Holy Church
by Heather Colley
The below is a short piece of fiction by Heather Colley that also happens to be a chapter of her debut novel. If you want to read more, you can do so in The Gilded Butterfly Effect!
Trip Swindle prided himself on a few different things: the fact that he was a pre-med student who actually knew what sort of doctor he wanted to be (dermatologist), the fact that he could down five Jager bombs in one hour and still function okay, and the fact that he was indelibly handsome.
Most college girls were charmed at the beginning, because he had all the appearance of a content, Illinois-raised schoolboy, gentlemanly to a fault, and sheepish in conversation. But the days have their way with people; good looks make their way out, and other things crowd for space. It took due time, and a good amount of investigation, for some people to realize that Trip Swindle wasn’t handsome at all.
At college he lived in a Church. It sat prettily on the corner of South U and Church Street, and nothing had changed of this Church since its creation except for everything inside of it. Gone were the pews, the candles, the illusion of spirituality.
Gone was any presence of God, if ever there was one. If you could go into that Church, and feel His spirit anywhere at all, you must be of someplace holier entirely.
* * *
On Friday night, three young women headed there, dressed all in black and skin. Loretta led the triad. She was beautiful in a Midwestern sort of way, with long blond hair that reached past her shoulders, and fluttered sweetly around her face. When she turned to talk to her new friends, her hair swung and grazed the deep dimple in her cheek, which was elevated by a smile of light pink lips and straight white teeth. She was lean and muscular, the body of a girl who used to swim. This is all to say that she was the type of beautiful that everyone mostly forgets about upon college graduation. But now, on her first night out as an undergraduate, it seemed and felt like what she wanted was hers, and everyone and everything was working in conjunction to ensure that her time here would be terribly good.
She had no trouble getting into The Church, she felt practi- cally recruited there from her place amongst the other wandering freshmen, all of whom would feel like failures if they did not call home next morning with choppy tales of fraternity houses and what-we-did-at-three-AM.
Once inside, few were unaware of her presence. She broke onto the dance floor, which wasn’t a task, since the whole floor was the dance floor. The Church fraternity (who had o4cial letters, of course, but preferred the gloating irony of being called simply The Church) had their own established ethos, like all of the fraternities did. And they believed that any floor was a dance floor, if you didn’t think too hard about it.
Trip Swindle looked at her three times: once by accident, once on purpose, and once to establish his plan. He watched Loretta lead two other freshmen, neither of whom were graced with the former’s proud walk and apparent ease, over to the bar, where the new target held three fingers up to a recent pledge recruit, Sam, who poured three cups of pink wine from a plastic bag. Sam leaned over the bar on his elbows, said something only to her. Trip realized that any time he spent watching, and waiting, and ascertaining, was time enough for somebody else to bag the girl.
The basement of The Church was a place of senseless frenzy in which no one knew exactly who they were talking to, who they’d just finished o/ talking to, who they were going to go home with later, or where the exit was. It was a dreamscape for Loretta, who thrived o/ the energy of movement and terrible music. It was all beeps, and boops, and drops, and everybody pretended to understand.
Loretta’s two companions followed her around, whenever she switched from the bar to the stairs to the center of it all, which bothered Loretta, because these were the just-hatched, embryonic type of collegiate friends, formed purely out of geographic convenience. They lived just across the hall, but the only thing they shared between them was womanhood, and that was not enough to hold them together.
She burned straight through the middle of the writhing crowd, and her wine sloshed lazily onto her slender fingers. Up her hands went. She might have been on the front page of an advert on the rising quality of the college experience. This was life at wellness capacity.
Fraternity brothers, however, are not so easily entertained. Their attentions darted from the dance floor to the girls, to the bedrooms, which were situated in separate halls, out of the party’s entropy. Their shadowy faces moved amongst the party, girls would see one, and target, but then he’d disappear, and where had he gone? In Trip’s case, to the bedrooms, with brothers alongside him, and that was where he was now, in a musty room with Jimmy Crawford, and the pledge Sam, who had taken a break from his post at the bar. They carried on there with things as usual; the first party of the semester begged for coke, and some other complements to it which they shoveled out of their pockets, and they sat around in ecstatic stupidity, thinking what a year they were set to have.
