The Great God Cernunnos

The Great God Cernunnos


         Those women with his wife entered the coffee house and sat down. The girls' day out shopping always ended at Yeoli's. It was a gentrified coffee house on Banks Ave. It used to be a rundown storage facility. Pete lived in a smallish city, an old town. Pete sat outside Yeoli's in his pickup truck, not directly in front but down a short distance past the red brick trim. His wife couldn't see him through the front glass.
 
         He knew she was inside yakking it up with her girls, laughing and gossiping. He knew she talked about him with these women. She told them their secrets. Pete had heard hints of it. She talks to them about how he can't get it up and about how he can't get her to orgasm. Ever. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
 
         Goddam it! I try! Pete smacked the pickup's steering wheel with his fist. It held solid, a rugged truck. Hanging tough mattered, and trying mattered.
 
         Pete confronted her about this gaggle once, this moon-addled group, and their talks. He asked her to divulge her conversations with her circle of women. She refused! Kim had crossed her arms under her breasts, lifted her chin, and told him, "No!" She said he was paranoid. He could accept that. He knew he could be paranoid and right at the same time. And he was right.
 
         He formulated a plan and rummaged through his truck. He looked behind the seat of his pickup. Grinning about his good luck, he found his old high school letter jacket. Further rummaging through his hunting stuff turned up his old ball cap. Pete got out, shook the dust and debris off the old coat, and donned the cap. He went to Yeoli's side entrance, sneaky as he could, and slid onto a stool at the bar close to his wife and her friends' table.
 
         "He's making the rounds," Clarice said. She was a tall brunette older than Kim by a couple of years. "An evening after our Wicca moon circle in March at our place, he came to my door. After Mark was asleep that night, everything went down in the spare room. We couldn't wake up, Mark!" They laughed. "I'm telling you...," she said and leaned over. Clarice whispered. She talked to the others, looking from one to the other, bent over the table for at least two minutes. Pete couldn't hear. The girls gasped. The girls laughed. They leaned back red-faced and mouths agape.
 
         He stared straight ahead, content with the bits and pieces. He did not want any of them to see his face, but he did risk a glance from time to time.
 
         "For two hours?" Kim, his wife, asked. Pete heard just fine. She was his focus. He ordered coffee and pie and wanted to hear more. Pete thought his Kim was the prettiest of them all. She had short, raven-black hair that hung to the front of her chin when she looked at her coffee. He loved her hair.
 
         Clarice leaned in again. "I never had it as good with Mark," she said. Pete heard her, too. "Mark is good for one little snap," she said, snapping her finger, "but Cernunnos, oh my God!" Clarice rolled her eyes.
 
         "God is right," Sherry said. "Being Wiccan has opened me up, I mean, opened me up! I couldn't orgasm before our circle meditations and before Cernunnos." They laughed. Sherry was a short red-haired woman, curvy. Her face was freckled. Sherry leaned in and whispered. The girls laughed out loud. Sherry held up her hands to let them know how long he was. Kim raised her eyebrows. Sherry leaned in again and whispered. They howled. Pete picked out the words, "pussy, ass, everywhere, such a fantasy, such a turn-on."
 
         The girls sat in silence. Kim fanned herself. She asked, "Leona, when can I expect him?"
 
"          Ah! When does The Great God Cernunnos come your way?" Leona asked. She turned to Clarice. "I must meditate and check the proper channels. Patience! The Great God is in great demand."
 
         Leona motioned for them to join hands.
 
         The girls joined hands and bowed heads. "Hail Cernunnos," they said low. They raised their heads and laughed.
 
         Leona, the High Priestess, talked about another circle with the all-men's Pagan group under the stars in the forest.
 
Pete had heard enough. He slid from his stool and slipped out the side door.
 
         Later, Pete and Kim fought to end all of them. Pete accused her of everything from kissing the devil's ass to having sex with men in the woods. Kim told him he was crazy. Pete ranted and threw things but did not raise a hand to her. Pete broke things, but he did not hit her.
 
