The Prayer Factory
When the day of his Prayer came, Raymond awoke with a sick feeling in his stomach. He became slowly aware of what in particular had woken him: through the wall, he could hear his mother’s radio playing a forgotten tune from his childhood. Beyond that, he could hear his mother’s voice, alighting the music with her humming. Raymond’s mother loved her radio, filling her home with music each morning the way a person could be filled with Prayer. But she rarely hummed and, then, only when she was truly pleased. She had been waiting for this day for what felt to Raymond like a long, long time.
He didn’t want to Pray. But his mother had insisted. She had discovered that he was full of Sin, and Sin could only be purged through Prayer.
The music faded to be replaced by a man’s voice crackling happily through the speaker, muffled through the wall but clear nonetheless: “That was Perry Como with ‘They Say It’s Wonderful.’ One of the best love songs of the last decade in my book. Not a bad way to start the morning.”
The man’s voice was interrupted by the howling of a choir of angels.
“Hear that?” he asked his listeners in mock surprise. Raymond grimaced. He’d heard this performance far too many times. “That’s the sound of our sponsor for today. Looks like for the two hundred and sixty-eighth day in a row our sponsor is the beloved Prayer Factory. We’ll be back with more music after a sweet little word from them. Blessings Upon Thee, and all that.”
Raymond felt the sick feeling swell into his throat and immediately pulled his attention away from the radio. On today of all days, he did not want to hear another advertisement from The Prayer Factory.
He wrapped his arms around himself and rolled onto his side, facing his bedroom window. Through it, he felt he could see the entire world. The little suburban houses across the street glowed yellow and orange in the early morning light, and trees swollen with new leaves swayed happily in the spring breeze. How easy it would be to be a tree, Raymond thought bitterly. Trees did not have to worry about Prayer or about The Prayer Factory. Trees had only the simple worry of shaping themselves to better reach the warm caress of the sun.
Somehow, the idea reminded Raymond of Brian. Perhaps Raymond was a tree, in his own way, at least when it came to Brian. It was easy to think of the boy as the sun. Raymond found that he liked the idea, and he knew Brian would find the image just as wonderful and humorous as he did. Brian always seemed to find the humor in things. But this feeling ebbed as quickly as it had come as Raymond remembered that, if today’s Prayer went as planned, he would probably never get the chance to tell Brian.
If today’s Prayer went as his mother had planned it, Raymond would no longer think of Brian this way. He may never think of him at all. The memory of the last time Raymond had seen Brian came unbidden into his mind, and he clutched at his sides, that horrible sick feeling suddenly squirming inside him again until it was all he could feel.
What he had done with Brian was Sin. What he felt for Brian and, surely, what Brian felt for him was Sin. And the only cure for Sin was Prayer. And the only place to find Prayer was at The Prayer Factory.
*
The rules of The Prayer Factory were clear and were helpfully included in the small print of all their TV commercials and full-page magazine ads:
1. Each individual is allowed one free Prayer. Any extra Prayers must be by application and will require payment of a fee (amount to be determined). Blessings Upon Thee.
When Raymond had been a small boy, six or seven years old, his family pulled the money together to get his aunt, Maybel, a second Prayer. She had used up her free Prayer to lose fifty pounds, but then she’d been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and her only hope for a cure was through The Prayer Factory.
To pay the fee of her second Prayer, Aunt Maybel had had to sell her house, so she came to live with Raymond and his family for a time. For the week before her appointment, she stayed little more than a lump on the couch, her face gray and sagging with the weight of her sickness.
2. Prayers are only by appointment. No walk-ins will be accepted. Blessings Upon Thee.
It was Raymond’s mother who’d driven Maybel to The Prayer Factory, as Maybel had also sold her car, and they took young Raymond with them. He didn’t remember much about the place except for some rather shiny floors and employees with even shinier smiles. They wheeled Aunt Maybel, tired and sick, through one door, and a few minutes later she came strutting out a second door, a grin splitting her cheeks and her face radiating with new healthy color.
“Her doctor was astounded,” Raymond’s mother always said whenever she told the story, “When he checked her over and found her clean as a whistle again! Like he’d never heard of the power of Prayer! He should try Praying away all the debt from his years wasted in medical school! Or maybe he should have invested in miracles instead in the first place!”
