Read Alter Boys for Free Online

snow.”  It worked the first time so daddy repeated his answer.  “Well good!  We have an arrangement and an agreement.  I’ll keep---“  The priest flushed slightly.  “Why forgive me, I don’t even know your name.  What do they call you young man?”  Corky had neither the wind in his lungs nor the savvy in his social to contend with the question.  He stood mute, still staring at the gregarious giant before him.  Father Milliken turned toward daddy who also flushed but far more than slightly.  “Boy – uhh …Corky. Call him…Corky.”  A pregnant pause permeated the room before the priest suddenly brightened:  “Oh well yes, of course, a nickname!  Then Corky it is!         
     
    And with the introductions made Corky was left alone in the room while daddy and the priest went off to retrieve the shovel and discuss (although discuss is a generous term, Father Milliken talked, daddy listened) the procedure for clearing the walks of snow. 
     
    Corky was not unaccustomed to being alone.  But being alone in a foreign place was a whole ‘nother matter.  He hadn’t been offered a chair so he stood fixedly in the spot where the two men had left him.  The priest’s voice and daddy’s heavy footsteps occupied his ears as they drifted down the hall.  The rest of his senses he opened to the world around.  His eyes landed on a large desk.  It wasn’t the desk itself so much, but the objects upon the desk that caught his intrigue.  There was a thick black-bound book splayed open.  A cluster of colored strings emanated from the top of the book and from there they separated and hid among the pages.   A bible he thought.  He knew the word and he knew the significance.  Perhaps Father Milliken would hold the bible high and read to him just like he did in church.   Also on the desk were scapulas, tassels, and even a small bell like the kind the altar boys rang during mass.  Diminutive crystal vessels of holy water and anointment oil displayed varying levels of each clear liquid.  An incense burner, smaller than the one swung back and forth during mass, but an incense burner just the same (Corky could now detect the lingering aroma, that and furniture polish) held a position of prominence at the head of the desk.
     
    He could barely take it all in.  He looked the room over and over again, each time his eye would find something it had missed before.  The anxiety of being in a foreign place all alone tried to lift itself up the back of his neck.  When he found that happening he turned his attention to his personal pacifier; the silent TV.  Hogan’s Hero’s was on right now.  He didn’t dare be so bold as to turn on the TV, but its mere presence alone meant comfort.  And who knows?  Maybe the priest would come back, turn on the TV and they could play church together.
     
    There was one item in the room that both intrigued and unnerved him.  It was the telescope.  It intrigued him because the name was so close to ‘television’ that it must be good.  But the sight of the device itself; a gangly, ominous contraption; with spindly legs, mysterious tubes and slinky cables was not pleasant.  Not pleasant at all.  It reminded Corky of the te rrorizing spider from the show ‘ The Incredible Shrinking Man. ’   And so he turned his attention away and looked at other things of interest until Father Milliken returned.
     
    And return he did.  “Well, Corky it is, right?  Let’s get started.”  He beamed.  Father Milliken entered the room and closed the door.
     
     
    2
     
    At some point in a young man’s life a spiritual awakening occurs, triggering the desire to pursue a career in the priesthood.  Gustavus Milliken had experienced a calling.  But it was a calling of a different nature.  The fact that he was a priest was a matter of convenience not of calling.  For him the vestments of priesthood were an effective cloak to his real calling as a pedophile.
     
    As a