Clara and Charlie, Episode 4

She awoke, puckered, cold, and naked. She hadn't brought a towel, and had to use her sweatshirt to dry herself, before limping damply back to her room. It was dark, but she didn't dare turn the light on, and was forced to fumble through her drawers in the dark. A clean pair of jeans and a new T-shirt made her feel much better, but started to realize how hungry she was. There wasn't much left in her mini fridge, either. The realization dawned that it was the cafeteria or bust. The thought of leaving her room was a bundle of anxiety in her head, but what other choice was there. She dug out the four inch claw hammer her father had given her when she had moved here, so she could hang pictures on her wall. It was comfortingly heavy in her hand, as she padded down the flights, and across the building in bare feet. She had tried to get shoes from her closet, but every time she opened its door, row upon row of paired empty sockets had stared up at her, like the cockeyed shoes in the hallways, and she had been left crying in a puddle on the floor. She’d tried it twice now.

It was half way across the North block basement hall that she heard it. A voice. Distant, male, conversational in tone. She froze, her mind reeling to calculate whether it was safer to run forwards, or go back. She was still vacillating when a door not 30 feet in front flew open, and a man hove into view. He had blonde hair over a craggy jaw, and black smudged eyes, like a sleep deprived Robert Redford. He was carrying a flat panel computer monitor under each arm. She didn't see any more before turning to flee, driving her bare feet again and again into the linoleum, accelerating away. She swung sharply into the Number Two stairwell and half a flight up was stopped in her tracks by the breach.

A window had been smashed in, and shards of glass lay all over the landing. It was not a large window, but the gaping wound it left seemed enormous. The poison had a way in. Clara stepped gingerly around the largest pieces of glass, one arm held out for balance, the other clutched to her chest to keep it from shaking. She was able to stretch her foot directly up to the third step, and once balanced there, ran like there was a wolf at her heels until she was back in the safety of her kitchenette. She didn't feel hungry any more, only slightly dizzy. It wasn’t for hours until she ventured forth again. It was hunger’s return that made her do it. She kneeled behind her door for half an hour listening for intruders, and peeking out through the half inch gap between her door and the floor.

Everything seemed clear, so she tiptoed as fast as quietitude allowed, over to Mary-Jo's room. The sense of intruding was so strong that she didn't dare touch the light switch. The mini fridge, though, quickly surrendered a jar of miracle whip, a banana, a bundle of asparagus, and a 6 pack of plastic diet coke bottles. She looked in the cupboard over the microwave, and there were two packs of Ramen Noodles, a can of tuna. Scooping them clumsily into her arms, she pleaded with Jesus not to blame her as she ran-walked back to her room to cook.

Later, as dusk started to fall and she was pressed flat against her wall, reaching sideways to lower the blind to the outside world without anything being able to see her in through the window, she heard a voice in the hallway outside. Only fragments came through loudly enough to decipher.

"...among you... stones... people go."

She ran to close her door, then tried to place the voice as she squatted, trying not to shake. It was familiar, but clearly nobody from the college. She pressed her head to the bottom of her door to peer out. A one sided mumbling was taking place on the other side, like half a phone call. Eventually a shoe came into view. It stood diffidently for a moment, then paced back out of her sightline, then back in and out again. It was a dirty off-white sneaker, with untied laces.

Aha. She had it in a flash. Foot Washer Charlie. That's who it was! Crazy Charlie! The panicked realization dawned that she much have dropped the hammer in the hallway downstairs with the monitor man. She felt defenseless.

Clara and Charlie, Episode 3

Half a loaf of wonder bread, a cup of blackberry yogurt, a jar of Skippy non-crunchy peanut butter, a tin of meal replacement diet shake powder, and a bottle of Pur water. That's all that was in her mini fridge, and she had just devoured half of it. Lying on her bed some of the pain let go her body, releasing her back to a higher level of thought.

Now she could see the full size of it, she burned with embarrassment at her sin. She squirmed and twisted as if she could rub a hole in her sheets, straight out through the bottom of the bed, and out of existence. How could she have been so weak? And at the exact moment of rapture, no less? Once when she was eight years old she had forgotten to lock the bathroom door, and her brother had walked in at the exact moment she started peeing. This was that times a million. Times a billion.

Jesus had called the army of the faithful, and the vault of her being had swung wide open to show the crimson stain she had let seep in. She had been warned so many times of the apple planted in the Eden of her body. She had been lectured about the hole that let temptation in, that would dangle the juicy fruit of sin so provocatively up against her fingertips. Preachers had bewailed its succulent cries, had told of its siren call that ran as rivulets past a dry tongue in a desiccated barren. She had been warned so many times. And had she not chastised her friends when they had fallen? Had she not lectured the girls at her old secular high school when they had been profligate with their charms, and had she not stood with righteous rectitude as they had thrown away their precious virginity, one after the other like so many harlots and cheap things.

And yet! When the trumpet had sounded for Christ's army to arise and come to his side, He had swung her soul wide open, and there, in the black void of her mind, there in the inner spiritual truth of her being... panties were not where they should have been.

It made her sick even to think of such a thing. Determination boiled up within her and a frenzy drove her limbs to push at once in the same direction. Her groveling squirms aligned and coordinated themselves into purposeful movement. Thin legs drove her tiny frame up and out of bed. Her dark brown hair tangled round her, and clung to her hollow temples and high forehead. Her pressed lips were nearly the pale white of her cheek. A steady stride carried her out to the hall, and down to the second last door. With a shove she entered, passed by the shower stalls, and came finally to rest before the one bathtub. She twisted the soap specked faucet full on hot. A minute later she slid her clothes off, and stepped with gritted teeth into the curling steam. With iron satisfaction she sat, making herself take in everything she deserved. She could feel the sin burning away from her, and she felt lighter than air.

