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Reverend Rick

"Sacrifice is more than just a word," said Reverend Rick. He despised the platitude, but his congregation only understood platitudes. These platitudes had long since lost any meaning to them except that they were familiar and therefore comforting to people who had worked for long hours, which had left them far too tired to labor over new ideas.

"What is sacrifice?" Rick asked rhetorically. Today, he would use a common ploy to try to get his congregation to use their minds just a little. He looked out and saw a young man in the pews, who had a rebellious and sour look about him. Those were ripe territory for conversion. Just a few thoughts of peace, and how they blossomed. "Come on, Sean," he said, "you can speak."

Sean sat up from his slouch, and he realized he was being stared at by a lot of people. He crossed his arms defensively, and his eyes darted from side to side. "I guess it's giving up something," he said weakly, his voice sounding tinny and uncertain.

Rick smiled and nodded. "Okay, but you can give something up for a bad reason. What makes sacrifice different?"

The poor youth shifted about miserably as he cudgeled his mind to give an answer that might appease the reverend. He sighed heavily, and he stammered, "I guess...I guess if you think it helps someone else?"

"Like helping your school-mate get a girl? Like helping a rich man get more rich?"

Sean's face flushed angrily. "Hell, no!" he snarled. "I mean...uh, I am sorry. I guess, I mean...I know that ain't right. It's sacrifice if it's right, like if it's proper."

"That's getting so close, Sean! Anyone want to help?"

An older member of the congregation, apparently a scholarly sort, piped up, saying nasally, "Based on the proto-European root, you would think it refers to keeping up or establishing some kind of a treaty or agreement."

"Precisely," said Rick. "When we make a sacrifice, we are not giving something for free. We're not throwing something away. We are really bringing things back to a more fair balance. We are making things how they should have been all along."

"So what about giving to the poor?" said Sean. "A lot of them have never done anything to help others."

Rick shook his head. "Many of them never will, I'm afraid, but isn't their homelessness or their hunger an indignity, itself, to what they ought to be? Is it right for people to be hungry?"

"I suppose not," said Sean, "but is it right for a rich man to not have as much money as he would like?" He seemed to think this was clever.

Rick sighed. "Let's all read the Parable of the Talents, perhaps, and then we'll meditate on it for a while. For the record, I disagree with the idea that having more than enough of a blessing makes it more of a blessing...unless the wealthy man can multiply it for others, which he doesn't always do." He continued his sermon from there, going into case examples and short anecdotes. He felt a little bit satisfied when Sean started to laugh lightheartedly at some of his jokes, and even though Sean had never admitted publicly that Rick had proved any point, Rick nevertheless felt that he had made a friend.

Later that day, long after the service, Rick had a conversation with Sean, and Sean confided in Rick that he had been having some awkward conflicting thoughts.

"Look," Sean said to Rick, "I've been reading the earlier parts of the scriptures, and all I see is war. People are being put to death for just having different beliefs, like in the Book of Numbers...Chapter 31 speaks of vengeance over some sort of deception, and I asked Aunt Rita about it. She said to me, these were not people but demons, but then I pointed out that the Chosen People had forced the little girls to become their wives. This is really weird...I mean...how do you justify this?" Sean looked very disturbed and disgusted as he recounted this conversation.

"And you see this as wrong, right?" asked Rick.

"Yes!" Sean cried. "It's evil!"

"And how do you know it's evil?" asked Rick.

Sean paused, and he couldn't form an answer.

Rick pressed on. "Come on...why isn't it right that the victorious tribe should not claim their right as conquerers over a defeated people? Aren't they better for being stronger?"

Sean looked sick. "That's...that's horrible" he whimpered.

"Let me confide something in you now, Sean," Rick said gently.

Sean nodded numbly.

"I am an atheist," Rick admitted.

Sean's eyes shot open, and he started to stutter again. "But you just...you just said all those things, all those things about miracles and the healing of the sick, and you were really into it...and it's all a lie?" he stared at Rick, disbelieving.

Rick shook his head. "I know that certain things are right because I love those people, who are my congregation," he said. "I teach them what I hope is healthy for them to think is right."

"But then how do you know anything is right? Like you said..."

"I don't know," Rick said grimly. "I have a life experience, and my life experience has left me feeling a certain way about things. I don't know that the way I feel is necessarily right. I hope it is. It's just that all of these investigations we fight over--about what is wrong and what is right--is really a complete mess, when you get right down to it. It's all a mess."

"Or maybe you are a mess," Sean said cynically, seeming like he wanted to leave.

"I am," said Rick. "Perhaps the fact that I think all of us are a mess doesn't change that. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Am I wrong about that?" He looked at Sean intently.

Sean stopped trying to make his departure, and he shook his head in the negative after pausing for thought for a while. "Let me tell you about my life at home," said Sean. "I'm a bigger mess than you. I know I am."

Dr. Matlock

The alley was still there the next evening, around the time that the sun was setting on a cloudy evening. People proceeded up and down the street, their heads down as they hurried through the dangerous area in the waning hours. Those who carried firearms openly clutched them in their hands as their hunched forms fled over what was perceived as a war zone.

Dr. Matlock, himself, was wrapped in a tattered trenchcoat he had bought from a thrift store, his face smudged with grease-paint to make himself look like he had been sitting there homeless for months in the alley, pretending to be a common begger. It was a crazy disguise, but nobody really noticed a begger: they were criminals like any other in the area, and they were the least harmful as far as anyone could tell.

