A Useful Trick of the Trade

I must tell someone. There were telltale signs on her body – the handprint-shaped bruises around the rib cage, the mouth, at that time still full of two tongues. Hers and someone else’s. She had evidently died during the act of lovemaking.
In all, the body showed evidence of a mutually violent passion, rather than an act of rape by either party. It was difficult to be absolutely certain because I was merely looking at one side of the story, as it were. If there was another body, there was no sign of it, neither its presence nor any mode of its exit from the flat.
Needless to say, being a churchgoer, stumbling upon this sight in my own flat, I was more than a little shocked out of my mind. But, of course, there was some need to say it....
Without further thought, however, I knelt beside the bed, palms pressed together, like fleshy moth wings, and have called upon you God, rather than the police. I suppose I was administering last rites, in the desperate hope that it was not too late. Trying to neaten and clean her body, too, ready for your attention.

The following Sunday, I could not find my usual church. This was most disconcerting because I had been attending it since I was a small child. Where it should have been was a block of flats.
Somewhat in despair, I gave myself the benefit of the doubt, becoming convinced that it had always been in the next street. The first street, however, turned out to be longer than I remembered, with rank upon rank of unbroken terraced housing eventually arriving at the park gates. I knew all along that the church was nowhere near because I could not see its spire, which would have poked up higher than the TV aerials.
As a child, I had dreamed that the church was really a rocket ship. After all, it looked like one, despite being old-fashioned and bedecked with stone gargoyles. I’d heard of sending monkeys into outer space … but statues and icons? If Mrs. Smith had been cleaning out the pews when it happened, she must have gotten an almighty shock.
I shook my head in disbelief. Was I really thinking these things? Perhaps that incident during the week was taking its toll on my mind. Which was not surprising. I could hardly credit that the police, when they eventually arrived on the scene, were almost giving the impression that I was the chief suspect in a case of murder. After all, they said. Who else was there? It was my flat, wasn’t it? What was the dead woman doing there? Not surprisingly, I was dumbfounded at their damned nerve. They put my behaviour down to shock. Grunts and wild gesticulations.

I found the church at last, tucked away in a nondescript cul-de-sac – quite close to where I lived, as it happened.
Yes, it did look a bit like a rocket ship – but a lot of churches do, don’t they? Except those with square towers, of course. And, oh, yes. Those newfangled Catholic ones with bits of sculpture outside in the guise of oblique builders’ scaffolding.
Today I was so much in awe of you, my God and Saviour, that I literally knelt down in the grounds of the church and made the rest of the way by crawling, in the process scraping off bits of my stockings, and then skin, and then splinters of my kneecaps. My high heels fell off first.
Once inside, it was certainly a useful trick of the trade to know how to pray in silence – unlike those tub-thumping hot gospellers who seem to do everything with their goddamn tongues.
Rest assured, dear God, I am not praying to you only on my own behalf, for that would be more than a little selfish. I am also pleading your gracious mercy and forgiveness for that poor deaf and dumb man whom the police ended up arresting from next door to my flat. He had lived there quietly for years. His loft connected with mine, it turned out. He was viewing ‘Crimewatch’ on TV at the time, I believe. From what I found they should be looking for a man who is made of plastic. So, even though I know the police are not easily fooled, I am still unconvinced of that man’s guilt. Or am I getting confused, Lord? Only you can tell, I’m sure. Hear my words, dear Lord. As you ready yourself for my arrival in your Heavenly church up so very high.