disciple (ch. 2)
by Tom Stuckey
2
After months of gruelling discovery about Thomas, it was time for us to go on holiday. I had taken the brochures that he had ordered on Rome, and no doubt he would have ordered more, so we would be looking at these exact same pictures. It lit my heart to know that I would be following this unknown Saint through landscapes, such as The Vatican City, The Colosseum, and The Sistine Chapel. My open ticket was expensive, but I had recently inherited enough money from my parents’ deaths, so I didn’t have to worry about working any more. Steve, my manager at Heal Farm Meats, looked like a colicky baby when I told him that I wouldn’t be returning, indefinitely. I actually thought he was going to cry, but then he bottled it up and decided to make a snide comment instead, something about always being a cunt. I decided not to tell him that his wife was fucking the delivery boy, that I sometimes got to watch when they left the curtains open, having decided to follow in the footsteps of my St. Thomas and not gossip. I have never understood why I was so disliked; it seemed to me an unfair dismissal from society’s bosom. I was average looking, an average worker, average lover, average tax bracket; I had made it my mission to be mediocre at as much of life as possible. Maybe, they sensed I was trying too hard at this; it could also be that I truly believed I had a gift, that I could tell peoples secrets, and if I decided to, I could see into their souls. For these reasons, I spent a large portion of my life alone, and there are things that you develop, keen senses, when all you have is the thoughts that crawl around inside your head for company. Rome would be different, however; it would have light, golden light, that is not scared to touch the skin. Here it hides away behind the clouds for most of the year (too long!) as all the sounds of the abattoir fill the hills. There is only so much soul searching a man can do under these conditions before he breaks.
Enough about me though. Let me tell you about my Saint. He painted, mostly women of various kinds, and always seemed to find the most beautiful elements that brought them to life. They always seemed comfortable with him, and sometimes they would pose nude, voluntarily offering their most vulnerable secrets. There was one woman whom he painted on a regular basis. I didn’t like her; she was overweight and had a habit of eating whilst he painted, but the paintings always turned out well, showing the sadness in her eyes every time. I bought the last painting he did of her, in fact, entitled Central, and it was a nude that showed her laying on her stomach in an empty park with her hands reaching down her front, her bottom slightly raised in the air. He made her look almost Angel-like with birds looking down at her from the trees. When he wasn’t painting, he did charity work at the soup kitchen and didn’t even flinch when the hag of a woman, who ran the place, needled him all day with little putdowns. In fact, one late night when I was taking a walk with him through the town, which was sleeping peacefully save a few boisterous drunks; he actually had wished a group of men well as they stole his coat and his wallet in a mugging, leaving one member of the gang in a state of shock, so much so that he could not move. All of this was threaded together with regular attendance at churches, but not on Sundays when the hoards were doing their once a week keep me out of hell God visit. No, he would go at irregular times, never to the same church twice. I must of attended a hundred with him, each one more Divine. Sometimes at night, when they seemed to be closed, he went and they would be opened. On those nights, it was me and him, with the shadows of God’s darker side for company. He made love, too, with men and women, and all of them ended in climax; his penis was like a gladiators forearm and—without a doubt—the most magnificent gland I have ever seen. None of these people, however, had seen what I had in him, or at least not fully, so (for now) he was only Saint Thomas to me, and that felt pretty special.
I can’t sleep as I recall all this; there has been so much already, but I must, for tomorrow we go to Rome.
Closing my eyes, the images flash before me like cars on full beam at night, and I already know that I won’t sleep, or may never again, and that this must be one of the conditions of being a true Disciple, who has seen a portal into another world, so I video call Lucy, and she is wearing nothing and shows me her pussy almost immediately. By all means, it is aesthetic, slender and tight as she runs her wetting fingers over it, holding the lens up her stomach so her breasts come into view like a distant mountain range; but I don’t feel anything, just the coaxed blood of an aging cow who has been milked so many times that it just does not care anymore. It is not grazing in the mountains, cannot smell the living air, and will never again see the outside of the cage again.
*Read Chapter 2 of Tom Stuckey’s new novella Disciple coming on February 3 2025, at 6PM CST.
Photo of Tom Stuckey
BIO: Tom is a writer from Devon in England. His work can be found at A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bristol Noir, Nut House Press, and Pulp Magazine. He is the author of The Canary in the Dream is Dead and The Sun Marches upon Us All. Learn more about Tom Stuckey at www.tomstuckey.com.