Naked Candice, still lying on the floor of Agape's study that Sunday morning after the party, woke up about ten minutes after Camilla had laid Candice's dress over her body to cover it. Nigrovum almost automatically relieved Candice of her hangover and discomfort from all the drugs she'd done the night before. She looked over to her left and saw Father Josiah still asleep on the couch. Remembering how she, in her stoned stupor, had originally thought he was Agape in the black shirt and white undershirt, she now felt horrified and embarrassed about what she'd done with him. Hoping he wouldn't wake up and see her, she got up and quickly put the dress on.
"My God," she whispered. "I fucked the priest--
eww!
"
She went over to the door connecting the study with the living room and opened it. She saw Agape lying asleep on the floor next to the coffee table and his chair: his groin was covered in come; she could easily surmise what had happened. She gasped, unable to say anything. What she'd done with the priest was nothing compared to what Camilla had obviously done!
I can't look her in the eyes,
Candice thought;
I'm getting out of here, now!
She grabbed her shoes and put them on, got her purse, and quietly went out the front door.
A sob came out of her mouth with every step she took on the sidewalk back to her apartment; by the time she was in her room, her face was drowning in tears. She immediately went for her heroin.
****************
Five minutes later, Father Josiah woke up, falling off the couch in Agape's study. He looked at his watch: it was about 9 AM. He had only two hours to get to the church and do his homily, and he was hardly in any condition to do anything other than feel completely awful! Overwhelmed by the hangover he had, as well as his body aches from the ecstasy he'd unwittingly consumed with his whiskey, he could only wish the pain away with all his will. Amazingly, he did wish it away: the discomfort all vanished within a half minute.
"As little as I deserve Your aid, thank you, Lord," he said. Had he remembered drinking Camilla's come the night before, and had he known what special healing things were swimming around in it, he'd have thanked Nigrovum instead.
He went through the door leading into the living room, looking for his shoes. Seeing sleeping Agape bathed in come on the floor as Candice had seen him, Josiah inevitably came to the same shocking conclusion as she.
"Camilla, no!" he whispered, then quickly put on his shoes and quietly went out the front door and to his car. He drove home as quickly as he could, impatient to get into his bathroom and take a shower. When he got into the shower stall and turned on the water, he sighed in relief to feel the warm water pouring on his chest. As he lathered the soap in his hands, he thought,
If only this bathing could clean my sinful soul as well as it can my body.
****************
Finally, after having sat on her bed for several more minutes, still shaking with fear and shame, Camilla decided to leave her bedroom, go downstairs, and face the consequences of what she had done with her father. When she'd given her father his black shirt to wear over his white undershirt on Saturday night, she conveniently hadn't thought much about it; now, however, she knew she'd done so deliberately to fool herself when she would get stoned later. She'd made her hangover disappear automatically upon waking up: if only she could have used Nigrovum to erase her guilt the same way.
When she got downstairs and went into the living room, she noticed neither Candice's shoes, nor those of Father Josiah, lying anywhere. Candice's purse was also no longer lying on the coffee table, where Camilla remembered having seen it when she got Candice's dress to lay it on her naked body in the study. Camilla went into the study: they both obviously had left. There was also no doubt that they both had seen Agape with her come all over his pants, a come that only she gushed.
They knew what she'd done.
It was now imperative that Camilla not let her father know.
Using Nigrovum to keep Agape asleep, she rushed into the kitchen, filled a pail with soapy water, and got a cloth. She hurried back into the living room and began scrubbing her come off the floor as best she could; she also gently wiped his pants, getting as much of it off as she could. Resigned to the fact that she couldn't get him any cleaner, she took the pail and cloth back into the kitchen and poured the water down the sink; after putting the pail and cloth away, she returned to the living room. She then used Nigrovum to make her father hear gentle birdsong by his ears, waking him up.
"Oh," he said, rubbing his eyes and sitting up, "I feel terrible." Wanting the pain to go away as Josiah had, he unconsciously used Nigrovum to rid himself of it. Within seconds, his discomfort was gone, and he had no idea he had the ability to make it go away. "I
felt
terrible, I should say. Suddenly, I'm more or less 100% again. How have I been able to erase pain like that, just by wishing it gone? Just like Monday morning, the aches just disappeared in seconds. How?"
"The power of positive thinking, Daddy?" she asked, faking a weak smile.
If only Nigrovum could make my shame disappear in seconds,
she thought.
"And how'd I get all wet?" he asked, getting up.
"I-I cleaned you up, Daddy," she said. "You spilled your drink all over your lap, and on the floor."
"But I don't smell like bourbon," he said, bending down and sniffing himself. "It smells like...oh, I don't wanna say. I had sex with someone, didn't I? Who? I was so drunk, I don't remember. Did you see who, Camilla?"
"I-I-I don't kn-know either, Daddy," she said in a shaky voice. "I was pretty wasted, too." She backed away a bit in fear.
"It was Candice, wasn't it? As attractive as she is with that new black hair, I can't let her go on seducing me like that when I'm drunk. I'm afraid I can't allow your friend to come here anymore, Camilla. Sorry. I've been cheating on Carrie, and I love her too much to want to do that. God, what do you do about that kind of guilt?"
