2. Something/Disfigured; Living Arrangements

2. Something/Disfigured; Living Arrangements 

Something disfigured and barely tangible. Something hard, tight, stubborn to soap & sponge and the viciously determined fingers of Dorothea McEntyre. She scrubbed at it like some animal fighting a blood infection. This tiny thing, roughly two inches by two inches. Amorphous and yet memorable. It made her heart race like a prisoner of war trapped in a bamboo cage. 

And she made an enemy of that something. She refigured the strings of its identity to be more than just mildew or filth. It almost had a face, something waiting to be named and conquered by her efforts... Of course, she was ridiculed by these efforts. They created a chorus of tiny insect voices that rose in their chatter of spectral taunting, seemingly more pronounced with every scrub of her hand and the instrument... 

She considered the Priest. Her last confession hadn't gone so well. When she thought on them, none of her confessions were redemptive or fruitful the way she'd hoped for or anticipated. No matter what she said through the sepia etched acrylic screen to the technically-anonymous face posted in silhouette behind it, no matter how vividly she described the acrid and commercial odors and the "manly physiques" of all the one-night stands and brief relationships that began in bars and supermarkets, the hard thrust of ephemeral pleasure and the empty gasp of apathetic farewells, no matter the timing inbetween confessions, the details or her personal delivery, the silhouette of the Priest remained stolid and chaste, and he simply prescribed a few more Hail, Shelley's and implored her to redirect her energy from promiscuous engagement with "horny men-folk" to her personal relationship with Lord Bazzah and His sacrifice, the Prophet and the Holy Essence that "permeates us, one and all." 

It was humiliating for Dorothea McEntyre. 

She didn't care for it in the least. 

She had this bold epiphany -- somewhat invented, but not without a truthful harmony -- to reveal something more personal yet to the Priest. That she, Dorothea McEntyre, was in fact a divine reincarnation of the Holy Mother, Shelley of Bazzledom, and that the otherworldly-seed of Prophet's 2nd Coming had taken root in the caverns of her interiority... 

And that's when he finally lost it. There was nothing to bring about modesty or self-control or the most minute sense of self-reproach within this lecherous and abjectly shameless woman. (Wasn't she the mother of the McEntyre Wild Child locked away on the Pelican Ranch for raping one of his guardians or teachers?) And while he did his best to preserve her technical-anonymity while performing his clerical duties, he told her there was nothing more to be done, that she was "absolved of all sins and trespasses from the Dawn of Creation until the last wishes of Lord Bazzah. Go home and wait on the Prophet Child. May His power reign within you." 

'Well, that's that,' she thought. 'There must be something constructive to do with my time.' 

Which there was: She was being evicted. See, through no direct fault of her own save indifference in a hostile and unnaturally political country, she was about to be one of some eight- or nine-hundred people selected for domestic evacuation of their chosen communities in order that "corrective and necessary measures be taken in the fields of research and manufacture towards America's prospects and challenges at home & abroad concerning bad hygiene, ill health and terrorist-catalysis." And then she was thanked in advance for her cooperation, and there was a computer-generated signature from New York's governor.... 

It was a not-so-bad storm of events, ultimately: She'd always kept a few loose phone numbers in her purse from the less-than-humpable men she interacted with when drinking and buying groceries. One such number, Andy Witzberger's, was in there, and he didn't live where Dorothea lived, which made him a candidate for living arrangements. She called him and he timidly answered... 

A week later she was feverishly cleaning his bathroom. 

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