they absolutely had to get out before Father Dick shut the door.
Adults treated Father Dick with a kind of knowing, lightly embarrassed humor. And everyone had an excuse.
“That’s just the kind of thing that happens at small town churches!”
“The clergy are under an enormous amount of stress. They all end up with their quirks.”
“He just shows off. He doesn’t touch anyone!”
“The only kids who say he’s touched them are the ones who are looking for attention.”
“A deacon is Christ’s representative in the church. Christ himself was very comfortable with his body. He’s just living like Christ!”
“These boys from broken homes – no father in the picture, you know how it is——they need a man to guide them through certain things.”
“It is a deacon’s special duty to care for those in need. This is just his way of helping.”
It was 1984, and Herb Buckley served as a docent at Oil County Courthouse, which meant he sent mail, cleaned toilets, and served as Father Dick’s go-to altar boy should the need arise. Herb had mostly avoided Father Dick’s attention thus far, as he’d been a slow grower and Father Dick preferred big, strapping boys. But Herb had recently had a growth spurt, and Father Dick’s eyes had begun to slide back and forth over him like a cat’s sandpaper tongue.
Herb’s parents were always telling him to be wary of homosexuals, but Herb was pretty sure that he himself was a homosexual, so this was a paradox. Well, Herb’s brother Todd said Herb was a homosexual because Herb loved The Wizard of Oz.
And Herb knew Father Dick didn’t count because priests obviously couldn’t’ be homosexuals.
On August 19th, Father Dick motioned for Herb to follow him to his office. Herb had to help him with a big courthouse wedding, one almost everyone in Pithole would be attending.
“Shut the door behind you,” Father Dick said.
Herb’s mouth went dry, and his stomach suddenly hurt. He shut the door, then reached over and grabbed the loaf of bread sitting on the small table by the door. Herb figured that maybe, if his hands were full, then Father Dick wouldn’t ask him to touch anything.
Then Herb turned to Father Dick and, sure enough, Father Dick had his cassock lifted, the bottom of it twisted and thrown over his shoulder.
Below the waist, Father Dick was naked, his rubbery legs bowed and his parts emerging from under his belly, hanging there like an old sock flopping out of the bottom of the dryer.
“Are you ready to taste the flesh?” Father Dick asked, his voice wet.
Herb hugged the bread and then, realizing his mouth was empty, took a huge bite of communion bread.
Father Dick took a step towards Herb. Back in the sanctuary, people were clamoring for the secular-but-not-secular wedding of the year. Herb could hear all the footsteps, all the voices, so close but so far away. If he called out, if he interrupted, his dad was bound to whoop him.
Father Dick took another step forward, his giblets jiggling.
“God help me,” Herb whispered.
As soon as the “me” of his plea whistled past the squishy clump of bread in his mouth, screams rang out from the courthouse. Father Dick dropped his cassock and walked over to the door.
Screams, excited chatter, and ardent yelps flooded in as soon as Father Dick opened the door. Herb popped up and followed Father Dick out the door, shell-shocked with gratitude but also curious as to what all the fuss was about.
And there was Jesus.
The giant, 12-foot-tall ghost of Jesus Christ floated straight up the middle of the courthouse, causing wedding guests to faint, others to cry, and a few to scream.
Herb was stuck, his grey flip-flops felt glued to the courthouse floor. He was staring at Jesus! Or his ghost? His huge ghost? Father Dick fell to the floor in supplication.
Ghost Jesus shook his head and aimed a severe look down towards the floor for a moment. Herb knew that look well, because it was his mother’s most frequent expression: disappointment.
Father Dick let out a choked “He is risen!”
He didn’t look excited to see the son of God; he looked terrified.
When Ghost Jesus heard Father Dick’s flaccid proclamation, his kind, Holy face twisted itself into a face of righteous anger.
Father Dick looked agonized by Ghost Jesus’s expression, and he opened his mouth wide.
“Father, forgive…”
Before Father Dick could finish his request, ghost Jesus’s eyes shot out two ruby-red lasers and Father Dick exploded like an over-microwaved hot dog.
Herb and everyone in the front couple of rows of the courthouse were covered in sizzling guts, little pieces of bone, black teeth, and burning hair.
Herb stood there, dumbfounded, as his mother fell out of the pew into the aisle, heaving her pre-church Eggo waffles onto the stone floor. Other members of the congregation joined her in barfing, while others cried, screamed, keened, and prayed.
Ghost Jesus turned and walked back towards the doors, and Herb looked to the loaf of bread, still in his now-trembling hand. Except it was no longer bread. It was a loaf-sized hunk of skin and muscle. It had turned to flesh.
He tried to scream, but his mouth was still full of what was once bread. Now it was meat.
Jesus Meat.
Ghost Jesus turned back, his laser eyes fixing on Herb.
“Oh Jesus,” Herb gagged.
Jesus’s lasers zapped out in two Holy beams, and Herb squeezed his eyes shut and prepared himself for death. But he felt no pain, no fire, no suffering. He felt like he was flying.
Herb opened his eyes and saw Jesus still standing there, smiling back at him. He looked down and saw what Jesus’s lasers had done. The mark of the Lord was there, right on his feet.
No, not stigmata.
Herb was wearing a pair of laser-red ruby slippers.
Like Sharon Stone and the zipper, Dr. Mike McClelland is originally from Meadville, Pennsylvania. He has lived on five different continents but now resides in Illinois with his husband, two sons, and a menagerie of ancient rescue dogs. He is the author of the short fiction collection Gay Zoo Day and teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University, where he won the 2024 Distinguished Faculty Award. His creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Guardian, Rolling Stone,The New York Times, WIRED, Boston Review, Vox, The Baffler, Fairy Tale Review, Ecotone, and a number of literary magazines and anthologies. He’s a graduate of Allegheny College, the London School of Economics, the MFA Program at Georgia College, the University of Georgia’s Creative Writing PhD Program, and the University of Illinois’ Diversity and Equity in Education Program. His favorite historical feud is Serena Williams versus the world. She won, of course.
