Fiction by Elena Sichrovsky
Keeping Up with the Magdalenes
Peter is such a slut, Mary tells me one day while she’s hanging up a load of laundry.
Is? I use a paper straw to drown the ice in my latte. He still getting around?
Yeah, who do you think Thomas is seeing since Jesus ghosted him? She purses her lips. I’m feeling like it’s a pasta day. Porcini or carbonara.
I put my feet on the coffee table, pick up the MacBook. Did you ever fuck Peter?
Before he transitioned. Got a pretty decent tongue. Mary breathes in the wet washcloth hanging off the clothes peg, her mouth morphing into a dark hole for soft vermin.
Isn’t it weird to sleep with your son’s friends? I try to look busy. Log in to Facebook, Gmail.
Mary pops her lips against the damp fabric. I mean, I got knocked up by one of my son’s father’s friends.
You still didn’t RSVP for Judas’ suicide party, I remind her.
She detaches herself from the washcloth. Her pores are open and gleaming in the raw sunlight. Be my plus one? You can wear the Shroud of Turin if you want.
Three new messages from my manager in Outlook. Asking me to close my legs during meetings. Reminding me to stop leaving my diva cup in the coffee tray. Telling me that I can’t claim sick leave just because my father used to bite me.
I put the MacBook down. There’s a rooster next door that’s kept its head on for much too long. Mary, get the apron, I say. I feel like it’s a chicken alfredo day.
We never see the missed calls from Jesus on the answering machine. We see the story later on the evening news. Pilate is balding much faster than we’d thought. They use cherrywood for the crosses. Talk about wasting natural resources; the forest won’t survive at this rate.
It cuts to commercial before the end. Mary complains about the soap jingle that comes on. She always says the same thing: who needs to be convinced to become clean?
Mary puts on a DVD of The Exorcist while I thumb through the Centurion catalogue. I moisturize the scarred whip marks on her back. Peter tries to Facetime us but by then it’s past eleven and we’re in the bedroom. I’m not gonna pick up.
Not after Mary says I can wear the strap-on tonight.
Elena Sichrovsky (she/they) is a queer disabled writer trying to exorcise her hyper-religious childhood by writing sapphic smut with Jesus' mother and Mary Magdalene. Her debut chapbook Eating Out Anne Sexton was released in August 2024 with Ghost City Press. You can find them on X @ESichr / IG @elenitasich or read more published works here.