Maybel now lived with her new husband a few towns over. When the two of them came to visit last Sunday, Raymond’s mother told them before they’d even shrugged off their coats that she’d made Raymond’s appointment for him and why. Maybel nodded heavily in approval and assured her that this was the right path. Maybel owed her whole life to Prayer. She believed in The Prayer Factory.
3. The subject of a Prayer must remain within the Self or the Body and cannot pertain to anyone or anything outside of the Self or the Body. Blessings Upon Thee.
For a relatively new company, The Prayer Factory had already perfected its business model and had become quite popular. It had grown large enough to start putting local offices in every U.S. state so that almost anyone could enjoy the luxury of their very own Prayers close to home. These were certainly very Blessed days, indeed. At least, that’s what Raymond’s mother would often say to him after a Prayer Factory advertisement had played its ending jingle.
They had even begun to put up Prayer Factories in the poorest areas of Africa and South America, a fact which The Prayer Factory CEOs found particularly inspiring. Footage of Africans thin as broomsticks stepping into a Prayer Box and stepping back out again, smiling for the cameras through fattened faces and playing with their new enormous bellies, had been all over the commercials lately. It warmed Raymond’s mother’s heart to see so many people around the world Blessed by Prayers. To her, world peace seemed to be two steps away, and the key to it was The Prayer Factory.
4. “Prayers” are a trademark of The Prayer Factory. All other “Prayers” without The Prayer Factory trademark are false. Believe in The Prayer Factory. Blessings Upon Thee.
For years after Maybel’s marriage, Raymond’s mother would go to Maybel’s house for lunch every Sunday. Maybel insisted then that she always play host. She often said that Raymond’s house reminded her too strongly of the time she had been dying of sickness before her second Prayer. It was during his mother’s absences that Raymond would bring Brian over, for only as long as his mother was away. Perhaps even then Raymond knew that they were committing Sin. Though it certainly hadn’t felt like Sin.
Brian was beautiful. Raymond hadn’t known before meeting Brian how beautiful a boy could be. His smile was so sweet, his laugh intoxicating. Raymond loved his laugh and his smile. Raymond loved his warm hands and his soft lips and his lean body. He even loved Brian’s smell.
It was during one of these times that Raymond’s mother had come home early from lunch while Raymond was still busy loving Brian. She had forgotten her homemade quiche in the fridge, but paused on her way to retrieve it when she heard a strange sound from Raymond’s bedroom upstairs. In Raymond’s haste for Brian’s belt, he had knocked a glass of water off his side table and onto the hardwood floor, something that went unnoticed by the two teenaged boys.
No matter how beautiful Brian may have been to Raymond, his mother was not of the same opinion. Raymond still remembered with sickening clarity the face she had made when she opened his bedroom door to find Brian in her son’s bed, belt on the floor with the glass, his lips vigorously loving Raymond’s.
This love was Sin. Raymond’s mother’s love for him was pure enough to know this. His Sin was his sickness. And the only cure for him was The Prayer Factory.
5. Prayers cannot be refunded under any circumstances. Blessings Upon Thee.
Through his window, Raymond could see the entire world. The world that looked back at him was a place that believed in Sin and a place that believed in The Prayer Factory.
The Prayer Factory had Blessed his aunt, and now it would Bless him, too, by purging him of Sin and of Brian.
These were Blessed days, indeed.
*
The Prayer Factory was just as Raymond expected it to be. It didn’t look much like a factory from the outside and, truth be told, Raymond thought it looked rather nice. The outside of the building was like an enormous white sheet cake dotted with dimmed glass windows and a glass doorway framed by two giant stone angel wings. The wings were the only sign of what waited inside; unlike most businesses, The Prayer Factory could live on their reputation and didn’t feel the need to plaster their name on the walls in big, gaudy letters.
The midday sun bore down on mother and son as they walked up to the factory from the adjoining parking lot. Raymond could already feel the back of his neck starting to burn. His mother turned to him with a grin and said that the weather was a sign that today’s Prayer was meant to be. Raymond’s Prayer was good.
The lobby inside was pure white as well, and its white floors shined from a recent wax. It made Raymond feel as if he were wading through the waters of the heavens. The Prayer Factory was a very mystical place by design. Unlike most businesses, they played no music.
