Oh No! The Reverend Has Killed Again

[03.29.01] » by Very Metal

"The dead," Aeris said, "even they make me sick." She sat on the roof of her church, kicking her heels over the side and wondering what she could hook her slim, bulimic crowd with later that morning. The past three weeks had been cumulatively bad, starting with the impromptu killing and going steadily downhill from there. Her guiltily optimistic sermons were emptying the church a pew at a time. Not too long ago there was almost one body to a row, ordered every week like the last, rapt with slightly apprehensive attention as she prowled the altar like a divine terrorist, ritually hijacking the church and ordering them to turn their lives around or she'd execute every mother fucking last one of them. Now the few sitting at the back were slipping away, causing the whole human structure to retreat towards the door a pew at a time.

The rot had started when she had started smiling, that much was clear. The relief rode through the draughty building like a wave: breaking on the rigid faces and softening them into doughy lumps of white, white skin which sank back on telescoping spines into spongy, unfolding petals of flesh. The bravest few leaned back. A single man crossed his arms awkwardly and dared Aeris with a glance. All at once she knew that he knew about the legs in the back. She dug what she imagined the inside of a grave would have looked like, only taking the smallest liberty when it came to the length because she had a service to get to and a curious face lured to the doorway by the sound of her spade would necessitate a second grave, the dimensions of which she could not be sure of. When she had finished, sweating and leaning back on the mound of wet earth she realised with horror that splitting the corpse into two easily-stacked pieces with the axe before her appearance was impossible. There was certainly no part of religious life that involved turning up to a ceremony while both blood-splattered and clothed. Aeris dragged the body into the hole and decided to split the difference. She covered the man up to his waist. At first she had been in dilemma as to which way up to bury him, but the image of a torso emerging grey and shocked from the church floor seemed cruel and unusual so she flipped him over and buried him legs up.

Aeris wondered what the change was when she walked in. Usually the room snapped to attention like frightened schoolchildren. She looked down at herself and realised her hands were shaking so she shipped them into the shadow behind her upright back and strode up to the altar as if she was about to reprimand it. She took hold of the thing with both hands, which was as good as solving the hand problem. Then she began speaking, and everything became apparent.

Aeris kicked a lump of moss down and watched it burst on the cracked stones below. She'd never been so embarrassed in her life. People didn't come to church to be happy, they came to be told they were slothful and wrathful and greedy and gluttonous and envious and prideful and lustful and they were going to burn forever so that they could feel guiltless about going out for the rest of the week and getting on with their slothful, wrathful, greedy, gluttonous, envious, prideful and lustful lives because they knew that they would pay for it every Sunday when she spent two cold and draughty hours reminding them of their slothful, wrathful, greedy, gluttonous, envious, prideful, lustful ways and how they would pay for them in terms just excruciating enough to make them change nothing. Which was why people were staying away, if they wanted to feel good they could save themselves the trouble and stay in bed an extra couple of hours. Matters were quickly getting out of hand. She knew she was going to have to pull something spectacular off to terrify the masses back. Simply not smiling wasn't working any more, she couldn't not smile any more, not since he was sitting there, threatening to think about the body in the back and get her arrested for it. Perhaps she would have to keep driving people away until he was the only one there, left standing out like a shipwreck at low tide, so she could kill him. All there was was to vault the six or seven rows into the centre-right of the church and land the end of her staff squarely in the centre of his head, if he wasn't secretly waiting to drive a concealed blade into her the second she tried to vault the six or seven rows into the centre-right of the church and land the end of her staff squarely in the centre of his head.

Her mind wandered to the pittance a thoroughly disrespectable gun could be got for. She might be able to kill the man for the cost of less than a thousand gil and perhaps just three fingers on one of her hands when the thing exploded. Aeris thought of him sitting there every week struggling to keep his arms folded over his chest and panicked at the image of him stuffed with a bulletproof jacket in case of just such an eventuality. And as she was picking up her fingers he'd stand up and shoot her and bury her body next to the one in the back. She immediately wondered how much a bulletproof vest would cost and how she could use one without wearing it and having it upset her proud ascetic figure which she worked just hard enough to keep from the attention of her parishoners that they couldn't fail to notice it. Apparently guns were not the answer, and a conspicuously armed priest could easily give the misleading impression that those not affiliated with the Church could wield any degree of temporal power, when it was clearly stated in a bull she had received via Archbishop Soren K. in her own handwriting that only officials of the Church could delegate absolute temporal power at the same time as conducting their affairs exclusively in the sphere of the unknowable and the eternal.

Disheartened, Aeris took herself down from the roof and thought about unleashing her half-finished 'Absolution Royal' of the teleological suspension of the ethical as she squeezed herself into her homemade clerical dress and adopted a more ambiguously religious shape. The despair passed and she renewed her conviction to save that gem for the jury. A room away her audience awaited. She slammed her staff down so it jumped with a bang and snatched it back. The report carried through the church, a scant reminder of the days before the fall; days which meant nothing now that people counted down the rest of their sentences in very private fear and trembling. She apprehensively took her place, raised her staff and in her most commanding voice proclaimed:

"All life is travesty-" before the roof shattered above her and rained down in a series of deafening crashes.

