With Death Laughing

✍ Scribed by Peter Plate

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: en-US
• Weight: 52 KB
• Edition: Seven Stories Press first edition
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

It's Christmastime in the Southland in this near-future vision of 21st century California. Our narrators, an ex-con turned pistol-carrying priest, and Sugar Child, a halfway house resident, have just met. The priest is a donations solicitor for Blessed World, the church and charity, and works downtown, "where I bang a tambourine and beg for money in the mellifluous, singsong voice beloved by children worldwide: Help the needy, give to the poor, amen." But nothing is going right. Hassled by SWAT cops, and troubled after a failed marriage, he's losing faith in himself.
Sugar Child has her own problems. She's arrested by SWAT police, and sent to "lockdown." Her opinion of the priest is no better: She's never met a man who was stronger than a woman. Looking at him, she never will.
As the days speed toward Christmas--holiday shoppers aren't giving him any money--the priest wonders whether there isn't some new mission awaiting him, one that'll help the people in the...