writhed on the bed, imagining he was Phials, head exploding with the lights of desire, groaning as he climaxed, Phials taking control as Kevin slumped against a wall, disgusted, loathing himself, but already looking forward to the next rising of his flesh.
Several minutes later he staggered back towards them, taking control again, not meeting his sister’s tormented gaze, consumed by evil lust, sacrificing himself to it, burning on an incestuous altar of his making with a savage, sex-fired smile.
FOUR
Gawl McCaskey took a pew near the back of the Church of Sacred Martyrs and waited for Fr Sebastian to summon him. Staring with disinterest at stained glass windows, statues of Christ and the Virgin Mother, the stations of the Cross, remembering the stories from his childhood, reared a good Scottish Catholic, whipped if he couldn’t name all the apostles. He started growling to himself at the bitter memories. Fucking apostles. Who gi’es a fuck. Dead fucking saints — fuck ’em all.
His blasphemy didn’t worry him, even coming in a house of the Lord. Gawl b elieved in God but didn’t care. Suspected there was a devil but wasn’t fussed. Religion was for the weak and gullible. He was determined to wring all of the pleasures from this life that he could. Fuck whatever came next. Deal with it when he had to.
Gawl studied his knuckles — cracked, creased, stained, scarred. A labourer’s hands. Fighting hands. He had beaten men senseless with these fingers, built roads and houses with them, destroyed with them. A life on building sites and in pubs, laying blocks and breaking skulls. All his history there. Christ needed two rows of documentative paintings but Gawl could see every day of his past in the red lines and ugly lumps of his fingers.
Gawl chuckled. A woman two rows forward glanced back at him with a frown. He stared her down, grey eyes cold, smiling leanly. This wasn’t his patch. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself and sour the sweet deal he had going with Fr Sebastian, but if the bitch gave him grief, he’d grab her by her scrawny fucking throat and choke her within an inch of her life.
She looked down at her rosary beads. Gawl sneered. Yellow fucking hoor, piss the fuck off and take yer Saviour with ye. Resting his arms on the back of the pew, cherishing his minor victory, beaming around the church, master of the house.
Not many in attendance. Some old ladies at the front, the bitch near Gawl, a few men on their last breaths sitting alone, a couple of bored kids praying by a row of candles. Gawl felt overwhelming contempt for all of them. Anyone who needed a crutch like God was a hopeless case. Gawl stood alone, asked no favours, faced the world on his own terms. God and his angels, Satan and his demons, saints and sinners — they could all go fuck.
A middle-aged woman in tweed stepped out of the confessional. A long pause, then Fr Sebastian stuck his head out, checking to see if anyone else required his services. He spotted Gawl in the recesses of the church and his lips tightened, his face reddening above the white collar. Gawl started to wave but stopped — he’d be a fool to alert the parishioners to his relationship with the priest. Scratched his head instead. Parry disappeared back inside the confessional.
Gawl grinn ed to himself in the gloom, remembering Leeds, his introduction to Fr Sebastian Parry in a brothel. It was a gangbang. Parry stoned, naked from the waist down, sanctifying bread by dipping it between a laughing whore’s legs, passing it around a group of horny punters and giggling prostitutes, all partaking of the holy host , Parry deadly serious, praying for their souls, weeping for his own. Gawl refused the bread — he didn’t put anything in his mouth that had been in a whore’s snatch. He took Parry home afterwards. Thought about rolling him for the contents of his wallet, then thought
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