After a few minutes she didn't feel anything any more. She made herself sit there until the water was nearly cold. Only then did she let her head touch the back of the tub, and the gentle tug of oblivion lift her to the temporary respite granted the sleeping.

Clara and Charlie, Episode 2

It was the buzzer from her room that got her off the floor. She didn't know how long she'd lain there. It was hard to get up, her back was stiff, her legs were numb. BUZZZZZZ BUZZZZZ. She pressed the 'listen' button down by millimeters, like it might burn her finger any moment.

"HELLO! HELLO HELLO! Anyone!" the voice was distorted with madness as much as by her speaker. Clara let go of the switch and looked out her window at the street outside. It was quiet save for a big dark car smashed up against a lamp post. She was inspecting the crumple in its hood when a heavyset man in a football bomber turned into view. He walked briskly, head down but coming up to glance around every few steps. Clara slammed the window shut and backed away in horror.

There were people out there. Contaminated, worldly, toxic. The refuse Jesus had abandoned. People who had sinned, who had been weak, who had betrayed Jesus. Like her. But there they were roaming, eating, mating. Out there. She lost her thought as the buzzer shouted at her again, making her jump. It was too much. She pivoted and plunged into empty halls that suddenly seemed hard and bare. The stairwell to the first floor gulped her down with its jagged concrete teeth.

The lobby, when she got there, was dark. The lights weren't on. Fake plastic plants made ominous holes in the indoor daytime twilight. A tangle of fabric nearly tripped her as she came out the fire door, and a patent leather shoe ricocheted off her foot and up against the wall. She tiptoed around the rest of the pile then turned a corner towards the front door. There, late afternoon daylight blazed in through the glass doors that encased the half-way cage to outside. In it, a woman in a floor length tan coat was hammering wildly at the grid of round black buzzer buttons, long wisps of hair flying as she pounded both fists against the panel.

"HELLO! SOMEONE HELP!" Its voice was shattered, half muted through the inside door. Clara edged towards the mad creature slowly. She was within 10 feet before she was spotted.

"Oh there you are! Someone, thank God. Do you know where Bridget is? Bridget Glenn. I'm her mother! Is Bridget ok?"

Clara froze. A beseeching hand rested on the glass between them, fine boned, fingers curved as talons.

"Let me in. Are you a student here? Do you know Bridget?"

"Sinner." Clara croaked. "Unrepentant!" There was a long table to her right, covered in fliers for abstinence programs. She took a handful and flung them at the door. They fluttered off the glass and scattered to the ground. The creature stared at her. Clara could see the sinews of its neck belling out to its shoulders.

It seemed to Clara as though she could almost see the sickly vapors of corruption coalescing around the creature in the cage. They were probing for a crack, it seemed, a hole, a way into God's sanctuary. She blinked her burning eyes and squinted into the back lit cage. The creature shifted, sliding along the glass towards her, searching, testing, snaking. The heat was upon her, invading her nostrils, creeping onto her skin. She gripped clammy forearms with sticky palms.

"My name is Kim Glenn." It was cajoling now, seducing, tempting. "My daughter is enrolled here. I haven't heard from her in three days, I'm worried sick. I need..."

Clara didn't hear the meaning, she just saw the flickering lips. Words were slithering past them, through the door, into her mind. She shook her head violently and grabbed her ears. "No!" In a lightning movement she snatched for more pamphlets, but when her hands hit the table she seized that instead.

"You're not getting me!" Energy came from nowhere, and she heaved the table up against the door, blocking it. "Not again!" She fled back upstairs as fast as rickety legs could take her. "Not again!" She only fell once.

Clara and Charlie, Episode 1

"I'm dropping Astronomy." Michelle said, then disappeared. She didn't make a popping sound, there was no sparkle of lights. One moment she was there, the next she wasn't, like a light being turned off. Jibes evaporated from Clara's mind as she watched Michelle's hollow jeans and Wheaton sweater, crumple over suddenly empty shoes. She jumped when a metal-bending crash came in through the open window. A Cheshire smile grew over her lips. She knew what had just happened. She knew exactly what had happened. Clara pressed her eyes shut in ecstasy, waiting for the light.

And she waited. After half a minute she became aware of her head and chest throbbing with double pulse beats. Her stomach started constricting in on itself. Where was Jesus? She broke her pose and sprinted out into the hallway, Michelle's sweater traveling with her, tangled around her left Converse. A scatter of college wear lay in a heap outside Maria's door. Silence swallowed her whole in one massive gulp. They were gone. She was not. Jesus had gathered the righteous, He had assembled the flocks at his side, he had brought in the faithful. Michelle was raptured, Maria was raptured. Clara clutched the guilty flesh of her painfully solid wrists. Could God be late for her? Was he still coming? She fell to her knees, blood red fingernails seized in a desperate claw of prayer.

"Hello?" She screamed. Nobody answered. "Hello?" Nothing. Was anybody else here at all? It didn't matter, she knew it as soon as she thought it. There was no point looking. She wasn't worthy, she was abandoned. She knelt in place until she couldn't feel her knees anymore. Between the carpet and ceiling tiles, her sobs didn't so much as echo.