Special Delivery

The Compendium 001

This is the first fictional short story I’ve ever shared.

I’m still figuring out how to shape this all up on this Substack - fiction / craft stuff as well as those other, normal, essays.

But for now, enjoy the first edition of The Compendium, it’s a trip.

---

For just over minimum wage I deliver drunk people home on evenings and weekends.

Most nights are the same, clock in just after dinner, and wait for the buzz and beep of someone needing a ride. And then put on a smile and pretend to care just enough that they give me a tip.

Taxi drivers don’t really use the meter anymore. That’s just for the movies.

Everything is apps, now.

I guess you can thank Uber for that.

Most nights you don’t need a clock, you can tell what time it is by the signs - the tells people give you.

Before 10pm there’s a bit of slurred speech.

Around midnight people are laughing or crying in the back.

By two in the morning someone has vomited on the seat.

By four, well, throw the dice, but you can bet someone has passed out, and you have to decide whether you leave them on their doorstep or not.

Because of their phone’s face recognition it’s a simple choice to make.

Drop them off, hold their phone up to their face, give yourself a five star rating, give yourself a generous tip, and drive off into the night - someone will find them in the morning.

Special Delivery.

As soon as men in suits start asking for rides, I know it’s time to go home.

Deliver myself, as it were.

I’ve done this for a few years now; behind on rent payments and hospital bills—and the cadence of my life is backwards from just about everyone and everything.

I’m nocturnal.

There’s no early birds around me; I wave at the racoons and the coyotes; I sing with the owls and the bats. And we carve through the city like shadows.

There’s no worms, either.

No carpe diem, or whatever, just stale cigarettes and diner coffees in between rides.

Most nights are the same, but not all.

Tonight, in between vomit and comatose o’clock, this girl gets in.

She has these eyes that remind me of a predator, and she’s sober.

“Not what you were expecting?” she says, and she buckles up her seatbelt and she leans forward, head almost between the front seats, elbows on her knees.

“You’re supposed to be drunk,” I say.

“Sorry to disappoint.”

I look at her through the rear view mirror and give that pretend smile. It’s harder to secure a tip when people are sober, but most of them just want to sit on their phone for the ten or fifteen minute trip.

“Is this okay?” She’s leaning back, and she lifts up her hand and shows a pack of Luckies and a lighter, and I nod. She’s missing the ring finger on her right hand.

“Good,” she says, and she rolls the back window down a bit.

She’s watching me, waiting almost, with those eyes, and I can see the sharpness of her cheekbones in the passing illumination of streetlights. Her eyes are bright cerulean, even in the shadows between.

She looks like a razor blade, but beautiful.

“You should come with me.” She says. Smoke pours from her nose.

“What?” I had been propositioned before, but never by someone sober, and never by someone pretty. I’m usually the last call, the final hope, of some drunk girl who couldn’t find some stud to take her to paradise. To make her forget. So they ask me. And I always say yes.

“You should come with me.” Repeated.

“Where?”

“To Chapel,” she says.

I turn down the radio.

“Like Church?” I ask.

“Kind of,” she says, “but not really.

We sway together as I make a right turn.

“I’m not really the church type.” I say. “Sins, and all that.”

She’s inhaling.

The city is mostly oranges and browns on this side of town; it’s dark, it’s always cloudy, and the old, dirt stained brick buildings are lit up in ovals by incandescent street lights.

“Have you ever heard of the Yubikiri?”

“No.” I say.

“It’s a demon,” she says, flicking some cigarette ash out the open window. “Say you’re walking down some path in a middle of nowhere kind of forest. The kind of silence you expect at the end of the world; the kind of silence that makes your ears ring.

“And there, just up ahead, there’s some small red shrine - a single candle glowing on an altar; flickering, calling out to you.”

She leans in, and whispers, almost in my ear.

“One finger for safe passage.”

She leans back and inhales.

The smoke spills out the window as we make another turn.

“You think you hear it, but maybe you don’t - maybe it’s just some other Ghost Story you can shrug off, some urban legend you can sweep under the rug. You keep going, down the path, past the altar, and you set up camp in a small clearing of grass. Your fire is turning to embers, and you feel the cool breeze, like ice, lick at your spine and the base of your neck. And then, you feel it, a throbbing on your right hand, the ring finger. Then the throb turns to burning, from the inside out. Then it’s gone. No blood, no mess. Just gone. Like it was never there. Cut to black.

Smoke billows.

“And then you wake up - back where it all started. That path in the middle of nowhere. The same silence, the same shrine, the same candle, still flickering, like it knows.

“You walk it again, and you hear it: “One finger for safe passage.” And you look down, count to nine, and you know you can’t run forever.”

We make eye contact in the rear view mirror.

“Well, I don’t take fingers,” I say.

And I’m thinking, my landlord doesn’t take fingers either.

