Just what she wanted.
The groove of her sex began to slicken, yet she never once considered lowering the wand to actually pleasure herself. That would’ve been a sin; and would reduce to falsehood her own morality. In truth, Veronica had never even had an orgasm and this was not due to frigidity at all but via her own force of will. Again, she thought of minor sins allowed to serve a Godly end—and wasn’t this just more proof of her faith? Her entreating of Mike orally was only to demonstrate her own charitability; it was not some lustful need on her part. She knew this, and knew that God knew it too. She was saving her very first orgasm just as she was saving her virginity: something to only be experienced once betrothed in the eyes of God and with Jesus as her witness. Not many women would have such strength, no indeed. There had even been rare occasions when Mike had reciprocated with cunnilingus, whereupon Veronica had only feigned climax, knowing full well that such abstinence only proved more—still more of her faith.
Content now, and buzzing all over in her secret joy, she went back out to the show room, her nipples now fairly jutting beneath the Best Buys shirt. Mike was on the phone by the check-out. Archie stood on a ladder in the TV department, hanging Christmas decorations.
Veronica secretly smiled as she eyed Mike’s profile.
My God I love him SO MUCH…
However, at this precise moment, Veronica couldn’t have felt closer to her own spirit nor closer to God. Venal sins, be damned! It was only a matter of time before Mike saw the light of Veronica’s love and they were properly wed in the eyes of the Lord. She even dared to think: Maybe he’ll propose to me on Christmas!
Veronica would be pleased to know that her minor venal sins of fellatio and vanity would indeed be forgiven. But what she wouldn’t be pleased to know was this: she would have to pay for those sins first, and she’d be paying for them in a matter of hours.
She’d be paying big-time.
— | — | —
Chapter 5
(I)
“Maw? Maw? It’s me, Helton…”
Helton sat in the metal chair next to the convalescent bed, looking sorrowfully down at the wizened form of his 80-some-odd-year-old mother, Petunia Tuckton. The stroke last year had landed the noble backwoods matriarch here in the Daisy-Chase Nursing Home, and it was a place Helton could scarcely fathom, part of a system that for some inexplicable reason wouldn’t let dying people die. Upon entrance, he first noticed rows of hoppers heaped high with brown-stained linens. An unnerving silence was periodically broken by inane jabbering, hacking, and lone shrieks. Mostly overweight women who spoke not one word of the English language listlessly pushed medication carts from door to door. Several doors stood upon, revealing shuddering stick-figures beneath sheets, sunken-faced, hollow-eyed: seemingly cadavers that jabbered. No way to live, no sir, Helton thought. In one room, he saw the darnedest thing: a fat nurse in pigtails had pulled up the hospital gown of an absolutely ancient man. Bare, paper-white legs stuck out with knees the size of grapefruits. What kind’a pree-vert show we GOT here? Helton wondered, because now the nurse had the old man’s withered dick between her fingers, and what she did next…
What she did next was she began to insert a long clear plastic tube into the old man’s dickhole!
She pushed the tube down, down, down, and then, when it must’ve been in the poor old fucker two feet…the tube began to fill with piss. Helton’s astonished eyes followed that piss, which ran all the way down the tube and began to empty into a plastic bag…
Good God! They steal folks PEE in this crazy place!
Helton didn’t understand and didn’t want to. His big frame moved on past the nurses station over which hung Christmas decorations. A fella in white clothes sat asleep before a television where a bunch of tall, black fellas in the silliest little shorts and shirts were running back and forth on the wood floor, bouncing a ball. On a cork board, Helton spied an index card that read: HELP WANTED: YOU CAN EARN $10 PER HOUR CUTTING PATIENTS’ TOENAILS! APPLY AT FRONT DESK.
A dense, diarrhea-ish odor followed Helton to his mother’s room.
It pained him to see her like this, and pained him more to notice one of those bags of discolored urine connected to her bed as well. God in Heaven—they’se are even stealin’ my OWN MAW’S pee… Six-motherfuckin’-thousand-dollars a month is what this creepy, feces-smelling hell-hole cost, but Petunia had wisely never kept her cash in the bank; indeed, she remembered the “Bank Holidays” of the Great Depression and “that connivin’ closet Commer-nist FDR!” Too many good folks had lost everything back then, all because they trusted their government. Petunia knew better, which is why she kept all of her money hidden in a secret place. Fuck the government. This way, Medicaid got stuck with the six-motherfuckin’-thousand-dollar-per-month nursing-home fee, and this was Helton’s good fortune now. He’d never before asked his mother for money—money was something he rarely needed—but he knew she’d understand once he explained the complexion of the matter.
He kept gently nudging her. “Maw?”
The withered face looked like something trying to suck in on itself. Flap-like eyelids fluttered; then a rheumy gaze found Helton’s face.
“Helton, my wonderful son,” the voice creaked like old boat timbers. “It’s heavenly to see ya but—oh, dear, son—ya know I asked ya not to visit me. I just cain’t bear fer no one to see me like this…”
Helton squeezed her ancient hand. “I knows, Maw, and I’se terrible sorry fer not abidin’ by your wishes, but see…see… Somethin’ happened…”
Old and dilapidated as the woman was, her senses immediately seized on her son’s words. “Aw, Lord Almighty…is it my great grandson Crory?”
Helton swallowed hard. He could still hear the monstrous sounds from that DVD machine, the sounds the poor tot’s head made whiles goin’ in and out, in and out. “Yeah, Maw,” was the only reply he could muster.
The vigorless woman seemed to age another year just in the next few seconds; wells of tears magnified the cataracts in her eyes. “What yer face is tellin’ me, son, is my wonderful grandson is dead—”
Helton nodded.
“—and it weren’t by accident.”
Helton had to steel himself. “No, it weren’t—it were cold-blooded murder, Maw, of the horriblest kind. S’matter’a fact, what they done to Crory was so awful, I couldn’t never tell ya ’bout it, never.”
The old woman’s breath rattled in her sunken chest. She made a despairing nod. “I’se understand, son.”
“I knowed ya would, Maw. Ain’t no recourse but ta git our proper revenge, and with God’s help, I think I can.” He looked deeply at her. “See, Maw, what was done ta Crory was so devilsh, there ain’t but one way ta deal with it…”