Fiction: Heresy

The body of the witch was cold when he got there. Her skin like wilted lettuce and her lips, like wax on crepe paper rose petals. Bending over her face, he put an ear to her nostrils and nodded. The woman was dead.

It came from out of the stark blue desert sky like a bullet, 20 feet off the ground. Throwing up a burst of sand and dust as it broke the sound barrier. Belinda put her hands to her mufflers as the reflection of the ramjet flicked over her face shield. Flik flack stinging her bare legs. Wind rippling through her knotted paisley blouse and around avocado breasts.

“I tell you it works!”

“It will -given time”

“No, surely not time itself, nor can time be apportioned much less gifted an inanimate thing”

“But regardless this autistic hair splitting, Albert, we have to reconcile our points of view”

“Harumpf!”

Her dress is wet. Soaked with something vile. I think it may be balsamic, to be polite. Already the edges of my Bible are damp and crinkly. We must be sure she doesn’t rise. 

The Defender rattled as it took on the bumpy, rutted dirt road that led up to the reservoir. The limp body of the witch, still soft, sat upright on the back seat of the jeep, held down by a seatbelt.

There are times, Belinda, we must do what we believe in. Regardless the direct consequences to our selves, pride, even our reputation.

“Yes, Father”

She got on her sand skipper, pivoting into a horizontal prone, with her hands on the throttle. Ahead, the pilot of the sonic bullet in his blue flight suit stood by the landed craft with his helmet under one arm. She had Polaroids of them, she looking like Marilyn Monroe in a glitzy movie production, and him in trunks by the pool. His hair was gloss wet. And the sun turned cold for an instant, to her girl skin and its goosebumps. These were called emotions. Not a fear of losing control. At this speed, anything might happen. And she glimpsed approval on his face as his eyes squinted over a widening smile.

“The speed of sound can be squared, Albert, but surely not the speed of light”

“As an absolute constant, hinged on 4 dimensions, I dare say depend on some other coefficient to be treated quadratically”

“That’s why you don’t understand”

“That speed can be constant while space-time plays to its own ear like fingers stretching a rubber band?”

“No, but that the rubber band knows it can be stretched”

“Light is time doing distance”

They reached the dam at sundown. The jungle rustled with sounds of wildlife coming to the lake edge to drink and the treetops buzzed and chirped with insect song. They took the body out of the jeep and lowered it into the sampan. The small narrow boat glid on the still water. On his lap, a Latin Vulgate and beside it, a kerosene lamp. Ripples of light. Jimmy, who looked like an ape, with his chin only beard and beady black eyes, pulled the single oar gracefully, port to starboard with taichi flips of the wrist. He looked aside from his hungrily staring assistant. His high Roman nose and slightly drooping cheeks. A white skullcap over thinning gray hair cropped short.

They hoisted the body of the witch over the side of the sampan. Sweat beaded on his brow as he chanted. The rosary smelling of her vinegar, grating against his moist palms and knuckles. Then her eyes opened, white and pupiless, and her fingers snared his cassock like thorn bushes around a white tail buck. Jimmy rose up and started hacking at her with the oar blade. Silence at the water’s edge. A macabre silhouette against the hunter’s moon. Diana, best turn away.

Belinda set the instant camera on the seat of the sand skipper and ran over to her man. She pressed into his shoulders and her lush lashes focused in on the shot, turning suddenly serious as a woman scolding a dog. Speed is perfection, perfection is speed. Likewise for those whose feet touch not the good earth.

“What do you say to more tea, Albert?”

“Delta t, but of course”

“Right on cue for the Champaign!”