Next Please – For several months I lived in the basement of an abandoned building, a church to be exact. Actually, I purchased the church and was fixing up the inside and chose to live in the basement while I turned the upstairs into a place to dwell. It had gone on the market after its congregation had died off and no one was left to attend. I bought it for a dollar at auction. That’s a lot of Jesus for one buck.

I learned through neighbors that the denomination had been strange, nothing anyone had ever heard of before or since. Something made up? Or perhaps the dream of a slightly off kilter religious zealot and drunk--this devote bunch worshiped box wine. In fact the building was made of cement blocks poured into the empty boxes of wine.

No, no, they didn’t give communion in the common sense of the word, they EMBIBED quite heavily and were often said to leave the parking lot zigzagging in their Ford pickup trucks. They believed Jesus’ blood (wine) would fortify their souls against the cruel cruel world.

The neighbors also told me that the downfall of the church was no surprise, that there had been a death pool—that the local grocer Mr. Langley had won—and that it took only four years to kill off the entire congregation. It started with the liver failures which were rampant in the congregation and that some died in domestic disputes caused by the wine. Still others wrecked on their way home from the church after service and perished—of course they were completely tanked.

One day I was tearing out the altar and had wrenched it away from the wall when I noticed a secret passageway. The altar had a false side panel and this is how the person or persons must have gained access to the passageway. I got my flashlight and made my way into the passageway. I crawled for fifteen yards or so when I came upon a room. I scanned the room with my flashlight.

“Who the hell is that!”

I nearly dropped my flashlight. There amongst a mountain of boxed wine sat a little old man in religious garb.

I shined my flashlight in the little bastard’s eyes. “No, the question is who the hell are you? You are in my building.”

“Bullshit, this is my building.”

I stepped into the room. “It fucking stinks in here.”

“Well, what do you expect? I’ve been shitting and pissing in empty wine boxes for 10 years.”

“That’s fucking gross…wait, you’ve been in here ten years?”

“That’s right, when my congregation died off I used the last of the offering and bought ten thousand boxes of wine. I’ve been in here ever since drinking them down.”

“What do you eat?”

“Cardboard from the boxes. It has a lot of protein in it.”

“Cardboard doesn’t have protein in it.”

“Well, it sure does taste good with ketchup.”

“You have ketchup.”

“No, I ran out 9 years ago. Now, if you’d kindly take that flashlight out of my eyes you can leave now.”

“No way this is my church now and you’ll have to leave.”

He heaved an empty box of wine at me which landed five feet short of its mark. I laughed. He pulled out a gun but he was slow and drunk and really quite uncoordinated. I dove at him and beamed him over the head with my flashlight and killed him. Blood the color of chardonnay ran onto the floor. I hightailed it out of that place. It was creepy as hell. Also, I’d killed a guy and thought I needed to cover it up, so I covered the secret passageway with brick and never spoke of the ordeal with anyone.

After that incident there was no way I could live in that church so I changed plans. I bought a half dozen flat screen TV’s, hired a couple slutty waitresses and opened a sports bar. I figured its what the previous worshipers at the church would have wanted if they were beer drinkers and not box wine drinkers.