Warning: This short story tells of an obsession by a boy who becomes a Priest, and how his faith drove him to both sexually assault and kill. There are moments of mutilation. Please read with care.
I didn’t steal a loaf to end up here. No, my father always told me stealing the body of Christ was the greatest sin. The greatest sin imaginable. I never wanted to go to hell. But this place is only one small step away from the flames.
A tiny room with dull grey walls. Peeling paint and a slim, barred, window. I’d count the bricks, but there’s too much dented plaster.
But what else could I expect? I broke a commandment. Maybe two, maybe more. How could I be blamed though? God left me, and my father said He never would. I prayed and I prayed harder. I kissed my cross and screamed my confession. I worked my rosary. I pleaded.
Where’d it get me?
Nowhere.
Merely a small cell in a noisy jail. And emptiness.
God has absolutely deserted me now.
I fondly remember my old freedoms, bitter as they are. Running the streets with my friends. The sense of awe when I entered the church. The respectful way I watched the priest. My youthful giddiness in confession, admitting to pulling on skirts of my female classmates.
I miss such innocence.
Discovering more as I grew older, I desperately wanted what I never could have. I wanted anything to escape the knowledge of age. Anything to escape the obligatory drudgery of what was expected.
Perhaps that’s when it all started. Sitting in church, trying to stop my very unreligious thoughts about the girl in front of me. She was a siren distracting me from prayer. My eyes wandered from the thorns around the Easter candle to the slender flesh of her neck. To her short blonde hair. To the pale blue floral dress wrapping her snowy skin.
I wanted to touch her.
Caress her.
And enfold her to the wax and thorns.
Eve. My first sin. She was the snake and the apple. Coaxing me to violate every vow. To destroy every prayer I’d whispered. Every childish whim and confession I’d uttered.
I followed her home, after Mass. I watched her from a distance; her carefree laughter with friends. The parting, after soda in the local café, to wander to the woods with a boy. I assumed he was her boyfriend.
Jealousy rooted in my veins.
The shadows of the forest provided me with a place to hide; a place to witness her welcome his tentative kiss. I saw his keen explorations and desperately longed to know how she felt.
The excitement in my blood stirred me from the heavens to the lair below. If I hadn’t been so caught up, hand moving amongst gooseberries and gorse, I may have noticed I was falling.
But Eve was everything I wanted.
She was more than she. She was all-seeing, all-knowing. She was my God. I prayed to Eve. I made icons for Eve. I curated a concealed shrine for her. It was her I bowed to. It was her I dreamt of.
It was her, always her.
My beloved.
For two years, I was devoted to her. Followed her. I neglected the majority of my studies and my numb routines. My expected vocation waned to accommodate Eve’s beauty.
Then, she left.
Leaving me with only memories and foolish idols. Heeding my father, I returned to what I’d been told was the true church. The true God. But Eve never escaped my mind. Though I endured many celibate years, she taunted me in my dreams. Despite these many disruptions, I completed my education, I accepted theology, my orders.
I became a priest.
My father was delighted.
His wayward son had remained virginial, had returned to his faith, and donned religious garments. My childhood innocence translated into the role of a blessed conduit for God. I was now the subject of respectful awe.
This pleased me greatly. There was a sense of completeness. A deep fulfilment found in my understanding of duty. But as I performed for the congregation, I became proficient in resentment.
Old envy resurfacing.
I saw young faces, happy couples. The eager gazes with lust, barely veiled, scarring their eyes. They saw flesh. They felt desire on which they could feast. I felt only a sense of empty loss for all I’d missed.
I missed Eve.
It did not take long for my thoughts to turn from God to Eve. To the temptation of slow, seductive, violent, sex. As a priest, I heard the sordid confessions of others. As a man, I watched others perform. I witnessed the hellish delights I’d given up without ever experiencing.
I wanted it. To live it.
To feel flesh under my own.
Around my own.
A young woman, relatively new to my church, was regularly pouring out similar aspirations to me. In confession, she’d mix dark fantasies with more petty sins of smoking, of being late to her college classes. She sought absolution but only brought me distraction.
She knew what she was doing, I’m sure of it. She was always the last to enter the confessional in the evening, in the empty church. And I’d listen to her gentle sobs, how she would softly beg for forgiveness, and knowingly catch my eye after, when she knelt to pray.
I’m sure she sensed the brutal heat in me.
She didn’t stop me when I opened the compartment’s door. She didn’t stop me when I unbuttoned her blouse. She didn’t stop me when I clumsily unhooked her bra and ran my hands over her exposed breasts. My trembling touch welcomed when I raised her skirt.
I tried to pace my emotions; my brain was ecstatic but wary. There was caution entwined with memory. Memory of what I’d witnessed in the woods, in the clubs. Memory of what I’d heard in confession.
The removal of my clothes was sufficient to allow me to enter her. Her fractured sigh the only noise she made, even when I groaned out the name Eve. She didn’t correct me, didn’t stop me. Kneeling, I found the worship I had sorely lacked. Her kiss on my forehead a blessing.
Guilt subsided with every visit she made to my confessional. Her pleas for forgiveness voided when I forced her to sin again. Until, after several months of such clandestine pleasure, she admitted she wouldn’t be attending confession alone again.
I said I understood.
But I was broken.
I’d tasted heaven, and I refused to return to my hell. I couldn’t return to being a hidden voyeur, not after finding my lost Eve. No, if I couldn’t have her, then no-one could.
I recreated my shrine, I consecrated the flesh of her as my God.
This new Eve, this woman, was mine.
The hushed concerns of my congregation, for their missing member, were met with my compassion. My assurances of her wellbeing. For I believed she was happy. I believed she knew she was adored. I knelt at her feet every night; her body tied to the cross.
I devoted myself to her.
Of course, I missed her voice. But it’d been the first thing I took when I chained her in the basement. I couldn’t risk her screaming, not during the quiet services I conducted over her head.
I loved her, fed her, kept her warm.
Then her body began to change, to swell.
And I realised the weight of my sin. The depths I’d reached. A small part of me recognised the warnings which dripped through my blood. My mind cognisant of consequence. Yet, it was difficult to admit it was time to release her.
I wept when I left her; her body carefully draped below the arching hawthorn in the sprawling graveyard. Her flesh over Eve’s grave, and covered in a pure white alb. But I knew she had to leave. I knew I needed to return to God. To my faith.
Only I found nothing.
God had left me bereft of hope. There was no prospect of welcome for this prodigal son. Even when the police shackled me, when they led me from my church, I found only absence. I was numb, abandoned by my heavenly father and my flock. Awe had been replaced with fear. With disgust and anger. My own family as hurt as those I’d blessed.
So, no, I didn’t steal a loaf. Nor did I desecrate Christ’s body. But I did break commandments. I know that. I failed Eve. I failed in my devotion to her. And I shall serve my time in hell.
Find out more about my anthology, The Menagerie, or have a listen to the playlist.
Inspirational, profound. I love it.
This was so powerful. One of the stories that I can never forget.