Free WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) by Joseph Turkot

been told by so many over the years. But everything about him looks skeletal—from his flabby skin, meshed with endless wrinkles, to his filmy eyes and his tired, ancient voice. Neither of us say a word. I want to look at Maze, to get some clue as to what lead I am about to follow, but I don’t. I know she’ll get it started, and I can pick up from there. Then, for almost twenty seconds, Father Gold scrutinizes our appearance. As if he’s divining what we’ve done from how we look. I think for a moment that we’re really fried now, because he knows that Maze has stolen the map. That she’s stalked his home at night and broken in. And he’s toying with us now, waiting to use his trap.
                “You have touched metal ,” he says finally.
                “What?” says Maze, caught off-guard.
                “Both of you.” He pauses to analyze our reactions. “Do you deny it?”
                I think of the knives—but their handles weren’t metal. Still, we climbed the fences, and we turned the doorknobs in the Deadlands. We definitely touched metal—but how could he know? And it comes to me, after Maze finally responds to him, that he can’t know. There’s no way he can know.
                “I’ve never touched metal in my life. And neither has Wills. We spent the night on the beach. We shouldn’t have done it. There were wolves though, and we were trapped there overnight.”
                “At the beach?” Father Gold says, his face perking up at her admission of guilt. “You know that the beach is off-limits without the guidance of a Father.”
                “I know. It was my fault, Father,” she says. I think she’s done it—given him enough to get him off the idea that we touched metal.
                “Is this to suggest that—besides touching metal—there have been acts of fornication as well?” His eyes dart around like a madman, crawling away from our faces and over our bodies, as if an underlying perversion rests in his accusation—as if the idea that we broke one of the cardinal rules of the Fatherhood is creating some kind of sick enjoyment in him. He waits, and it’s clear that Maze is slower than usual. Knowing she wouldn’t want me to, I chime in anyway.
                “No, Father.We didn’t.”
                “Your loyalty to her…astounds me. After each further revelation of her untowardness, you cling the more tightly.” His face bores into me. And then, like he’s dismissed me that quickly, as a coward who will defend her no matter what, his gaze falls squarely and singularly back on Maze.
                “There will be a communion of Fathers today to determine your fate,” he tells her.
                “Determine her fate? ” I say, my need to protect her overriding my new nonchalance about her wellbeing.
                “It’s okay,” she says to me, almost as if she expected me to lose control. I turn to look at Father Gold. All that punches through my head is whether or not he knows about the map—if any other explanation besides that is even possible to make sense of this.
                As I watch him, I know he has her in a trap now. His face lights up. He speaks slowly and directly to her:
                “We will cast sentencing for you both at the communion. To touch metal is one of the gravest sins,” he continues. Then, to my complete surprise, Maze submits.
                “He didn’t touch it, Father. It was only me,” she says. I look at her, speechless, and before I can object, prepared to return to the original defense that neither of us touched any metal, Father Gold sighs like he’s deeply relieved, and then a gross smile spreads his thin lips.
                “I knew it. Only you would do such a thing. And to bring him so close to it—why, that is an additional sin