Glenda

Beautiful old houses alternated with modern high-rise buildings. People crowded at crossroads under umbrellas, in plastic raincoats, and some patiently endured the heavenly streams without anything.

Suddenly, at the crossroads, Glenda once again saw a frightening sight. She was numb.

Horror forced her to let out a short, sonorous breath.

Neither Iver nor his partner noticed such a reaction; the car was noisy from the rain drumming on the roof.

A man near a traffic light in a cap stood without a face or hands and stubbornly looked into her face. Next to him, a little girl with a grinning face looked more like a freak after a failed operation, but still without a superficial layer of skin. “Like a burn? But from what?”

Thoughts began to fill her frightened mind, and gradually Denmark’s guest finally came to her senses.

"What am I doing here? Why do I feel so bad here? Maybe it's the north wind that's bad for your health? Meningitis seems to cause problems with the brain.”

Tormented by thoughts about her visions, Glenda was driving in a car with two men, one of whom she had already seriously fallen in love with. And Jornas will forever remain in her memory as a kind and vulnerable boy, but who taught her to restrain his malice. If she hadn’t pressed him so hard that evening, they wouldn’t have argued and nothing would have happened.

— We've arrived.

The Grundtvig Church, built in the style of expressionism mixed with late Gothic, met with its severity and seemed to say: “Everyone who enters will never leave the same. Your sins will remain here forever.”

Covering their heads with jackets, the trio ran up the stairs and burst through the brick-red door. On Friday at four o'clock in the afternoon there was a communion service for tourists. A pastor in a white alb and green fabric with yellow stitching, in Lutheranism this is called stola, stood at the altar and distributed bread and wine to everyone who knelt near the fence.

A man in a black shirt and trousers, with a white insert on the collar, apparently a deacon, approached the guests.

— Greetings, brothers and sister. How can I serve you?

— We would like to get to the House of Welfare, our relative lies there.

— It will be my pleasure to accompany you. But first you need to cleanse yourself of your sins, leave them to Jesus our Lord. Everyone needs a Savior. — the slow, peaceful communication of the servant of God irritated Glenda. She didn't like churches.

— What does it mean?

— This means that you need to take communion.

— Oh no, thanks. I'm not very pious. — the girl giggled nervously. — Christ, Buddha, Mohamed, all good guys, but, unfortunately, I didn’t know them, and I won’t trust them with my sins.

Here Iver not very delicately poked her in the side with his elbow, hinting with all his appearance to shut up.

— Yes, of course, we will definitely take communion. — Jack concluded, and all three took their turn at the altar.

— I am an atheist. — Glenda whispered to her companions when the intrusive deacon was no longer around.

— We do too, but this is the only and easiest way to get to Yornas’s brother.

The girl just sighed resignedly, but agreed.

The pastor's hands touched her neatly laid head and he muttered something in Danish. “Prayer,” Glenda concluded. Then he asked her in English if she agreed to accept the body of God and drink the blood of God to atone for her sins. Glenda nodded.

The dry, thin flour tablet — prosphora — quickly melted on the tongue, leaving behind a pleasant aftertaste, and the cold monastery wine flowed down my throat, parched from fear.

"And it's all? And I was afraid. Nothing wrong, very tasty.” As soon as she calmed down, she suddenly felt a salty metallic taste in her mouth and the smell of rotten meat. She tried to swallow, but her gag reflex took over and the food she had eaten came out.

Bloody vomit with some contents very reminiscent of a tongue lay on the stone floor, causing Glenda to have a new attack of primitive horror.

— Forgive our friend, she is not feeling well today. — Iver stood up to the deacon running up with questions. — We'll clean everything up now.

The girl looked again at the puddle under her feet, but saw nothing there except the hamburger she had eaten for lunch, which began to dissolve under the stomach juices.

— It’s okay, we’ll clean up ourselves. Go to the neighboring building in the courtyard through this corridor.

The deacon, embarrassed by the unusual situation, hurriedly escorted the guests to the hospital building.

— Yes, there is an inveterate atheist in you. You couldn't even go through the simplest ritual. — Jack joked with Glenda.

The small rooms to the left of the corridor, and the spacious garden to the right, looked very much like a Catholic monastery, the only difference being the people in white coats. The girl, pale as death, was still shaking from the experience, but she continued to confidently walk forward.

— You have no face. Maybe I should take you home?