“Peace be with you,” the churchgoers say en masse, and they smile with benefiscence through the conclusion of the Agnus Dei. The chalice is full. The host has been blessed. Now the moment has come.
A small old woman in the centermost seat of the front row creaks to her feet behind her walker. It is a scene that a single frame of film might have caught, because the next moment she is down, crushed by a linebacker of a man who has just rushed up from halfway back. The bent and shattered walker pokes up like syringes of the medicine the old woman won’t be needing anymore.
But now the linebacker is having trouble of his own, for a cluster of middle-aged women and bejeaned high schoolers slowly asphixiate him as they clamber over, under, and around him. The pews are empty and silent for a moment, except for the nonbelievers and unrepentent divorcees who are now being crushed as the seats topple over, front to back, like a row of oaken dominoes. The spray of sweat and vitae gives the lighting a reddish quality more commonly associated with a Who concert. The priest looks serenely on as the piles grow deeper and deeper, the cries from the bottom grow feebler and feebler. At last the ministers of the sacrement succumb, every last one, and all is silent in the church.
The body and blood of the Lord looks out upon the blood and bodies of the congegants.