Edward Lee - Quest for Sex, Truth & Reality

“Mother!” he heard.

The plea had sounded impoverished, a desperate whine like a lost child’s.

Then: I SHOW YOU TRUTHS, SEEKER. SEEK. SEEK OUT THE SUSTENANCE OF TRUTH. SHOW ME YOUR WORTH.

The writer smirked. What else have I got to do? He could feel the churchfront as he approached, as one might sense a particular face in a crowd. Candlelight caused the nave’s darkness to fitfully shift, populating the pews with a congregation of shadows, worshipers bereft of substance.

“Mother! I’m here!”

Aw, God, the writer thought, and it was the palest of thoughts, the bleakest and least sapient. What he saw numbed everything that he was. He stared toward the chancel as if encased in cement.

The coffin stood empty. Its previous tenant — the dead old woman — had been stripped of her last garments and lay stiff across the carpet, all gray-white dried skin and wrinkles, and a face like a dried fruit. Between the corpse’s legs lay the priest, black trousers at his ankles, copulating furiously.

“I’ll bring you back!” he promised, panting. His eyes squeezed shut in the most devout concentration. Sagging bags for breasts jiggled at the corpse’s armpits.

“You’re having sex with a corpse, for God’s sake!” shouted the writer.

The fornication ceased. The rage of this ultimate coitus interruptus focused in the priest’s eyes as sharply as cracked glass. “What?” he shouted.

“You’re fucking your mother’s corpse!”

“So?”

The writer shivered. “Correct me if I’m wrong — I’m not an expert on modern clergical protocol — but it’s my understanding that priests aren’t supposed to have sex, especially with their mothers, and more especially when their mothers are DEAD!”

The priest faltered, not at the writer’s objection, but at some inner query. A sad recognition touched his face as he withdrew and straddled the embalmed cadaver. “I can’t bring her back,” he lamented. “No, not like this.” His erection pulsed upward, a parodical stiff root. Forlornly, he picked something up.

The writer’s guts shimmied. What the priest had picked up was a pair of heavy-duty roofing shears.

“There’s only one way, I’m afraid,” mourned the priest. The writer shouted “No no no! Holy shit! Don’t do th—”

— as the priest unhesitantly clipped off his glans with the shears.

The obligatory scream shot about the nave; the glans fell to the carpet like a gumdrop.

The writer was backing away, his ears ringing. I do not need to see this, he thought. But something forced him to look, and by now he had a pretty good idea what that something was.

Blood jetted freely from the priest’s clipped member — yes, freely as water out of a garden hose. “Mother, oh, Mother,” he muttered, shuddering as the blood poured forth.

TRUTH, banged the voice in the writer’s head as he plodded in shock back out onto the street. Something’s made everyone in this town crazy, he realized.

NOT CRAZY. BLOOMED IN TRUTH, THE REAL TRUTH.

He ignored this; he had to. So how come I’m not crazy?

YOU’RE THE SEEKER, came his answer.

He gazed emptily down the street. He didn’t feel crazy, he felt fine. So why was he hearing voices?

AH, YES, he heard. SUSTENANCE!

Was it really madness, or was it susceptibility, as the voice seemed to infer? All his deliberating over truth, and what truth really was, had skirted one very important consideration. Perhaps truth was mutable. Like philosophy, art, technology— like life itself — perhaps old truths died and were replaced by new ones.

So the truth had changed? Was that it?

The writer banged through the swinging doors of the Crossroads.

“Look, he’s back!” said the fat blonde. “It’s the writer!”

“The seeker, ” corrected the keep. “Ready for a shooter?”

“Cram your shooters, rube, and you,” he pointed violently at the fat blonde, “Stay the hell away from me.” She burped in reply, halfway done with her next pizza. The redhead was still at the rail too; on a bar napkin she absently doodled stick figures with inordinately large genitals.

“What brings ya back?” asked the keep.

The fat blonde ripped off another belch, which sounded like a tree cracking. “Maybe he wants more pizza.”

“You haven’t seen my hopelessly inadequate boyfriend wandering around, have you?” the redhead asked.

Jesus, thought the writer. “All I want to know is when the next goddamn bus comes into this goddamn town.”

“Call Trailways,” invited the keep. “Pay phone’s by the john.”

Finally, a phone!

“But hold up a sec.” The keep slapped a yellow shooter down. “Drink up, seeker. And don’t worry, it’s a—”

“I know, a tin roof.” Can’t hurt, can it? The writer shot the shooter back, froze mid-swallow, then spat it out. “What the fuck was that!”

“A Piss Shooter, partner.” The keep’s fly was open. “The house special. Bit more tasty than the last one, huh?”

“You’re all a bunch of psychopaths!” screamed the writer.

“Crank up one of them Snot Shooters,” suggested the fat blonde.

“Good thing I’ve had a cold all week. Makes ’em thicker, meatier.” The keep applied an index finger to his left nostril, then loudly emptied his right one into a shooter glass. “Yeah, there’s a beaut. Go for it, seeker.”

The writer’s head was reeling. “No, thanks. I’m trying to cut down.”

“Cheers,” said the fat blonde. She tossed it back neat, swallowing it more or less as a single lump. “Nice and thick!”

It just never ends, does it? The writer wobbled back to the pay phone, dropped in some change, and waited.

No dialtone.

“Goddamn this fuckin’ shit-house piece of shit crazy-ass motherfuckin’ town!” the writer articulated to the very best of his refined and erudite vocabulary. “Suckin’ fuckin’ redneck shitpile town ain’t even got a fuckin’ phone that works!”

“Phones haven’t worked since last night,” he was informed. It was the guy in the white shirt, who’d just come in the back way. He was hefting a shiny 44-oz aluminum softball bat. “Shh,” he said next. “I want to surprise her.” He snuck up behind the redhead, assumed a formidable batter’s stance, and swung—

Ka-CRACK!

The impact of the bat to the redhead’s right ear sent a big spurt of blood from her left. She flew off the stool like a golf ball off a tee and landed on the floor.

“How about that? ” White Shirt softly inquired. “I’ll bet that was big enough for you.” The keep and fat blonde applauded. The writer just stared. White Shirt dragged the redhead out the back door by the throat.

“Still ain’t found what’cha seek, huh, seeker?” commented the keep. “Still ain’t found the truth. Well lemme tell ya somethin’…truth can change.”

The writer peered at him.

“I know what the truth is,” claimed the fat blonde.

“Yeah?” the writer challenged. “Tell me then, you fat hunk of shit redneck walking trailer-park puke-machine. What is the truth?”

“It’s black!”

Great. The truth is black. Wonderful. The writer started for the back door, but the keep implored, “Don’t go yet. You’ll miss my next one.” He was lowering his trousers.

“Jizz Shooters!” cried the fat blonde.

Laughter followed the writer out the door. It made him feel rooked. Perhaps in their madness they knew something he didn’t. Perhaps madness, in this case, was knowledge.

In the alley, White Shirt was eviscerating the redhead with a large hunting knife. Less than patiently, he rummaged through wet organs like someone looking for something, cufflinks maybe. “Give it back!” he shouted at the cooling gore. “I want it back!”