/lit/ - Literature

It was during late summer that I'd "borrowed" a bird-watching telescope and had it loaded in the trunk of the car. I drove far away from the city lights, past fields and a golf course all covered in fog, into the woods and past old churches and bridges built by people who spoke a different language than I.
I pulled up to a bus stop on a road between farm houses. Someone had brought office chairs here to make up for there being no bench. A dog barked a ways off. I wondered if it was warning me off its territory.
I pulled out the telescope and set it on the road. It wasn't designed for looking at things outside the Earth's atmosphere, so there were aberrations. I found Jupiter and four of its moons easily enough, all in a neat line. Next I looked for Saturn. The orb was easy to see, the rings could be made out as well. Long ago theologians had taught that just as Jesus Christ had bodily ascended to Heaven, so had his foreskin. That foreskin had not joined him, but had become the rings of Saturn. This was a holy moment. 175,000 miles, that's how long those rings were across. Jesus of Nazareth did not have phimosis! Amen, amen.

I left the car where I'd parked it and went to one of those churches I'd seen. Breaking in was easy, someone had done it long before me and nobody had bothered to fix the door. The roof had caved in and there was a puddle of water on the floor. It smelled of damp and mildew. The benches were rotten. I kneeled in that puddle anyway and offered my prayers to the night sky, visible through that hole. This would be my church.
I climbed to the roof up a good, strong iron ladder and set up my telescope there. I found Christ's foreskin again. The dog kept barking, closer this time. I stole a peek in the direction and saw a flash of light, a flashlight. Someone was checking out my car down the road, and there was the damn dog with them, too. Children of God were always persecuted. The dog found my tracks and led the man and his light closer to the church. The light shot up at me.
"Hey, you!" he shouted, and the dog pulled at his leash with a violence that almost made the man fall over.
"Begone from me, ye cursed and into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!" I shouted in reply.
"Get down from there, it isn't safe!"
"The Lord is my shepherd, I will not want!"
In reply to the Lord's name, the hellhound broke free with great fury and rushed at the church. His handler fell headlong into the damp earth, his flashlight falling from his hands and leaving me in the dark again. I moved to look for loose rooftiles to cast at the enemies of the faith with.
"I said get down from there, that roof isn't safe!" the voice rang out again. I saw the glowing eyes of the hellhound in the church, through the hole in the roof. I took the first tile and threw it at the hound. A loud yelp revealed I'd hit it but not fatally. The best left my field of vision, and I rushed to the edge of the roof to better aim at the man.