Moth: Milgram

3- Milgram's Psalm

And so where he walked, drawn unto a specific scent like damp old leaves, piss and sweat, until he found himself in the mouth of a shallow alleyway, closed off and into a small parking lot that had once been used by the employees of an old institution that once housed a small population of the city's dying.

St. Jeromes Hospice had been closed since the early eighties, and most of those that had once lived here had either moved on or been moved out long ago. All that was left here now was the hollowed out shell, but the old Carmelite convent that had once serviced the old hospice was not vacant. Not quite.

Autumn had never actually became a nun, though the rest of the convent's former residents had always called her Sister Autumn. She had been left and found here. Taken in by the nuns, she had been given the name Francis Autumn, but rarely ever went by her first name anymore. Not since the nuns had left, having been moved on by the diocese that she had last been called Francis. It was never a good thing when she was called by that name, as she had a penchant for trouble. She liked it better when the sisters had called her Frannie, as they were usually not mad at her whenever they called her that.

Autumn had grown up here, though there was some concern about letting her into the hospice. It was there that Autumn had started sneaking in, and it was where she had met Andrew Wilson.

She had not realized that Andy was dying at the time that they first met. He was just kind of a funny looking kid, as he we really pale and he had no hair. Andy had thought that she had to know why he was there, so he didn't really bring it up. Andy was older than Autumn had been at the time, though it really didn't seem like it to her. Autumn had no idea about brain tumors, let alone inoperable tumors that were malignant.

Andy was not supposed to live as long as he had, though the nuns of St. Jerome considered every day that survived a blessing. It had taken them a few months to figure out that this was where Francis was going, more often than not when she was supposed to be doing something else. They didn't get too mad after Andy had asked where she was, which was how they found out about Francis sneaking into the hospice. Autumn was ten when Andy first came to St. Jeromes, and he was always happy to see her... until a day came that he was not quite so happy with her anymore. Autumn was fourteen, and had no idea why he had his sudden change of heart. It took her being quite a pest to actually find out what it was that had started bothering him... and being something of a sneak about, as Sister Delores claimed she was.

Autumn knew some things about sex, but she had no idea what in the heck he was doing when she had crept out of her own bed one night. There was a peculiar pang of jealousy in her, as that perhaps he had found some another friend and didn't need her anymore. She had crept in up to his door, and when she found him, lying alone in the dark. She heard him panting at first, until her eyes began to adjust to the lightlessness. She watched on as she watched the sheets begin to writhe, and a short gasp escaped from his throat. She watched as the sheet bounced over what she had thought was his stomach, at first. She did not immediately the queer sensations of arousal, as the bouncing became steadily faster, and Andy seemed to almost crazy then. She had almost went and gotten one of the sisters, as he tensed up and his body arched upwards... until he gradually sank back down into the bed, his breaths still coming very short and sounding kind of raspy. It was only as she heard him crying that she came out from her hiding place.

"How long have you been there?" His voice panicked as soon as he seen her, and she quickly brought a finger across her lips to shush him back.

"Are you alright?" She asked, and could tell that, now, he was only upset.

"Just get the hell out of here Frannie," he said, and so she did.

Frannie really didn't sleep that first night. Some because she was not certain what to do, but mostly because she wanted to know more. She knew that it was kind of wrong to want to know more, as most of what she knew had come from Deana Marks, her best friend at school. St Jeromes was near St. Anne's Catholic School, which of course was where the nuns had taken her. There were no boys there, but some of the older girls were already dating. Dee-Dee really didn't know much, and Francis was kind of afraid of asking the older girls anything about sex. Whether they told on her, or merely laughed at her; asking them was just a really bad idea.

It was Dee-Dee that had found the movie in her mom and dad's room. Frannie had went over to her house to watch it, as the sisters would go ballistic if they ever found something like that inside the convent. If she had thought what she had seen in Andrew's room that night was crazy, the movie that they watched was stark raving mad. Men with really big things, putting them in women's mouths, between their legs and even up their butts; women doing things to each other naked, and the entire thing was something of a trial to sit through as she sat there with Dee-Dee, somewhere between grossed out, confused and more than a little frightened by what she was seeing. Really, the only tidbit that she had gathered from the movie at all was when she had seen one of the men pulling on his thing before he had   sunk it into a woman as she knelt down on all fours... she was not even sure where he put it, nor where something like that would even fit. As the camera angle changed, she figured it out-- and then winced as he started pounding it around inside of the poor girl.

To suggest that she was kind of devastated by it would have been honest, but curiosity eventually won out as she lay in bed, wondering what it was supposed to feel like. She reached down under the blanket, and began imitating something that she had seen one of the women in the movie do. She didn't figure it out right off, but she was pretty sure she knew once she had gotten it right. It was kind of like a shock to her system at first, the first truly pleasurable sensation that she had discovered. She stopped herself immediately, wondering that she might get caught or that someone was watching her, as she had been watching Andrew. Somehow, the knowledge of the sin was not quite dissuading enough for her to quit.