“The Chapel is just up ahead,” she says, pointing with her cigarette hand. “And listen, no hard feelings if you don’t come - but I can see it in you, the same desperation I had. I played the game too, smile and nod, keep my mouth shut, say yes to whatever, because I needed rent and food and skag.”

She takes a drag.

“The Chapel changed it for me.”

And I’m thinking that I want to go.

I’m slowing to a stop, pulling off on the right side of the road, and you can see these giant arched, red wooden doors. You can see this long line of people, The Chapel, spray painted in white on the brown brick. And my clock is telling me she should be passed out by now.

“Come with me,” she says, “and I’ll pay your rent this month.”

And I say, “Yes.”

We get out, and I see the leanness of her body. Her black coat drapes over her, and her hair looks like lost embers in the streetlights. When she looks over at me, sees me, while I’m locking the doors and doing up my old jacket, I get the sense that she can see right through me.

Like I’m hollow.

Like she’s a fox and I’m a hare.

And that church, The Chapel, well, that’s the trap, I guess.

Inside is dark, the haunted kind, and the old pews groan in wooden creaks while people just like us sit in them. There’s stained glass windows along the walls, but instead of seeing the Christ, it’s these depictions of stone circles, of ravens, of a table, of feasting.

Up at the front of the church, the front of The Chapel, where you expect to see the altar, there’s another stained glass window, but it’s hard to make out, because there’s a big spotlight shining down from the ceiling.

The girl, the predator, the fox, she’s beside me in the wooden pew, her elbows are on her knees, hands clasped near her cutting face, and it sounds like she’s praying, something like ecstatic tongues.

I haven’t been in church since I was seven, when my dad died, and my mom and I left town and never went back because God forgot about us. But I knew the drill. Sit still, maybe for an hour, maybe two, give a few bucks in the plate, shake some hands, tell the minister he really pierced your heart, and then leave.

And collect rent for a month.

Easy.

The hushed whispers start to fade, and everyone leaning forward in supplication sat up, almost in unison. And the light dimmed a bit and behind the beam I could make out some of that obscured stained glass: cupped hands holding something.

“Here he comes,” she says, her hot breath on my neck, and I can feel it cascading like warm honey down my body.

This man—he looks like he’s eight feet tall—strides out onto the stage, his heels clicking on the old hard wood floors. He looks like he was born a thousand years ago; not old, timeless. His hands are gloved, clasped in front of him, and he’s wearing dark red ornate robes.

He stops in the spotlight, he raises his hands, and you can feel the tension. The people around me seem ravenous, waiting, expecting, hungry for whatever this man has to say.

“Welcome.”

His voice is deep and echoes through the hall, echoes inside of me; corroborating evidence of just how hollow I am. His hands come back to a clasp in front of his chest.

And he starts on about a Great Feast and about Offerings.

When I was six I learned how to sit up straight in church, to make it look like I was listening, and drown out every word. Turns out, it’s like riding a bike, it comes back to you, pretty quick. Easy to turn the sermon into nothing but background noise.

Then lights turned off.

This was new to me.

The orange haze of outside street lamps spiralled into the sanctuary in purples and reds, landing on us like tongues of fire.

“There is someone among us,” the bass echoing like thunder through a valley, “who has never been here before.”

He lifts his right hand, slowly, palm up, fingers pointing at me, and then they curl back, save the pointer.

“You.” He says.

Everyone turns to face me.

And the girl beside me is smiling; the fox and the hare.

“This is the good part,” she whispers.

“Come here, weary soul.” The priest says. “No one here goes away hungry - not in His House.” And the smile on his face looks like he just ate; red wine stains at the corners of his mouth.

A light shines down on me, and I can feel that spasm pain in my eyes, the muscles tightening to focus. Somehow I’m standing, walking towards the front, almost like I’m carried forward by the eyes of all these onlookers. The priest, he’s smiling too, gesturing the way, down the aisle, up the stairs, and across the stage.

He and I stand together, facing each other, in a yellow moon. Lost worlds surround us.

His hands reach down, both open, asking me to hold them, to place mine in his.

He’s staring into my eyes, and for a moment I turn to look to the girl, a side eye, and she nods yes, and I guess this is how I get my rent paid.

I place my hands on his, and he breathes out a sigh. Not like thankfulness, like the kind of wind that comes before a storm.

His hands quickly wrap around my wrists, and his strength feels archaic. He rips me in, and his eyes are a breath away from my own. And he relishes in my fear, like he can smell it, that scent we leak when our body shifts to instinct. I’m trying to pull away, but his hands are unrelenting.

“For too long you have struggled.” He says. “When you kneel at our table, you will finally understand what it means to be a part of a body.”

The heat of his words moisten my face.

“The struggle can end, tonight. Tonight you can be born again.”

I’m still twisting to the pounding rhythm of my heart, trying to break free, and his arms don’t even move as I try to jerk away.

