Outside The Church

AA Anderson

Bathurst, New South Wales

Australia

 

It was hard to think of him as anything, other than a Bishop, with his tall Bishops hat and his thick pale hands bearing the large purple ring of his office.

He walked, or should I say wobbled down the cobbled streets, past the fancifully dressed older women with their ridiculous long bustled dresses, high powdered hairdos and huge hats or the younger ones with their luscious red lips and long flowing curls. He smiled, or perhaps it was a smirk, as he enjoyed staring down their low frontage as they dropped to curtsy.

No one dared to object to his behaviour as it would have cost them dearly if they even looked displeased.

He was the Chief Religious Advisor to the King and had more than once shared the bed of the ‘ladies in waiting.’

However this rich, pompous, silk and lace cassocked bishop had one dubious mania, the penchant to enjoy dressing as a female. Though male in habits and personality, he would raid his housekeeper’s wardrobe to find female clothes, then garbed as a lowly maiden, though a rather overblown one, he would walk down the dark back streets of the city enjoying the freedom that it gave him.

It was indeed dark in these streets, many had warned that this was where the wild things were and they could lurk in any doorway. However it was a freedom seldom felt in the role of a Bishop

Alas though, this venture was fraught with danger, as the notorious Jack the Ripper was known to frequent this district. Many young women had lost their lives when Jack the Ripper was about.

On our prancing bishop went, if you could ignore his red bulbous nose and strange wobble of his huge rounded backside. The bobbing blonde curls from his female wig, of course, viewed from the back, could perhaps give the appearance of very, very, very buxom lass.

But alas! As our bishop rounded the next corner he came face to face with this dangerous man, Jack the Ripper and instantly fainted. Jack the Ripper in the darkness only saw a blonde headed maiden, he tore the bishop’s frail blouse, but, when he observed the pudgy flesh and coarse black hairy chest instead of the sight of a delicate female appendage, shock overtook him and he was instantly nauseous and ran to be sick in the nearest horse trough.

The Bishop regaining consciousness went as fast as his fat feet would take him straight for the sanctity of his church, his female wig flying off his round bald head, and ran, straight into the arms of His Majesty the King who had come to see him on official business.

The king was overjoyed. ‘Oh you darling boy, I didn’t think you cared, but not outside the church’ and before the poor bishop could explain had whisked him around into a back alley.

Bio: AA says this piece is definitely a fictional romp, not to be taken seriously, just enjoyed. It was inspired one day at U3A when AA had been given: ‘Sentence’, ‘Words’ and a ‘Title’ then was told to make a story out of these. AA chose Title: Where the wild things were. A Saying: It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity, Thus might I sing and thus rejoice, but it is not so with me. Words: Outside the church.