Frank sat uncomfortably in the hard wooden pew. The back of the pew was straight and rigid, causing him to sit entirely upright instead of his usual slouch. The air was hot and thick with the swaying bodies seated on either side of him. His button-up was dampened with sweat and rings of moisture were forming under his armpits, leaving large wet patches on the thin material. When he looked around, he saw a sea of hands in the air. Some people raised both hands up to the sky and others kept one hand over the heart and the other in the air.
Frank’s hands sat on his thick knees, his knuckles turning white where his fingers dug a little too deep into his jeans. He did not sway. He tried to focus his attention on the organist, first on the stark white patent leather dress shoes that pushed the organ pedals with a fervor he had never seen. In the fluorescent lighting, her hair was the color of hay and pinned back with a large, plastic barrette. She sang loudly as her fingers struck the keys. Frank noticed small beads of sweat forming on her forehead as she led the congregation into the next song. Somewhere in the crowd, someone had started to strike a tambourine, and its metallic rattle cut through the air.
Frank checked his watch. They were about thirty minutes into the service. The room seemed to be getting warmer and warmer and Frank started to feel nauseated. The room was a sour ocean of cheap perfume, salty skin, and stagnant air. Frank could feel the thick odor creeping into the back of his throat. It tasted like curdled milk. The organ music and singing seemed to fill the whole room and Frank felt like he would be pushed out by it.
As the organist brought the twirling notes of the song to an end, the pastor rose from his chair in the front row and turned to face the congregation. The pastor had his black, button-up shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow and Frank could see tiny scars specked over his arms. They looked like pin pricks of faded red and Frank fixated on them, counting each raised mark on each arm. They went all the way up to the elbows. For all Frank knew, they just kept on going. He was so transfixed he almost couldn’t hear the pastor start his sermon.
The pastor’s sermon came to a fever pitch, and suddenly, people were jumping out of their chairs and making their way to the front of the room. “Come on, brother!” the man sitting next to him said as he grabbed a hold of Frank’s arm. Frank snatched his arm out of the man’s grip and pushed his smudged glasses up from where they had slid down his nose. The man shrugged his shoulders and scooted out of the pew, on his way up to join the others. Shiny black and brown loafers shuffled over the stained carpet, sliding and turning. Ladies’ shoes with sensible heels and neutral colors hopped and twirled.
The women and men who had made their way up were now dancing in the front, weaving in and out of each other in an almost choreographed chaos. Frank saw one man turning over and over in tiny circles, his feet moving so fast it was almost comical. Both his hands were raised, and his eyes were shut so tightly that his whole face scrunched up in ecstasy. Frank’s eyes shifted side-to-side as he took in all the bouncing bodies. The congregants left in the pews had all stood and were clapping and shouting things like “Praise God!” and “Yes, Amen!”
Frank leaned forward in his chair, leaning his elbows on the pew in front, letting his belly rest on his thighs. He breathed in deeply and started counting up to ten and then back down to one. It was a trick his 5th grade teacher had taught him when he would feel overwhelmed in school. He was an awkward child, never really knowing how to integrate into a group. It was just him and his father growing up; his mother left them when he was six. His father worked long hours as a lineman and Frank found that food was the only thing that would fill the void, he felt gnawing at his stomach. He would come home from school and gorge himself on slimy, salty hotdogs, straight from their greasy packaging. Spongy, yellow cakes filled with fluffy, vanilla cream. Bags of thin, ranch covered chips that would leave a multicolored dust on his fingertips which he would lick off, one at a time, savoring the taste of artificial buttermilk and garlic.
He would eat until he felt sick, and his weight skyrocketed over the years. His eating got so bad that his father took to locking up the cupboards with small, metal padlocks. But in Frank’s craze to eat, he always found the small, hidden key. His father would find the thin cellophane wrappers and bright bags stuffed under the couch or hidden away in bathroom cabinets. In his frustration, his father would beat him mercilessly trying to exorcise this desire out of Frank. He would always apologize at the end of the night and while Frank lay awake in his bedroom at night, sometimes he would hear his father weeping in the living room.
Frank thought of his father, long dead, as he looked on at a woman laying prone on the floor. Frank turned his head and eyed the back door. This seemed like an opportune time to make an exit, while everyone was distracted in their worship. Frank started to scoot his large frame inch by inch towards the end of the pew, leaving a trail of imprints from his sweat. The music had become so loud and the dancing so feverish, that Frank felt the pew vibrate under his hands as he placed them flat on either side of his body, ready to push himself up. As soon as he was ready to rise, a person in the aisle next to him shouted out and started to speak in a garbled language. Frank sat down quickly as a man next to the woman shouted, “I can translate!”
Frank remembered hearing about speaking in tongues but never witnessed it. He turned his attention back to the front of the room while the woman who was just speaking in tongues sobbed loudly in the aisle. He saw the pastor make his way quickly out the side door of the church. He strode back in, almost as quickly as he came, carrying small blowtorches. As the mass of people pulsated together, they passed these small blowtorches around. Frank watched in horror as a man lit one and held the thin, golden flame up to his hand; all while hollering and jumping in rhythm to the music. The man passed the torch to the closest person. Frank squinted his eyes, expecting to see the man’s flesh bubbling up from the fire but his hand, as far as Frank could tell, looked fine.
The next man took the torch and gave a yell as he pushed his wet, sweaty hair out of his eyes and lit the torch. He blazed it over his arm as he shook his leg and shuffled across the room. Frank could see three small torches in rotation, and one had made its way to the pews and was being passed around. Frank recoiled into his chair, trying to make his large body as small as possible. The fire reminded him of the rare camping trips his father would take him on in his youth, in an effort to make up for the beatings and long work hours. Frank hated the camping trips, hated being outdoors, and hated the lack of food. His father would desperately try to teach him to be an agile, outdoorsy boy but Frank remained who he was; an overweight and awkward kid who had no friends and who was constantly bullied in school.
