. . . the confessional
I wrote this story last semester for fiction writing class, but never posted it because I never liked it. I combined two different moods to this piece, and it bothers me that I couldn't decide on one. But I am posting it now, just because I really don't have anything to lose by doing so. ^-^
December 12, 2005
“Oh, come on now, David, let’s go inside! I want to show you what it looks like inside!” I said to him enthusiastically.
We were standing on the outskirts of a little broken down church; and in the gentle darkness of the night, I was tugging at my companion’s hand, watching the disapproval spread across the smooth contours of his youthful face.
David stood there leaning against the corner lamppost, his brooding green eyes gleaming beneath the furrow of his brows.
“No more, Cecil,” he said sternly, “you’ve dragged me through enough of this poverty-stricken town for one night. Honestly, if you had wanted a philosophical discussion about the folly of mankind we could have just as easily done so in a café at the Rue Royale - not in the pathetic squalor of a neighborhood like this.”
I smiled at him, finding his choice of words to be utterly charming.
“What better place to discuss such a subject than in a church?” I mused back at him.
He gave a bothered sigh, digging his hands deeper into his pockets as he glowered at me.
“But why this neglected town? Honestly, your fascination with dirty things will never cease to perplex me.”
I smiled at him, It is a quaint little town. It amuses me. You’re probably just worried that we’ll get in trouble for ‘trespassing,’ aren’t you.”
“Worried? No, I can assure you that that is not sentiment I am experiencing right now.”
I laughed at the dryness to his tone. I couldn’t help it.
He was my lover - a beautifully dark fellow with a cynical mind and a scholar’s tongue whom I had met in a religious philosophy class during my first term of college. I had fallen in love with his darkness, his sullen attitudes; snared into his cynical world like some scattered lost mind in search of comfort. And in return he had somehow managed to look past my whimsical romanticism, past my affection for lowly things he would normally not give a second glance upon. We were locked together now, or so I liked to think; and his possessive nature over me often confirmed such beliefs.
But now he was growing steadily impatient with me as the night progressed.
“Cecil, are you listening to me?”
I found myself smiling despite the agitation he was trying to conceal.
It wasn’t enough that I had dragged him out of bed at three in the morning, or that I had coerced him into coming to a dirty little town that he hated - I had brought him to a dilapidated old church. He had never had much of a liking for churches; he found their religious ideals foolish and mindless - which he had been quite vocal about during our religion class last year.
“Oh, come on, David. Why - it’ll be so much fun! you and I wandering ‘the sacred grounds.‘ I promise you that no one will ever know we’ve been here. They think everyone respects their ‘holy property,’ so the doors aren’t even locked up! Isn’t that marvelous?” My eyes were glittering with delicious excitement.
He shook his head in disbelief.
“Damn it, Cecil, are you even thinking straight?”
I turned to open the small rusted gate at the entrance of the grounds. This little old church delighted me, with its cracked stain-glass windows void of its past finery, now caked with grime and beautiful wretchedness; I loved how the old -- once strong and fine -- stone walls had become broken and cracked, infected with ivy vines gnarled within the stones. This church should have been torn down years ago and yet it hadn’t - somehow it had survived, and the romantic imperfections of this place caused me to fall in love with it.
David pulled back sharply on my arm.
“You’re not even paying attention to what I am saying!” He tried to reason with me, “We cannot go in there. And besides, it looks like it might fall upon us at any moment if we even tried to do such a thing.”
But I was already pushing open the gate, ignoring his protests as I eagerly tugged him up the dirt path and towards the entrance.
I squinted in the darkness of the spacious sanctuary, thankful for the shafts of light cutting through the darkness. The thick smell of must encompassed us as we wandered down one of the isles, past broken pews sitting in humble rows throughout the sanctuary. David had twisted his lips in a small expression of disgust, his feet padding without a sound across the worn carpet.
I giggled at him. “Isn’t this beautiful?”
“Do you want an honest answer to that?”
How lovely the subtle French lilt to his voice.
I laughed.
“It is though! Catholic churches are always so fanciful - their ideals, I mean. The way they have the place adorned with relics that are supposed to represent the presence of God. And all the rituals preformed here as well, the little choir that sings hymns of praise to their Lord with such reverence, right beneath that crucifix hanging upon the front wall there!“ I pointed towards the alter. “And you see that,” I whispered, “That is where those lovely little alter boys used to stand, in their dusty garments of red and gold. They probably thought they looked like saints standing up there with the lights glowing upon their cherub cheeks.”
He sighed and shook his head.
I pointed again, rapture filling the low timber of my voice. “And you see there - the Virgin Mary! Oh, how they love to pray to her, she’s a mere figure carved of stone and yet they think -“
“You do not have to tell me what everything means, Cecil,” he told me, reaching up to my outstretched hand to place it down by his side. “I am not completely illiterate to this all.”
“But you said you’ve never been in a church before.” I replied in slight confusion. I felt a secret pleasure in feeling the soft pressure of his hand against my own.
“Yes, but I have seen pictures of what the inside of a church looks like. Those great books you always make me look through at the library,” he reminded me none too fondly, “have you forgotten?”
I smiled pleasingly at him as I touched the strands of black hair falling by his cheek.
“No, lover, I have not forgotten.”
I wasn’t sure why we spoke as softly as we were, it was almost as if we too actually felt some reverence for this place of worship. My eyes passed over the great alter, and I imagined hearing the voices, sweet and clear, rising from the congregation and melting into the sky.
“And that, over there, is that their little confessional?”
David’s curious voice distracted me from my fantasizing and I followed the path his eyes made towards a dark little corner at the far end of the church.
I felt something turn cold in my chest and it hurt; but I pushed aside as a fleeting sensation.
“Yes!” I cried, tugging forth my excitement once again, “That is where they go to confession. They pour their hearts out to the gentle priest as if he can actually cleanse them of their sins.”
“Supposedly it makes one feel relieved if one unburdens oneself by confessing,” David murmured. His eyes had taken on a strange appearance - soft.
