I rolled into Saint Lucian’s like a junk-mail confession, half–sober and twice as curious. The sanctuary’s walls were so white they felt corrosive, like bleach in your lungs. In the center of the marble floor, there she was: a nun, pinned by a length of steel chain that bit into her hips. The lock glinted, insolent, as if daring whoever came next to redeem her.
She wasn’t chanting hymns. She was muttering numbers lottery combinations, stock tips, phone numbers over and over, a deranged rosary for the damned. Her habit had been cut away, revealing lace so fine it looked like a spider’s last gift.
The buttons of her blouse were undone, framing a world of scars reassembled into something perversely sacred: a crucifix of flesh. Around her throat, a garland of broken pearls showed where she’d tried to strangle herself for mercy.
“Sweet Lord,” I whispered, but that word was already obsolete in this house of martyrs.
I crouched beside her. The tile pressed cold through my jeans, an unwelcome reminder that the real world still existed beyond these walls. She turned, eyes rimmed with something that might have been hope. Or hatred. They were both tangled.
“Help me,” she rasped. But those lips had tasted too many confessions; they trembled with hunger. “I’m no savior,” I said, lighting a cigarette. The ember flared like a tiny damnation. Smoke pooled in her hollow collarbone, coiling into the vaulted ceiling.
“They called me Sister Magdalene,” she said, voice curdling. “But that was before the prayer came alive.” “Prayer’s a bitch,” I offered. The flame guttered out. Silence claimed us like a third conspirator.
We moved her, stumbling, I guiding, and an altar rail nearly took my head off. She laughed, a weaponized sound that ricocheted against the stone. She’d been left here for days; the stench of stale incense and something fouler, a cocktail of unwashed flesh and broken vows, clung to her habit. Yet she smelled like freedom.
Outside, the world was the same: billboards blinking #Blessed and #Forgiven. But forgiveness was a currency few could afford. We ducked into the alley, where the dumpster rats gorged on sacramental wafers tossed by careless churchgoers. Sister clutched her chain like an umbilical cord; the padlock scraped across the pavement, sending sparks that looked like miniature fireworks.
“I need a phone,” she said. She’d never learned how to swipe left or right; she spoke as if touchscreen devotion were blasphemy.
I handed her mine. Her thumb hovered over the cracked screen, uncertain. Then she punched a number so fast it blurred an exorcism by digits. Her parole officer? Her dealer? I didn’t ask.
She sank against the brick, the chain wrapping her legs. Her habit’s tears exposed a tattoo: a bleeding heart pinned by needles. A map of every sin she’d ever committed.
“Tell me you’re not the damn savior,” she said, voice calmer now.
I shook my head. “I’m worse.”
She smiled, and it was like watching a saint transform into a succubus. Lips parted, revealing a glint of something metallic, maybe a piercing or a secret she carried like contraband.
“Then show me something real,” she said.
We spent the next hours flitting between holy water taps and dive bars that served communion in shot glasses. She ordered a bottle of holy wine, Merlot from Balzano, mixed with Jägermeister. And each gulp made her preach a new heresy: that God was a conspiracy, religion a dark web forum where souls sold each other short. Her laughter cracked through the haze, unhindered by shame.
I watched her transform: the nun’s habit replaced by a second skin of leather; her eyes, once hollow, now held fire. She kissed me in the back booth, as if offering absolution, her hands grazing my neck, her breath hot as a preacher’s sermon.
The world blurred outside the neon cross of a tattoo parlor, the hum of the freeway, distant sirens playing a broken lullaby. We were two heretics rewriting doctrine in real time. Flesh became scripture; sweat the only sacrament we needed.
By dawn, the alley was littered with evidence: empty vials of sacraments, shattered beads, a half-burned Bible with our names scrawled in the margins. Sister No, Magdalene leaned over me. The chain lay slack, as if it had lost its purpose.
“I used to ask God to punish me,” she said. “Turns out, He was listening.” I kissed the line of her collar, where the pearls had strangled her. She tasted of blood and cigarettes—an odd conspiracy of life and death. “I think He’s done,” I said.
She smiled, violet bruises blooming beneath her eyes. “I think so, too.”
We walked away, leaving that mausoleum of faith behind. Sirens carried on without us; morning light crept over the city like an indifferent witness. Magdalene slipped her hand into mine, the chain’s end rattling softly.
In the distance, the bells tolled not for a mass, but for our particular brand of madness. And as we disappeared into the wreckage of dawn, neither of us knew if we’d find redemption. But we both agreed: it was more fun this way.
They’ll write sermons about us someday, how we sparked a riot between sin and salvation. But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Tonight, we’re free. Free to love like lunatics, to bleed without apology, to chain ourselves only to each other.
Because sometimes, the only prayer that saves you is the one you whisper into someone else’s ear. And that, my friends, is the last confession you’ll ever need.
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- jspc ] wanton street artist [
"We fucked like zealots high on holy water laced with drain cleaner, our screams echoing through the empty pews."