"The plate's falling!" someone screamed. "God! God! God!" The building emptied as people fled the anathema of being caught dead in a church. When the dust thinned Aeris could see the pews were deserted. A ragged hole had opened up in the ceiling, broken beams jutting in like smashed teeth. Littering the floor were roofing tiles like blank and broken tablets. The flowery patch before the altar that might once have been perfect for erecting the gallows indoors was half-buried under splintered wood. In the distance the doors slammed shut. Aeris allowed herself a smile so drawn out and drunkenly sincere she clung to the altar and gazed up in silent, self-absorbed awe at what she had called down to save her. Next week would be better. Next week would be so much better. Even He wouldn't dare interfere after this, and the rest of them would come flooding back once word got around. She could even charge them to enter because their sins were spontaneously manifesting divine retribution, and because she'd have to import real foreign wood to fix the roof like new. She was struck with a terrifying thought and darted out under the hole, squinting up to check that the plate really wasn't raining down en mass. It was still intact, as was her divinity, as far as she could see. Now, if she could knock one of those down on another sector, on somewhere as teeming and sinful was Wall Market, especially now this had put the fear of God into them... Aeris grinned in divine intoxication as something groaned pitifully beneath her feet.

"Iconoclast!" Aeris started and stood on the figure's neck, raising her staff up in her hands. She panicked and ran to the doors in a fit of pique and stuck her head out into the street. The low and level filth stretched far away. Secure that noone had seen she locked the doors and ran back to the body, lifting the debris off it and debating by which end to drag it. As she was pulling it into the back she was most annoyed that it began protesting inarticulately, she dropped the legs and, being a dealer in death and a new master at the art of grave digging, began to search for the most choice piece of dirt into which the figure could be sunk. Resting her staff against the wall she took up the spade she kept there conspicuously because no killer would ever make such a mistake, a fact which she was assured would put off even the most zealous investigator at a moment's notice and which left the device immediately at hand should her first conviction fail. The face of the spade seemed the perfect device for slamming the boy into oblivion before digging his grave with, or vice versa. Aeris enjoyed her private irony before her mind leapt to a more ambitious one. Trembling with her own genius she fled from sight to struggle from her official vestments and into her unofficial ones as hastily as her eager, shaking fingers would allow. When she returned the body was gone.

Aeris stopped to collect her thoughts, afraid she might have reflexively buried it before she changed and just overlooked that fact, either that or the body had buried itself: but if that was true then how could the shovel have got back to into its place as it had? Unless, Aeris reasoned, the dying man had had an accomplice. She underwent a brief but thorough interrogation to ascertain whether this shadowy third person was herself before seizing her staff and running into the main wing of the building. The figure, undead, was staggering towards the door.

"Suicide, eh?" Aeris shouted. He whirled around, wide eyed and confused, groping for his sword.

"What?"

"You weren't trying to commit suicide, were you?" Aeris asked, walking up to him. "Jumping through the roof of my church like that."

"Oh," he seemed to get worse before he got better. "No, no," he assured them both, shaking his head.

"Good, because if you had been then I'd have a duty to stop you jumping through someone else's roof. So, if it wasn't suicide?"

He shook his head. "Where's the other person?"

"Other person?"

"Yeah," he paused, "the... sexless one in white who was dragging me about."

"Sexless?" Aeris shouted in spite of herself, enraged and vindicated at the same time. Her pride got the best of her. Concussed and insane, she though to herself. "Ah," she feigned surprise, "the curate. Yes, she thought you were as good as dead, it's thanks to me she didn't perform the last rites." Aeris steeled herself and planted her feet among the crushed flowers like a wayward titan. "Now come on, you shouldn't be walking about, come in the back," she feverishly scanned the windows for any sign of a prying face that might discover her secret. He couldn't be allowed to leave for now.

"No, I need to get going," he told her, turning for the door. "Thanks."

"Thanks?" Aeris raged, launching herself at him and pulling his face next to hers with his collar. "I spare your life and all I get is 'thanks'?" She dragged him, shellshocked and bleeding, into the back and out of sight. "You understand, I could have done without you turning up, but since you're here you're going to help me out for the damage you've caused," suddenly she broke into a smile and wrapped her arms around him, "now, why did you fall?" Aeris whispered.

"I..." he stuttered, more oppressed by her closeness than anything else. He began to try and struggle out of her arms without her knowing it. "It was an accident, with one of the reactors."

"Oh? And why were you involved with one of the reactors?" Aeris purred.

"You're not with Shinra, are you?"

"Why? You're not one of those terrorists, are you?" Aeris laughed. He went rigid. She stopped the sound dying in her throat when it had already died in her mind. A smile cracked across her lips. "And what's your name?"