When Trip reappeared in the basement, he was still flanked by the other two, who were both mildly handsome but altogether uninteresting. His eyes were glossed red and etched with bright veins, and his smile was slacked, and his walk was swaggered. He zeroed in on the moving target, led his friends on a route that appeared quite random, and as he crossed her, he grinned and laughed at things so empty and stupid that they made you wonder if you’d missed something. You hadn’t. Loretta saw that he was good looking enough, but much more important was her abrupt desire to get in on that laughter that seemed to come so easy.
There was trouble with her confidence. Because in her experience, distant male admiration never resulted in much by way of actual approach, which made her think that she might’ve imagined the admiration to begin with. Because what’s attention, without somebody there to prove it? She habitually convinced herself of her own unattractiveness when men’s watchful eyes didn’t translate to even dull party chit-chat. When Trip walked right up to her, and took her hand above her head to drift her around, she was so restored in confidence that she locked her arms around his neck, and kissed him right there under the lights, and pink wine spilled all down the back of his shirt.
Right about here in the exchange is normally where it becomes apparent that time has stopped for a moment, the world goes still, the present surges toward urgency, hearts fly, thoughts get frenzied, and underarms sweat. All that happened, more or less. Except for the bit about the frenzied thoughts—neither thought much of anything at all.
When she pulled away, he gave her a great, sloppy smile, then grabbed her neck, and directed her back. She eventually gave a laugh that was more like a giggle through her teeth, which she whitened often, and the disco lights reflected from that smile in blue. When he spun her the second time, he
stopped her halfway through, and her body folded into his, and then they were dancing.
You get the idea. They were wired on each other’s good looks. Others watched, and speculated, and felt their insides dry up with envy. Some can only imagine in private dreams and silly fancies what it is like, to flirt so carelessly like that, and to have those flirts returned so easy.
Her slim waist turned circles. And when it ended, he grabbed her by the elbow, and steered her away, to a darkened basement corner. Their conversation at this point is one of the strongest memories she has of that night. He said, “Don’t want you to think I’m rude, you know,” and gave a smile that made
his eyes crinkle up. “I should have asked your name before all of that. . . ” and his fingers grappled at her waist.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I had a good time. You’re a good dancer, and my name is Loretta—”
“—could’ve guessed it was Loretta, you know. Would’ve been my first guess,” he interrupted her, with a heavy sigh, “if you had only have given me a chance.”
“You would’ve guessed?”
“Sure. Pretty name. Pretty girl, pretty dancer. . . ” and he enveloped her in another kiss, his arms circling around below her waist this time, and she leaned into it, thinking it a pleasant thing that this pleasant boy thought her name pretty, and she even prettier. All of which she already knew, of course, on some subconscious level. But she liked to be reminded.
Their embrace was interrupted.
“Yo, Swind!” shouted Jimmy Crawford, “Smoke something, Swind, let’s go! Leave the chi—”
“—Shut the fuck up, man, she’s—” said Sam.
“Leave the chick, Swind, for a smoke!”
Trip looked at Loretta, and then back at them, and did some calculations in his head, and eventually came up with results that the girl would be here all night, and the drugs perhaps would not be.
“Really sorry, Loretta,” he said, and cast his eyes away from hers, in the direction of his comrades, who made their way out of the basement, and toward the bedrooms. He ran a shaky hand through his blond hair, which was mussed up, as though he’d just awoken, or else been spooked out of a crazy
high. He suddenly looked very tired.
“It looks like the guys need me,” Trip said. “I’m Risk Manager around here, so I’m responsible for making sure no one screws up too bad. I don’t like to talk about it. . . ” and he let the thought die, as if ashamed of his own inherent buzzkill.
Her eyes widened. A gentleman.
“Later? Let’s meet up later?” she locked her fingers around his neck again. His smile was sweet, relieved.
“Of course. I’ll find you before tonight ends. I can’t wait.” And he kissed her but didn’t walk away without giving her a pressing glance, as if to say that he truly missed her. She galloped back to her acquaintances, who had begun to suggest they ditch the entire scene for a slice of pizza from the shop across the way when Loretta’s blond hair cut right across the discussion.