“Do not run from your destiny, little rabbit. Salvation lay within your grasp, as does damnation. You cannot escape destiny, you can only choose how you experience it.”

And he lets go of my wrists.

And I want to run, but everyone in The Chapel is standing. Surrounding me. Watching.

Destiny awaits.

He motions to the crowd, calling for something to be brought forward, and immediately up from the front row comes a golden stand, placed between us.

“Here, on this altar” and he motions, “we offer you a gift.”

The altar is old, like memory, and the wooden poles that hold up the gold stand are stained with something that hasn’t yet dried.

“Gifts can never be forced,” he says, deep and smooth. “They must be accepted, or rejected. And tonight, the gift lay before you.”

He turns to the congregation.

“There are two kinds of flesh, my children, flesh given, and flesh taken.” And he runs a hand across the altar, a familiar kind of love, and he rubs the undried stain between his gloved fingers.

“This is our body, and you have been faithful, you have given and you have received—” their rows of faces glowing with anticipation, mouths slightly open.

And the priest turns back to me.

“Will you give of your flesh?” He is taking the gloves off of his hands, and the ring finger on his right hand is gone.

“Or shall we take it?”

His hands have pulled out a thin blade, and even if I wanted to run, even if I could, even if I wasn’t petrified, turned to stone, there’d be no escape.

“One finger, a tithe, a tenth - and you shall receive the gift. Freely given, freely received. One finger and you become part of the body, and our body wants for nothing. You will never hunger, you will never beg, you will never sleep alone in the cold. We will take care of you.”

He steps towards me, right hand, four fingers, open - left with the blade.

“But if you cannot give, if you will not freely offer your flesh, then we will take it. All of it. Even the unwilling can be made holy; even the faithless can feed our flock.”

The red flecks at the corners of his mouth moisten with saliva.

And my heartbeat isn’t in my chest anymore - it’s thick and heavy in my throat. I can feel the drum of it in my fingertips, hammering. And my legs turned to prayer, collapsed before the priest, soft and weak.

“There is nothing to fear,” the priest says, consolation in his voice. “Suffering is always the path to life, and to give such a small part of you, and to have it multiplied, is the hope of all faith.”

My hand rose, on its own, or by my will, I don’t know. But it didn’t belong to me anymore - I didn’t belong to me anymore. It’s trembling, laid bare, open on the altar, some desperate attempt to say yes.

To stay alive.

Like always.

“With this offering you join us - body given, body received.” And he lifts the knife. “The Lord is my Butcher…” and with precision it slices across my knuckle, and the blood pours out. “I shall not want.”

There’s two people beside me, immediately, one holding me, one gathering blood into a chalice before cauterizing the wound.

“The incense rises…” the priest says, inhaling, and he’s talking about my burnt flesh and the tin smell of blood.

The man with the chalice hands it to the priest, who lifts it heavenward - and I see the stained glass window behind him, clearly.

Cupped hands, full of blood, a heart in them, and the priest says:

“Let all who thirst be filled.”

And he drinks my blood.

Red stains at the corners of his mouth.

And everyone gets in line, and they drink too, and they kneel and they say, “I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”

And I see her, the predator, the fox, and she kneels, and she drinks, and the priest puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, “blessed are you, little fox, for the offering. You shall remain in the body for another year.”

She has tears in her eyes, and she says, “I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”

And I black out.

---

It’s a Saturday, seven months later, it’s comatose o’clock, and this lady gets into my car.

Since that night, the night when I paid the tithe, I haven’t had to pay rent, I haven’t had to pay hospital fees, and someone showed up at my apartment and brought me a new car. Well, newer car.

“I shall not want.” Red ink on white parchment folded on the driver’s seat. That’s what was there when I first opened the door.

I look back at the lady, the one who just got into the car, and she’s a mess, can barely keep her eyes open, hair disheveled, shoulder straps of her dress off her shoulders, bra peaking out behind her low neckline.

The heat is on and the windows are up, like an incubator, warm enough to encourage sleep - to ease her off into a soft slumber. Easy jazz is playing on the radio, nothing but good dreams for her.

It’s the least I can do.

The sway of the turning car rocks her back and forth, like she’s in mommy’s arms, like everything is going to be okay.

It’s not a far drive, and I’ve done this so many times now, it’s easy.

Signal on, slow to a stop, and breathe out.

I open the back door, grab her phone, scan her face, give myself five stars, give myself a generous tip, and I drop her off.

Leaning against the giant arched red doors.

The Chapel spray painted white beside us.

I knock, and a man in black opens, grinning, red stains at the corners of his mouth.

“An offering?” he asks.

“Special Delivery,” I say.

---

Well, there you have it.

Let me know what you think—and I’d love to hear if you picked up on some of the themes and ideas.

Also, if you like this, you can check out my book.

It’s not fiction, and not about cannibal cults, but it’s still good.

Room for Good Things to Run Wild: How Ordinary People Become Every Day Saints