By the following night, her fingers were back, exploring where they did not belong. She tried a couple of the things she had seen, and quickly ruled at least one of them out as something she  didn't think to be right. She had stopped herself several times, using shame and guilt where and when it seemed to just keep getting worse. It wasn't until the fourth night that she found out what the word orgasm really meant.

She wasn't entirely certain what she wanted to do with this new knowledge, though the image of apples and serpents often crept up in her dreams afterwards. In her dreams, she probably already knew, but she was still afraid. The sisters would undoubtedly send her away, maybe even throw her in jail... She had a fair idea that she already had plenty to confess, but she could not even imagine herself telling Fr. Carlyle about any of it.

And so she didn't, which meant that she had never atoned for those sins. She had considered merely telling him that it was something that she did not know how to talk about it, but he would just keep on asking her until she finally confessed that she was a wanton. And from that fourth night on, she was pretty sure that she was becoming a stark raving whore. She kept wanting to do it again, but she put it aside... at least the doing part of it. She was becoming more certain that something was entirely wrong with her. It was in her dreams that she first found herself visiting Andrew in his room... By that time, she knew that he was dying, which probably made it all the more awful to want to see him... do what he did that night, and maybe do something to her as well. She probably loved him... maybe, but they obviously were not getting married... and she was beginning to feel kind of filthy and disgusting.

Which seemed to work, for a while. Andrew wasn't so mad at her anymore, and he had started telling her about why he had been so upset that night. That he would never meet anyone, fall in love... "stuff like that". She was reasonably sure that the "stuff" he was talking about was sex, and then it started to seem like an awful thing not to do. It took her a while, never really being able to convince herself about the right or wrong of it. She already knew what the sisters would think of her, but somehow what Andrew thought of her just seemed to begin to matter more. And that he would go to Heaven, or Hell, without ever having fallen in love was... well it seemed wrong, and she knew that she really cared about him quite a bit. She would hardly consider this with anyone else that she knew, which must mean that she loved him.

"What the hell are you doing?" Andrew moved her back away from him, and Francis was mortified. She had only tried to kiss him, and she had not even touched him down-there, nor took her own clothes off. She nearly fought back the urge to run away, and never to set foot back into his room. Nearly...

Francis was upset, as she had to wonder what he must be thinking about her. She did stay away, until Sister Margaret had told her that Andrew was asking about her. She had nearly worked up the nerve to go back on her own when Sister Therese had told her that Andy was very sick now... and that he likely would not survive for much longer.

"I love you!" she blurted out, trying to stir him back awake. She had laid her head against his chest, listening for his heart, and calming just to hear that it was still beating. She stayed there with him, and the sisters had allowed her to miss school the next day.

Andrew never recovered, and died a virgin two days later.

If anyone would have asked her, she would have had no idea why it was that she was so pissed off. She had started acting out, as Sister Delores always claimed that she was. She had started masturbating like a stark-raving whore, not so much for how it felt anymore as it was kind like telling God to eat shit and die... without ever having to actually say it.

She discovered that she had absolutely no trouble telling Father Carlyle about it either. She wasn't really certain why she seemed so pleased with herself by the discomfort she was causing him.

Drinking came next. Dee-Dee and her had started smoking, flirting with boys that they met on the street, cursing... staying out late, and looking for the next wrong thing to do before it found her. It was something that, no matter how mad or upset she was, that she would have never wished to do... but she did wonder that it might be God's punishment upon her. In such as miserably distraught state as she was the night after the two men had found her, walking home from Dee-Dee's, drunk on her ass and... she could imagine that she had brought that upon herself, and that God had merely turned his head.

Milgram watched her as she stood there now, shivering and wet. Her body emaciated, and her stringy dirty blonde hair clinging to the side of her face. There was almost a look of disgust on her face as she sat, nearly fell down against the window. She drew back the sleeve of her jacket and exposed her vein... after so many years, and so many evil things had come to pass, that she could hardly remember the girl that had longed for the touch of a dead man's hand. Autumn pulled out the needle and jabbed it angrily into her arm, stopping short of pushing the plunger in, as she began weeping.

The sisters had told her that she had to go, once her behavior only became worse. She remembered that some of them had cried, and Sister Delores had begged her to change, and that she could stay if she only could behave. Francis had left, not sure where to go, and Autumn had taken over.

Autumn found a job at a club that she was technically too young to be working in. Later she found herself in a biker club, and aside from being passed around by them, had started making cyber-porn. It didn't hurt anymore. She was usually too stoned to really feel anything. She felt tired and empty, as she readjusted the needle and then let her thumb slide the plunger down. She pulled the needle from her arm and flung it away, pulling off the tourniquet, and swearing that she could feel the poison crawling deeper into her vein... like apples and serpents, sweet-ichor sweat and bitter desperation for everything just to stop... before she heard the sound of what sounded like a saxophone, coming closer as she looked up and seen the man with the wide brim hat and the old dusty coat. She was pretty certain that she had to be hallucinating.