The woman at the front desk smiled broadly as they approached, her teeth as white as her dress. “Welcome to The Prayer Factory,” she said in a voice like warm honey. “How may we Bless you today?”
“My son has an appointment for today at two o’clock. Raymond Fuller.”
The woman eyed the white paper on her white clipboard. “Ah, yes, I do have that name scheduled for today.” She readjusted her glasses to get a better look at Raymond, who was suddenly aware that his armpits had begun to sweat under his button-up shirt and jacket. For some reason, his mother had insisted he look his best for his Prayer today, but now that he was here, feeling the heat clinging uncomfortably to his body, it all seemed so unnecessary. “We have it on record that this is your first Prayer, Raymond. Is that right?”
Raymond looked at his mother, who nodded. “Y-yes. I’m Praying today,” he said. “My first Prayer. The free one.”
The woman smiled again, and Raymond worried that she was trying to hold back a laugh. “That’s just heavenly, Raymond. But since it is your first time, we do ask that you fill out a quick form just so we can have you in our files for next time.”
“N-next time?”
“Of course!” she said. “Eighty-two percent of our first-time customers eventually return. That’s the power of Prayer!”
She held out another white clipboard and a glossy white pen to Raymond, both of which his mother quickly snatched up, and they promptly sat down at a nearby series of white plush chairs.
Raymond felt the dampness under his arms growing. He put a finger between his neck and his tie, trying to loosen it and allow himself to breathe. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched his mother fill out his paperwork for him. The ink that flowed from the white pen was a beautiful sky blue and his eyes traced the lines and loops of it around the page: “April 14, 1956,” today’s date; “August 7, 1939,” his birthday; his name; his hometown; his Social Security number and billing information. His whole life seemingly on one piece of pure white paper. Or, at least, the most of his life that The Prayer Factory needed to know.
Reason for visiting The Prayer Factory today: “We believe in Sin. We believe in The Prayer Factory,” is what his mother wrote without hesitation.
“All right,” the woman behind the desk said when Raymond’s mother handed back the clipboard and the pen. “You’re all set. Head right through that door.” The door she gestured to was as white and pure as everything else in The Prayer Factory. “On the other side is the waiting room. Someone will be by shortly to direct you to your Prayer Box.
“Thank you for choosing The Prayer Factory for your Prayer needs. Have a lovely day and Blessings Upon Thee,” she said, smiling broadly at Raymond one last time before his mother pulled him through the door.
What they found in the white waiting room on the other side made Raymond’s breath catch in his lungs. He didn’t want to let the breath go, fearing that somehow by doing so the impossibility of it all would come crashing down on him all at once.
“Oh my God! Raymond?!” the boy in the plush seat in front of him exclaimed. It was as if the universe wanted to play one final trick on Raymond before his Prayer, and The Prayer Factory was in on it.
“Brian?” Raymond asked, his voice choked to little more than a whisper. “What are you. . .” But he suddenly realized he didn’t need to ask.
That familiar sick feeling gripped him again, but it felt different this time around. It felt sharper and harder. Raymond turned to his mother, who had become so livid at the sight of Brian in the same room as her son that she’d turned nearly as red as an apple.
“You told his parents,” Raymond accused her. The words were heavy in his chest, and hot, burning his stomach and singeing his tongue as they left his mouth. He had never felt such anger toward his mother before. It was an anger fueled by days of nervousness, loss, and betrayal. Or perhaps a lifetime of such things. “You told them to bring him here, too.”
“What Brian did to you is a Sin,” his mother told him. Her eyes were the small, dark seeds of the apple. “They had to know. They’re his parents. They know what’s best for him.”
Raymond flashed a look at Brian and found that the boy’s beautiful cheeks had begun to turn horribly pink.
“This is what The Prayer Factory was made for, son,” the man sitting next to Brian said. The man shared Brian’s nose and eyes. “It’s made for fixing illnesses before they become dangerous.”
“We’re saving you from a lifetime of hurt,” the woman on Brian’s other side said. “It’s better to forget all this. Forgetting will give you a fair shot.” The woman, Brian’s mother, shared his round lips and dark hair. Sympathy glittered in her eyes and wrinkled her brow. No, not sympathy—pity, Raymond decided.
