Stigmatic — Steve Isaak

He was staring at her again.

His warm gaze made Angie shudder with simultaneous trepidation and ecstasy.  The chemical and sexual raptures she’d experienced before these visions were mere whispers of this one: it was pure, indefinable, and supernal.  He shamed her with His forgiving, firm smile.  How could she continually doubt such mercy?  If only she could believe – truly believe.

She wished Jess were here.  Jess, whose take on life was brighter than hers, despite thirty years of similar atheistic existence. 

Angie wept now, shook.  The thieves on the flanking crosses weren’t alone in their crimes.  She, like those in the angry, mocking crowd, was also a criminal, willfully blind to the full gamut of love, human and divine.

A vinegar- and gall-soaked sponge, speared on a sturdy reed, was pressed to His lips.  That haunting, wet-inducing smile never left them as He drank from it, nor did His gaze waver from her.

#   #   #

Jess daubed Angie’s stigmata with a wet red rag.

She’d been doing this since midnight, when Angie’s weekly wounds re-opened, with their attendant visions.

The pinkish-white squares that appeared on top of Angie’s feet and wrists two days ago were now ruptured vesicles, oozing violet blood, as was the wound in her side.  A triple layer of plastic was secured to the mattress beneath her nude rail-thin body.  Her Italian dark skin beguiled: Jess resisted the urge to caress it.  Instead, she wiped a strand of brown hair from her lover’s glistening brow.  She tasted Angie’s blood and sweat as she softly kissed it, prolonging the contact.

It would be over soon, just a couple of more hours.  Angie’s bleeding never lasted more than eight hours.  The blood she lost would be replaced with refrigerated blood.  A trained nurse, Jess knew how to do that.

Angie whimpered, fell silent again.  Jess looked concerned, and smiled.  She thought about how they met.

Angie, then twenty-three, had been rushed to the hospital after she’d suddenly collapsed, unconscious and bleeding.  She’d been babbling in an archaic language nobody – herself included – understood.

Luckily for Angie, her collapse had happened outside the dive she tended bar at, Flushed Pearl.  She and few of the club’s patrons were smoking cigarettes, watching the city’s denizens bump and flow past them, the sober ones avoiding eye contact, the inebriates laughing, practically dancing their way to their next watering hole.

Angie, alternating between vexation and ecstasy and all moods in between, had regained consciousness a few hours later.  She’d woken to the sight of Jess wiping her red-beaded, sweaty brow.

It was literally love at first sight.

There was no known medical reason for Angie’s “phenomenon”.  Four respected doctors had told them this.

There were no religious factors, either.  Angie’s agnostic parents had raised their daughter accordingly.  Nothing in her personal history indicated deep-seated religious issues.

Angie’s tear-puffed eyes fluttered open, startling Jess.

“Did I babble much this time?”

Jess reciprocated her smile.  “Just the usual Hebraic pick-up lines.”

“Good.”  Angie’s wink was weak.

“Water?”

“Please.  But first I want you to kiss me.”

Jess lightly kissed Angie’s ginger-flavored mouth.  Angie prolonged the kiss by slipping her tongue past Jess’s lips.  Jess responded in kind, lost in her lover’s aggressive tongue thrusts and pliant feints.

Cupping Jess’s breasts, Angie pinched her steeling nipples.

Jess broke off the kiss, shook her head as she handed Angie a glass of water.

Angie took the glass. “What?”

“Nothing.  Just drink your water.”

“No.  I want to know.”  Angie’s dark gentle gaze softened Jess’s.

“I’d think being with me – with anyone – would be a letdown if Jesus’ gaze is as ‘pure’ as you say.”

Angie set the glass on the floor.  She pulled Jess to her, hugged her tight.  Her tan bare skin was hot against Jess’s gray tank top and sweats.  Angie was careful not to get any blood on Jess.

“Lover, the two are so related,” she whispered in her lover’s ear.

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More of Steve Isaak’s sexy stories can be found here.

Steve Isaak, also published under the name Nikki Isaak, lives in California.  He is the author of the anthologies  “Charge of the scarlet b-sides: microsex stories & poems” and “Behind the wheel: selected poems”. (available at Lulu.com).   He is also the author/editor of  www.readingbypublight.blogspot.com and the multi-author www.microstoryaweek.blogspot.com.