I laughed at this comment.
“It may make them feel better, but it certainly does nothing for their sins.”
David frowned at me. “Do not mock their beliefs.”
I arched my brows in jest at him.
“Are you serious, David?” I inquired, finding his subtle change of attitude most curious indeed. “And agnostic fellow like you, standing up for these delusional beliefs? Have you become a believer as well?”
He shook his head at me and looked off through the darkness at the lonely confessional.
“Do not speak such foolishness,” he said, “I am only talking of respect.”
I shrugged.
“Do you know,” I began again, “that when they go into that little box, they cannot see the Priest’s face, but he can see theirs?”
He nodded.
I continued, “But he doesn’t wait there anymore, the Priest. Something bad happened to him and so this church has been abandoned. I guess God listens to everyone’s prayers for safety but the Priest’s. I think that’s sad.”
He watched me silently.
“Do you think,” he asked, “that the Priest prays for himself as well?”
I titled my head thoughtfully at the little confessional, “Surely he must. Not that it did him any good, of course.”
“What if his prayers for himself takes away from the prayers of the peoples?”
I gave another careless shrug. I found it strange, his sudden interest in the rituals of this church. And for some reason his sincere curiosity was making me uncomfortable.
“Those poor people then, all praying for things that will never come true.” I turned towards the alter.
“But their prayers must come true in some way,” David said, causing me to halt mid step. I looked over my shoulder at him. He had spoken with such soft and earnest determination that I found myself facing him completely. He was frowning to himself, the tiny lines forming delicately around the corners of his mouth and upon his brow. “They wouldn’t still be praying for all these years if their prayers had never been answered.”
I scowled at this comment, confused by it. I thought of how the Priest’s prayers for safety had failed and I found myself growing agitated with this whole religious concept of God and prayers and confessionals. The fact that I was so affected by this bothered me even more.
“So you’re saying God only answers the prayers that He feels like?” I retorted angrily.
He turned to face me, his brows rising in the faintest manner. I had completely startled him. “Why are you so upset?”
Caught off guard by my sudden release of emotions, I attempted recover with a dismissive shake of my head.
“No reason. I just think it’s foolish, that’s all.”
He didn’t let it go.
“You were just fawning over this place minutes ago.”
“I know.”
“I’m only asking questions because you were so eager to share it all with me before.”
“I said I know.”
“Why the sudden change?”
I crossed my arms over my chest in exasperation.
“David, forget it. Really.” I eyed a smudge of dirt on the carpet sullenly.
Silence returned, falling upon the two of us just as thick as the mold in the air that crawled up my nostrils and tried to fill my throat. I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking, memories returning that I wrestled aside. I was beginning to feel sour inside.
“So what happened to the Priest?” David asked me finally, the emotion gone from his voice. He had slipped his right hand from the front pocket of his jeans and carefully pulled a small black book from one of the slots on a wooden pew beside his leg. He touched the old weathered cover of the object, tracing his fingers across the dusty surface of the cracked leather binding.
“I told you, something bad happened to him.”
David’s eyes flickered up to mine.
“Bad?” he echoed, “do you know what it was?”
I shifted my shoulders, an uneasiness creeping through me, a dark entangled mass hovering in the back of my mind.
“No. What does it matter?”
He shook his head in a distracted manner, but he did so with such eloquence that I was momentarily overwhelmed.
“And so the church has been abandoned.”
I could not identify if there was a trace of sadness or merely indifference in the quiet pitch of his voice.
“Yes,” I said, hugging myself tighter as I let my eyes wander over the dank solitude of the sanctuary. “He was their shepherd, the Priest was. And now that he has gone and left them the people wander through this town like the scattered mindless flock they are.”
“Can they not find a replacement for their Priest?” David wondered aloud, glancing over to the confessional as if it was some forsaken treasure. “If just for a little while?”
I frowned at him, studying the acute angles of his profile, which were partially hidden by the shadows cast throughout this daunting place. I wanted to ask him, Why are you so curious about all of this? but I didn’t. Because I didn’t understand this change in him; it was unnerving to me.
So I scoffed at him as if I found the subject to be of little interest to me, and replied, “Surely you cannot be serious. They would never be able to find another Priest, especially not in a poor town like this.”
“Still,” David said, “To abandon their church like this, surely they would want to preserve it for when their Priest would return.”
I felt that familiar uneasiness return, squirming in the hollow of my stomach, and I rubbed my hand over my waist.
“Who knows what they are thinking, David. I don’t - why do you keep asking me like I know?”
His eyes fastened on mine, their sharp gaze piercing through the agitation that had encompassed me. And I felt naked, exposed before him. Why was I trying to hide?
I shifted my weight.
“You once believed as they did, Cecil. He was once your God too.”
“Not anymore.” I snapped at him. “I gave Him up, remember?”
“Yes, you did,” he said, nodding.
“I gave Him up for you!”
“Yes,” he said again. “Are you regretting your decision?”
I scowled at him in the darkness, suddenly hating him very much. I tasted the venom of my thoughts upon my tongue and I wanted to spit at his feet.
“You know I don’t. I willingly gave Him up for you.”
“But why?”
I glared at him. But his expression had become very soft, although I had not a single inclination as to what he was thinking; his eyes guarded such personal thoughts.
“A person cannot worship two gods.” I told him.
“It says so in the scriptures you used to read.”
“Yes. Now stop asking me questions that you already know the answers to.”
“But why?” he pressed.
“I told you why. A person cannot worship -“
“You told me you could not worship two gods, yes. But why did you abandon Him - why not me?”
I felt the muscles of my neck slowly tighten.
“Surely I could not have been that far superior to your God whom you had served since childhood.”
“Why are you asking me this?” I asked, my voice breaking. “What difference does it make?”
“It doesn’t.”
I frowned at him curiously. “And why are you so inquisitive about it anyway? Do you want me to leave you? Go back to Him?”
He shook his head at this, watching me evenly with those dark eyes of his as I challenged him.