“And you two are welcome to stay friends after this,” Brian’s mother continued. “You just can’t . . . umm . . . .” She blushed as deep as her son and didn’t finish the sentiment.
“We didn’t agree on that,” Brian’s father said harshly, turning back to Raymond with penetrating eyes. He placed a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder. “I think it’s best if you stay away from my son after this, Raymond. He wasn’t like this before he met you, and no one can guarantee it won’t come back. Not even the damn Prayer Factory.”
“I’m sorry,” Brian said softly into his knees so none present could be sure who he was speaking to. It made Raymond even angrier to see Brian made so soft and fragile.
“They’re just like you,” Raymond growled at his mother. “They believe in The Prayer Factory.”
“Ray, please. Don’t,” Brian pleaded, meeting his eyes and lingering there. This, above all else, seemed to bother Raymond’s mother the most.
“I had to tell them,” she spat. “They need to know these things! They’re his parents!”
“So that they could ‘fix’ him, too?!”
“So that they could know that their son is a fa—”
But she stopped herself. Her face was red as a plum now, as red as she had been when she discovered Brian in Raymond’s room. But the word she had almost said brought a raw, tangible fear to her eyes. Raymond swam in sudden guilt; his mother was afraid for him.
A man in a white uniform entered the room from the door opposite Raymond and his mother. The door to the bowels of The Prayer Factory.
“Brian McAvoy, your Prayer Box is ready,” he said with a pure, white smile.
*
When Raymond was a boy, just after the success of Maybel’s second Prayer, he had asked his mother what Prayer Factory Prayers were made of. Nothing else in the world could purge a body of such illness so instantly. No doctor, no medicine, no healthy food or habit. There was nothing else like it.
Raymond’s mother lowered the dish she’d been washing back into the sink, gripping the soapy washrag tightly in her fist. She looked down at her feet for several moments before admitting that she didn’t know.
When she was Raymond’s age, she told him, they didn’t have Prayers. Or, at least, they had something by the same name, but it did not use a Prayer Box and it did not happen at The Prayer Factory. Those “prayers” required faith alone, but sometimes faith alone was not enough, as she’d learned with Raymond’s father.
Raymond’s father did not believe in The Prayer Factory when they first started building it in town. It was right in the downtown area, near all the other shops selling their lesser goods, and on their way to these places they would have to drive by it. Raymond’s father would glare at The Prayer Factory each time they passed, she said. He glared at every board and every tile that was laid until the factory was finished. And he swore that his god would bring shame onto The Prayer Factory and onto anyone who dared to utilize it.
Raymond never knew his father. This blasphemy was his father’s ultimate Sin and he paid for it heavily. While cleaning the house’s gutters, he’d slipped off the ladder and split his head on one of the decorative stones in the front yard. As Raymond’s mother waited with him for the ambulance to arrive, his blood filling the grass and her tears dotting his shirt, she’d begged him to agree to go to The Prayer Factory. She believed in The Prayer Factory. She knew that Prayer was the only way to save him, and she didn’t want her unborn child to grow up without his father.
The last words Raymond’s father said were, “Not that place. Not The Prayer Factory. Never. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.”
*
When it was Raymond’s turn to Pray, his mother tried to go with him, but the man in the uniform put up a gentle hand and insisted in a soft and dreamy voice that she wait there. She would not have to wait long, as quick results were always their guarantee. But this was Raymond’s Prayer, and Raymond’s Prayer alone.
She grabbed her son’s shoulders before he could walk away. “Remember,” she said, her earnest eyes piercing his. “Phrase it exactly how I told you to. Everything will be fine. I’ll see you soon, darling. I love you. I love you so much, Ray.”
The man led Raymond down a long white hallway and into a new room, which was empty save for a large white rectangular stall: a Prayer Box. With a smile, the man gave Raymond his instructions and then left Raymond alone, closing the door behind him.
Raymond undressed quickly, as per his instructions. It seemed the heat he’d felt earlier in the lobby had faded and, now, in nothing but his underwear and t-shirt, he shivered with cold. The iciness of the tiled floor made his bare feet ache.
He felt along the front edge of the Box until he found the little seam of its door and pulled it open. Its hinges were noiseless. Inside the Box, there was nothing. He would have to fill it with Prayer. He stepped up into the Box and turned to shut the door silently behind him, casting himself into complete darkness. His quick breathing echoed against the close walls and shook with his shivering.
