Seven Devils

 

‘Wild night last night,’ Magdalene greets me one morning as I slither into the closet we use as kitchen. She’s sitting at the table, chin resting on her bent knee, hair undone and spooling off her shoulder onto the floor, a paring knife in her right hand that she’s using to chip bruise-colored varnish off her toenails.

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‘You mean the brawl, or just yours?’ I take out my favorite mug, pour some coffee from the pot on the small table. The mug has a vulvar picture of the Holy Mother with her hands spread and the word “VIRGIN” stamped on it on one side, a topless Mary Magdalene with the word “WHORE” on the other. I had spotted it in a thrift shop and the women beckoned me like Anthony’s temptations.

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‘Both.’

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‘So how’d that end anyway? I had to go up to prep for my next one.’ I take a sip of coffee. It’s bitter and tepid like fresh piss.

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‘Oh it quieted down after Mariam and Marie intervened.’ To everyone’s disbelief, all the current girls in the hostel are called Mary, so we distinguish each other by variations and nicknames to avoid confusion. ‘Honestly it would’ve been awful if the cops got involved.’

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I shudder in agreement at her observation, rest my elbows on the back of the opposite chair, notice the strip of blood-stained leather hanging limply from its seat like foreskin— Marybeth has left her flogger lying around again, even though we told her not to. ‘And what about your night?’

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‘Purificatory. I drank and pissed so much holy water that my bowels feel as clean as a relic’s.’ She smiles beatifically like an ecstatic saint, in that eyes-half-closed way she has that suggests utter rapture.

 

The Mother Superior passes briskly down the hall, noiseless if not for the bell-like clanging of her keys. She glances towards the kitchenette without slowing, and as we lock eyes for a brief instant, she gives me her thorny glare of disapproval. The nuns don't like to see us idling around, even though it’s barely past lauds. They'd work us all day if they could. 

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Magdalene glances briefly over her shoulder towards the noise echoing down the hall. 'The Mother's got her head in a spin,’ she says, turning her attention back to her toes. She begins painting on a fresh coat of nail polish, side-wound red. 

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'How come?' My hangover makes it hard to focus, hammering my skull like rusty nails, even though I haven’t touched any altar wine last night.

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‘Oh you haven’t heard? The statue in the chapel is weeping blood.’ She pouts in obvious disbelief. ‘But she's hesitant to signal the miracle to the Vatican because it might attract attention to our little business. And there’s no way of predicting if it'll be the good or bad kind.' She pauses to survey her work. 'Well, maybe if she prays real hard...' she adds as an afterthought. 

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'I doubt they'd find anything sacred in that blood if they tested it, anyway.' I recall how earlier this week I witnessed Marybeth diligently rubbing her sodden tampon around the Virgin's face as if she was applying her make-up, all while humming to what sounded like Madonna. 

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Magdalene reaches out to snatch an Eden apple from the bowl, then leans back into her chair, assuming her signature pose, even though it’s just the two of us here— robe hanging open, legs splayed, no underwear. I try not to stare at the russet tangle of fur between her thighs. Over her bitten apple, her curious eyes graze over me like cat-o’-nine-tails. 

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She smiles conspiratorially. ‘You been foraging?’

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Her curious word choice makes me feel uneasy. ‘Foraging?’ I swallow another gulp of piss-coffee as nine-inch thorns pierce my eyeballs.

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She cocks her head to one side, still appraising me. Her smug smile is even more vexing at this angle. ‘You have dried blood on your chin.’

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I touch two tentative fingers against my mental crease, and my fingers come away with tiny flecks of rust. I bend over the coffee pot, try to catch a glimpse of my reflection in its chrome surface, and my refracted image screams back at me with a dozen sullied chins. A sudden memory of his half-eaten mouth against my forehead in a parting kiss hits my ribcage like a pail of vinegar.

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Just then, Marianne plummets into the room, goes to select two apples from the bowl, testing their heft in her palm. A few fruit flies float disgruntled in the air. ‘What are you sluts gossiping about?’ she asks by way of greeting.