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t let you leave me even if you wanted to.”
I tried to feel reassured by this possessive remark. After all, it had always done so for me in the past, hadn’t it? I gave a troubled nod of my head, attempting to show him that I was satisfied with his answer. But something very unsettling had been stirred within me. Suddenly I was suspicious of him.
“You’ve never asked me about it before.” I said again. Why did I suddenly feel as if I had to guard myself against him? The emptiness of the church no longer held any comfort for me.
David gave a slow shrug of his shoulder, closing the book softly with his hands; he bent his head down as he carefully touched his lips to the spine of the old hymnal book.
“No reason, really.” David said, placing it back into its little confinement behind the back of the pew. “I guess, I never really thought about it much before you brought up the subject in here. Does it bother you to hear me ask you such things?”
I grumbled quietly to myself, feeling disgruntled and somewhat foolish.
“No, forget about it. I don’t mind.”
But in truth, seeing the confessional huddled in the corner of this little sanctuary had caused me to feel restless. Suddenly I regretted coming into this church, for dragging David in here and for scoffing at the little fragments of items that rested in the crumbling domain.
I wanted to suggest leaving, but the uneasiness that swelled within my throat had slithered into my brain, numbing all rational thought.
So I mumbled, “If you’re so infatuated with that thing why don’t you try it out - do you want to confess something?”
The moment the words left my mouth, I paled. I heard the syllables ringing in my ears, could see them wiggling in front of my astonished eyes. I almost reached up, grabbed them between my fingers and stuffed them back into my mouth.
David turned to me, regarding me with such narrowed eyes I couldn’t breathe. He was silent for a long moment, weighing what I had just said with careful deliberation that darkened the sculptured angles of his face.
Then he said, “Let’s do it.”
I inhaled sharply.
“What?”
“You heard me. Only you be the confessor. I have nothing that needs to be said in a place like this.”
“But -“
I looked over at the dank and hollow confessional. The very idea of being in there utterly terrified me - I could feel the fear quaking through my bones!
But David had taken my hand and was leading me to there now.
A panic surged through me - no! cannot go back in there!
I struggled to maintain my composure, to relax, to once again respond in some unconcerned manner at David’s idea as if it did not matter to me. But I couldn’t go in there - face those memories -
Anguish flooded through my veins, rendering me utterly helpless for a brief moment, and I sagged against David; against the slender strength of his shoulder.
“David, don’t make me go in there,” I whispered in a torrent of words.
“Why not,” he replied, and I could hear the indifference clearly in his tone.
Get a hold of yourself!
I gave a jittery laugh, wishing that it could sound as carefree as before. But it didn’t. It sounded rank and unconvincing in my ears.
So I tried again with, “Because it’s a silly game, David. And I don’t want to go into that foolish confessional anyway.”
“You were enraptured about everything else in here before.”
“I know . . . “
“You’ve something to confess.”
“I don’t!”
He stopped abruptly and turned on me, his eyes locking intensely upon my own. I felt the blood drain from the throbbing flesh of my face. There was no softness in his voice now, and I shuddered at the menacing words that grated from his lips, “Yes. You do.”
And he pushed me into the confessional, releasing my hand as he moved away to sit on the other side, outside of the little confinement.
My body trembled as I sat upon the small seating, my back ridged and my hands gnarled into two fists of desperation upon my lap. I swallowed, but the muscles in my throat constricted, making me have to gasp for air. Good God, was that I who was panting, each rasp scrapping against the walls of this horrible black box?
The memories!
“You’ve been here before, Cecil.”
David’s voice shocked me, and I jerked from my reverie, blinking rapidly in the darkness.
Could I keep these secrets from him any longer? How rapidly my heart was beating!
I wanted to whisper yes so he would let me go free, so I didn’t have to hear his cold voice snake around me, so I didn’t have to face -
“You came here every day. That is where you got the rosary beads from - the ones hidden beneath the pillow of your bed,” he accused.
I almost cried out upon hearing him - he had found them?
“You mock this little church and these people as if they mean nothing to you. Yet you love and fear everything about this place!”
Oh, how he was furious with me. His low voice burned my ears, his tongue spewing words that taunted me - ravaging the very sacredness of the little confessional!
I felt my grip on sanity slipping away from me. He shouldn’t be the one sitting there - where the Priest used to sit, oh, my beloved Priest, whose voice had only soothed me again and again.
And I could imagine sitting in here as I had in the past. The smell of dust faint in the small box chamber; and my hands pressing into the soft worn cushion I sat upon as the soft voice of the Priest caressed with, What is it, my child? as I cried out in response, Please don’t abandon us!
The awful memories flooded my brain, scratching through the chambers of my unconscious, dragging them to the present. Here, in this chapel, as David sat on the outside - where the Priest had sat! -his low voice taunting me of the past.
I had tried to come here, to the little church of my childhood, as if I could completely disregard what once was. I had lost my faith, tried to make a mockery of this place; tried to make light of the sacredness of the objects that I had once looked upon with such reverence.
I had failed. What a fool.
David’s voice continued relentlessly as he tried to force, to rip down the walls that protected my memories, that kept the pain locked away. David was whispering:
“And just what was it that tore you away from Him? Surely it was not just I, no - you had abandoned your God long before you had ever met me. Yet you could not throw away the relics - your precious crucifixes that you instead stowed away beneath your bed -“
“Stop.”
“-stuffed in boxes deep within your closets -“
“Stop!”
“Did you think I would never find traces of your passion for Him? That I wouldn’t smell the lingering scents of the incenses you burned in your room for Him during those hours of prayers?”
I clamped my hands over my ears. I wanted to flee from this horrid confessional, rip away the tattered black fabric hanging from the doorway and escape through the old wooden doors of the church. But I couldn’t - David’s voice had fastened itself upon me now, locking me to him, curling around my neck like a noose that would strangle me if I tried to run.
“With all those times spent in your bed, did you think I would never discover that accursed obsession you had with your God!? Why did you leave Him!”