Oh, Daddy, you don't know the half of it,
Camilla thought. Afraid to look Candice in the eye after knowing that she knew what Camilla had done, she then said, "I agree about Candice, Daddy. She's a bad influence; she shouldn't come here anymore. She does too many hard drugs."
"I'm glad you agree she's a bad influence, sweetie," he said, putting his arm around her and kissing her on the forehead. She feared his touch as much as she wanted it. "You know what a good influence is? Church. Let's take showers, eat breakfast, and go. Maybe Father Josiah will have something inspiring to say to make us feel better. Speaking of him, did he get home OK? He may have had a little too much to drink last night, too."
"Oh, he l-left OK," she said. Now she had to face him and one of his sermons, assuming he'd be fit to preach that day.
Did he--I hope--ask another priest to replace him, or did he have enough Nigrovum in him to know how to make himself feel better?
she wondered. She would soon find out.
Agape used the ground floor bathroom to take his shower, and Camilla went upstairs to take hers. In the bathroom and taking off her dress, she just kept shaking. Her mind was torn in two: she was terrified and drowning in shame, but also burning with desire for her father; for she remembered that their fuck had been the most electrifying lay she'd ever had! The temptation to commit incest with him would be too great to resist, and Nigrovum just made the desire all the stronger. No cock had ever made her feel that good. Her problem, however, wasn't merely about temptation to lust.
For the first time in her life, she knew the agony of being in love. Her choice of a love object was all the more agonizing in its perversity. A girl as sexy and desirable as Camilla was could have had any man, and she wanted the one man forbidden her.
Naked in the shower stall with the warm water raining down on her, she remembered Ravinder's theory that Nigrovum was brought by the solar winds into the Earth's atmosphere; then it came down to Earth in the rain. It travelled in moisture, apparently: water, come, piss, the moisture in shit, blood, sweat, or saliva. She'd rained the come of her desire on Vancouver grass, and some Nigrovum entered her body, giving her the power to make, potentially, all of her desires come true. She'd certainly made this shameful one a reality.
She could make her physical injuries go away; it could make her hangovers go away; it could make her fatigue go away. Could it make her shame go away, too?
She could visualize all kinds of things and make them come true: could Nigrovum help her have Agape, too? Could she make him want her as much as she wanted him? Could they have a sexual relationship free of guilt feelings? Could that advanced extra-terrestrial technology find a way to invalidate conventional morality, allowing her to commit incest with her father, with no trace of shame? Did she dare try to use her power thus?
****************
Sitting at the front pew with Agape at Mass, she kept shaking, seeing Father Josiah's eyes and knowing that he knew what she had done with her father. She tried to allay her fears by reminding herself that he was guilty of scandalous things, too, so she didn't worry about him telling anyone. Still, he knew, and Candice knew, and that was torment enough for her.
His choice of a topic for his sermon did little to ease her nerves.
"Sex is a gift from God," he said in his homily. "It is to be enjoyed only within the context of marriage and the raising of a family. It was never intended for the free, unrestrained pursuit of pleasure, as so many people misuse it. What I say to you isn't mere prudery: much human suffering is caused by so-called 'free love'. When the flames of uncontrolled sexual desire are fanned--" now he was looking straight at Camilla, "it leads to such sins as adultery,
incest
, and homosexuality. I know it isn't politically correct to condemn this last sin as such, but God's laws don't need the approval of today's ever-changing 'ethical' fads. God's ethics aren't concerned with contemporary trends--His laws are eternal. Few would debate the commandment, 'You shall not commit adultery.' No sane person would doubt the sound judgement of Leviticus 18: 'The nakedness
of your father
, or the nakedness of your mother, you shall not uncover.'" Again, Josiah looked at Camilla with piercing eyes: she winced at his words.
"But still, modern society turns a blind eye to the sins of homosexuals," he continued. "Many people today think Leviticus' condemnation of homosexuality is like being forbidden to eat shrimp, an old Jewish prohibition we Christians needn't concern ourselves with anymore. But St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans warns us not to give up natural intercourse with the opposite sex, to be consumed with desire for the same sex,
which produces no children
, the whole reason God made sex to begin with." These words made Camilla think of her lesbian relationships with Candice, Calina, Li-ping, and Desiree. She felt no less guilty.
"Liberals accuse priests of hypocrisy for condemning homosexuality when we all know that some priests have been guilty of sexually abusing boys," Josiah went on. "Indeed, we men of the cloth must guard against sin in ourselves, too; but not one of the sexual scandals that have recently plagued our Holy Church negates our morality--in fact, this grim reality should only increase our sense of urgency for promoting sexual decency in our society. We all must remember what St. Paul said in his first epistle to Timothy: 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.' We priests are the chiefs of sinners. We aren't any freer of sin than you, the flock, are; but we must all come together and stop each other from sinning, for in sinning, we hurt one another. Please, let's keep sex in its proper place, within marriage, and for the purpose of procreation."
Camilla could see in Josiah's eyes a half-confession of his own sin when he quoted the words of 1 Timothy. Of course, her own sins were her main concern at that time.
****************
She and Agape returned home as soon as Mass ended.
Getting out of the car, Agape said, "I feel spiritually refreshed. I am completely resolved never to touch Candice again. I am Carrie's, faithful to the end. I hope you'll correct your naughty ways, too, Camilla."