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‘Have you seen the weeping statue?’ Magdalene asks her. 

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‘Yeah,’ Marianne says, slipping two sachets of Lazarus instant coffee off the counter. ‘But she’s better now. They cleaned her up.’

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Marie hovers in the doorway, waiting for her. She raises her hand in blessing, lit cigarette clouding the atmosphere like a censer. They’re probably going to visit the two-headed lamb at the farm next door again, and then fuck each other senseless in the vestry. 

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‘So?’ Magdalene presses as soon as they leave. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

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I chew on my bottom lip until I taste that familiar, metallic tang. ‘I’ve been experiencing something,’ I say hangdoggedly. ‘But it’s weird.’

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‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Weird is kinda commonplace around here.’ She draws my attention towards the crucifix that hangs at an angle on the wall, erect and looming like a phallus. Martha’s “suffer well” thong is hanging limply off of Jesus’s left arm, with a freshly-blossomed period stain that lends particularly well to its message. ‘And besides,’ Magdalene goes on, ‘I'm pretty unshockable, so… What is it? Religious ecstasy? Or just a daddy with a peculiar kink?’

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‘You could say that…’ I sink into the chair closest to her without bothering to pull it out, wiggle into the space between her knee and the table, so she’s forced to close her legs to make room. I can’t talk about this while her cunt is in my face.

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‘It’s a monk, isn’t it?’ she presses. ‘Monks are such perverted freaks,’ she says in mock revulsion.

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‘Just an ordinary father,’ I say, shaking my head, even though there’s nothing ordinary about him. ‘He comes by every Thursday.’

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‘The regulars are the easiest to deal with. But their need is so pathetic, like pilgrims’. It’s rather depressing,’ she says over crispy chewing. ‘So what does this Daddy hunger for?’

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‘Voracity.’ 

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He always begins by confessing me. He says my soul must be clean if I must partake in “the body of Christ." He sits down on the bed and makes me kneel next to him. The confession feels like edging. He keeps probing with his eyes, burrowing, asking ‘what else?’ whenever I think I’m near done as if he senses the things I keep to myself. He wants to know all the details of my encounters and it’s so grueling that I end up feeling shameful, even if I don't really feel guilty about the things I do here.

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‘Some of them are into that,’ Magdalene interrupts me. Sometimes I end up confessing the same sins three times a week and just making up shit to keep them going. Luckily I never run out of ideas with everything that goes on around here on the daily.’ 

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Then he starts to unbutton his cassock while I perform my penance prayers. I'm supposed to keep my eyes closed but I watch him furtively. He’s usually naked underneath as he lifts the half-buttoned robe over his head. He pulls off his socks and garters. Then he lies back on the bed, his half-erect cock resting on his thigh. It looks imposing even when flaccid. ‘But he never fucks me. He just… asks me to eat him.’

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Magdalene pouts, unmoved. ‘Communion roleplay. How pedestrian.’ She pauses to swat at a fruit fly. ‘Maybe they should make oral the 8th sacrament,’ she muses. ‘Most of them already involve a man shoving something into your mouth anyway.’

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‘He doesn’t want a blowjob,’ I clarify. ‘He literally wants me to take bite-sized chunks out of his flesh.’ The first time I was expecting to feel sick. I was worried I'd throw up all over him, regurgitate the raw chewed up meat back into his wounds. But I didn't. His flesh started to taste good in my mouth, like it was something my body had been craving unwittingly. He always calls me ‘my child’ and likes to lay his hand over my head while I’m consuming him, guiding it, stroking circles over my hair with his thumb (when he still has it). If he cums he does so discreetly, his semen getting lost within the flood of body fluids leaking out of him. Once we’re both sated he tells me I can masturbate, encouraging me to use whatever mangled body part I want to get myself off. And then he redresses, his bites bleeding invisibly through his soutane. ‘He doesn’t look like he’s particularly in agony, or if he is it must be a kind of pleasurable agony.’