“He abandoned us!” I screamed, every frustration and hurt and fear bursting from my lips, stealing the breath from my lungs. “The Priest - he left us all! He lost his precious child to some filthy sinners out for a ‘joy ride.’ God failed to protect the Priest’s child. And then he left us all, abandoned his faith and us. But the people needed him - I needed him! - how could he not know? He broke his promise to never leave us! He made me lose my faith!”
The anguish consumed me now, crippling me as I doubled over in the darkness, gripping my head with such desperation I was sure I would rip the hair from my scalp at any moment.
I thought of how beautiful the church had been, with her sanctuary filled with the voices of the believers, with the polished statues of the Saints gleaming in their finery and humble respect for their Lord. And how quickly this gentle sanctuary had fallen victim to the filth of festering rats and owls - no longer a home for the Holy. The sweet fragrances that had been offered up to the Saints had been snuffed out by the stench of mold and decay.
My precious sanctuary.
I rocked back and forth, sobbing, moaning something beneath my breath, words forming of their own accord; I was lost to their meaning.
Someone’s hand touched my shoulder.
I jumped, startled by the sudden intrusion into my misery. David was standing there, his slender figure outlined by the moonlight sifting its way through the splotches of dirt encrusted upon the stained glass windows of the room.
At first I presumed to be imagining him standing there before me. And I looked back at to the chamber where David should have been sitting. But it was empty now and I faced him again, the figure standing before me.
He was watching me, his eyes holding such sadness to their soulful depths; and I was struck with a deeper grief at seeing such emotions upon his face than at the pain of my own memories. He had fallen back into his own ascetic nature once more. Gone was the spiteful young man who had been beside me only moments ago. I realized suddenly that I wanted to feel David’s arms around me, those long slender arms of quiet strength. But I couldn’t find the will to move and instead huddled deeper within myself.
“Forgive me,” he said, the remorse revealed openly in the dim reflection of his eyes. “That was cruel of me to do to you, to press you like that. I don’t know what came over me.”
I opened my mouth, attempted to respond, yet could not. The grief was still too strong, the memories that had been brought to the surface still too raw. It hurt to try and speak.
“I did not know, Cecil,” he implored softly, watching me still. His hand was outstretched to me. “I should have realized it was a fragile subject, that there must have been a strong reason you would not disclose such information to me. I let my jealousy take the better of me. Please, forgive me.”
I tried to control my pathetic tears and I covered my face with my hands as they continued to seep through my eyelashes.
“You’re not going to leave me?” I asked, the fragility of my voice frightening me. “You’re not going to leave me like the Priest, like he did?”
He shook his head gently, “No, I’m not going to leave you. I promised you I wouldn’t.”
My shoulders shook with each new rush of tears.
“But so did he!”
I felt his hands on my shoulders.
“Look at me.”
I refused, only cowered deeper.
His hands grasped my wrists, slowly pulling them from my face. But I could not bear to look at him and I felt his breath warmly across my brow as he waited patiently. The heat from his body was emanating softly around me, trying to creep into the coldness of my flesh and encompass my trembling bones.
When I could bear the silence no longer, I lifted my face to his own.
He began, speaking tenderly, yet the subdued strength interlacing his tone was unmistakable
“I do not care what your Priest may have said to you, or your god for that matter. I do not believe in the existence of either one of them, so I do not find it possible that they were capable of uttering any form of truth to you.”
I bit down on my lower lip, tasting the metallic liquid seep into my mouth from the bitter wound inflicted upon the supple flesh.
“So I am telling you now that I will not leave you, just as I had promised that I would never let you leave me as well. You are mine now, and I’ll willingly surrender my soul to Hades - if it does indeed exist - in order to make sure you are bound to me forever.”
I looked into his face, into the dark possessiveness of his eyes that glowed against the smooth planes of his face. The light from the windows was bathing his face in a disarray of shadows and colors, defining the sharp slant of his brows and the high angles of his cheekbones; I wanted to reach up and touch the smooth flesh molded over such features, to feel the blood pulsing within the cells of his skin.
I sighed wearily, my shoulders failing.
“I want to leave here.” I whispered, hearing the life drain from my body with those words. “I don’t want to ever come back. Let’s lock up the doors so we will never be able to get back in. Can we do that, David?”
His fingers tightened around my wrist in silent reply as he tenderly helped me to my feet.
“David, David,” I murmured into his throat, pressing my body closely to his own as I allowed his scent to envelope me. “Have we damned ourselves forever?”
“Perhaps,” he said. Such a simple answer. “But that really does not matter to me, and you know that, Cecil.”
I nodded tiredly, letting my hands crawl around his waist and tie around the tight muscles of his lower back. I wondered if it could be possible to melt into his flesh, let him consume me completely.
“Can you accept that?” he asked in the faintest manner, as if he thought that pressing me too hard would cause me to break as easily as the stained glass windows.
I sighed again, wishing I could somehow forget this all, this very night, here in my old home. What would happen once we left this church and never looked back? Would anyone come to visit her, this sad little church? Would she crumble into the earth in a pile of rubble and dust, the very memory of her presence lost to the soil of the earth forever? What a bitter thought. How dreadful. The Priest had abandoned me, so I had abandoned my God and my humble sanctuary. In the end she would suffer in a way surely greater than us all. We would continue to live, in some way without him to guide us. But this humble church would perish sooner from neglect than any of us - than I.
I drew away reluctantly. My crying left me feeling weary and empty inside.
“I just want to leave, David,” my eyes pleading with him, “Lover?
He nodded.
I let my gaze trail longingly over the sanctuary one last time as David led me down the isle. I felt the worn carpet beneath my feet, remembered how lush it had once felt. And the alter with the Priest standing over his people; and the alter boys whose faces glowed just like the angels painted by Michelangelo; and the figure of Mary smiling down upon us with her open arms of stone. The empty confessional shrank further away from us, a little chamber whose black gaping mouth wailed silently for me to return.
I thought of what David had said earlier that evening, about the confessional.
He had been wrong.