The torch finally found its way to Frank and all he could do was act like he didn’t see it being passed to him, which he was sure looked ridiculous. He looked straight ahead while the torch was waved back and forth in front of him. He felt his body relax and exhaled a long sigh when he saw the torch move on. He scanned the room for the preacher and found him coming through the same door as before, this time carrying glass jars full of a clear liquid.
The preacher started passing jars around to the dancing men. While the liquid sloshed in the jar, the men would convulse and vibrate. Each took a small sip and passed the jar on to the next. Frank didn’t know what was in the jar but after seeing these people try to burn themselves, he figured it was nothing good. Just like the torches, a clear jar of mystery fluid made its way back to Frank. He held the smooth glass in his hand and inhaled deeply, expecting a sharp burning in his nostrils but instead, he smelled nothing. He peered down into the clear liquid, wondering what it could be.
When he looked up, he was met with the gaze of his fellow pew mates. Frank shifted in his seat carefully holding the jar so that the liquid didn’t spill. He could feel their faces penetrate him. He brought the jar up to his lips and took the smallest sip he could, cool liquid streaming over his lips. The taste was sickly bitter, and Frank felt his stomach heave as he swallowed. He quickly passed the jar on. When Frank looked back to the front of the room, five wooden boxes were lined in a tidy row on the floor. He saw the preacher lean down to the farthest box on the right and flip open the lid.
He gently eased his scarred arms into the box and lifted out a coiled snake. The snake twisted and curled its smooth body as the preacher began dancing while lifting the snake in the air. He passed the snake on and returned to the boxes on the floor, retrieving another snake from an identical wooden box. Sweat started to drip down Frank’s back and he could feel each salty path the drops made. His earlobes were burning, and he thought he could feel his heartbeat in them. His limbs stiffened as he watched yet another snake added into the rotation. Soon, Frank counted four snakes being passed around by the congregation, angry snakes who were coiled, agitated, and writhing. People would hold them in the air as they spun and shuffled.
Suddenly, Frank’s head felt heavy, and he could feel it nodding forward until his chin sat upon his chest and it took him great effort to lift it again. His vision also started to warp—had everything been so blurry before? Frank couldn’t remember, but now, he looked at the group as if peering out of a rain-soaked window. He scrunched his eyes up tight and then quickly opened them as wide as they could go, hoping maybe to bring some clarity back. It didn’t help. The people around him, who now were shapeless blobs, continued to pass the snakes around and Frank thought he saw a snake lunge to bite a worshipper on the arm, but he couldn’t be sure.
The room had grown unbearably hot, his shirt now saturated with sweat, clung to his clammy skin like Saran Wrap. He pushed himself up from the pew but swooned as soon as he stood. Grabbing the polished wood of the pew in front, he tried to steady himself, and slowly he started to shift to his right, aiming for the aisle. When he reached the end of the pew, he braced himself and paused to catch his breath. His vision was still unclear, but as he scanned the room, he thought he could make out the form of a woman, crouched in a corner, just behind where the preacher had been delivering his sermon.
Frank took a step and then felt the air rushing as he plummeted towards the ground. He was caught by a few pairs of strong arms. “Bring him up!” the preacher called. His voice sounded muffled, as if he were underwater. Frank wondered if he was drowning as he was escorted to the front of the room. The closer he was, the better he could see, and he was right about the woman in the corner. She sat crouched, her arms resting on her thin sinewy legs. Her hair was dark and cropped close to her scalp and she was wearing a simple, yellow sundress. She sat rigidly still and stared at Frank with an intensity that, even in his stupor, made Frank’s breathing shallow and his heart race.
The preacher appeared next to Frank and grabbed both his arms while he shouted, “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover!”
While the preacher recited, the woman in the corner slowly rose, uncoiling her body with a fluidity that could almost be sensual, under other circumstances. Frank could hardly hold himself up and slumped back against the preacher who still had his arms pinned. The women moved closer, starting to dance now to the organ music. She did not dance like the others; instead, she slowly twisted and curved, and she never took her eyes off Frank. She was writhing in front of him, undulating, almost trance-like as if she was dissociating, as if she had left their world and was somewhere else. Somewhere warm and dark and quiet.
He looked anywhere except her body. He started to focus on the carpet, counting every stained fiber. She leaned in closer. She smelled sickly sweet, like the smell of some cheap perfume mixed with the smell of cigarettes and rotting teeth. It made him start to retch again. The air hung heavy and moist like the inside of a belly, the way the hypodermis might feel once each layer of skin is peeled away.
Frank tried to call out, but his tongue felt large and swollen, he found it difficult to swallow, let alone speak. The preacher called out again, “They shall take up serpents…” but Frank didn’t hear the rest of it. He was staring at the woman in front of him. She loosened the joints in the mouth, unlocked her jaw, and her mouth opened wider and wider and wider until her mouth was an empty, black void. An unending cavern, cold. He was paralyzed by her eyes, gleaming in the low light, focused, calculating. The preacher slowly lowered Frank to the floor and stepped away, leaving him paralyzed and alone. She started with his feet, gently easing them into her mouth—her teeth piercing his skin as she pulled his legs deeper. Frank did not struggle when she had swallowed him up to the chest. He stared up at the ceiling, listening to the organ music. Then, there was nothing.
Shanon Adame is a reporter and fiction writer residing in Maryville, Tennessee. Her work has been featured in The Daily Times, Knoxville Writers’ Guild, Impressions Literary Magazine, and The Highland Echo.
**Featured image: Katy Heejin, Pixabay