Larva Malum - Mike Burns (readnow txt) 📗

up, and I judged them softened up and ready for the collection plate. The acolytes delivered them and collected them, making their rounds from front to back. It went off smoothly, and looked like a big take.

The sermon was a sad one, about the recent death of one of our missionaries, Giorgio Bellisari, who had died in Venezuela at the hands of militants, ones with whom I drew a spurious connection to a certain Democratic politician in this country, and thus implicitly blamed him for it. That got them angry, on top of being already sad.

The communion grape juice was on the cheap side, but nobody seemed to notice. It was a touching ceremony, and made a good centerpiece to the service. It was effective, too--I knew for a fact we had peeled off some Catholics from the one local papist institution in recent months.

A couple more hymns, and a benediction, and that wound it up. They seemed wrung out but happy.

A massively good Wednesday night for Fellowship’s Light Ministries!

And I didn’t know the half of it yet. Diane Gunther, who had appeared at the motivational seminar earlier that day, caught my arm before I went to the rectory, armed with an extensive list of questions concerning both the seminar and the church. And SHE proposed discussing them over dinner!

Man, I was on a roll TONIGHT! Before she left to head for the restaurant, I noticed the lovely turquoise-tortoise shell ring she had on. Hmmm…might make a lovely addition to the collection. I’d have to be careful, though. I have found from bitter experience that bilious body fluids tend to bleach out turquoise, should the collection process prove messy…


Chapter 4

At the restaurant (a little Italian bistro), we ordered cannelloni for two, breadsticks, and a bottle of good Vingte-Rossi vintage. She led off the conversation after a few bites of pasta and a sip or two of wine.

“So, what kinds of things do they do at your church?”

The crude bluntness of the question, its insipid open-endedness, surprised me. I took my time getting around a mouthful of cannelloni, and washing it down with a good swallow of wine before I answered.

“Well, that’s a bit of a broad question. Depends on who ’they’ are. If you mean myself and the rest of the ministerial staff, we have a variety of functions, as any church’s ministry does. Sunday and Wednesday services. Seminars on prayer and meditational techniques. Pastoral counseling. Sponsoring and hosting the youth group, certain self-help groups, and a young adult singles group. Organizing and funding retreats for both ministers and congregation members. Organizing and hosting charity drives. Revival events--and not just in the summer.

“We also serve as a resource for directing people to various social agencies that can help with indigence, medical care, counseling, referral to drug and alcohol-treatment programs, foster parenting---just to name a few.

“We sponsor political awareness events and informational presentations, frequently giving forums to groups who would have a hard time being heard otherwise. Our Palestinian human rights event last year and this year’s global-warming awareness week seminars were pretty massive successes, if I do say so myself.”

I watched Dianne closely as I reeled off my standard spiel. A certain fixity of gaze and her non-stop intake of food and drink told me she wasn’t really listening, that she was just enduring my litany of accomplishments and activities. Once, while I gazed through my fingers while pretending to push my glasses up higher on the bridge of my nose, I caught her rolling her eyes.

Why, the brazen effrontery of this hussy! How dare she! I decided to put the ball in her court.

“May I ask what, if any, church you attend? Maybe some of your own activities have their counterparts in certain of our own activities?”

This drew a blank stare for a moment. Maybe this young lady couldn’t handle her wine too well? That could be useful…

She hiccupped then, and finally answered me. “Sorry. I just needed a minute to understand what you meant. You have a very…different way of speaking than our pastor, at Niedemayer Heights Baptist. You almost sound more like a college professor than a minister. He…I don’t know, he just lays on the hellfire-and-brimstone thicker, I guess. It’s a little hard to shift gears, just like that!” She snapped her fingers for emphasis.

Then she continued. “Yeah, what we do there is emphasize the presence of the Holy Spirit, more.
People become possessed of the Holy Spirit during his services, and go into…into trances, an’ speak in the languages of Heaven…”

Great, I thought. A holy roller church! I knew what I had intended to do here, but something in her know-it-all, condescending manner impelled me to debate this with her, nonetheless.

“Dianne, this may come as a surprise to you, but good works aren’t low-priority in God’s scheme of things, don‘t y‘ know?. Manifestations and supernatural events have their place---as the history of the Church shows---but they aren’t what it’s All About. Church isn’t a place to go and be entertained, like going to a rock concert or an NFL game.”