It wasn’t long before he heard the voice.
“Hello,” it said. “I am your Higher Power for today. How may I Bless you?”
Raymond opened his mouth to say it, the words that his mother had fed him daily, nearly hourly, in the week it took for his appointment to finally come: “I wish to only feel love for women, and not at all for men—not for Brian.” But the words fell away from his tongue suddenly like the seeds of a dandelion caught in the wind, and he was left utterly wordless.
He had to Pray it. Praying his love for Brian away was the safe thing to do. The healthy thing. It was a dangerous time to be different. “Different” meant death of career, death of character, or just death in its purest form. Brian’s parents were right. His mother was right. Being in a love outside of convention—being a fag—was a curse upon themselves and their families. They were asking for trouble. They were trouble.
Raymond’s gut sank as he thought of Brian alone in his own Prayer Box, Praying Raymond out of him. He closed his eyes and wondered what Brian had thought of as the beautiful boy that Raymond knew ceased to exist. Were Brian’s last thoughts of him before the Prayer took hold and Raymond was gone from his mind forever?
Raymond’s nose tingled as tears made their way to his eyes. He thought only of Brian now, he could no longer help it. He thought of Brian’s beauty, his warmth, his touch. His body, his smell, his hair, his mouth. It was the last time he would be allowed to think of these things. A great door was closing before him, suffocating him in its largeness. Once that door was closed, where would he be? What would be left behind?
A thought wiggled in his mind, the words of a silent Prayer, and the voice responded, bringing with it a sharp light that filled the Box around him. “Hmm, yes. I see your Prayer. One moment, please.
“And Blessings Upon Thee.”
*
As soon as he stepped back out into the waiting room, his clothes back on but his tie and jacket folded into the crook of his elbow, his mother leapt out of her chair to ask him how his Prayer had gone. He told her it had gone well. At this, she smiled. She held up a hand and hesitated, her eyes on his face as if she were searching for something, before fixing his hair, tidying the little wrinkles in his shirt.
She then told him that he looked different.
“Different?” he asked.
She nodded. “Different is good,” she insisted.
A memory of something bubbled into his mind, hazily. But he decided it was better to forget.
The drive home was pleasant. Raymond’s mother smiled to herself and hummed some old happy tune, tapping the steering wheel with her thumbs. It was only when she was really pleased that she hummed. She caught him watching her and gave him a big grin. Love filled her eyes as she looked at him. But something inside Raymond ached suddenly, an emptiness in his stomach, and he didn’t understand the feeling.
As they came upon the house, her smile faded. She squinted up at it as if seeing something dangerous, and Raymond followed her gaze: a lean figure was standing on their front lawn. As they got closer, Raymond realized it was the figure of a tall, dark-haired boy.
“Do you know him?” Raymond’s mother suddenly asked.
Raymond squinted at the boy. The tension in his stomach grew as he looked at the boy and, again, the feeling was strangely familiar. “No,” he told her.
“Good.”
She pulled the car into their driveway and the boy ran up to Raymond’s window. Raymond could see through the glass that the boy had been crying.
“I didn’t do it!” the boy shouted excitedly. Proudly. Fresh tears curled around the edges of his enormous smile. Raymond caught himself looking at the boy’s lips, but he didn’t know why. “I couldn’t go through with it, Ray! I don’t care what anyone says! I couldn’t give you up! Never! Never, never!”
Raymond was acutely aware of his mother next to him, her anger heating up the air in the small car. But there was something even stronger he was aware of, something pulling his eyes to the boy behind the glass. It was a feeling inside him. That feeling. The ghost of something powerful he had lost or perhaps had simply forgotten.
The boy put his hand to the window and smiled again. When the boy looked at Raymond, he held such love in his eyes. Love. Love. Raymond caught his breath as something new flooded him, something wonderful and terrifying and suffocating in its largeness.
He smiled then, at the sun gleaming right outside his window, reaching its hand out to him. Without fear, he reached back.
Gwen Hollins is a queer writer and indie comic creator from Chicago, Illinois. On top of working on her current webcomic, “By The Light,” she also does freelance editing and illustration.