Harlotsville II: Altar Ego

Until the time came when she could fashion her own spiritual exodus from this padded hell, she would have to entertain herself. She lifted up a portion of the family documents, thumbing through them uncomprehendingly.

Most of it was simply legalese jargon, though seeing her father's handwriting did offer her the smallest bit of comfort. Hardly enough to sustain her. But it was nice to see, for a moment.

Near the back of the bundle, however, were two cardboard envelopes, one of which she immediately recognized. It was water damaged on the edges, and her own splotchy handwriting was upon it, labeled simply "Betty - Private."

As a testament to her parents' trust, the envelope had remained unopened all these years, which was quite something given how nosy her mother typically had been. It was sealed with a small glass decal of a fish, a rare gift from her childhood. How it had gotten mixed up in these files was a mystery to her.

She opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper. The front side was a page from one of her father's religious tracts.

She flipped it over to find something unexpected.

It was not drawn by her, yet recognized the handiwork immediately. Too crude to suggest a future career in the fine arts, but detailed in a way that couldn't be entirely dismissed as a mere child's doodle.

It was the facial expressions that struck her most. They were surprisingly accurate. There was a time when they would only have made her uncomfortable. But now they only made her strangely nostalgic.

It was a drawing of two girls in a garden. One girl, with long messy blonde hair, drab clothes and a ruddy complexion, is wielding a carrot with a mischievous grin on her face. The other girl, grimacing and pretty with her brown curls and elegant silk dress, is bent over, receiving the offending vegetable in her cartoonishly huge rear end.

On the bottom of the page is signed, "Dear Betty: Don't be glum, here's a carrot in your bum! Love, Eugenia."

Betty looked down at this picture, holding it at an angle so as to obscure it from any guardsmen.

"Eugenia..." She mouthed in a dry whisper, "they won't take this one away from me," she said to herself.

With her spirits momentarily lifted, she decided to inspect the other envelope. This one looked new, and had official postage stamps on it. She opened it to find just one piece of paper, handwritten in a barely legible fashion.

She squinted, employing a good amount of mental energy to decipher what was being said. She finally determined it to read:

"Dear 'Betty.' I have ensured that, after a requisite 2-month stay in what I am sure is a horrific excuse for a "mental institution," you shall be set free, and given a small amount of money to get on with your life. Destroy this letter after reading it, if you can. Just to be safe.

Why am I helping you? The wretched church had a punishment in store for you that I, as an innocent bystander, could not abide by. God's mercy indeed! I need not know your story to save you from the guillotine; nobody deserves it, least not for so-called "whoredom."

Sincerely,

M.M."

Betty stared at this letter in disbelief, and then, with total realization, joy rushed into her scarred but still beating heart.

___________________________________

"It was the strangest dream," Moses mused in between sips of an acrid house brew. "You know I am far from a mystic, but for the life of me I cannot explain why it felt so real..."

"They must've drugged you!" his friend concluded with an emphatic clawing of the air. "

"No, I don't believe that is it," Moses replied slowly, leaning his head back and stroking his scraggly goat's beard. "I know when I've been drugged--it always leaves some psychic or physical residue, a fog of sorts, or a nausea. I woke feeling rather the opposite. More alive, more alert. Even through the considerable pain of my wounds, I felt more alive than I had in a long time."

"Perhaps you had a good doctor," his friend said in a less confident tone, an idea which again was waved away quickly by the extravagant vagabond.

"Hardly! The fool left me with stitches so poorly knit that my own insides were nearly falling out. His manner was bumbling and incurious, even oafish; when my eyes first laid upon him, he was vigorously picking his nose, and its bloody contents were then swiped on his smock. He then used these same hands, unwashed and uncovered, to attempt applying fresh wound-dressings! I ended up electing to do them myself, which he did not think to argue with."

"My lord," the friend replied, raising his beetle brow in disgust. "So this dream, what was it of exactly?"

"My friend, it was a dream of such sensation. Most of the time, we dream in pictures, perhaps a few sounds, but rarely does the element of touch come to play. This I attribute to how our minds are organized by nature, for in a dream-state it is usually unnecessary to feel that which we already understand through the inference of dimension and texture. Then again, I am no expert on the science of the mind. In any case, can you ever recall the sense of touch in your dreams?"

"No, I can't say I have," his friend said plainly.