There was no relief in confessing. Only the bitter undeniable truth of pain and disappointment upon finally hearing the confession voiced aloud.
December 12, 2005
“Oh, come on now, David, let’s go inside! I want to show you what it looks like inside!” I said to him enthusiastically.
We were standing on the outskirts of a little broken down church; and in the gentle darkness of the night, I was tugging at my companion’s hand, watching the disapproval spread across the smooth contours of his youthful face.
David stood there leaning against the corner lamppost, his brooding green eyes gleaming beneath the furrow of his brows.
“No more, Cecil,” he said sternly, “you’ve dragged me through enough of this poverty-stricken town for one night. Honestly, if you had wanted a philosophical discussion about the folly of mankind we could have just as easily done so in a café at the Rue Royale - not in the pathetic squalor of a neighborhood like this.”
I smiled at him, finding his choice of words to be utterly charming.
“What better place to discuss such a subject than in a church?” I mused back at him.
He gave a bothered sigh, digging his hands deeper into his pockets as he glowered at me.
“But why this neglected town? Honestly, your fascination with dirty things will never cease to perplex me.”
I smiled at him, It is a quaint little town. It amuses me. You’re probably just worried that we’ll get in trouble for ‘trespassing,’ aren’t you.”
“Worried? No, I can assure you that that is not sentiment I am experiencing right now.”
I laughed at the dryness to his tone. I couldn’t help it.
He was my lover - a beautifully dark fellow with a cynical mind and a scholar’s tongue whom I had met in a religious philosophy class during my first term of college. I had fallen in love with his darkness, his sullen attitudes; snared into his cynical world like some scattered lost mind in search of comfort. And in return he had somehow managed to look past my whimsical romanticism, past my affection for lowly things he would normally not give a second glance upon. We were locked together now, or so I liked to think; and his possessive nature over me often confirmed such beliefs.
But now he was growing steadily impatient with me as the night progressed.
“Cecil, are you listening to me?”
I found myself smiling despite the agitation he was trying to conceal.
It wasn’t enough that I had dragged him out of bed at three in the morning, or that I had coerced him into coming to a dirty little town that he hated - I had brought him to a dilapidated old church. He had never had much of a liking for churches; he found their religious ideals foolish and mindless - which he had been quite vocal about during our religion class last year.
“Oh, come on, David. Why - it’ll be so much fun! you and I wandering ‘the sacred grounds.‘ I promise you that no one will ever know we’ve been here. They think everyone respects their ‘holy property,’ so the doors aren’t even locked up! Isn’t that marvelous?” My eyes were glittering with delicious excitement.
He shook his head in disbelief.
“Damn it, Cecil, are you even thinking straight?”
I turned to open the small rusted gate at the entrance of the grounds. This little old church delighted me, with its cracked stain-glass windows void of its past finery, now caked with grime and beautiful wretchedness; I loved how the old -- once strong and fine -- stone walls had become broken and cracked, infected with ivy vines gnarled within the stones. This church should have been torn down years ago and yet it hadn’t - somehow it had survived, and the romantic imperfections of this place caused me to fall in love with it.
David pulled back sharply on my arm.
“You’re not even paying attention to what I am saying!” He tried to reason with me, “We cannot go in there. And besides, it looks like it might fall upon us at any moment if we even tried to do such a thing.”
But I was already pushing open the gate, ignoring his protests as I eagerly tugged him up the dirt path and towards the entrance.
I squinted in the darkness of the spacious sanctuary, thankful for the shafts of light cutting through the darkness. The thick smell of must encompassed us as we wandered down one of the isles, past broken pews sitting in humble rows throughout the sanctuary. David had twisted his lips in a small expression of disgust, his feet padding without a sound across the worn carpet.
I giggled at him. “Isn’t this beautiful?”
“Do you want an honest answer to that?”
How lovely the subtle French lilt to his voice.
I laughed.
“It is though! Catholic churches are always so fanciful - their ideals, I mean. The way they have the place adorned with relics that are supposed to represent the presence of God. And all the rituals preformed here as well, the little choir that sings hymns of praise to their Lord with such reverence, right beneath that crucifix hanging upon the front wall there!“ I pointed towards the alter. “And you see that,” I whispered, “That is where those lovely little alter boys used to stand, in their dusty garments of red and gold. They probably thought they looked like saints standing up there with the lights glowing upon their cherub cheeks.”
He sighed and shook his head.
I pointed again, rapture filling the low timber of my voice. “And you see there - the Virgin Mary! Oh, how they love to pray to her, she’s a mere figure carved of stone and yet they think -“
“You do not have to tell me what everything means, Cecil,” he told me, reaching up to my outstretched hand to place it down by his side. “I am not completely illiterate to this all.”
“But you said you’ve never been in a church before.” I replied in slight confusion. I felt a secret pleasure in feeling the soft pressure of his hand against my own.
“Yes, but I have seen pictures of what the inside of a church looks like. Those great books you always make me look through at the library,” he reminded me none too fondly, “have you forgotten?”
I smiled pleasingly at him as I touched the strands of black hair falling by his cheek.
“No, lover, I have not forgotten.”
I wasn’t sure why we spoke as softly as we were, it was almost as if we too actually felt some reverence for this place of worship. My eyes passed over the great alter, and I imagined hearing the voices, sweet and clear, rising from the congregation and melting into the sky.
“And that, over there, is that their little confessional?”
David’s curious voice distracted me from my fantasizing and I followed the path his eyes made towards a dark little corner at the far end of the church.
I felt something turn cold in my chest and it hurt; but I pushed aside as a fleeting sensation.
“Yes!” I cried, tugging forth my excitement once again, “That is where they go to confession. They pour their hearts out to the gentle priest as if he can actually cleanse them of their sins.”
“Supposedly it makes one feel relieved if one unburdens oneself by confessing,” David murmured. His eyes had taken on a strange appearance - soft.
I laughed at this comment.
“It may make them feel better, but it certainly does nothing for their sins.”
