The Bighead Read Free

foot of his spartan rectory bed.
    God, I beg of thee, he thought, I’m so
scared! Protect me!
    Perhaps God did, then, because the
fear, which made the priest feel as though he were drowning in a
hot tarn, subsided.
    But the vision…
    Christ…
    The aftervision didn’t subside just
quite yet.
    The two nuns stood looking down,
chuckling munchkin-like. In a patina of dim morning light, they
grinned. Their eyes were dull as death, their mouths like thin
slashes in gray meat. Then they lifted their black clerical
skirts—
    God in Heaven…
    — and began to
urinate.
    Right there on the rectory carpet, in
hot, steady steams, their fingers forked against their pubic
mounds, baring tender, tiny urethras…
    Their high, witchy chuckles faded, as
so did their images, as the priest came fully awake.
    Fuck, the priest thought. Fuckin’-A…
    But there was something else, only for
a split-second.
    An image lingering in the space of a
blink.
    A black maw stretched wide as a
garbage-can lid, full of teeth sharp as ice-picks…
     
     
    (II)
     
    “ Well, it’s nice to meet
you,” Charity said once she’d loaded her bags into the tiny trunk
and got in.
    “ Nice to meet you too,” the
blond woman said. For some reason, Charity couldn’t remember her
name. Jennifer? Jessica?
    “ And I like your car,”
Charity added, for lack of anything else. It was a bright-red
Miata, a two-seat convertible. It was nice. Expensive too,
probably. One day I’ll own a car like
this, Charity swore to herself. Once I get my degree…
    “ It was great that you put
that ad in,” the blond woman said. “It was perfect. I mean, how
many people need to take trips to the sticks?” Then she paused, her
face tensed. “I’m sorry. You’re from around there, right? I didn’t
mean to say that your home is the sticks. It’s just a figure of
speech.”
    “ Don’t worry about it,”
Charity said. The little car bolted off onto the beltway, and at
once her long, curly dark hair lifted in the breeze. “It is the sticks. Simple
people, simple ways. Actually, it has it’s advantages.”
    “ Tell me about it!” The
blond woman erupted, then honked at a black Fiero that cut her off
on the exit. “I’ll bet they don’t have people who drive like
that!”
    Charity smiled. High-strung, she
determined very quickly. And… Jerrica!
That’s her name! Jerrica Perry. “So… I
don’t quite remember. You’re a writer?”
    “ I’m a journalist for
the Washington Post, ” Jerrica corrected behind the padded steering wheel. “Local
Section. Been there four years.”
    “ Wow. A newspaper
writer.”
    “ It’s no big deal. But
every now and then one of the senior editors’ll assign you a good,
high-paying piece. That’s what happened to me. They gave me a
three-part article on Rural Appalachia. Good money,
too.”
    Charity wondered how much. Good money
to Jerrica was probably outstanding money to Charity.
    “ So what’s this about your
aunt?” Jerrica asked, heading up the beltway toward the Richmond
exit.
    “ Well, she kind of raised
me, up until I was eight. Then…” Why should she be embarrassed
about the truth? “Her boarding house ran out of money, and I got
put in an orphanage.”
    “ Jesus, that’s
tough.”
    “ It wasn’t too bad,”
Charity lied. Actually it had been quite tough. She felt like a misfit
to the world. But why go over all that with a woman she’d just met
today? She’d turned out all right.
    “ I got out at eighteen, got
two jobs, got my G.E.D. Now I’m working at the University, and I’m
taking night classes, because they pay half of the tuition. I want
to be an accountant.”
    “ Sounds good. Good money.”
Everything, for whatever reason, with Jerrica, was
money.
    “ Anyway,” Charity went on,
“my aunt invited me up, and since I don’t have a car yet, I put the
ad in the papers.”
    Jerrica lit a cigarette, it’s plume of
smoke sailing away. “And your aunt, you say she runs a boarding
house?”
    “