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I see the left side of Magdalene’s mouth curl slightly upwards, like she’s privy to some inside joke that I’m too dense or naive to get. Still, she seems neither shocked nor impressed. I guess this place really desensitizes you to everything.

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‘Sometimes after the confession he makes me talk to him. So we end up spending most of the night just lying naked on the bed, while I vent and he listens, offering advice.’ I suppose this isn’t much different from the praying I used to do as a little kid, when I would ask God for things and then imagine his answers. I once confessed to him that I was jealous of my classmate’s mother-of-pearl rosary and he ‘told’ me to steal it, so I did.

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‘Though he’s always saying weird things like “if you eat of my flesh you will live forever."’ I blush involuntarily from secondhand embarrassment while Magdalene lets out a sort of snort. He’s probably a fanatic now that I think about it. He has thirty-nine lashes the color of coagulated blood tattooed on his back, complete with matching side wound and stigmata. ‘But he always tips big money so… whatever.’

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It’s actually not that bad, all things considered. He’s undoubtedly the most handsome guy to set foot in here. He’s always clean and heavily cologned, his hair and silver-flecked beard impeccably groomed. His eyes are intelligent and spellbinding. And he’s built like a cathedral. Not to mention his cock— it’s so big that I never even manage to eat it entirely, and end up leaving him with a bitten, bloody stump. 

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‘Afterwards I always feel so giddy and inspired, as if his flesh was laced with something,' I say. ‘And that’s not even the weirdest part.’

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Magdalene remains resolutely unrepulsed by my confession, and takes another bite out of her apple, relishing it, studying the dents her teeth left in the juicy flesh, no doubt imagining how her bite marks would look on a taut, ample scrotum.

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‘The weirdest part is that his wounds have completely disappeared by the time he comes back,’ she says.

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‘How do you know that?’

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‘Because he visits all of us.’ Magdalene tosses the apple core in the general direction of the bin but instead it lands in the baptismal font we use as a sink. Now the water will have to be replaced.

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‘So you know him?’

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‘Don’t you?’ 

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I suddenly feel ashamed, as if I’ve been posed with an obvious riddle that I’m still too dense to grasp, so I turn to stare out the window where last week a dove splattered its brains against the glass. It still hasn’t been washed off. The sky outside is dismal and colorless like a holy wafer. 

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‘Me and the girls call him the Big G,’ she says when I don’t answer.

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Amused, Magdalene watches recognition slowly seize my face. My mouth gapes open like the entrance of a tomb.

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I’m nailed through with guilt as if through my cluelessness I committed a mortal sin. ‘So you mean it’s really Him?’ 

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She nods slowly. ‘He told me.’ Admittedly, it does make sense when you think about it.

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‘He said there were some flaws in the original plan. Now that He's had some time to think and revise, He wants to do things differently.’

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Jealousy pricks my mind like thorns. ‘How does He tell you all these things? He never tells me anything.’

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‘I have my ways,’ she says mysteriously. It’s always like this with Magdalene. Apart from being pretty, she’s also intriguing, receptive, and filled with childlike wonder, which makes her the most desired girl here. It’s only natural that she would be His favorite.

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‘What else has He told you?’

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She lifts her hair off her shoulders and lets it cascade seductively. Her robe parts open like a wound to reveal one rosy nipple, and a smattering of bruises around it like a finger rosary. She gets performative like this whenever she’s in the presence of some guy she likes. I imagine He’s in the room with us now even if we can’t see Him. 

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‘He told me he’s planning a banquet,’ she says dreamily. ‘He'll offer Himself and we’ll eat Him all together.’ Her eyes shine excitedly as she envisions this. She enjoys the thought of all us girls partaking of His bounteous body simultaneously. As must He, I suppose.

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‘But why here? Why us?’

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‘Because we’re filthy,’ she says, omnisciently. ‘He said that when we’re ready we will all bear His son. And then the nuns will have to stop whoring us out to the priests.’

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‘All of us?’

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‘Yeah.’ She shrugs. ‘I guess killing the son of God would be harder if there’s seven of them.’