Iglesia ……………………………………… Episode 43

 

(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

Abe hadn’t met very many women in his life, the women in the village were grownups, the girls that he had gotten to know had all been longtime companions and had just really started turning into women. A Journey which mystified him back then, as he watched his friends change and grow and blossom in ways that were delightful, but disturbing to the equilibrium and mysterious to his simple male mind….and when he had got to The Center, well. That was a whole different world. In so many ways. He was sure that there had been liaisons there, as there were women operatives, but he had been, in retrospect, afraid of them on many, many levels.

His few visits to the company’s “Comfort House” on the base had been less than comforting, though they did relieve certain pressures.

So it was not really surprising that he found himself sitting on the cold concrete floor of the service corridor under a ton of bricks and with a hole the size of the Maginot Line through his being.  

His eyes were closed so that he could see Her more clearly in his minds eye. His nostrils were open, still hoping for another whiff of her scent, a scent he hadn’t noticed until it had wafted back to him on the breeze that her passage had stirred. Now it filled his nose and his mouth and he shuddered with every breath. His ears longed to hear Her voice, knowing it would be like bird song and Beethoven all at once. The skin on his arm twitched when he imagined Her hand on it. And goosebumps were there as he saw that hand being painfully drawn away as she walked on by through his dumbstruck mind, just as she had walked by him on the road, that wonderful road…his own hands shook at the thought of touching Her. He felt cold, but he was sweating. And what was left of his heart was beating so fast and so loudly that….

Slap.

Rogers slowly came into focus.

Shit.

The world was back, the painful world where She was not only married, but gone. And at the moment its foreground was filled with a completely exasperated and quite annoyed looking Rogers. What a completely horrendous trade off! It was patently unfair. He tried to retreat to the world where SHE existed at least as a memory, but Rogers would not be denied. Apparently he had finished his tea.

He had Abe by the scruff of the neck now, and had actually lifted Abe’s whole body off of the floor before Abe could react enough to unfold his legs and bring them shakily beneath himself. 6’2″ 220. And he had done it effortlessly. Abe was actually able to spare enough blood from his bleeding heart to blush when Rogers started to pull him down the corridor by his ear.

Rogers did not release him either, as he opened another hatchway door and led Abe through it. Abe’s senses were apparently returning a bit finally, since it took him hardly any time at all to realize they were now underwater.