To call the death of Rebecca’s mother an exorcism gone wrong would be an understatement. It was a disastrous failure that sent Luke spiraling for weeks, from bar to bar, town to town to avoid nosy parishioners. How could he call himself a priest when he didn’t have the banishment spell memorized word for word? He’d gone in a confident man and left that house a nervous wreck.
I can see your heart and know you’re a sinner, too, it’d said, hovering over the bed like the elderly woman was just a marionette, limbs held up but loose and lifeless, the heart monitor’s quick beeps filling the room. I’m done here, anyway, he’d said, and dropped the fresh corpse onto the bed, the long ring of a flatline roaring in Luke’s ears.
For a demon to kill its vessel is unheard of and suspicious, but he’d been too distraught to report it.
A knock at his door woke him up from a restless, booze-induced slumber. The clock read 3:00. His slippers scratched against the floor as he dragged himself to the door and opened it. What he saw was a young woman with bright green eyes and a long blonde ponytail, dressed in a pink pencil skirt, mary janes and a white cardigan. She could’ve been anywhere from in her teens to twenties with a baby face. Either way, she radiated beauty and youth in a way that would make other women jealous
Luke cursed himself for automatically being struck by something as vain as looks. “It’s 3 in the morning, dear. Do you need something?”
“It’s actually three in the afternoon, Father.”
Yikes, thought Luke.
“My mistake. I’ve been…ill.”
“I need your help.” She held up a bandaged arm. Luke’s first thought was that the poor thing had cut herself, but then he heard it; the whispers, faint but very apparent with the presence of this teenager.
“Come in,” he said, and led the stranger into his home.
Ellie’s story was this: she’d been walking home from field hockey practice when she crossed paths with a rabid dog. She knocked him dizzy with her stick, but not until he’d bitten a deep wound into her forearm. Animal control was called, but Ellie didn’t stick around to even take the phone call, hiking up a tall tree until they arrived to take the animal away from her. She didn’t know what the fate of the dog was, and had terrible guilt for hurting the animal despite it being clear self-defense.
“Where do you go to school, Ellie?” he asks as he takes a swig of his flask, hidden behind the door of the fridge, within earshot but outside of her view.
“Saint John’s College. I’m a Freshman.”
“Take a medical leave. You won’t want to be around people if you have what I think you have.”
God, his head hurt. He was going to bed after this, that’s for sure.
When he arrives with a glass of ice water, the girl wipes the back of her sweaty forehead with her palm. Ellie begins to unbutton her cardigan. “I feel like I’m having a hot flash,” she says, revealing a tight grey lowcut top with fraying spaghetti straps. She was busty, with thin arms but a thick chest. Her face turns red. “I also have had… uh, breast growth? But that could just be my um, period…”
Luke swallows dryly. “Right… That does narrow it down then.” He stands up and walks over to his book shelf to pull out his beat-up tome of demons.
“Do you want to fuck me, Father?” says a different voice. It’s lower and not as nasally as the girl’s, and when Luke turns around Ellie’s top is being pulled over her head to reveal a bra that’s several sizes too small, the nipples poking out from the top of the garment. When the top is off her head he can see only the whites of her eyes.
“This girl is a slut, so I’m sure she won’t mind. Banged a quarter of the football team in her first semester.”
Luke drops the tome, then falls to the floor, scrambling for the right page to banish the demon. A small beige bra hits him in the face.
“Don’t be like that,” she croons, and a quick look over at the couch shows that the demon is now massaging the girl’s large breasts with manicured hands. “Pour us a drink. I’m here for a good time!”
Luke starts the chant, a quick reader. But before he’s through, the tome is yanked from his hands and, for the second time that month, thrown at the window, only this time it doesn’t crash through the glass but it still sends loose papers everywhere.
Two telekinetic demons in one week? And after a swig of vodka while hungover? God sure knows how to test him, but he’s determined to rise to the challenge. After all, that’s what he <i>should</i> do if he’s a good priest. Right?