David frowned at me. “Do not mock their beliefs.”
I arched my brows in jest at him.
“Are you serious, David?” I inquired, finding his subtle change of attitude most curious indeed. “And agnostic fellow like you, standing up for these delusional beliefs? Have you become a believer as well?”
He shook his head at me and looked off through the darkness at the lonely confessional.
“Do not speak such foolishness,” he said, “I am only talking of respect.”
I shrugged.
“Do you know,” I began again, “that when they go into that little box, they cannot see the Priest’s face, but he can see theirs?”
He nodded.
I continued, “But he doesn’t wait there anymore, the Priest. Something bad happened to him and so this church has been abandoned. I guess God listens to everyone’s prayers for safety but the Priest’s. I think that’s sad.”
He watched me silently.
“Do you think,” he asked, “that the Priest prays for himself as well?”
I titled my head thoughtfully at the little confessional, “Surely he must. Not that it did him any good, of course.”
“What if his prayers for himself takes away from the prayers of the peoples?”
I gave another careless shrug. I found it strange, his sudden interest in the rituals of this church. And for some reason his sincere curiosity was making me uncomfortable.
“Those poor people then, all praying for things that will never come true.” I turned towards the alter.
“But their prayers must come true in some way,” David said, causing me to halt mid step. I looked over my shoulder at him. He had spoken with such soft and earnest determination that I found myself facing him completely. He was frowning to himself, the tiny lines forming delicately around the corners of his mouth and upon his brow. “They wouldn’t still be praying for all these years if their prayers had never been answered.”
I scowled at this comment, confused by it. I thought of how the Priest’s prayers for safety had failed and I found myself growing agitated with this whole religious concept of God and prayers and confessionals. The fact that I was so affected by this bothered me even more.
“So you’re saying God only answers the prayers that He feels like?” I retorted angrily.
He turned to face me, his brows rising in the faintest manner. I had completely startled him. “Why are you so upset?”
Caught off guard by my sudden release of emotions, I attempted recover with a dismissive shake of my head.
“No reason. I just think it’s foolish, that’s all.”
He didn’t let it go.
“You were just fawning over this place minutes ago.”
“I know.”
“I’m only asking questions because you were so eager to share it all with me before.”
“I said I know.”
“Why the sudden change?”
I crossed my arms over my chest in exasperation.
“David, forget it. Really.” I eyed a smudge of dirt on the carpet sullenly.
Silence returned, falling upon the two of us just as thick as the mold in the air that crawled up my nostrils and tried to fill my throat. I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking, memories returning that I wrestled aside. I was beginning to feel sour inside.
“So what happened to the Priest?” David asked me finally, the emotion gone from his voice. He had slipped his right hand from the front pocket of his jeans and carefully pulled a small black book from one of the slots on a wooden pew beside his leg. He touched the old weathered cover of the object, tracing his fingers across the dusty surface of the cracked leather binding.
“I told you, something bad happened to him.”
David’s eyes flickered up to mine.
“Bad?” he echoed, “do you know what it was?”
I shifted my shoulders, an uneasiness creeping through me, a dark entangled mass hovering in the back of my mind.
“No. What does it matter?”
He shook his head in a distracted manner, but he did so with such eloquence that I was momentarily overwhelmed.
“And so the church has been abandoned.”
I could not identify if there was a trace of sadness or merely indifference in the quiet pitch of his voice.
“Yes,” I said, hugging myself tighter as I let my eyes wander over the dank solitude of the sanctuary. “He was their shepherd, the Priest was. And now that he has gone and left them the people wander through this town like the scattered mindless flock they are.”
“Can they not find a replacement for their Priest?” David wondered aloud, glancing over to the confessional as if it was some forsaken treasure. “If just for a little while?”
I frowned at him, studying the acute angles of his profile, which were partially hidden by the shadows cast throughout this daunting place. I wanted to ask him, Why are you so curious about all of this? but I didn’t. Because I didn’t understand this change in him; it was unnerving to me.
So I scoffed at him as if I found the subject to be of little interest to me, and replied, “Surely you cannot be serious. They would never be able to find another Priest, especially not in a poor town like this.”
“Still,” David said, “To abandon their church like this, surely they would want to preserve it for when their Priest would return.”
I felt that familiar uneasiness return, squirming in the hollow of my stomach, and I rubbed my hand over my waist.
“Who knows what they are thinking, David. I don’t - why do you keep asking me like I know?”
His eyes fastened on mine, their sharp gaze piercing through the agitation that had encompassed me. And I felt naked, exposed before him. Why was I trying to hide?
I shifted my weight.
“You once believed as they did, Cecil. He was once your God too.”
“Not anymore.” I snapped at him. “I gave Him up, remember?”
“Yes, you did,” he said, nodding.
“I gave Him up for you!”
“Yes,” he said again. “Are you regretting your decision?”
I scowled at him in the darkness, suddenly hating him very much. I tasted the venom of my thoughts upon my tongue and I wanted to spit at his feet.
“You know I don’t. I willingly gave Him up for you.”
“But why?”
I glared at him. But his expression had become very soft, although I had not a single inclination as to what he was thinking; his eyes guarded such personal thoughts.
“A person cannot worship two gods.” I told him.
“It says so in the scriptures you used to read.”
“Yes. Now stop asking me questions that you already know the answers to.”
“But why?” he pressed.
“I told you why. A person cannot worship -“
“You told me you could not worship two gods, yes. But why did you abandon Him - why not me?”
I felt the muscles of my neck slowly tighten.
“Surely I could not have been that far superior to your God whom you had served since childhood.”
“Why are you asking me this?” I asked, my voice breaking. “What difference does it make?”
“It doesn’t.”
I frowned at him curiously. “And why are you so inquisitive about it anyway? Do you want me to leave you? Go back to Him?”
He shook his head at this, watching me evenly with those dark eyes of his as I challenged him.
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t let you leave me even if you wanted to.”
