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| wagon, but Sister Susie's virtuously humble singing voice. Father Feinstein looked down at his body, and seeing his stained underwear, concluded that he was awake. His foolproof method of distinguishing sleep from consciousness was the following: was asleep. If he was clothed during the nightmare, he was awake. This method saved him the trouble and medical expenses of having to flap his arms and attempt to fly out the window. Father Feinstein shook his head to wake up. "I'm up." he groaned. "What is it?" Sister Susie pounded on the door. When the pain sensation was communicated from her knuckles to her brain, her brain triggered the "stop knocking" enzyme, then nudged the eardrums to do their stuff. "What do you want?!" the priest was screaming. "Father Feinstein! Across the street. Look out the window!" Like a giant human leg struck by a doctor's mallet, the priest flailed towards the window in one movement. Lunging at the windowsill, and still half kneeling, he threw open the blinds. He saw it. Cold sweat began to flow out of the pores of his forehead and underarms. It creeped slowly, synchronized with his tense refusal to believe what he saw. "Ho-lee He threw on a robe and rushed out of the room. Sister Susie ran after him as he bounced down the stairs and out the front door. He stopped on the front steps and looked. The building wasn't a skeleton after all. Crowds of people lined up at double glass revolving doors. There was laughter and talking. Father Feinstein noticed a few of his own parishioners among the crowd. On the roof of the building, a line of men stood like royal soldiers, pulling the ropes of the huge tarp. Smoothly and quickly, the cover climbed up the glass walls. The black mask was coming off. The building was three stories high, covered with rows of windows as wide as a man's outstretched arms. On a modest plot of land, it managed to tower above the street. Lamps from within and along the upper outside walls made it a glowing box of solid light, though some escaped like steam from the building's surface. The growing crowd stood on the sidewalk, circling the building like a moat. They watched the mask rise above them, revealing a thin horizontal line of glass in perpetual upward motion. The black | |||||
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