DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

“The bar’s closed!” Frank repeated, shifting the shotgun.

The red-haired woman laughed again.

And Frank blew her face off.

He didn’t mean to. Or at least he didn’t think he meant to. It happened so fast. She was laughing at him and he was pointing the gun at her and his gaze went from her black panties to the look of black hatred on her slutty face and he hated that look and he wanted her to shut up and before he could even think about it he was pulling the trigger and when he could see again she was down and her face had been blown off.

And the others rushed him.

He had no time to reload, no time to do anything. Ted was in front, and he leaped the bar and yanked the shotgun from his hand, and then others were hopping over the counter. He saw breasts and fists, pubic hair and penises. He went down, punched and poked, scratched and kicked, and he heard bottles being smashed, chairs being thrown. There was laughing and whooping, the smell of newly opened alcohol. Wine spilled onto his face.

Above him, Ted grasped the shotgun like a golf club and lifted it over his shoulder, crying, “Fore!”

Frank did not even have time to scream before the butt of the shotgun smashed in the side of his head.

Pastor Robens cowered in his office, his back to the locked door, listening to what was going on in his church but afraid to confront it and put a stop to it, afraid even to look at the blasphemies that were being performed under his roof.

Under His roof.

That was the most horrifying thing of all, the utter lack of respect for God Almighty and His Son Jesus Christ.

They had been there already when he’d returned from his nightly visit to the AIDS hospice. They’d broken into the church, had smashed one of the side windows to gets in, and they were dancing in the aisles, ten or fifteen of them, teenagers and young adults, some sort of horrible rap music blasting from a boombox that had been set up on the dais. There were wine bottles on the carpet, wine bottles in the hands of the dancers, and he’d stormed into the church filled with rage and righteous indignation, screaming at them to leave immediately. He’d charged to the front of the church, turned off the boombox, whirled to face the revelers—

And he’d seen the statue.

The statue of Christ, his statue of Christ, the one he had received from the Reverend Morris in Atlanta. It was lying on its side on the front pew, and it had been desecrated, a garish clown’s smile painted on the face with lipstick, an enormous clay phallus appended to the crotch.

Standing on the pew next to the statue was a young woman with blond-and-black streaked hair. She was wearing a black see-through bra and a short black skirt, but the skirt was hiked up, and she had on no underwear. She was fingering herself, her hips swiveling in a slow, sensual motion.

There was a topless girl in the midst of the now motionless dancers, a boy with an erection emerging from his open zipper. Two young men, fully clothed, were lying on the floor underneath the broken window, embracing.

The lecture he’d intended to deliver died on his lips. He saw now that there was something hard and corrupt and vaguely threatening in the faces of these drunken teens, a knowing belligerence he had not noticed at first.

His anger faded as he faced the trespassers, replaced by a growing fear.

No one spoke.

Smirking, the young woman on the pew moved to the left, straddled the desecrated statue.

She spread open the lips of her vulva and peed.

There were giggles and chuckles that echoed in the silent church, titters that turned into guffaws. The young people were all still staring at him, but in their faces was not the shame at being caught that he’d expected to see, not the guilty acknowledgment of their wrongdoing that he would have thought they’d exhibit, but condescension and a smug, intimidating contempt.

A ponytailed boy swaggered up to the dais, held a bottle out. “Hey, dude, have some.”

Pastor Robens wanted to smack the bottle out of the boy’s hand, wanted to grab him by the collar and shake some sense into him, but he stood meekly aside as the boy took a swig of the wine and turned on the boombox.

The other youngsters started dancing again, passing around their bottles, whooping and hollering. The two young men on the floor were now partially undressed. Against the back wall a girl screamed as a boy began beating her breasts with his fists.

Pastor Robens hurried into his office, shut the door, locked it.

He heard a chorus of laughter from the partyers on the other side.

The ironic thing was that he did want a drink. He had never wanted a drink more in his life. He was trembling, his heart pounding with fear.

He had never encountered anything like this before. He had counseled troubled teens, had even worked for a while in a gang-counseling center in downtown San Francisco. But nothing he had ever experienced had prepared him for this. Emotionally troubled youth and violent fledgling criminals, those he could deal with. Those kids had specific recognizable problems. But that group out there… Something smashed against the door of this office, and he leaned against it, closing his eyes, offering a quick prayer to God that they wouldn’t get in.

There was something wrong with them, something deep and fundamental that went beyond the surface problems caused by family or society or even mental instability, something that he sensed but could not see, something that he only partially understood.

Evil.

Yes, that was it exactly. Evil. These kids were evil. Evil not for what they were doing, not for what they were saying, but for what they were.

He had intended to come in here and call the police, but as