"Neither could I, until this hospital-bed dream I experienced. I felt the sensations of sex; the tip of my prick was enveloped in a soft, warm, wet sensation. Very much the feeling of a mouth, you see, and an expert one at that. So expert that I felt it move down my shaft to a length rarely achieved in my waking life. Nearly half way!"

"Now we know this is a dream, Moses," his friend said chucklingly. "You've told me the stories. No mortal woman could reach that benchmark on a man such as yourself. Unless she planned not to breathe again."

"I would say the same thing, however...the strangest part comes next."

"What's that?" The friend asked, expectantly shifting his considerable weight on an uncomfortably short barstool.

"When I was discharged--they attempted to imprison me, but I simply wrote them a cheque large enough to placate them--I stopped in a wooded area on the way to town to inspect myself one more time. There I found those awful stitches which thankfully have held. But down below, I discovered two long, curly brown hairs affixed to my crotch. When I held them up to the light, I could not fathom whose they were. Neither that ridiculous doctor nor his nurse had hair of this sort."

"What could it mean, Moses?"

The dark, handsome vagabond winced for a moment as he leaned back, clutching his still-sore side, then settled into a relaxed expression.

"I cannot say for sure," he said, "but I did one good deed before I left that ridiculous abbey. While regaining consciousness--and sneakily, before I had broadcasted that I was cognizant of my surroundings--I heard much chatter and gossip among the nuns who were handling me. There appeared to be quite a fuss raised over the apparent misdeed of a particular nun, someone they referred to as 'Sister Arbach.' It was quite a flagrant offense, whatever it was, though I could not catch the details."

"You mean..."

"Like I said, I cannot know for sure. But from the few things I could piece together--the use of the word 'whore' on several occasions to describe this woman being the most obvious--it did cross my mind that perhaps this dream I experienced had a worldly muse, let's say."

"Moses! Even at your most desperate hour, you attract them like honey to bumblebees!"

"Haha, well...it's only a theory. Nevertheless, they were bandying about the idea of execution for this poor woman, which I could not tolerate. So within my payoff to those principled papal authorities, I added an extra request: that the woman be set free. This they could not directly approve, however it was to happen in short order. I arranged it so that they do not receive this second payment until there is proof of her release. They seemed eager to comply."

His friend nodded in respect. And then, a moment later, he blinked and lifted his head as if his mind had flooded with new thoughts.

"You said this woman's name. Arbach, was it?"

"I believe so."

"Hmm. That name, it sounds familiar somehow," the man recalled.

"How so?"

"I'm not sure. I recall hearing about a whore from a wealthy background, I believe that was her family name, though this was not common knowledge. Merely a rumour."

"What about her?'

"Well, she was quite the whore. She disappeared some years ago. But I hear she was quite popular in this very bar, back in the day. She went by something like, Betsy Bumhole or something..."

"Is that so?" Moses said with interest.

"Yes. I hear she was spellbinding, actually, even though she wore an eye mask. Most men did not concern themselves much with her face, however."

"Why's that?"

"Because she was famous for her gigantic bum," the friend said loudly, throwing his grubby hands wide apart and nearly knocking his drink over in the process. "Like this. Massive, and exclusively built for a sod. I remember now. They called her "Backroom Betty,"

"Backdoor Betty," one of the old patrons, who sat nearby, now overheard.

"Yes, thank you friend. Backdoor Betty."

"Did someone say Backdoor Betty?" another salty bar denizen piped up. "I lost my virginity to that wench. My god, we miss her here!"

"Sorely!" shouted another man across the way, followed by a hail of chatter on the subject.

"You could pork her in that fat rump for ten bucks!"

"Damn right, that whore's tooter was wide open for business, 7 days a week."

"I betcha them damn coppers came and carted her away. I hope she gets out one day, before she runs dry. Sure would love one last bang in that big ol' box."

"Don't even get me started!"

Moses looked at his friend and, for the first time, was the more excited of the two.

"All these years and you never told me of this woman?" he asked, almost offended.

"Well...we all assumed she had, y'know...kicked the bucket. Such women don't have the longest life span, sad t' say..."

The vagabond tossed his coins on the table and stood up sharply with a large grin on his face. "My friend, I shall see you again. I must go write another letter," he concluded.

He turned towards the pub door with renewed purpose.

THE END