The Priest by Monica La Porta

today.” The Priestess wrote down her
instruction and passed the tablet to a nurse.
    Mauricio’s stomach started rumbling on cue;
he was relieved when the Priestess left without having looked at
him once the whole time. A nurse took his vitals and then punched
his skin with a needle that was connected to a pipe that led to a
bag full of a transparent fluid. Mauricio saw the liquid substance
dripping inside the pipe, drop by drop, until it reached the
needle. He couldn’t help gasping when the cold liquid started
pouring inside him. The feeling was, at first, unpleasant, but
after few minutes, Mauricio noticed that he could think better. The
fog that had swamped his thoughts was clearing fast. The nurse took
his vitals again, read the numbers on a display at the end of his
bed, and nodded, satisfied. She fussed over the machines in the
room, waited until all the liquid in the bag had found its way
inside Mauricio’s body, hooked another full bag with a different
liquid substance to the pipe and then left.
    He soon felt better than he had in a month
and was ready to go back to his cell. He didn’t like the room he
was in. It smelled of that clean, citrus scent that, in Mauricio’s
mind, was connected with that day, four years earlier, when the
women had chosen him to be a semental. He was fully immersed in his
memories when the door opened and a woman came in. Out of habit, he
lowered his head and closed his eyes. Years of servitude had shaped
him like that.
    “I heard that you fainted,” a familiar
feminine voice said with a hint of concern. Mauricio opened his
eyes and saw the girl looking at him. She walked toward his bed but
stopped when she realized that she was too close to him. “How are
you now?” the girl asked.
    “Better. This water is miraculous.” Mauricio
raised his hand to show her the needle and the pipe with the light
green substance dripping down.
    “I tried it, too. It’s good stuff,” she said
and then laughed.
    Mauricio felt a foreign satisfaction at the
fact that she was laughing. He didn’t understand why it meant
something to him, but it did. “What’s your name?” he asked
suddenly.
    “Rose. But everybody calls me Rosie. What’s
yours?” If she was surprised by his question, she didn’t show
it.
    “My dad used to call me Mauricio.” His voice
broke. He hadn’t expected her to be interested in knowing his name.
He had been a string of twelve digits for the last twenty-two years
and had hated that number ever since a guard had made him memorize
it.
    “What a unique name.” Rosie seemed to think
about it for a few seconds and then said, “I like the sound of
it.”
    “I like your name, too.” Mauricio said,
feeling that, as replies went, this wasn’t the greatest.
    “My mom has a penchant for flowers.” Rosie
was playing with her hands.
    Mauricio thought the way her fingers toyed
with a ring on her right hand was nice.
    “I don’t know anything about flowers,”
Mauricio said automatically, his eyes lingering on her hands.
    “Oh—” Rosie looked at him with wide eyes and
then said, “A rose is a flower with many petals that comes in
different colors.”
    “It must be nice to look at.” He slowly
raised his head.
    “Yes, roses are the prettiest flowers and
they also smell wonderful.”
    “What’s it like?” His eyes were now openly
staring at her.
    “A rose smells like sweet and spice, and
sometimes also like dew. When I was born, my moms planted hundreds
of roses under my bedroom’s window, and when the buds opened I
could smell the perfume drifting to my bed; their scent was almost
intoxicating at night.”
    “I’d like that…” To sit at night with
you, surrounded by roses . His heart made a somersault in his
chest, his lungs suddenly seeking air. Is this what feels like
to be intoxicated?
    “You’d love it.”
    “I’m sure.”
    “I—” She silently looked at Mauricio for a
few seconds before lowering her head. Her ring slipped from her
finger and