The Bighead (16 page)

“
Ahhhh,” she
murmured.

She began to urinate.

“
What the FUCK!” Alexander
yelled, helpless against his fetters.

She pissed hard. The stream was hot,
and firing directly into the cleft of Alexander’s clenched
buttocks.

“
Stop it!” he
yelled.

She didn’t stop it. Instead, the force
of the urine accelerated. It stung, expelling in a pinpoint line to
his rectal orifice, and eventually its velocity rose to such an
extreme that it was actually entering his anus. Soon he could feel
it, he could feel the droll nun’s piss forcing its way into his
rectal canal. And piss she did, on and on…

“
What are you, a fucking
race horse!” he shouted.

It seemed to go on for an hour, her
urine firing precisely as a laser, jetting from the plush plot of
hair.

“
Aw, gimme a break!”
Alexander groaned. “You’re pissing enough to fill gasoline
truck!”

Eventually, and thankfully, the stream
abated, dying to a trickle which dribbled onto his calves. But in
the aftermath, he could feel it all in there, all that hot urine
wobbling, filling his large intestine to the point of distention,
and slowly working its way up into his alimentary canal…

“
There,” the nun said. She
dropped her habit. “Doesn’t it feel good, Father? Doesn’t it feel
good to finally be purged?”

««—»»

The image followed him, like a buzzing
pest. When Alexander leapt out of bed, he rushed immediately—if out
of reflex—to the bathroom, where he immediately defecated. No
urine, of course, was forthcoming, but he felt obliged to do so
regardless. Then he showered and shaved, dressed quickly in his
black slacks and shirt, affixed his collar. But the image wouldn’t
leave him.

The nun,
he thought.

Christ.

“
I should see a
psychologist,” he considered, then stalled. “Wait a minute.
I’m
a psychologist!” But
what could explain such a disgusting dream? Dreams, after all, were
born in the psyches of the dreamer. It was
part
of him, in other words…
Christ.

Eventually he got moving, went
downstairs and looked around. There was no sign of Annie, the
proprietor. But when he turned through the kitchen into the dining
room, he saw two attractive women sitting at the veneered table,
eating. One blond, one brunet. They both glanced up in
unison.

“
Good morning,” he said.
“I’m Father Alexander.”

“
Hi, Father,” said the
blonde. The brunette smiled curtly and nodded.

“
I’m rooming here for
awhile.”

“
We know, Annie told us,”
said the blonde. “I’m—”

“
Don’t tell me.” Alexander
held up his hand. “You’re Annie’s niece, and you—” he pointed to
the brunette. “You must be the newspaper reporter.”

“
You got it backwards,” the
blonde told him, laughing. “I’m Jerrica, the reporter, and this is
Charity, Annie’s niece.”

“
Nice to meet you both.”
They all shook hands; Alexander sat down.

“
Would you like some
funnelcakes, Father?” Charity offered, extending her hand to a
plate full of squiggly looking pieces of fried dough beside which
sat a small bowl of molasses.

“
No thanks. They look
great, but I’m never hungry in the morning.” Then he looked more
closely at both women. Charity was dressed primly in a billowy,
flowered summer dress. Jerrica wore cutoff jeans and a white
halter. But both their faces, pretty as they were, looked drained
somehow, depleted.

Then Jerrica, the blonde, spoke up.
“You’re probably noticing how ragged out we both look, Father. It’s
because we both had outrageous nightmares last night.”

Alexander felt his brow go rigid.
“Well, then, nightmares must be contagious around here, because I
had a hum-dinger.”

“
Oh, yeah? We’ll tell ours
if you tell yours.”

Ho!
Alexander thought.
I dreamed that I
got a piss-enema from a nun. That’s not the kind of thing I really
want to tell people about.
“Forget it,” he
said instead. “One time I dreamed that the Pope and I were playing
volleyball, and he was kicking my butt; dreams are a lot of laughs
sometimes. But, believe me, this one’s worth
forgetting.”

“
Aunt Annie said you’re
here to rebuild the old abbey,” Charity said.

“
Not rebuild it, restore
it,” Alexander corrected.

