Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Gabriel chuckled. “I actually don’t mind spiders. I pity them. Sure, I don’t want a nest in my pillow, but they don’t bother anyone. People hate them for no reason. Is it weird that I think they’re kind of cute with their long legs and many eyes?”
Abaddon stalled, but then his chest lightened, and he pulled Gabriel close before leading him down the hallway. This one was narrower than the one they’d braved together earlier, but just as long. “Maybe you should keep a tarantula then? Though not sure how it would fare against your cat.”
“You’re gonna have to get used to my cat, you know? He doesn’t scratch or anything,” Gabriel said and ran his fingers over the small of Abaddon’s back.
Abaddon flinched, unsure how to respond. He wasn’t afraid of bites or scratches, nor did he feel disgust for small furry animals. He just didn’t want them anywhere near him. “Don’t know about that,” he ended up saying before stalling at the top of a flight of three stairs. There was light coming from a hole in the floor ahead. “Shh. Let’s take off our shoes, We’re in the ceilings.”
Gabriel followed his request and stayed close, never missing the chance for little touches. “Whose ceilings?” he whispered.
Abaddon shrugged but removed his boots and took a careful step toward the faint ray of light shooting ahead. He froze when the silence was disturbed by a long, shuddery moan.
Gabriel squeezed his hand. “What’s going on?”
Abaddon’s blood ran faster, and he put his finger across his mouth before stepping over the opening and kneeling on its other side. When he placed his fingers on the floor, they felt a piece of thick cloth, which he slowly pulled aside, revealing more of the small openings in a layer of wood, leading straight into a room bathed in warm light.
His body hair bristled when the noises became clearer. Who, oh who, was watching porn in this fine establishment?
Gabriel kneeled next to him, but what they both saw made Abaddon scowl. Father John looked almost unrecognizable without his cassock, but it was him—in tighty-whities and a stained white tank top. With eyes closed, he let his head roll over the back of his armchair, and Abaddon’s eye twitched when he spotted the culprit—a curious ‘tea’ made of herbs and mushrooms, which made the priest too wrapped up in whatever fantasy he was living to continue watching a woman getting dicked by a buff man in a balaclava. It seemed he’d found his small woman on the TV.
Abaddon scowled. “Poor taste,” he whispered, glancing at Gabriel, who stared into the room as his face gradually reached the shade of a beetroot.
On the pale screen below, the actor pulled out of the moaning woman’s vagina and pushed hick cock into her anus, but above, in the dusky corridor, Gabriel backed away so fast he fell on his ass, causing a rumble. Father John looked up with a scowl, prompting Abaddon to fold back the fabric and sink the passage in impenetrable darkness.
The change in illumination was so sudden, he couldn’t even see Gabriel, but heard him crawling away on hands and knees as if he were an overgrown spider.
Poor thing.
With a grin on his lips, Abaddon stood up and followed him in soft footsteps, all the way back up the three stairs.
“You knew he’s a murderer, and it shocks you to see him high?”
“What?” Gabriel asked, but then swore, bumping into something.
Since the holes in the floor were now covered and they left them behind, Abaddon turned on the flashlight and caught up to Gabriel where the dusty passage was somewhat wider. “There was shroom tea on the table.”
The boy covered his flushed face. “Why would he watch that done to her? And I left my blanket. I brought it for you. I’m sorry.”
Abaddon frowned, but when Gabriel turned his face away from the light he lowered the lamp and pulled on the boy’s chin so their eyes could meet. “That was porn. Those people in the movie are actors.”
“But he p-put it in… I saw it.” Gabriel trembled and curled his shoulders but sought answers in Abaddon’s eyes.
It was hard to fathom that a grown man didn’t understand the concept of adult movies, but the sense of panic inhabiting Gabriel’s body was very real, so Abaddon patted his head and whispered. “Ethical concerns aside, the people in that video are being paid to be in that movie. Have you never watched one?”
Gabriel shook his head. Right. No phone, no Internet. The poor lamb.
“There’s movies of this?” he whispered. “And people just show themselves like that for money?”
Abaddon gave an awkward laugh. “Well… not everyone, I mean… most people wouldn’t.” But as the boy chewed on his thoughts, like a bird that had dropped from the sky out of shock, more questions popped up in Abaddon’s head. “How… how do you think people have sex?”