I tried to feel reassured by this possessive remark. After all, it had always done so for me in the past, hadn’t it? I gave a troubled nod of my head, attempting to show him that I was satisfied with his answer. But something very unsettling had been stirred within me. Suddenly I was suspicious of him.
“You’ve never asked me about it before.” I said again. Why did I suddenly feel as if I had to guard myself against him? The emptiness of the church no longer held any comfort for me.
David gave a slow shrug of his shoulder, closing the book softly with his hands; he bent his head down as he carefully touched his lips to the spine of the old hymnal book.
“No reason, really.” David said, placing it back into its little confinement behind the back of the pew. “I guess, I never really thought about it much before you brought up the subject in here. Does it bother you to hear me ask you such things?”
I grumbled quietly to myself, feeling disgruntled and somewhat foolish.
“No, forget about it. I don’t mind.”
But in truth, seeing the confessional huddled in the corner of this little sanctuary had caused me to feel restless. Suddenly I regretted coming into this church, for dragging David in here and for scoffing at the little fragments of items that rested in the crumbling domain.
I wanted to suggest leaving, but the uneasiness that swelled within my throat had slithered into my brain, numbing all rational thought.
So I mumbled, “If you’re so infatuated with that thing why don’t you try it out - do you want to confess something?”
The moment the words left my mouth, I paled. I heard the syllables ringing in my ears, could see them wiggling in front of my astonished eyes. I almost reached up, grabbed them between my fingers and stuffed them back into my mouth.
David turned to me, regarding me with such narrowed eyes I couldn’t breathe. He was silent for a long moment, weighing what I had just said with careful deliberation that darkened the sculptured angles of his face.
Then he said, “Let’s do it.”
I inhaled sharply.
“What?”
“You heard me. Only you be the confessor. I have nothing that needs to be said in a place like this.”
“But -“
I looked over at the dank and hollow confessional. The very idea of being in there utterly terrified me - I could feel the fear quaking through my bones!
But David had taken my hand and was leading me to there now.
A panic surged through me - no! cannot go back in there!
I struggled to maintain my composure, to relax, to once again respond in some unconcerned manner at David’s idea as if it did not matter to me. But I couldn’t go in there - face those memories -
Anguish flooded through my veins, rendering me utterly helpless for a brief moment, and I sagged against David; against the slender strength of his shoulder.
“David, don’t make me go in there,” I whispered in a torrent of words.
“Why not,” he replied, and I could hear the indifference clearly in his tone.
Get a hold of yourself!
I gave a jittery laugh, wishing that it could sound as carefree as before. But it didn’t. It sounded rank and unconvincing in my ears.
So I tried again with, “Because it’s a silly game, David. And I don’t want to go into that foolish confessional anyway.”
“You were enraptured about everything else in here before.”
“I know . . . “
“You’ve something to confess.”
“I don’t!”
He stopped abruptly and turned on me, his eyes locking intensely upon my own. I felt the blood drain from the throbbing flesh of my face. There was no softness in his voice now, and I shuddered at the menacing words that grated from his lips, “Yes. You do.”
And he pushed me into the confessional, releasing my hand as he moved away to sit on the other side, outside of the little confinement.
My body trembled as I sat upon the small seating, my back ridged and my hands gnarled into two fists of desperation upon my lap. I swallowed, but the muscles in my throat constricted, making me have to gasp for air. Good God, was that I who was panting, each rasp scrapping against the walls of this horrible black box?
The memories!
“You’ve been here before, Cecil.”
David’s voice shocked me, and I jerked from my reverie, blinking rapidly in the darkness.
Could I keep these secrets from him any longer? How rapidly my heart was beating!
I wanted to whisper yes so he would let me go free, so I didn’t have to hear his cold voice snake around me, so I didn’t have to face -
“You came here every day. That is where you got the rosary beads from - the ones hidden beneath the pillow of your bed,” he accused.
I almost cried out upon hearing him - he had found them?
“You mock this little church and these people as if they mean nothing to you. Yet you love and fear everything about this place!”
Oh, how he was furious with me. His low voice burned my ears, his tongue spewing words that taunted me - ravaging the very sacredness of the little confessional!
I felt my grip on sanity slipping away from me. He shouldn’t be the one sitting there - where the Priest used to sit, oh, my beloved Priest, whose voice had only soothed me again and again.
And I could imagine sitting in here as I had in the past. The smell of dust faint in the small box chamber; and my hands pressing into the soft worn cushion I sat upon as the soft voice of the Priest caressed with, What is it, my child? as I cried out in response, Please don’t abandon us!
The awful memories flooded my brain, scratching through the chambers of my unconscious, dragging them to the present. Here, in this chapel, as David sat on the outside - where the Priest had sat! -his low voice taunting me of the past.
I had tried to come here, to the little church of my childhood, as if I could completely disregard what once was. I had lost my faith, tried to make a mockery of this place; tried to make light of the sacredness of the objects that I had once looked upon with such reverence.
I had failed. What a fool.
David’s voice continued relentlessly as he tried to force, to rip down the walls that protected my memories, that kept the pain locked away. David was whispering:
“And just what was it that tore you away from Him? Surely it was not just I, no - you had abandoned your God long before you had ever met me. Yet you could not throw away the relics - your precious crucifixes that you instead stowed away beneath your bed -“
“Stop.”
“-stuffed in boxes deep within your closets -“
“Stop!”
“Did you think I would never find traces of your passion for Him? That I wouldn’t smell the lingering scents of the incenses you burned in your room for Him during those hours of prayers?”
I clamped my hands over my ears. I wanted to flee from this horrid confessional, rip away the tattered black fabric hanging from the doorway and escape through the old wooden doors of the church. But I couldn’t - David’s voice had fastened itself upon me now, locking me to him, curling around my neck like a noose that would strangle me if I tried to run.
“With all those times spent in your bed, did you think I would never discover that accursed obsession you had with your God!? Why did you leave Him!”
