Free Runaway Nun (Misbegotten) by Caesar Voghan

From the berth where he lay wrapped in a blanket, Adolf
Hitler fastened his stare on the crucifix stuck on the cabin’s bulkhead: two
twigs held in place with a string of rusty wire and the stripped, withered man
latched onto them. No crown of thorns dripping blood, no mane of curls fallen
over eyes ravaged by Heaven’s wrath—Jesus had no hair and no eye sockets;
he had a crooked grin, a short oblique slit etched into the wood under a nose
curved like the beak of a bird of prey.
    The dry rasp of Adolf’s syncopated
breathing grazed the silence inside the cabin. His chest barely swelled beneath
the covers as the air whizzed in and out of his failing lungs. His eyes, moist
and dusk, remained pinned to the figurine abandoned on its holy perch.
    “Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi
custodiat animam tuam in vitam eternam. Amen…” Father Micon’s voice interrupted
the dying man’s reverie.
    Adolf’s head fell back onto the
pillow, and his eyes shifted to the sixty-year-old black man arrayed in a
sackcloth cassock. A simple rosary hung around Micon’s neck, as it was
customary for the abbot of a Franciscan monastery. His fallen hood revealed a bald head with tiny clumps of gray hair scattered around the
temples like small clouds hovering over a dark and desolated planet. A frown dug
its trench at the root of his nose—a scar left by long vigils filled with
regrets and unanswered questions, lonely nights of which a pair of remorseful
eyes testified silently. Seated at the edge of the bed, the priest raised his
hand holding a communion wafer.
    Adolf glanced at the thin, almost
translucent sliver of unleavened bread. The dry scent of baked flour teased his
nostrils briefly, then vanished, swallowed by the stench of decaying
flesh—his flesh. He returned his death-stung eyes on the wooden Christ.
    Following Adolf’s stare, the
priest, too, rested his sights on the makeshift rood. A boy, or maybe a
girl—somebody named Jacob or Sophia, faceless shadows living in one of
the hundreds of orphanages that littered the barren landscape of
Amerikania—had carved the artifact during their woodworking class, but neither
Jacob nor Sophia cared too much for the Savior’s face. All that mattered was
the bare, roughly hewn shape of a crucified human. A gaunt
silhouette, bald and eyeless.
    At least the ribs are all there,
Micon thought, and he counted them. Half a dozen hurried scratches. The wound
was there, too—a smear of red ink marked the spot where the centurion
pierced God’s own heart shedding blood and water. There were nails drawn
through the figurine’s wrists, barely visible under a thin coat of paint, so
from a distance it looked like the man from Nazareth defied gravity by means of
a mysterious, albeit cruel, force.
    The fluorescent lamp on the
bulkhead buzzed and flickered erratically. Shafts of light seeped through the
wafer approaching the dying man’s lips. Adolf opened his mouth and took in the
Eucharistic provision. The abbot smiled, and his pupils welled up. He wiped a
wandering tear away with the heels of his palm. He had seen the mystery at work
countless times. One last meal. A thin
sliver of bread. An arcane rite in which all souls
eventually found solace at the portals of death.
    Adolf tightened his jaw and tried
to crunch the wafer, but he couldn’t muster the strength. The bread melted slowly
on his tongue and gathered at the back of his throat. He closed his eyes and
swallowed the lump with the body of God—a small holy fetus made of baked
flour and a dying man’s saliva. He strained to speak. Heaved. A labored rasp left
his lips. Eyes shut tight, he swallowed again and
grabbed the abbot’s hand.
    “May God pardon thee whatever sins
thou hast committed by the evil use of thy body, my brother,” Father Micon said,
squeezing the replika’s hand.
    Adolf let out a grunt, then opened
his eyes and glanced one last time at the outcast clinging to his contorted
wood, alone in his agony. He tried to