Ten-Dollar Saviour
Author: Carlton Mellick Iii
Date: 2012-01-02 11:44:31+00:00

TEN-DOLLAR SAVIOR

Should be working, but daze-staring, just watching her typing in the corner of the office, a chin-resting-in-hand gaze, inhaling all the details of her body:

Her hair short and street-black, perfectly constructed oval around her snowy head, white-pasty skin with rosy cheeks and dark makeup around the eyes, turquoise-blue eyes, and I think of her as a porcelain doll come to life, a toy-come-human playing typist at her tiny desk, her navy blue suit pressed tenaciously against her body, stretching with her tiny breaths, and sometimes she feels embarrassed of the ring on her finger so she hides it from me, she also hides her teenaged husband inside her panties and private cavity so I, nor anyone, will know he is inside her.

I stand out of my desk and peer down at her porcelain-doll face, her teeth pinching the side of a puffy lip, neglecting eye contact.

“We said we wouldn’t do it anymore,” her voice shivering.

“We said a lot of things.”

The phone rings.

Her face locks into mine, pausing, we know who it is, I shake my head slowly and keep my voice in check. Then she picks up the phone:

HELLO TURNER CLIVE BROKERAGE THIS IS MOLLY WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU OH HI MRS MCCONNELL OH YOU JUST MISSED HIM HE’S OUT TO LUNCH NO I’M NOT SURE WHEN HE LEFT NO IT LOOKS LIKE HE LEFT HIS PAGER HERE NO I’M NOT SURE WHERE HE WENT DO YOU WANT ME TO HAVE HIM CALL YOU WHEN HE COMES BACK YEAH I THINK HE’S WITH DOUG NO IS IT IMPORTANT OKAY WELL I’LL LET HIM TO CALL YOU SURE MRS MCCONNELL OKAY THAT’S FINE GOODBYE.

“We better hurry,” Molly says, getting her little square purse. And we hurry out of the office, apathetic to those who are watching.

We churkle-drive her beaten blue jetta across the street to the grocery store and I run in to buy a Miniature Christ.

He comes in a small plastic casing, about 6 inches in height, squatting on His cross, glancing at me with habitual love as I take Him from the shelf, away from all of His duplicates, His face thoroughly free of sin. He only costs $9.99, and is free of tax.

We don’t consume the clock, driving direct-frenzy to the pink and sky-blue motel, removing our clothes before getting inside of the room, saving time. Not yet touching or rubbing each other.

I let Molly freshen up in the bathroom, let her hide her husband deep inside of her, deep enough so that neither of us notice him. Sitting naked on the bed, I open Jesus’s container and let Him crawl out onto the nightstand. I erect the little wooden cross on its little wooden platform.

Under His container, I find thirsty knitting needles, placing them into my palm as the mini-messiah climbs onto his cross and outstretches His arms.

Blank-watching Him, I pierce pin/stakes through His limbs until He is crucified under the heat-blistering lightbulb/sun, rolling his head from side to chest to side. Molly enters nude with a large smile, an I-can’t-believe-we’re-doing-this-again smile, so I disregard the little dying son of God, slide him back against the lamp.

Forty minutes of sticky love-making until we explode and drop from each other, panting with eyes at the ceiling. Molly and I folded around each other, all pressures leaked away: trickling down our bodies, mixing with sweat, soaking into the bare mattress.

We roll our eyes to the little Jesus, our breaths trying to calm. I rub her smooth rubber-white shoulder and kiss her neck. Her blue-fire eyes not leaving the Christ’s image.

“Why isn’t He dying?” Molly child-asks me in a delicate voice.

“He will,” I whisper under her ear. “He has to suffer first.”

We pet each other silently for some moments, observing the messiah wheeze-choke, exhaling deeply, His eyes dripping out of His head.

Miniature Christ: His head falling back, gleaming into the lightbulb/sun and words begin pouring out of Him, too distant to understand. And once he finishes, His head drops to His chest and life slips away from Him, as always.

“Our we forgiven?” Molly asks.

“Of course,” I tell her. “The commercials guarantee salvation.”

We get up. Molly stomping into the bathroom and pulling clothes over her saturated porcelain, and I clean up the dead messiah, wrap Him up in tissues and drop Him into the wastebasket.

“We shouldn’t come here anymore,” I tell the bathroom, taking my slacks from the floor.

Molly doesn’t respond, straightening her hair and face with perfection-speed.

Hurrying my clothes onto my body, I watch Molly’s reflection in the glass of a mock-impressionist painting, her fingers in her panties digging deep inside of her, searching for her husband. My penis must have shoved him too deep inside of her. He’s out of her reach now. Molly fingers as deep as she can, but he is lost, gone far away.

I sit back down on the bed, squeeze my eyes shut, holding my hand over my face. I don’t get up, listening to Molly charge out of the bathroom, out of the hotel room, leaving me on the sweat-pooled mattress.

Slowly, I feel my being slip out of consciousness, my guilts/sins beginning to drown in fantasy worlds, in lands without complications, in comfortable paradise… as Jesus Christ resurrects slowly out of the garbage can.