The Splinter: An Erotic Novella

Fumbling, Simon began to undo the buttons on his shirt. “Pretty? Do you think it’s pretty? Do you think that God would want any creature he made to do this to the body he gave them?”

Her gaze slipped from his face to his chest. “Oh, my God…”

Whorls and lines, puncture marks, words and raised symbols. Instantly and without thinking, she reached out a hand and touched one of the ridged scars with her fingertip. It followed the strange terrain of his skin down and over to just where his heart sat, beating hard beneath the surface.

“It’s…”

Dolores’s head was buzzing, like a million bees were zooming around trying to find a way out. She put her coffee mug on the floor and, with her other hand, traced another set of skin engravings on the opposite side of his chest. Nothing could have made her look away. The patterns danced and wove together as if they were alive.And they were.

“…beautiful.”

Her body compelled her forward, like being pulled on a string attached to something deep in her tummy. She edged off the chair and onto her knees in front of it, pressing her mouth against the swirling, dancing, speaking skin.

The deepest, longest electrical shock: that’s what it felt like against her lips. Her body shuddered at the contact. As if all the pain he’d suffered to make these scars poured down her throat.

Simon made a noise. She felt him try and pull away, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung on tight. His hands were on her arms, trying to pull them away.

“Don’t…Dolores. Stop. Please!”

She couldn’t stop. Closing her eyes, she smeared her cheek across the embossed flesh. Behind her lids, each bump, each ridge was a gloriously illuminated line on a map–a divine map. A map of God’s Kingdom, like the one she’d been trying to make on her own skin.

“Get off!”

Acutely aware of the dark history of his own religion, Father Steven, the sensible priest of her parish, is certain that Dolores is far more in need of psychiatric care than a nun’s habit.  He seeks the help of a colleague, Brother Simon, to assess the disturbed Dolores.

Uniquely qualified to counsel the young woman because of his own struggles with self-immolation, Simon takes on the task only reluctantly; he is not convinces his own demons have been put to rest.  Is God really speaking to Dolores, or is it something else?

Purchase The Spinter as an e-book at Republica Press