Cold Ennaline by RJ Astruc Read Free Book Online Page B

Nerve.
    Things go dark for a time. The sun is swallowed by the clouds. I feel as if I’m dreaming. Everything seems disconnected. The mud licks at my calves with a lizard’s tongue. I’m aware, distantly, of tall blue flames in the fields and the howls of dying sheep. I see people bursting into flowers and melting into the earth. I’m grabbed by someone; I push them away, only to find I’m not touching a living person but the smooth surface of a vine. The god’s fingers drive into the ground and take root. I touch my face and it comes away covered in black ash. I scream. The rest of the faith full launch themselves forward to meet their fates, like animals running blindly into a slaughter house. I fumble my way backward, still screaming.
    Then I feel a hand against the back of my neck and spin around.
    It’s Mrs. Piedmont.
    She’s still clean, still immaculately presented, in her simple black smock. Her eyes are dark and hollow as the holes of the god.
    “Mrs. P-Piedmont,” I gasp. “He’s killing them all.”
    “What did you think the god was?” Mrs. Piedmont asks. “Did you think he would be tame?”
    I stare at her.
    “I th-thought… I th-thought….”
    “Get out of here, Ennaline,” says Mrs. Piedmont. “This is no place for the faith less.”
    I run.

6
     
    T HEN I wake up.
    I’m lying in a double bed with white cotton sheets and four pillows with lace edges. The bed is in a small room half the size of my room in the temple. There’s a bedside table with a lamp and a window with a Venetian blind. The room has the plasticky musk smell of spray air-fresheners. The wallpaper is pastel yellow and gray and has a floral motif where it touches the ceiling.
    I rub my eyes.
    The room is still there.
    I rub them again.
    No change.
    I sit up, pulling my knees underneath me. Still, nothing changes. The sheets crinkle around my waist, and the bed squeaks slightly as I move. It’s all normal, unbelievably normal. There are clothes laid out at the bottom of the bed: a T-shirt, underpants, a bra, and a pair of jeans. They’re in my size—in fact, I’m fairly sure the pants and bra really are mine, clothes I left behind in our mad dash to the Piedmonts’ property.
    Normally I’d say my prayers to the god before I got out of bed, and then go to the temple kitchen to prepare breakfast with the twins. Then we’d pray with Father Nerve, and then pray again outside, with our hands and foreheads pressed against the earth. It seems almost blasphemous to get out of bed without saying anything.
    But do I really care about blasphemy now?
    It occurs to me that if I’m no longer faith full, I’ll have a lot more time on my hands.
    So I climb out of bed and get dressed. The fresh T-shirt and jeans feel weird against my skin, like they don’t really belong on me. As a companion of Father Nerve, I’ve always been expected to dress conservatively or in the simple smocks of the faith full. The last time I dressed casually, I was a little kid.
    Two doors lead out of the room. I try the first one and find a bathroom with a toilet and shower in it. An en suite , I realize—I’ve never seen one before. I try the taps. The water comes out warm immediately. I wash my hands, which feels good, and then I wash my face, which feels even better. And then I take off all my clothes again and have a shower with the water on as hot as I can stand it, until I feel I’ve burned all traces of the god’s foul stink out of my skin.
    Before I leave the bathroom, I take a good look at my face in the mirror. It’s the same plain face I’ve always had, although my cheeks are now very flushed from the shower’s heat. I expected to look different. Older, perhaps, or with some mark, some evidence of the god on my skin.
    But I’m still me, still Ennaline Whitehall.
    It all feels like a dream. Or a nightmare. I pinch my cheek, and it hurts, so I guess I must be real. I’m still not convinced about the rest of the world, though.
    When I go