“
It used to be a
convalescent home for priests, right?” Jerrica ventured.

Precocious,
Alexander thought. “Something like that What we’re
going to turn it into now is a rehab center.” Alexander knew the
rap. Lately the Catholics were getting trashed bigtime. Lots of
priests up on allegations of child molestation, drug addiction,
gambling. That’s all that filled the papers these days, and no
doubt Jerrica, a journalist herself, had made the connection.
Christ, they were probably going to close down St. Luke’s in
Suitland, the rap was so hot. The local residents were protesting,
said they feared for their children should a sick priest
escape.

“
I’ll be the first to
admit,” he came clean. “The Catholic Church is looking for remote
places to field their rehab centers. Priests are like anyone else:
sometimes they get sick. But in the old days, Wroxeter Abbey wasn’t
a rehab, it was a hospice for dying priests. It was a long time
ago, mid-70s. We had a bunch of Epiphanist nuns running the place.
They were just back from Africa, and they had nothing to do, so the
Pope gives them this gig.” Alexander noticed another turtle shell
on the table, and lit up. “Cancer, Alzhiemer’s, and just plain old
age—”

“
AIDS too, right?” Jerrica
challenged.

He didn’t jive her. “Probably, before
AIDS was an official diagnosis, sure. Sometimes priests go astray,
the Church has never denied that. But when they become terminal, we
needed place to put them that was cheaper than a hospital. So we
make hospices, and that’s what Wroxeter was.”

“
But it closed down, didn’t
it?” Charity asked.

“
Yeah. It wasn’t very full,
and the Pope needed the nuns to go back to Africa, for another
famine. So they closed her down.”

All this talk of nuns,
though…

Nuns,
he thought, with a sudden taste like sour milk in his
mouth.
The nightmare…
Alexander’s stomach involuntarily clenched. Then he looked up
to notice Charity pouring iced tea; the trickling sound only
reminded him more—of being urinated on. What inside him could
summon such a dream? Did he secretly harbor some fear of
refinishing Wroxeter?
Do I have a secret
fear of nuns?
he wondered. But that
couldn’t be it; it didn’t make sense.

Wouldn’t you like to be
purged?
the nightmare sister had
asked…

“
Father?”

Alexander looked up. It was Jerrica,
casting a sudden look of concern.

“
Are you all
right?”

“
Oh, yeah, sorry. Mind got
away from me a minute. Anyway, that’s the scoop on the
abbey.”

“
But that’s a strange
assignment that the Church should give you, isn’t it?” Charity
inquired next. “What about your regular duties, your
parish?”

The $60,000
question.
“I don’t have a parish,” he
admitted his pet peeve. “I’m the psychologist for the Richmond
Diocese.”

“
That sounds fascinating,”
Jerrica offered. “A priest shrink.”

“
I wouldn’t quite call it
fascinating, but it beats jacking fries at Burger King.”
God, she’s beautiful,
he
thought to himself. Actually, both women were, Charity’s looks
remaining more subdued, more prim. But Jerrica, there was something
vital about her, something really in-your-face. The striking
contrast of her suntanned skin and white-blond hair, blue eyes
bright as gems, slender yet curvaceous.
She could pop a stiffer on a bishop,
he thought.
It’s a good thing I’m
celibate, otherwise I’d be all over her like a cheap suit. Christ,
twenty years ago? Look out, honey!
At least
he could joke about it now; actually, though, celibacy proved
easier than he’d thought. It was even relieving. It converted his
human lust into much more productive energy. Celibate, he could
look at women honestly—
without
lust

—
and acknowledge the beauty
of their womanhood minus the taint of libidinal hormones. It
refreshed him to be able to look at women without wanting anything
of what he saw. Besides, in his younger days he’d had his fill, so
to speak. If anything,
more
than his fill.

“
Is Annie around?” he
asked. “I haven’t seen her?”

“
We haven’t seen her
either, come to think of it,” Charity said. “I don’t know where she
could be.”

Alexander screwed out his butt in the
turtle shell. “Last night, she told me there’s a
handyman?”