“Saw you in the corner with that guy,” one shrieked. Loretta waved it off, rolled her eyes. Trip and his brothers escaped, and their steps all fell evenly in line with one another as they swaggered out of the party, up the stairs, and toward a dimly lit hallway of bedrooms, away from the thundering music. The party in the hallway was di/erent from the one in the basement. It was still a party, but it took itself a bit more seriously, as if it had already started to consider its future. Couples had taken to the walls. Girls stood stacked against the white plaster, boys leaning toward them, pressing bodies, whispering silly things into ears. There was general talk about going home together.
Trip’s posse paid no notice to the drunken couples, though many were composed of brothers, and exes, and familiars. Jimmy Crawford was a tall and lanky boy with a babyish face and a shock of blond hair, which toppled over his fore- head deliberately to cover the acne that grew there. He nudged Trip as they entered his bedroom. “Smokeshow you were with, earlier.”
“Yeah, fuckin’ smokeshow,” Trip said, and he nodded his appreciation toward the direction of the music.
“Later?”
“Well. What would that have been for, then?”
Their hands met in a congratulatory gesture. They got comfortable on the bed and couch, and flicked on the TV to kill the silence, and Jimmy Crawford brought out a bong, which he packed. A thought came to Trip. “You sure Mark Brent isn’t around here?”
“Yeah. Been asleep since eleven,” Jimmy Crawford assured, which was sound enough to Trip, and so he let the peripheral worry of trouble with Brent escape him. The Risk Manager— you couldn’t find such a narc in the entire fraternity house. Life here was often caged by his attempts to reestablish order.
Soon, the air in the room was heavy with smoke that smelled so sweet and comfortable, and they each giggled over their own thoughts, all of which had nothing to do with the thoughts of the man beside them. Weed played funny tricks on Trip’s mind, every time. The sound from the television became guitar twangs, and he thought he could’ve been in the woods, even though he had no interest in walking through natural spaces, and all of that seemed a corporate advertisement, the collegiate obsession with trees and soil, and he’d have sooner crafted his own ad— an ad for what? Girls, he thought. The thought slipped away, and was replaced by equally silly things, until the image of the beautiful girl from earlier drifted slowly back to him, in pieces, until she finally materialized into a full and wonderful face.
He rose from the couch, to slurred objections from his brothers, who didn’t care much about whether he stayed or went.
“He’s bangin the girl. . . I think. . .” said Crawford to Sam, who sat sleepily beside him, and who responded only with a nod and a deep sigh.
The air outside the bedroom was pure and cold, untainted by the sickly smoke in the bedroom. It shocked Trip’s system but didn’t really wake him up. He wondered if this strange buzzing sterility, like a dentist’s room amidst catastrophe, happened every time he got fucked up. It did. The basement music reached him again, and the prerogative was to find the girl, because it was nearing early morning, and to be without a girl in his bedroom after a party like this. . . there would be gloating mockery from his brothers, followed by the dull, distant feeling of a false economy, of resources expended without the correct payout.
The party had trickled down, and the couples against the hallway wall had moved to better places with sheets and privacy. But the girls that remained, oh, the girls! Infinite waists, and pink lips, and hands playing in hair. It was systematic. Pornographic. How did they do it, the girls? How did they make it all day and night without succumbing to their own stupid power? How dedicated they were to the cause, the cause of risk, and how relentlessly they toiled at it. He stood there for a moment, basked in all the girls, especially the ones that still danced. Warriors. And he needed one. He specifically needed the one with the swimmer’s body.
The trouble was that in all the drugs, and recreation, and the carnival of time in between, his short-term memory was an unreliable narrator. Recall came to him in bits and pieces that seemed only a semblance of something that had actually happened. That girl, she had happened, the blond one in the corner. Had she not? Had her waist not felt so small and ready?
God blessed him with clear vision and facial recognition. She was there still in the center, danced just the same, danced in the way girls do just before they dance themselves into bed. As spotty though his brainpower was, it was her alone that danced in that way, with the circles that sometimes turned into eights. And this power of female recall—this alone was evidence in favor of Trip’s religious opinion: God was a man. He went, crossed the dance floor but ignored the music— time was nasty with its swiftness at this hour, and he had to get on with it—and brushed her mess of blond hair, then grabbed her shoulder.