Hell, he could be the psycho version of Stan Getz, for all she really cared at the moment. She was already dying, and whatever twisted and fucked up notion he may have in his head, she had quite likely already been there and done that. She groggily flipped him off, as Milgram just continued to keep coming closer to where she had plopped herself down on the concrete. The Hellions really didn't give a fuck about her, so much as that she had left them. They'd kill her if this asshole didn't, or she had tweaked up a little too light to get the job done herself. It was only as he stood over that she closed her eyes, and shrugged, that she heard the song that he was playing.

"You've got the cool waters, when the fever runs high"...
Paul Simon's voice spilled into her head, and an awkward sort of grin passed over her features as everything else seemed to drift away.

She had not heard that song since she had heard it one night at Dee-Dee's house. It was where she had run to after she had left Andrew's room, and her mother always let the radio play low as she slept in the next room.

"You've got the look of love-light in your eyes," she said clearly in her head, but only managed to hum and mumble loosely with the tune. She had never been particularly crazy about old love songs, but this one was kind of alright. Not about love, or some shit like that, as it was that Dee-Dee had finally managed to calm her down.

"I was in a crazy motion, until you calmed me down... it took a little while, to calm me down"...

Autumn heard the words, as her head slumped forward, and then she slowly laid down against the concrete.

She stirred when she found him there...

"When something goes wrong, I'm the first to admit it.
The first to admit it, and the last one to know"...

It was her that was in the bed, unable to move as Andrew stood at the door of his room-- so perfect and alive.

"Aren't you supposed to be playing harps, or some shit like that?" She said, her eye turned toward the single window that was in Andrew's room at the hospice, which looked out onto the street. She could remember him doing the same thing, sometimes, when she would be talking to him and his attention would just sort of drift off. She wondered that he may have been feeling awkward, like she was now.

"I recall that someone was there the day that I died... and something about loving me. Now how dorky is that?" He said, and her eye shot back quickly.

"You here to rub it in or what?" Her upper lip curled back slightly, but then her expression just as suddenly calmed into a still unreadable blandness.

"Given those choices, I choose or what." He answered.

"Some people never say those words I love you.
It's not their style, to be so bold."...

"What do you want Andrew?" It seemed pretty crazy to be talking to a dead guy, but being crazy was actually kind of low on the list of concerns at the moment.

"Some people never say those words I love you,
but like a child, they're longing to be told"...

Andrew said nothing as he walked into the room, and moved by the edge of her bed, picking her up and her body seemingly useless for her to even consider resisting. Andrew settled back into the chair that sat beside the bed, holding her and stroking at her hair as he hummed along with the song.

"Do you still love me?" He asked, and Autumn went stiff in his arms for a moment.

"I don't know... I am pretty sure that shit is all busted up inside, not to mention that you're a ghost." She said, her head falling back so that she could look up into his eyes, and then had to look away when he met hers. "I've done quick a bit sick and twisted shit in my time, but necrophilia was never really on my dance card."

"When something goes wrong... I'm the first to admit it"...

"You know why I came to your room that night?" She asked, as the silence seemed to be lasting too long, and she was certain that their time together was growing short. "When I kissed you?"

"I couldn't let you do that," he said, sounding certain that he already knew. "I was already dying."

"Do what?" She asked, a smirk on her face as she looked up at him again.

"Fall in love with me."

"A bit late to start sweating over that, Shithead." she said, and then let her head fall against his chest, listening for his heart beat. "I was actually going to have sex with you."

"Pity-sex?" He asked, and felt her shrug against him.

"Want-to sex... I mean, I thought maybe it would make you want to stay more... longer. Even if you didn't, I mean... I guess you just missed your golden opportunity Buddy." She went quiet and still as she felt his cheek move against the top of her head. "I guess we're both sickos. I'm dying now, and I really do not think you would be too impressed... even if I wasn't."

She stopped talking as he drew her head back and kissed her, resisting the urge to pull away as she felt the swell of him grow underneath her.

... "When something goes right, it's like you lose me.
It's apt to confuse me... I can't get used to something so right... Something so right."

Autumn opened her eyes as the noon-day sun came up over the rooftop, and spilled down to where she laid there in the alleyway. She could almost half imagine that she was dead, as for how she felt at first. She was damn sure that she was supposed to be dead, but the pain in her head seemed to suggest otherwise.

"Fuck me," she said, as she struggled to get up to her feet. She wondered where the asshole with the saxophone had gotten off to, but let that slide as the memory of the dream worked back inside of her head again. Lowering her brow slightly, as she glanced around, before undoing her jeans and checking the inside of her panties. Gross maybe, but she wanted to be sure that it was just a dream, before quickly doing them back up... and being kind of pissed off that it was all just some heroine induced coma dream... though a particularly nice heroine induced coma dream, that she did not need any more heroine to remember.

She felt hungry, as she managed to gain her feet again. Walking on rubbery legs was not a particularly new challenge, as would be scraping together a couple of bucks and trying to get herself a cheap hamburger, or something. It also felt kind of weird, with the walking, such as in like maybe she did have sex. Unless the nutjob with sax had raped her, it was pretty much impossible for that to have happened... but there was definitely something different going on... something she had not felt in a very long time.

Uley