As he waited, a half-feral dog came and lay down next to him, scratching and licking itself. As Matlock watched, the dog shamelessly enticed himself to form an erection, displaying it proudly to the passer by, and lowered his lips over it to pleasure himself, slurping loudly for his disgusted audience. He was a dog, though, and that's what dogs did.

The twilight set in, and the dog curled up next to Matlock to sleep. Instinctively, Matlock reached out a hand to lay over the poor brute, feeling sympathy and a sense of kinship toward this creature who was lower than a savage. The poor brute was probably infested with lice and vermin, being very dirty.

"You and I are both devils," Dr. Matlock said.

The dog nodded. "Yeah."

The man giggled, realizing he had found one of those dumb, unskilled mimic dogs. It was amazing how many words they could learn, it was said. There were urban legends of ones who could carry on a conversation, actually...

"I could do you," said the dog as Matlock stroked his fingers through the animal's fur. The statement came out of the blue, seeming oddly coherent. It wasn't anything that Matlock had said. The context was uncertain, but could it be...?"

"For flea meds, for flea meds. I need flea meds, just a twenty. Please..." the dog insisted while pawing at the trenchcoat, which Dr. Matlock had realized as he had sat there was also infested with some sort of mite.

With his face flushing as people continued to scurry by, Dr. Matlock shrugged his shoulders in such a manner as to let the opening in front of the trenchcoat part a little bit. Suspecting what the dog intended to do, he loosened his trousers, not even believing what he was about to let happen with people passing by in both directions. Some were quickening their step in order to get away from the brutish scene, but in this vile area, there was little chance of law enforcement coming through.

The dog's muzzle found Dr. Matlock's flaccid penis, and he licked it a few times, bringing it slowly to life. It had been kept relatively clean with a mint and kelp wash that Dr. Matlock himself owned a regional patent on, and it came to life with surprising ease under the dog's attentions. Full and soft lips worked around the member, pumping up and down and slurping audibly.

Dr. Matlock, at some point, leaned back on his hands, unconsciously letting the dog's work show where it could be seen as he stared in astonishment. Groaning, his toes started to point, and his breath quickened. He gasped as he almost orgasmed a few times, but even as the abortive orgasms faded, the dog's magic lips lovingly coaxed him back hard again, breathing heavily and stroking his muzzle determinedly while kneading Dr. Matlock's inner thighs with his dextrous forepaws.

It wasn't long before Dr. Matlock shot his load, and as his seed spluttered onto the dog's tongue, he instinctively held its head like a dear thing over his crotch, whimpering softly. At this point, there was no use in pretending he hadn't been watched by the passerby, and he ignored them pointedly. Fuck them. They couldn't understand.

After a while, he fumbled in his pocket for a couple of twenties, and the dog took the wadded currency in one paw and stood up, looking oddly like a gorilla...or a brutish man...as one forepaw lay fisted upon the ground like a hand.

Instead of leaving, though, the dog tossed his head toward the alley. "That was your test. You are ready. Come this way if you want to live," the dog said.

Bittersweet and Mrs. Angelson

The innate drive to live was really the only thing that held Mrs. Angelson together. Her body was badly ravaged by the illicit substances that she had been using to try to fight the disease that had spent the past five years reducing her body to ruin. Her spirit was utterly broken at this point, but with a sense of despairing of all else, she continued to douse herself with the poison, listening to the machine whir its sinister whir. And click.

"Whir, click-click."

"Whir, click-click."

"Whir, click-click."

"Whir, click-click."

Each cycle brought renewed feelings of weakness and despair. The chemicals ravaged her throughout her body, affecting her brain, her organs, everything. She would throw up later, probably with a gushing of blood, and she would shit blood. She was lucky not to just be shitting blood and vomiting up feces, really. "Pathetic" had taken on a new meaning.

Bittersweet lay her head on Mrs. Angelson's lap, listening to the rumble of her lower intestine. She would often press her paws carefully in a certain place, careful not to use too much force, and that would stimulate them to move in spite of the opiate that tended to impair their proper functioning. For Mrs. Angelson's bowels to lock up would be death, and it was as simple as that. That was the greatest peril. A blockage would result in her organs tearing themselves apart as they went into death-spasms, and the already intense internal bleeding, from the poison, would get worse.

"I am dying," Mrs. Angelson said weakly.

Bittersweet shook her head. She knew it might happen...would almost certainly happen...but it wasn't going to happen because she let it happen. The panda collie had vowed, to herself, that she was going to do what she could until the end.

After a while, Mrs. Angelson nodded off to sleep, even as the IV pump kept working.

The panda collie hadn't been fed, in the normal manner, by Mrs. Angelson for a long time. Instead, Bittersweet had been raiding the kitchen pantry for whatever stores were available, willing to eat canned goods that had been pickling in brine for longer than was really healthy.

Fortunately, there were some tomato preserves left, and there was some basmati rice. If she cooked the rice in a can of chicken broth and an added can of water, then that and some spices would make a somewhat edible repast. Mmmm, was that some powdered lemon zest in the back? Ewww...moldy. She quickly threw it out. Yuck.

She did what she had to in order to survive, and that was all.