Geraldine.
We will call her Geraldine.
Growing up the son of a vicar, you are forced to associate with some rather...odd customers. Geraldine was such a one.
She was in her mid-forties; single, with one adopted son, a young lad with down's syndrome. Even he thought his Mum was weird.

When she did intercessions (where you ask God to look after whoever's got a tumour this week) she did them in atrocious rhyme. When she couldn't think of a rhyming word, she made one up, or misused an existing one. So once we found ourselves praying for people with 'temporal illnesses'. When we heard that one I and my fellow sneaky-comic-book-hiding choirboys imagined a star-trek style devolution virus.
But it's not the poetry that was creepy.

It was the dancing.

Oh fuck me, the dancing.

My dad agreed to let her do some dancing in church one Sunday, for reasons I will never understand, and of course she had to rehearse.
So imagine, if you dare, an empty church, just after choir practice. You've drawn the short straw of having to clear up the music, so you're the last one out.

Apart from Geraldine.

It's dark.

And Geraldine, forty something, slightly pudgy Geraldine, is in a leotard, skipping down the darkened aisles, waving handkerchieves, dancing to music only she can hear.

The only sounds are the squeak of her pumps on the marble floor and little gasps of pleasure as she trips obliviously along.

And as you try to leave as quietly as you can, she turns, and you see her smiling.
Teeth showing, wild-eyed, ecstatic, almost orgasmic.

"Join in! Let's all be joyful together!"

I fucking ran.

I feigned illness for the day itself. Apparently it wasn't that bad in the cold light of day, but holy Christ that was terrifying.
Even now, just thinking about it...brrr....
(universalpsykopath loves what you've done with your hair., Mon 11 Apr 2011, 15:53, Reply)