“
Goop,” Charity
said.

“
What?”

“
That’s his name,” Jerrica
added. “Goop.”

“
Goop. Ah, well. Anyway,
where can I find him? Annie said he could take me into town, to the
general store. I need some supplies.”

Jerrica’s eyes lit up. “Oh, forget
Goop. Let us take you, Father!”

(III)

More’n more, it seemed, the more Dicky
looked at Tritt Balls Conner, the more he started lookin’ ike the
devil’s son. Yes sir. A lean fella he were, big, an’ with rock-hard
muskles in his arms, like apples under his skin, they looked. Black
hair hangin’ ta his shoulders, anna goatee ta boot. Adn that
blammed John Deere hat. But it weren’t all that as much as the
gander in his eyes. Steely little eyes, they was, like barrelholes
on a long rifle.

“
Bored, I’se say,” Tritt
Balls remarked, ridin’ shotgun in the ’Mino. “Bored shee-it-less, I
is, Dicky.”

“
I’se hear that.” The El
Camino rumbled along Rout 154, sucking down onto the road under
about 450 horses. “What we gonna do today, Balls? We ain’t got no
shine runs till the right now.”

“‘
S’true, Dicky. We’se
ain’t got no runs, but what we’se do got is a wad’a cash in each
our pockets the size of a hamhock. Guess we’se kin find
somethin’
ta
do.”

“
Shore, but
what?”

Balls chuckled, strokin’
that black goatee. “Well, I’se’ll tell ya what I’d
likes
ta do. Like ta
cornhole me some bitch so hard my spunk’d be dribblin’ out her nose
like she just blew a snot, I would.”

Dicky frowned at the wheel and Hurst
shifter. “Yeah, Balls, but we cain’t do that now. ’S’broad
daylight, it is. We’se cain’t be pullin’ no shit like that this
early.”

“
I’se know, Dicky, I’se
were just sayin’.” Balls frowned hisself just then. “I’se hungry,
though. Shee-it, man, I’se so hungry I could et me Mother
Ter-ay-shah’s pussy, I could, an’ her asscrack too, I say. What say
we stop on by the diner fer some hash’n eggs?”

“‘
S’awright by
me.”

Dicky Caudill didn’t even
know who Mother Ter-ay-shah was, but he weren’t genrally one ta
turn down
any
inver-tay-shun ta eat, bein’ as he wore about a waist
forty-four, an’ had a big gut on him, an’ tits like a gal, only his
had hair on ’em. But as he undertook the task’a drivin’ inta town,
he thought again ’bout Balls. Yeah, a devilish dude, we were;
problee done stuff, ’n’fact, that the devil’d be proud’a.
Yes, sir,
Dicky
thought,
what I gots sittin’ right next ta
me is problee the son’a Lucifer.

At least it were unique
company…

Yeah, they done some
ruckin’ in their time.
Bad
shit, it were, but it were fun, even Dicky hadda
admit. But then he got ta thinkin’ what he were thinkin’ ’bout
awhiles back, ’bout how one day they’se might pick the wrong folks
ta fuck with…

Dicky shrugged, an’ let the
speck-er-lay-shun pass. Not much point thinkin’ ’bout that, now
were there?

Music twanged on the radio, good
foot-stompin’ music. The singer were singin’: “I’m gonna buy me a
gun just as long as my arm, kill everyone who ever done me
harm…”

“
Shee-it!” Balls howled.
“Now
that’s
some
lyrics, ain’t they? I likes that, I do!” Then Balls Conner burst
out laughter. “Only thing is, Dicky, any folks we run into don’t
live long enough ta do us harm!”

“
That’s a fact, Balls,”
Dicky agreet, an’ it were pretty much true. Like that one time they
was in some roadhouse bar up’n Lockwood. They was just about ta
leave, both takin’ a piss in the john, an’ Balls finished pissin’
an’ he starts ta walk away fom the toll-et, an’ some big redneck
dude says, “Hey, man, was ya brought up inna barn? Flush that
toll-et when’s ya finished pissin’ in it. I’se shore don’t wanna
hafta lookit yer piss.”