         That still counts as domestic violence.

         Kim threatened to call the police. He calmed, and she opened the front door and pointed toward the outdoors, anywhere but inside the house. He gathered clothes and shaving gear in a duffle bag and threw it in his pickup. They both cried. She told him he needed counseling.
 
         A week later, Pete sat in his pickup down the street from the house. Pete worked the wipers every so often because of the misting rain. The lights were off. He sat in the dark. He had talked to Mark, Clarice's husband. Mark didn't want to involve himself in anything as dirty as spying, but he did tell Pete the girls were going out this weekend. Mark said it had to do with the Wicca and the moon cycle. Pete remembered the conversation at Yeoli's.
 
         "C'mon, Pete. The girls do crafts and light candles. They sit in a circle and meditate, you know, back to nature stuff. They're always moon this and moon that. What's the harm?"
 
         Pete didn't give a hearty crap about the moon. He did care about his wife frolicking around in a circle with naked men in the woods. He watched the house for an hour, but the garage door never opened. The house was dark. He dozed off.
 
         He jerked awake. The house was still dark. His head was on the driver's side window. Pete stretched and checked his watch. It was one a.m. "Forget it," he said, giving up. He reached for the key in the ignition.
 
         A dim, soft yellow light appeared in their upstairs bedroom. Pete knew the light. It was her tiny reading light on the headboard. But it was odd. The light shook. He knew what that action was about. The base of the light had a touch sensor. Often, when they made love, a hand touched it, and it lit. As the bed shook, so did the light. The light shook right now! The God, or whatever phony posed as a God, was up there humping Kim!
 
         He got out, fumbled with keys, found his house key, and trotted down the damp asphalt street.
 
The seal around the front door tore with its familiar soft ripping sound. The house was dark in the foyer, and the chill from the central air enveloped him. The house was cool and dark, but it was not quiet. His wife screamed in the throes of orgasm. The bed bounced.
 
         THUMP, THUMP, THUMP it pounded on the living room ceiling.
 
         Pete whispered. "Not her. You can't have her, too." He clenched his fist. He ran to the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife from the wooden cutlery rack on the counter. Pete ran back to the foyer and up the stairs. If this God or whatever can achieve a hard-on, then it has a heart.
 
         He turned the bedroom doorknob and rushed in with the knife thrust out in front of him. "You are..."
Kim lay on the bed with earbuds in her ears, and she bit her lower lip as she thrust her chin toward the ceiling. Her hips were off the bed as she pushed to the beat.
 
         "...masturbating," Pete said, still jutting out the knife, dumbfounded.
 
         Her order had arrived. On the carpet beside the bed was a long box about four inches by four inches square and over a foot long. It was open on one end. The top of the long box was transparent plastic, and along the bottom, in broad white letters, were the words, THE GREAT GOD CERNUNNOS.
 
         Kim removed the long, thick black dildo.

         "Get out of here, you sick, twisted, paranoid fuck!" She threw it. The dildo swapped ends as it flew and smacked Pete longways across the mouth.
 
         He jerked his head to the side. "AAAGH! It's poop! I got your poop on my lips!"
 
         "Get the FUCK OUT!"
 
         Pete dropped the knife and ran. He left the room and the house at a full-out run and didn't stop until he was back at his small apartment.
 
         The police came to his apartment an hour later. Reporters got wind of his attempt to knife his wife and turned it into a big story. A couple of days later, Kim dropped the charges, and he was set free.
 
         Pete and Kim didn't speak afterward. Pete went to counseling and anger management classes without telling anyone, even Kim. A year later, the divorce was final. He gave her the things she wanted: the house and alimony. One morning, his carpool stopped in front of his apartment, and he was gone. All his things were still there, but Pete and his pickup had vanished.
 
         No one blamed Pete for looking for a fresh start. When a man goes a little crazy in a small city, when his mugshot hits the paper, coming back from that would be a long, hard road. Women still come in from shopping and sit around at Yeoli's. They drink coffee and often talk about Pete.