Iglesia ……………………………………… Episode 33

(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

“You don’t know what I value. And I promise you, anything you have to offer me I will do my godammdest best not to want. You can’t bribe me Slim.” But she didn’t mean it and they both knew it.

It was his turn to stare at her.

“How” she said.

“Pardon me? I am not quite sure I comprehend your meaning.”

“How, how will you do……it?”

She had stopped being quite so suddenly scared….at the prospect of getting what she wanted most….and her anger was starting to build heat out of that cold place she had gone to when she realized…very much against her will, that he did have the goods, that he did have what she wanted, that it was she who was going to have to deal. Yeah, the heat of the anger was replacing the coldness real well now, thank you. She loved her anger. This wasn’t the first time it had been the only source of warmth in her life.

And being with Paul……. the time they spent together, had been the only part of her life where she hadn’t needed that warmth.

Not that she hadn’t um…shared…. that warmth with Paul, occasionally.

“I am afraid you will just have to trust us, Iglesia. We have put considerable time and effort into all of this you know. Quite a bit of planning, we like to think that we have, as they say, covered all the bases.”

“Well I am going to need some details Slim. And something in writing. Ad there are  still some things I want on top of the basic package too, you jokers aren’t going to get off that…….what?”

He had cocked his head to one side suddenly, like a dog. Well like a dog if they made dogs that funny looking.

“WHAT?”

“I am afraid that we must be going. If you will please follow me, I am afraid we must hasten by foot, as you are not yet fit for any other means of locomocution” His accent had become even sharper and he was enunciating syllables like a machine stamping out St Christopher medals, back when there had been machines that had stamped out St Christopher medals. He was spitting out syllables like bad oysters….

He was scared!

Her moment of psychological triumph was short though, as she immediately wondered what would make a guy that she couldn’t lay a glove on scared.

He walked to one of the eight walls…and opened a door, where there wasn’t one. That is to say he pulled on the wall and part of it opened, an oblong oval doors sort of like a hatch on a ship from an old movie on the inside, but still the wall of the room on the outside. She followed him into a largish corridor, painted industrial puke green and lined with ducts and pipes and one long glaring fluorescent light fixture, hanging down the center….of a corridor that appeared to have no end.

“There are service corridors in Heaven?” she asked

“Janitors and engineers have to die too, you know” he replied, as he shut the door behind them.