“He abandoned us!” I screamed, every frustration and hurt and fear bursting from my lips, stealing the breath from my lungs. “The Priest - he left us all! He lost his precious child to some filthy sinners out for a ‘joy ride.’ God failed to protect the Priest’s child. And then he left us all, abandoned his faith and us. But the people needed him - I needed him! - how could he not know? He broke his promise to never leave us! He made me lose my faith!”
The anguish consumed me now, crippling me as I doubled over in the darkness, gripping my head with such desperation I was sure I would rip the hair from my scalp at any moment.
I thought of how beautiful the church had been, with her sanctuary filled with the voices of the believers, with the polished statues of the Saints gleaming in their finery and humble respect for their Lord. And how quickly this gentle sanctuary had fallen victim to the filth of festering rats and owls - no longer a home for the Holy. The sweet fragrances that had been offered up to the Saints had been snuffed out by the stench of mold and decay.
My precious sanctuary.
I rocked back and forth, sobbing, moaning something beneath my breath, words forming of their own accord; I was lost to their meaning.
Someone’s hand touched my shoulder.
I jumped, startled by the sudden intrusion into my misery. David was standing there, his slender figure outlined by the moonlight sifting its way through the splotches of dirt encrusted upon the stained glass windows of the room.
At first I presumed to be imagining him standing there before me. And I looked back at to the chamber where David should have been sitting. But it was empty now and I faced him again, the figure standing before me.
He was watching me, his eyes holding such sadness to their soulful depths; and I was struck with a deeper grief at seeing such emotions upon his face than at the pain of my own memories. He had fallen back into his own ascetic nature once more. Gone was the spiteful young man who had been beside me only moments ago. I realized suddenly that I wanted to feel David’s arms around me, those long slender arms of quiet strength. But I couldn’t find the will to move and instead huddled deeper within myself.
“Forgive me,” he said, the remorse revealed openly in the dim reflection of his eyes. “That was cruel of me to do to you, to press you like that. I don’t know what came over me.”
I opened my mouth, attempted to respond, yet could not. The grief was still too strong, the memories that had been brought to the surface still too raw. It hurt to try and speak.
“I did not know, Cecil,” he implored softly, watching me still. His hand was outstretched to me. “I should have realized it was a fragile subject, that there must have been a strong reason you would not disclose such information to me. I let my jealousy take the better of me. Please, forgive me.”
I tried to control my pathetic tears and I covered my face with my hands as they continued to seep through my eyelashes.
“You’re not going to leave me?” I asked, the fragility of my voice frightening me. “You’re not going to leave me like the Priest, like he did?”
He shook his head gently, “No, I’m not going to leave you. I promised you I wouldn’t.”
My shoulders shook with each new rush of tears.
“But so did he!”
I felt his hands on my shoulders.
“Look at me.”
I refused, only cowered deeper.
His hands grasped my wrists, slowly pulling them from my face. But I could not bear to look at him and I felt his breath warmly across my brow as he waited patiently. The heat from his body was emanating softly around me, trying to creep into the coldness of my flesh and encompass my trembling bones.
When I could bear the silence no longer, I lifted my face to his own.
He began, speaking tenderly, yet the subdued strength interlacing his tone was unmistakable
“I do not care what your Priest may have said to you, or your god for that matter. I do not believe in the existence of either one of them, so I do not find it possible that they were capable of uttering any form of truth to you.”
I bit down on my lower lip, tasting the metallic liquid seep into my mouth from the bitter wound inflicted upon the supple flesh.
“So I am telling you now that I will not leave you, just as I had promised that I would never let you leave me as well. You are mine now, and I’ll willingly surrender my soul to Hades - if it does indeed exist - in order to make sure you are bound to me forever.”
I looked into his face, into the dark possessiveness of his eyes that glowed against the smooth planes of his face. The light from the windows was bathing his face in a disarray of shadows and colors, defining the sharp slant of his brows and the high angles of his cheekbones; I wanted to reach up and touch the smooth flesh molded over such features, to feel the blood pulsing within the cells of his skin.
I sighed wearily, my shoulders failing.
“I want to leave here.” I whispered, hearing the life drain from my body with those words. “I don’t want to ever come back. Let’s lock up the doors so we will never be able to get back in. Can we do that, David?”
His fingers tightened around my wrist in silent reply as he tenderly helped me to my feet.
“David, David,” I murmured into his throat, pressing my body closely to his own as I allowed his scent to envelope me. “Have we damned ourselves forever?”
“Perhaps,” he said. Such a simple answer. “But that really does not matter to me, and you know that, Cecil.”
I nodded tiredly, letting my hands crawl around his waist and tie around the tight muscles of his lower back. I wondered if it could be possible to melt into his flesh, let him consume me completely.
“Can you accept that?” he asked in the faintest manner, as if he thought that pressing me too hard would cause me to break as easily as the stained glass windows.
I sighed again, wishing I could somehow forget this all, this very night, here in my old home. What would happen once we left this church and never looked back? Would anyone come to visit her, this sad little church? Would she crumble into the earth in a pile of rubble and dust, the very memory of her presence lost to the soil of the earth forever? What a bitter thought. How dreadful. The Priest had abandoned me, so I had abandoned my God and my humble sanctuary. In the end she would suffer in a way surely greater than us all. We would continue to live, in some way without him to guide us. But this humble church would perish sooner from neglect than any of us - than I.
I drew away reluctantly. My crying left me feeling weary and empty inside.
“I just want to leave, David,” my eyes pleading with him, “Lover?
He nodded.
I let my gaze trail longingly over the sanctuary one last time as David led me down the isle. I felt the worn carpet beneath my feet, remembered how lush it had once felt. And the alter with the Priest standing over his people; and the alter boys whose faces glowed just like the angels painted by Michelangelo; and the figure of Mary smiling down upon us with her open arms of stone. The empty confessional shrank further away from us, a little chamber whose black gaping mouth wailed silently for me to return.
I thought of what David had said earlier that evening, about the confessional.
He had been wrong.
There was no relief in confessing. Only the bitter undeniable truth of pain and disappointment upon finally hearing the confession voiced aloud.