short fiction · 2026-10-26

The Blender Priest

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

Father Matteo kept a Vitamix beside the chalice. Parishioners whispered he blended the host into smoothies for the homebound — kale, banana, the body of Christ, all whipped to a bright green froth. The bishop called it sacrilege. The neurologist called it bioavailability.

In his notebook, Matteo sketched dopamine receptors like stained glass: D1 and D2, distinct until they dimerize, then the integration window widens, the signal stays. He understood the chemistry of merging. Two pathways, one vessel. The go and the stop, swirling together until the machine screams and the lid rattles.

Sunday morning he poured the emerald mixture into paper cups. "Drink," he said. "This is my blood, blended for absorption." An old woman crossed herself twice. A teenager filmed it for TikTok. The neurologist in the third pew scribbled: heteromer formation extends the temporal summation window by 300 percent.

Matteo wiped the blade clean. The motor cooled. In the sacristy, he opened The Anatomy of Melancholy to a passage he'd marked: Good people are scarce. He underlined it again. The blender sat quiet, waiting for next week's harvest — spinach, mango, wafer, wine — all the separate things the world keeps apart, spun into something the body can finally use.