"Cloud," he blurted out, his eyes screwed shut as if he were about to be executed.

"Hello, Cloud the terrorist," she exclaimed, hastily stepping away from him and vigorously shaking his hand, "I'm Aeris the reverend, pleased to meet you."

"Err, hi," Cloud replied hastily.

"So, what'll you do now?"

He froze up before answering. "Err, I should try and get back to sector seven before too long."

"Probably not a good idea to go now, though," Aeris warned him, "especially since they'll be looking for you. And I couldn't bear to see anything happen to you. I'm involved now, Cloud."

"Well, where should I go?"

"They wouldn't look for you at my house," she promised him, smiling throughout, "you could stay with me until things quietened down. If, that is, you don't mind doing something for me in return."

He eyed her suspiciously. She frowned and he looked back at the ground. "What?"

"You haven't been here that long, have you?"

He shrugged. "Not as long as you, I'd guess."

"No," Aeris said, staring off, "you don't look like it, you've got that nice complexion. You don't know the people down here, do you? They're poor, but they're only poor in money and spirit and moral fibre. I'm quickly coming to the end of my patience with them. They don't respect what they don't fear," she paused. "How much are they paying you?"

"What?"

"Your terrorist friends. How much are they paying you?"

"Oh, fifteen hundred, two thousand," he shrugged. Aeris tapped her foot, thinking of how much he must hate himself, selling himself for so little. She nodded.

"Fair rates. How about you work for me? Three thousand, to take care of something."

"Oh?"

"I need someone killed," she stated.

"What? But... you're a priest!" Cloud exclaimed.

"Exactly. Why's that such a shock?" Aeris asked, puzzled. "Obviously I can't be seen to have anything to do with this, it'll start the wrong sort of rumours."

"I don't know," Cloud didn't seem confident enough so Aeris leant on him and slid her arms around his back again to keep him from ever being certain.

"How's it so different to what you were trying to do before? How many guards did you kill before you dropped in here? And how many people would have died if you managed to destroy the reactor? Surely this is easier. It's certainly better value for money."

"That was different," Cloud squirmed in coils of flesh and logic. "It was to stop Shinra," he parroted Barret's words without believing them.

"Oh?" Aeris grinned in triumph and buried her face in his neck. "Then why did you accept their money?" Cloud went rigid like a corpse again and didn't answer.

"Forget it," he mumbled at last, looking away from her with dim eyes.

"Fine!" Aeris screamed and slammed him against the wall. "Fine! Be like that you ungrateful little..." she shoved him with all her strength and backed away as he slid down to the floor in a crumpled pile as if his strings had been cut. Over the unmarked grave she stood thinking, Cloud didn't move, he just existed without dignity like someone had thrown him. So she couldn't kill Him: no death wish on her part and no cat's paw in Cloud. She could carry on, though, kill Cloud there and then and hide the body properly. She could probably even get the satisfaction of having the worm dig his own grave and save her the trouble before returning to her routine of weekly ritual abuse. Unless.

"Yes!" Aeris shouted, pointing a finger straight at him. "Yes!" she repeated, advancing on him as if he'd done something terribly and unforgivably right. "Yes!" she began smiling and trying to get him to his feet. "Well done! Oh, thankyou, Cloud!" she privately mocked. "Thankyou!"

"For what?" he recoiled as she threw her arms around him again.

"For showing me not to give up on people," she hung about his neck like a heavy pendulum. "Come on, we've got to sneak out of here," she told him.

"Why? Where are we going?"

"I've got to get something from my house, then you're going to take me to your friends in sector seven."

"What if I don't want to go back to them?" Cloud asked her.

"I'll come with you anyway, wherever you go, as long as it's away from here," Aeris informed him.

"But, why? I don't understand."

"I'll explain later, come on," she urged, sweeping him to his feet and further towards the back of the church where a crazy, rotting staircase led up to the roof. She began to lead him over the mounds of refuse towards the house, thinking of how she could make a name for herself outside of the slums and return held high on Cloud's shoulders as the populace struggled to light her triumphant passage into the city with handfuls of exotic, foreign and truly green greenery, bartered, fought and died for on the black market so in days she could repeat the scene again in every city on the planet until Cloud could no longer carry her and was temporarily renamed Archbishop Soren K. in order that he could deliver a bull from Pope Aeris I to the Reverend Aeris of an unnamed church in the Midgar slums on the subject of absolute and temporal powers before the Pope herself would make the long trip down from her office on the sixty-fifth floor to the place where Saint Aeris was born when the roof of her church caved in mid-service, visiting the unmarked grave in the back of the building where she was buried and where her bones still lay and overseeing the exhumation of the relics as figures around the freshly-dug grave wondered why the saint was buried in a male Shinra officer's uniform Aeris I would look skywards with open palms and with trembling conviction pronounce "A miracle!"