Thou Shalt Not Kiss

VI: Sanctum Sanctorum

His index finger on his lips, Riktor leads Mrs. Featherstone into a deeper section of the bunker. In the middle of one cell, she sees a brown dome-shaped structure that's a cross between a tent and greenhouse. It's about two meters tall and the same in diameter.

Riktor opens the door, which swings on hinges, and motions her to go inside. She takes off her fur-trimmed white boots just outside and he sees that her dainty lily-white feet are sheathed in a transparent shiny pantyhose. She crouches and crawls into the low door. Upon closer inspection, Mrs. Featherstone realizes that the whole structure consists of a steel framework and copper mesh, including the floor.

"What is this thing?" she asks as she sits crossed-legged on a pillow seat.

Her eyes behind the visor can't get their fill of the illegal materials arranged in neat piles on the edges. The visor itself has oddly grown quiet as soon as she entered, but her brain sorts out the collection into two categories. Those that give the impression of big-boy toys (i.e. a grown man's secret stash) are comic books, books and magazines, packs of cigarettes, a hookah, Halloween masks, firecrackers, a skateboard, an electric guitar, cans of aerosol paint, a dartboard with darts stuck in it, a baseball glove and a ball, an LP with the sleeve but without the player, and so on. Those that remind her of the fall of man are a Quran, a bobble-head Hula Girl, a dented toaster, old currencies, motherboards, smartphones with webbed screens, scruffy stuffed toys, original or imitation paintings such as Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Gustav Klimt's The Kiss and so on.

"It's my Anti-Judgment Canopy," Riktor explains after he has closed the door behind him. "Fine copper mesh repels all Celestials, whether high or low-born."

"For real?!"

"Yes, copper is as receptive as Mother Terra. It helps us merge or root ourselves with the earth. It amplifies psychic energies and at the same time protects against intrusive energy from outside."

Riktor sits seiza-style across from her, half-kneeling half-sitting.

"When I'm feeling especially blasphemous," he adds in jest, "I call it the Sanctum. This is where I go when I want to get away from it all, when the outside world gets too much. As you can sense, it's quiet in here. No barrage of data stream. Think of it as a confessional. But unlike with a Courts-approved one, whatever you say in the sanctum stays in the sanctum."

Mrs. Featherstone is getting excited. Even with the heart rate monitor of her visor unresponsive, she can hear the pounding organ inside her. She of course has never experienced anything remotely resembling camping, but a centuries-old echo in her blood is whispering to her about the joys of tree houses, pillow forts and slumber parties. More recent than those, her memory summons childhood tales of oil sheiks, belly dancers and sex slaves chained to canopy beds. Everywhere she turns is a thin, false veil of modesty, just the tiniest nudge to bring her over to the side of exhibitionists – and adulteresses.

"Why did you bring me here, Your Reverence?" Mrs. Featherstone asks, instinctively lowering her voice and making it even huskier.

"I have a confession to make."

"You have a confession to make to me?"

"Yes," he says and then walks on his knees to the periphery, to a small plastic chest of drawers. He takes something out of a drawer, waddles back and hands the item to her.

Mrs. Featherstone is holding an amateur comic book. It's palm-sized, drawn in black and white and fastened by a single rusty staple. Her mononym Diva is the title. To be exact, Saint Diva and the Masked Maroder. Her co-eponym is a young Blinker wearing a neckerchief like a bandit. She's wearing her familiar choir uniform: military-style black blazer with stand collar, white epaulettes, embroidery and frogging. Through a TV screen, not a few fans have observed and commented that the uniform made her look like a skeletal Grim Reaper.

In Riktor's comic book, the blazer goes with a microskirt instead of the usual pants. The blazer itself is hanging open and she isn't wearing anything underneath. Her boobs, as big as they are in real life, are nowhere near as massive as they're depicted. She was drawn in an exaggerated and disproportionate manner, unrealistically low waist-to-hip ratio, that she'd have the weight of the whole world on her back and would fall over if she was real. That's probably why the artist saw fit to give her wings.

As Mrs. Featherstone turns the only several pages, it doesn't take long for the panels to become explicit.

"Did you make this?" she asks without looking up, embarrassed to keep reading but more embarrassed to meet his eyes.

"Yes," he whispers in her ear, leaning close. "That and nine other issues plus a second volume. Countless loads have been offered to you as sacrifice."

Her cheeks blossom pink.

"B-but I'm not a Seraph" is all she manages to say.

"You were to a thirteen-year-old me."

"Thirteen," she echoes in a gasp and as she lifts her face, Riktor jumps at the chance to place her in a lip-lock.

They're both breathless when their mouths part.

"You..." she gasps, flushed to the roots of her hair and looking even more beautiful because of it. "You broke the First Commandment, Your Reverence!"

Ah yes, Riktor thinks to himself. The so-called gateway sin.

The unsanitary, germ-transmitting nature of kissing has long been established by the Seraphim. This and the practice of holding open-casket funerals made sure that the bacterial infection called the Pale Horse Virus had exponential power. The Seraphim didn't bat an eye when kissing was prohibited because the gesture was entirely alien to them anyway, but it still took the top spot amongst the Commandments to help the humans fight the temptation. And the Blinkers don't always win.

 ****

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