Iglesia ……………………………………… Episode 30

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode and previous pertinent episode.

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There was no blood on her scalp, no cut, but there was blood in her eye. But, she wasn’t completely stupid. She got up and walked over to him, hands at her side and open to show non-hostile intent. She was lying of course, but it seemed to work, and he didn’t react to her approach. In fact he put down his teacup and picked up the tray of cakes and offered it. Instead of accepting, she made her right hand into a fist at her side, but with the index finger pointing out stiffly. She raised it slowly, not certain why she was being so cautious, since he had never actually hurt her. Huh. As he proffered the tray full of cakes, she poked him lightly in his midsection, right above the pockets of his waistcoat. He was solid, his flesh felt like and yielded like any other flesh. She poked him again, harder, just to be sure. As she withdrew her hand she shifted her right foot back slightly….and then let go with her best Bruce Lee: One Inch Punch.  

The follow through of such a short powerful punch didn’t carry her hand far, but it did carry it through his body. He stood there unperturbed, with her right arm passing through his solar plexus and her fist just protruding from his body in the back. She had a quick thought to just stand there, leaving her arm inside of him, to see if this effect was temporary and he had to re-solidify after a second or two. But it was too creepy and weird. She couldn’t feel anything in her arm, and it was starting to tingle….so she pulled it back and then took two steps backwards, instinctively dropping into a relaxed fighting stance …and mentally scratched her head.

He picked up his teacup, “We will call this lesson one then, if you are quite sure you wouldn’t like tea first? It’s very good and it is getting cold as we….speak.”

She wondered if that incredibly annoying accent was real if he was doing it just to piss her off. She shuffled quickly forward and feinted at his balls with her left hand and then immediately launched a short high roundhouse kick at his head. She hadn’t poked his head.

This time instead of vanishing or becoming insubstantial, he casually lifted his right hand to block her kick, rather gently absorbing the considerable energy it contained and not moving backward by any discernible amount. Before she could recover he extended the same right hand quicly and deftly, with the palm open, and smacked her lightly with center of his palm on the forehead. Right between the eyes. A ‘blow’ that normally would not have even rocked her head back….suddenly propelled her violently off of her feet, into the air… floating through the air for a short bit, and then when gravity took hold  smacking her whole body hard on to the floor, and even then there was still enough energy from his casual seeming tap to propel her sliding across the slick smooth surface of the golden, inlaid floor and to once again smack her head first into the base of the wall.

Hmmm.

“Lesson one sucks”

He lifted the tea cozy and put his hand on the pot, “The tea is still quite warm, should you wish to change your mind.”

She gathered herself into a tight squat and braced her back foot on the wall and pushed off hard and launched into a run, not quite sure what she would do when she covered the twenty feet or so and reached him. Then, as she was running, she  became aware that even though she had smacked her head into the wall even harder this time, it still did not hurt. Well it sort of hurt, well….she realized suddenly, it only hurt even that much because she was expecting it to hurt. Well.

“Aw fuck it,” she stopped running and walked over and picked up a cup. “So…are you God, or Mohamed, or…what?”