I stopped a moment and considered things, surprised at my own outburst. Things hung in the balance right now, possibly…if I wanted this to be a smooth and easy and pleasant collection, I’d have to backpedal and take a different tack…

“BUT, the charismatic experience is something we don’t try to dismiss or discourage, either. In fact, our new choir director, and his wife, the youth ministry director, have had some surprising movement in that direction, without ever meaning or planning to. That last choir practice had most of the youth group pitching in, and they did get to rocking the house like nothing we’ve ever had there. You shoulda seen it! There was SOMETHING going on that simply couldn’t be explained--an invisible hand moving bodies and lifting up hearts and spirits. And I’m convinced that where hearts and spirits go, minds and means will soon find a way to follow!”

Now that sort of an endorsement should be the kind of thing to do it, if anything would.

Her expression brightened visibly at this, then softened. “Oh, yes, that’s it, you’ve got it! You’ve been there, to that place of power, that place of REAL experience. Halleleujah!” She flung her arms wide, and almost shrugged out of her clothes---or so it seemed, so sensuous were her movements.

Yes, Dianne, I thought to myself, I would bring you the Holy Spirit, and maybe a little of something Nietzschean while I was at it. I sprang for another bottle of wine. Not for my benefit, of course; alcohol has always had little if any effect on me. A most useful state of affairs, considering.

We had steered our way out of hazardous waters. The rest of the evening was light, affable, and increasingly friendly.


Chapter 5

Very messy, I thought to myself, as I dealt with the aftermath of this particular evening. Armed with Windex, paper towels and Clorox wipes, I meticulously went over my car’s interior. Organic life forms have no business existing--much better if we were all rock or steel or porcelain. And I’m ready to duck the riposte that I am an organic life form, too. Obviously, if I winked out and didn’t get to be another kind, I’d not be in a position to resent it, would I?

That’s for the benefit of all you moralizers and devil’s advocates out there.

Anyway, Dianne’s turquoise and tortoise-shell ring made an impressive addition to the trophy case. Mrs. Tijeras would be sure to ask about it, as she did all my acquisitions. Of course, I could have shut it down with a single directive about “minding your own business,” but I saw no need. The cover story flowed effortlessly into shape in my mind as I set up the display.

An old business associate unexpectedly stopped into town, and he also happened to be a fellow metal-detector enthusiast. We lucked out over by, say, the old Dinsmore junkyard site, plowed under these many years, but a mecca for a select few hobbyists--those who are friends of the owner of the property, a man whom Mrs. Tijeras would never know of. All surpassingly easy, and I need never fear being checked up on--because SHE feared SHE would be checked up on.

Ah, but this was all too safe, all too easy. There needed to be more risk, more danger, more FEAR to this whole thing. Of course, I could just come clean about everything right now, and have her call the police. That would do quite nicely in the fear department, but that would be crossing the Rubicon. No coming back from that. The game would end then. And I enjoyed the game. No, that would never do.

Something to make it dangerous, more dangerous than now, but with the odds still stacked in my favor. Something Mrs. Tijeras could find, uncover, untraceable to me, yet a thing to tell her that something was going on, something of a very perverse and unsavory and dangerous quality.

How would she get it? In her purse? In her mail? On her doormat?

In her purse. Yes, before she nipped out the door.

A body part.

Yes. It’d be fun. Deliciously.

Ooh! What if I got caught? What if it were identifiable?

Not a chance. SHE’D know something was up. But she couldn’t prove anything.

Yes, this was the proper algorithm between risk and safety. Not too much of either.

In her more garrulous moods, Mrs. Tijeras would talk about her evening routine, after getting home from a day working in my employ. Always, she started with emptying her purse, and compulsively sifting, categorizing, winnowing, and cleaning the contents thereof.

Well, Mrs. Tijeras, thank you for that information. It will prove most useful.

Tomorrow, it would make its usefulness felt.


Chapter 6

Today was the day! I was all a-quiver with the thought of tasting that savory dish called Fear. I had cancelled a class for CTT graduate assistants. It was Tuesday, so no evening services at Fellowship’s Light Ministries vied for my attention. I came home early, and entered the front door quietly, hoping to find myself alone in the kitchen with Mrs. Tijeras’s purse, where she always set it on the breakfast table.

Bingo! Through the ceiling vent in the downstairs bathroom, adjacent to the kitchen, I could hear movements from the upstairs bathroom, directly above. That’s where she was. Good. There was her purse, right where it always was. I turned and strode into the next room, the downstairs