Part Twenty-One

Twenty-One
I jumped down from the altar and stood facing the floating candle, trembling, holding my breath, scared to death.
“Take a deep breath. Your mind is racing, trying to figure out where you’ve heard this voice before. It’s an itch in the back of your mind, but you can’t quite reach it.”
The candle floated toward me in a painstakingly slow sway from left to right and back. I could see the glint in her eyes now, but still it did not come to me who she might be. The trembling in my hands began to subside as I realized it was most likely not God descending the heavens to smite me. I took a deep breath. So, if not God, then who?
“You’ve decided that you’re safe from God for now, but you still don’t understand what’s going on.”
The candle moved ever closer to me, down the long aisle of the church, a midnight wedding procession for which the choir had forgotten to show. I could see now the ends of her hair wrapped neatly around her shoulders framing the candle that she held before her. The smoke curled up into the darkness of the church like a long spirit.
“You can’t stop staring. Your instinct tells you to run, but you just can’t stop staring. Every moment the candle moves closer, another clue is revealed to you, and you know that in just a few more moments you’ll have your answers. Keep staring.”
And I did. How could I not? Closer and closer the candle came, and more and more of her face and torso were revealed to me. Her chin, her nose, the full shape of her eyes around the glint of the candle, her shoulders, her coat, until finally she stood before me smiling, holding the candle up closer to her face.
“I’ve been following you, Labelman.” She blew out her candle. In that utter and unredeemable darkness, I could feel her standing beside me now, leaning against the altar as I was, and staring out into the void. “You’re probably thinking that you recognize me now.”
And suddenly, without the distraction of the candle and the possibility of being smote by the hand of God, I did. The girl from the bus. “My God,” I said, stepping away from her, not evening thinking about the phrase. “You’ve been following me?”
“Yep,” she said, loud enough that her higher-pitched voice echoed across the church. “Ever since you woke up on my curb.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You’d like to think it’s impossible, but let’s face it, it was quite easy really. You weren’t paying attention to the people around you, at least not as people.”
I huffed and stood silent. I had no idea what she might do next. I moved a few more inches away, thinking I might just slink off into the darkness and leave her there. The truth was, she scared me, and I wanted nothing more to do with her.
“You’d like to think you could get away from me,” she echoed again in the darkness. “You’d like to think I couldn’t keep following you. But that curious boy inside you won’t let you get away.” I heard the click of a button as she turned on her own flashlight and swept its beam across the church until she found me standing under the feet of the Blessed Virgin. “I suppose it won’t do me any good to scream for help in here either. Whatever you’re thinking about doing to me, I’m completely helpless to defend myself.”
“I was thinking of doing nothing more than leaving you alone,” I said. She shined the light directly into my eyes. I could see nothing but the light glaring.
“I suppose you think you’re being coy with your little lies. I know what you’re up to. You’re planning on coming up behind me, wrapping your arms around me and having your way with me right here in the church.”
I stared into the light and found that I could do nothing more. Hypnotized again by her evocative speech, I knew that I would probably do whatever it was she was going to tell me I would probably do next.
“You’re wondering what to do. You’re in limbo, stuck between the instinct to run and the call of the wild. You’re probably going to move toward the light, that being the only choice left for a poor rabbit caught in the oncoming beams.”
I moved toward her, toward the light that she kept pointed at my eyes.
“You have the urge to remove your coat, I bet.”
I did, and I did. And I stepped closer to her.
“You’ll probably ask me to take my coat off too.”
I did, and she did. And I stepped closer to her.
“You’re thinking now, ‘What the hell’, and deciding to take off all of your clothes. At least, I’d imagine that’s what you were thinking.”
I was, and I did. And stepped up to her, the light glaring into my eyes from under my chin. I could barley make out her face through the glaring light, but I could see that she had that smug grin on her face again.
“I suppose I’ll have to take off my clothes too, since you’re bound to make me anyway.”
I was, and she did. She set her flashlight butt-down on the altar, and the light saturated the air around us causing an uncanny glow in the room. My eyes adjusted as she disrobed, and when she stood before me, tossing her underwear over her shoulder, I could see now that all of her labels, my beautiful work, had been scrubbed away, and her skin was raw and pink like a baby mouse.