Exit Kingdom by Alden Bell Page B

gate, clutching at each metal bar as he goes.
    What’re you doin? Abraham says.
    But Ignatius ignores him and turnsinstead to the Vestal.
    Amata, if you please, he says and gestures with an open palm for her to step into the gated grotto.
    No, huh-uh, Abraham says. I ain’t here for no perverted sacrifices.
    Moses rushes forwards and gets between the girl and the door in the gate. Meanwhile, Douglas Perry moves closer.
    Wait, Ignatius says.
    I’m gonna kill this thing, Abraham says and aims hisrifle at the slug’s head.
    Please wait, Ignatius says. He won’t hurt her.
    That thing ain’t your parishioner any more, friar, Moses says. It don’t discriminate between holy and un.
    I promise you, he says. He won’t hurt her. Amata, please.
    He turns to the redhead with a look of longing.
    Then she, the Vestal, produces a look of utmost peacefulness and brilliance – like a stageangel backlit with spotlights.
    It’s all right, she says to Moses, putting her hand on the hand that holds the pistol and lowering it for him. He won’t hurt me. It’s all right. I’ll show you.
    Moses does not trust her – trust isn’t what’s behind it. But the strange woman has a desire to prove herself at the mouth of death, and that’s something Moses respects.
He will come between her andhim who would make her a victim, but he is not one to come between any woman and the mode of life or of death she chooses for herself. He will not be held arbiter of
such things, and he steps aside.
    What’re you doin, Mose? Abraham asks, the rifle still aimed at the slug’s head.
    Let it happen, Moses says. It’s her own say-so.
    So Abraham follows his brother’s lead. The Vestal Amatasteps into the grotto, and Ignatius closes the door behind her and locks it again.
    And that’s when Moses Todd sees something he has never seen before in all his travels across the wide and fissured country.
    *
    The Vestal Amata steps towards the dead man Douglas Perry. She comes within two feet of him and offers herself to him, spreading her arms wide, palms up to the sky, headlowered
in submission. The slug turns his gaze upon her, and for a moment everything stops. The two stand together, a wretched tableau, ancient beast and virgin sacrifice, devil and canoness, displayed
behind black bars strung through with dead flowers, under the stony proscenium of the grotto. There they stand, like statues in a museum diorama – or a new station of the cross: holy horrorrendered paralysed and dumb.
    The slug looks at the Vestal, his eyes cloudy and curious. He seems confused by her presence, by the aggression with which she offers herself up to him. An embarrassment of riches for the
cannibal dead. But his confusion quickly transforms to something else – and something else besides hunger too. For a moment it looks like deference – Moses believes for asecond that he
sees obeisance in the way Douglas Perry’s eyes drop to the hard-packed earth at the feet of the redheaded woman. But then Moses realizes it’s not even that, not even awed respect or
fear but rather just indifference. The slug loses interest. The dead man Douglas Perry looks at the woman as he would with faint curiosity at empty clothes fluttering their sleeves on a clotheslinein the middle of an abandoned yard. A momentary distraction before the resumption of a purposeless wandering.
    And so the slug drops his eyes, turns away from the Vestal and takes a few shambling steps in the opposite direction.
    What in the holy hell, Abraham exclaims.
    What’s the matter with him? Moses asks Ignatius. You trained him? Is that what you did?
    Moses has never heardof such a thing being done, but maybe the monk Ignatius has found a way.
    Did you blind him? Moses asks of Ignatius, who stands, smiling proudly. He can’t see her? What did you do?
    It isn’t him, Ignatius says finally.
    What? What do you mean it ain’t him?
    And then, as if illustrating the friar’s point, the slug Douglas Perry takes an