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Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys #1


by Kyle Hemmings


There must have been a black-holed galaxy of eyes watching us, Father Dunn's special boys, who secretly wished to be crucified. We tucked our plastic rosaries into our back pockets, the same ones where we once kept rainbow-colored condoms. There were awkward confessions in the corner of a room that always made us shiver with long-suppressed intimacies. Our hearts would never again be open to visitors. 

 

The proctor with early dementia sang at night through the only open window for miles. Something about stars on a string and how his mother did amazing needlepoint until her fingers went stiff. We told the star-crossed priests with traces of old acne that our mothers did tricks to save our bodies. Our pen knives were confiscated so we sharpened our pencils and used them for weapons.

 

 A young girl wavering between celibacy and punk mother-lust despair came to visit us each night. In a dim light, she blushed pink. She sowed our loins in different patterns with her brilliant coordination of tongue and complex fingering, then walked away, blending with morning sky. We became a wet dream. With magic marker, we drew the shape of open vaginas on the wet cheeks of incoming students. Asked who among them were ever caught red handed. We grew more rebellious under our sheaths of lethargy. We sabotaged track and field events with competing schools. After graduation, we committed insidious crimes with a light touch and a good pen knife. We lifted what every straight-edge bleary-eyed sucker thought he could possess: love. We were expelled into the next life.
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