the rite of the wretched

In a strange dream, I find myself walking amid the ruins of an ancient cathedral. The vaulted ceiling has long caved in, leaving a yawning hole that sucks in the harsh heavens. I cannot tell if it is day or night, but everything seems to have the sheen of dusk and the lust of dawn. The tainted walls still stand looking like a confused chessboard with gothic apertures where stained glass once held court. Scattered on the cracked granite floor are shards of colored glass, decapitated heads of stone gods, grimy vestments, empty reliquaries, and brass candelabras. So that’s how they look when stripped of sanctity, forsaken by the gods they used to symbolize. Like an archbishop on his way to the high altar, I wade through this mass of desecrated objects while sniffing the rotting air. Floating near the walls, spirits of dead cardinals scorn me. With my frosty eyes, I order them to return to their sarcophagi and mind their own decomposition. You have had your time to corrupt the masses. It’s time for eternal repose now, or perpetual damnation.

Up on the altar, I see numerous headless gods smug in their own niches. They loom large and regal like buffoons. Upon their feet is the long, marble table where sacerdotal cult masters once transubstantiated wafers into flesh of the Tortured One. Around the table is a pack of maimed, toothless, and stinking paupers. Some are dressed in tattered brown robes, some have slung tainted curtains on their bony frames, and some are totally naked. I understand at once that this is the rite of the stinking, the damned, and the wretched. The sweet revenge of the despised is to claim the high altar of their masters and recreate the ritual all over again, according to the Gospel of their own Torment.

They all pause and regard me with vicious eyes. One of them leers and sticks out her lesioned tongue to me. A couple stops from their dull fornication and look at me blankly. A naked man motions me to come forward with his dagger.

I walk toward them, unflinching. I suddenly realize that I, too, am naked. With my flesh quivering and my genitals dangling limply with every step, I come forward, letting them ogle at or deride my nakedness. Somehow, I know exactly what I’m there for. And I know exactly what to do.

Without saying a word, I climb on top of the marble table and lay there. They congregate around me like a pack of wolves salivating on their prey. I hear a surreal chant from one of them. It is hard to tell which one. At the end of the chant, the naked man raises his dagger and says an incantation in a strange language. I close my eyes.

Then I wake up.

And I realize that it is not a dream at all.