The priest really earnt his $550 dollar marriage celebrant fee. Joe could never have fit his biography into a ten-minute speech as elegantly as Father Love, who had known him since he was an altar boy sneaking sips of the blood of Christ and secretly spitting in the holy water. Joe had transformed into a sensible young adult since then.
Father Brimstone, the man in charge of Candlevale Parish, was old school enough to insist on a pre-wedding counselling session. Somehow, the aptly named Father Love had managed to keep a straight face as he skimmed through the evils of pre-marital sex with Joe and Trish a few days before the marriage ceremony. The young couple took Satan and his lakes of fire very seriously, so seriously that one could have been forgiven for thinking they were actors in a comedy, not a twenty-one-year-old couple in 21st century Australia.
“Okay people, this won’t take long. Father Brimstone told me to stick to the script he gave me. If you have any questions it doesn’t cover, feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to answer them. You two have been each other’s favourite person for as long as either of you can remember, so I’ll skip the parts about the Vatican’s views on divorce. Obviously, you’re both strict Catholics, so you know that abortion, contraception, polyamory, adultery, pre-marital sex, masturbation and homosexuality aren’t acceptable. I wouldn’t normally discuss all those things in just one sentence, but you’re educated Catholics so there’s no need to elaborate.
No doubt, you’re aware that having sex is only okay for the purposes of procreation, that God hates it if you do it for fun, so if procreation isn’t possible for you two then the church frowns upon any bedroom shenanigans. You’re probably well aware of that, but it’s one of the core parts of Father Brimstone’s script, so I thought I better mention it. There’s a few other compulsory bits. Let me see, um… Everything else in the script is very obvious to scripture teachers and youth group leaders of your calibre actually. Unless you’ve got any questions, we’ll leave it there.”
“Is God okay with fancy underwear, you know, the kind with frills, lace and see through parts and all the rest of it?”
“I wouldn’t worry Trish. As long as the purpose of the fancy underwear is to help one to procreate, I’m sure God is fine with it. It’s no worse than colourful feathers on a bird.”
“What if it’s see through in the most intimate places, or crotchless?”
“Trish, Father Love doesn’t need that level of detail to advise you darling.”
“As long as only your husband sees the fancy underwear it really doesn’t matter Trish.”
“What about during medical appointments with my GP or gynaecologist and so on, does it matter what I wear then?”
“I don’t think the catechasm, I mean the catechism, has anything to say about that, but I recommend wearing something non-descript, something plain and purely functional for occasions when anyone besides your husband needs to examine your private parts. These days, that might be a good idea when travelling through airports too. We can’t have our customs officials getting distracted from conducting body searches in the proper manner can we. Fancy underwear can cause trouble anywhere. Some parishioners have let Father Brimstone and I know that their body is their temple by sitting in the front row, during mass, wearing miniskirts and panties reminiscent of stained-glass windows. We could do without that sort of mixed messaging. It’s just not on. They should keep Victoria’s secrets secret from everyone except their husbands and God.”
“You don’t have any more questions do you Trish?” Joe said with a pleading look in his eye. He breathed a deep sigh of relief when she shook her head.
Minutes later, in the hallway of the presbytery, Father Love and Father Brimstone leapt in the air and bumped chests as they uttered the words “It’s sin Sunday Mary fucka.” It was the one Sunday of the month when Father Pious and Father Innocent conducted both the morning and evening masses, so Father John Love and Father James Brimstone were free to run amok. Normally, they went to Fantasy Land, a brothel with a back entrance that was obscured by an overgrown garden. They always travelled there by train, to make sure their cars weren’t spotted in the vicinity.
Father Brimstone’s favourite Fantasy Land roleplay involved giving Mother Mary a good seeing to in Joseph’s carpentry workshop. The son of God and his Earthly stepfather were always collecting firewood at the time. Father Love’s favourite roleplay was largely the same, but he was more of a Joseph man, so in his fantasy it was Mary and Jesus who were out collecting firewood.
© Rodney Hunter, 2024
Category: Prose
The Storystarter
You probably thought that Drew Barrymore’s character in The Firestarter was dangerous, but that was before you were introduced to The Storystarter.
After the troll ordered his pet tapeworm Tina to bite the ogre’s testicles off, things turned ugly.
The parasite bored through the former president’s skull. The thought of laying her eggs in his brain was a boring one. Someone had already done so. She wondered what kind of mother was willing to raise her children in such a barren landscape.
“It’s an optical illusion created by the microchip the government inserted into your cerebrum,” the flat Earther explained, after I asked him why we always saw the masts of the yachts first. It was the most plausible sounding nonsense I’d heard from him yet. Just last week he was telling me…
“Every intelligent person, who does their own research, knows that the reptilians would never let Earthlings land on the moon, not in 1969, not now and not in 2025 man,” said the man who does his own research.
“Shut up and kiss me darling” the George Costansa lookalike said to Tracy’s pet ostrich. That bold romantic gesture may not end well. The surgical team are still searching frantically for his tongue.
There’s no man in the moon tonight, not unless he’s wearing a mini-skirt and waving pom poms to cheer on the dawn.
The dragon sculpted a tap dancer from flames, and the xylophone its twinkling toes played.
“Is that mayonnaise, pimple pus, or something else splattered all over your ugly face, the man with a death wish asked the hypersensitive, homophobic bikie.
The gentle moonlight turned the giant’s teardrops into glistening billabongs.
The joy ridden hearse crashed into the crematorium.
Feel free to use my list of story starters to trigger your own ideas, that’s what I wrote them for. If you quote or paraphrase my work, make sure you acknowledge the source though.
© Rodney Hunter, 2023
Saturday
I awoke with an insomnia hangover. Three hours after midnight until 10A.M doesn’t leave one feeling as refreshed as an early night and rising before dawn. I washed down the remnants of avocado, smoked oyster and fried mushroom sandwiches with apple and blackcurrant infused soda water.
A Pink Floyd t-shirt satisfied my thirst for nostalgia and bleak crystal ball gazing. A floral buttoned shirt put cheerful icing on a melancholy cake. Work pants, with as many pockets as the catacombs, gave me freedom of movement and five star comfort for my keys.
I was out the door late enough to be over brimming with urgency. Traffic lights provided all the insight into Einstein’s theory of relativity I’m likely to get. Minutes waiting to cross felt like aeons in diesel fuel tainted air. Finally, I strode through the library doors and into the creative writing class, a somewhat respectable seven minutes late.
We experimented with haibuns and reinvented cliches. As green as grass became as green as an alcoholic troll with a craving for gangrene. As hard as granite became, as hard as a minefield tapdancer. As rough as guts became, as rough as wrestling a crocodile on a carpet of broken glass. As good as gold became, as good as a chalice of crushed ice in a Saharan oasis.
I couldn’t switch off.
Hypnos came to my rescue.
The writing class loomed.
© Rodney Hunter, 2023
The Surreal Art Psychonaut 