The Halo Effect

51

“Have you been thinking impure thoughts?” he asked.

She answered.

“I can’t hear you.”

“No, Father,” she said, trying to talk louder. But she was confused. The days and nights were drifting into one another. She wasn’t sure if she was ever herself anymore, or if the actress was taking over all the time now. She hardly ever opened her eyes anymore. All she wanted to do was sleep.

And now she was angry that he had woken her up to go through this ritual again. Twice a day. Every morning and every night. Which was it now? Night, she thought, remembering that she could tell these things if she looked beyond him at the light. It was bluish low light, which meant day.

“Cleo?”

His voice came to her from a distance and she fought it. She hated hearing his voice. It crawled on her skin like a snake, slinking up, never losing contact, sinuous and cold. She knew if she didn’t answer him he would just get angry. And when he got angry he did not let her use the toilet.

“Yes?”

“I asked you if you have been thinking impure thoughts.”

“No, Father.”

“How have you been purging yourself of them?”

“I have been praying.”

“I think we should pray together.”

She shivered. This, too, was part of the ritual. And she hated it almost as much as his withholding her bathroom privileges. She heard the door open and felt a whoosh of colder air come in with him. He walked behind her, unlocked the handcuffs and, then holding her hands tightly, brought them in front of her, where he put the cuffs back on. It was such a relief to have her arms in front of her. She could do more with her arms like this. Her shoulders ached. Not her shoulders, not her hands. The actress’s shoulders ached. She had stepped in. She had to step in. Because of what he was going to make her do. Cleo wouldn’t stay for this.

He unzipped his fly and pulled his erection out, placing it in her hands, slipping it up through her fingers so that he was ensconced in her hands as he would have been if he was inside her. But this was better, she thought. Less disturbing, less repugnant.

She shut her eyes and started to move her hands up and down his shaft, swaying just a little, moving to a silent rhythm. He moaned. Once. Twice. Again. She hurried her movements.

“I don’t want to do this to you,” he said. He always said this. Now he would tell her that he loved her.

“I love you.”

Next he would talk about how this impurity was only because of her impurity.

“If you were pure I would not want to defile you like this.”

She knew all the lines. They had performed this play so many times that she had lost track. He wanted…no, he needed to believe that this was something she forced him to do. And she didn’t care. Her hands were in front of her now, her shoulders relaxed.

“You know what I want?” he asked.

She nodded and opened her mouth, positioning it so that when he came, he would shoot up and into it.

“It is holy,” he intoned.

She nodded, moved her hands faster. When he started to talk about the religious value of what she was doing to him, she knew he was getting closer.

“You will be blessed. I will be blessing you. It will make you pure.”

She nodded.

“Cleo? Do you believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost?”

“Yes, Father.” This was confusing her. She was an actress. Her name was not Cleo. She didn’t know why he kept calling her that. Her name was-

“Can you feel the spirit enter you? Can you feel how you are being cleansed? When there is no more that is impure about you, when all the filth is gone, then I will be able to make love to you the right way. The way you want. The way that will make you come, too. You want that, don’t you?”

The woman wearing the nun’s habit, with her wrists handcuffed together, who was being starved, the woman who used to be Cleo and wore designer clothes and expensive shoes, and had men pay her enough money so that she had to find ways to invest it, nodded to the man who was the one she had been wrong about.

“Tell me what you want, Cleo. Tell me what it will be like. Tell me.”

“I want you.”

“You want to make love to me?”

“Yes,” the actress answered. It was the same drill again.

“You want to make love to me?”

She moved her hands faster. “Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Yes, I want to make love to you. On a bed, with you naked, with your arms around me, kissing me and loving you in holy matrimony.” All he needed were those two sentences. They worked every time. She shut her eyes again and tried to move away at the last minute, lest the semen get near her mouth or on her skin.

Despite her professionalism, she had lost her ability to do her job. And he knew it. And two seconds later he hit her face with the back of his hand so hard she fell backward.

“You slut,” he hissed.

Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back. If she allowed herself to cry she would not be able to stop.

Cleo knew that her life hung by a thread. Somehow she had to convince this mad monk that she no longer was a sexual being. That she was cleansed. But how?

He knelt a few feet from her and prayed.

“Mary, mother of God, come to me now in the hour of my need. Teach me how to teach your child to void her mind of the filth that smears it with piss, shit and vomit. Teach me how to wipe her clean, how to make her worthy of your spirit and grace. Teach me how to teach her to shine so that she will come to me. Whole. Intact. A virgin like you, like you…like you, so that she can be mine.”

And then he got up and walked out of the confessional. The screen on the door went black. She was shut off again.

There was silence, and then she heard a phone ringing. She closed her eyes and hoped he would come back soon to clean her off. She hated to be dirty.