“What’s up, Lo. . . L. . . what’s up, I’m so glad I found you,” and he turned his voice so slick and so soft, just deadened enough from the smoke. How attractive that was, and of course there is always that certain flattery of being found, since it implies that you had been sought to begin with. What man or woman has not lost his or her head over the possibility of that and that alone—being looked for? She wrapped herself easily around him as if to dance, he kissed instead.
She let him. It was simple enough to get her upstairs. She was drunk, and a happy one. The wine made her body fluid and her tongue hot, the rogue type of sexy, makeup and speech both slurred. He was quick about her nakedness. She was indifferent about his. He rode the high, which made it higher. She looked pale in the night, and graceful, and while it happened, he thought grateful praises of drugs and girls. When it was over, he fell asleep, and she lay there for a little while, neither happy nor sad, but still very drunk, and curious about the name of the boy, and how exactly she’d got from the dance floor, so merry, to the bed, so cold.
* * *
Loretta all the while slept soundly in her dorm room bed. She had drunk dreams. The night replayed itself in fragments, and Trip appeared there once or twice. She wasn’t particularly bothered that she’d left the party before he’d come back to find her. She had briefly thought that he must have found someone prettier, but she had downed a final drink in response to that suspicion, and headed for home.
“Sleeping at home, then, Loretta?” her friend had asked, with a cocky smile, as they walked away together. Loretta killed her friend with her happy look.
“He’s Risk Manager. He probably had to help a brother. It’s a hard job.” And she twinkled, which ended the conversation. Trip awoke some hours later with a fatigue that can come only from being both drunk and high for many hours, accelerated by the girl, and then crashed down afterward. A naked body, a mess of blond hair, lay next to him, and he looked at her for a second, mildly surprised. All he wore were his boxers, and her jeans lay crumpled at the foot of the bed, confused in the sheets. He’d fucked the smokeshow? The details and specifics were missing, but the evidence before him confirmed his remarkable capacity to score the beauty of the party with such ease that it was almost, he thought, criminal.
As she awoke, he climbed out of bed. What he needed was a smoke, a smoke with his brothers, any kind of smoke, but he normally preferred cigarettes for a hangover, and then weed to get the taste of cigarettes away.
“Morning. . . ” she said and looked up at him with a bewildered smile. She was unsure about the progression of this awakening, but she remembered glimpses of the boy coming up to her last night, and treating her like an old friend, which had made her feel special, as if he’d known her all the while.
He looked at her, startled. Girls were always so wise and clever, and with terribly gripping things to say in the night-time. The trouble always started in daylight, when they tried at conversation.
“Yeah. Morning,” he said. “I’m off. Need a smoke. Need a ride?”
“I’m. . . okay.” She was not. There was something in his voice, and the way he sporadically glanced around the room and toward the door, that made her think she should’ve left in the night. She reached for her jeans, and hurried to put them back on.
“Cool. Well. . . I’ll see you.” And that old sweet twinkle was back in his eye, and he placed one hand on her right knee, which he could reach over the sheets, and gave it a rub, and she felt a bit better, and thought what might happen if she saw him again next weekend.
Trip left and wavered down the hall, in only his boxers still, toward Crawford’s room, but Crawford was escorting a pretty ponytailed brunette out the door. Trip watched her go, and gave him a look of respect, before he sank into the couch. He waited alone for his brothers to return from depositing the girls back to wherever they’d come from.
The cigarette smoke gathered and tried to make sense of things. Happy morning—all was sound, and the girls were still pretty, and the cigarettes were still sweet. Some time passed before Crawford returned, this time with Sam, who announced he’d driven the respective girls back to their dwellings.
“Lindsey’s home,” said Sam. “Nice chick, Trip.”
“Yeah thanks. Who?”
“Lindsey. Your girl.”
“Right. I know.”
He lit another cigarette and thought of what it had felt like in bed with her, before the memory went and left him, and then he thought of not much at all except for prospects of breakfast, and told Sam to get on with cleaning the basement, and imagined all the girls to make his on the weekends, the girls so terrible and wonderful and special.
Continue reading in The Gilded Butterfly Effect by Heather Colley - out from 24/10/2025 (published by Three Rooms Press)