short fic.
Sinnerman
JtHM
Nny and Edgar, but Edgar mostly. Not really slash.
In the rain, he faltered.
The hour was late, but he could not sleep, remnants, he suspected, of his conversation with that man. He had been fascinated and repulsed and exhilarated, the most alive he had been in years and after there was nothing, not even a scrap of evidence except for the slightly dingy smell about him and even that had been washed away the next time he showered. Alone he sat, alone. Staring, empty, not even living, existing at the level of maybe crustaceans or ants and again, again, there was nothing.
At night, he slept, though it really wasn’t as much sleeping as a sleeping position and a series of suspicious sounds in the night, the refrigerator making ice, a car on the road outside, a country music song in the apartment below him...
Outside, in the rain, he faltered. Outside, on the gravel driveway, he faltered.
The man, distracted, had left, and for once Edgar was glad that he was so effeminately skinny. His hands just barely slipped through their restraints (apparently set already to their smallest size) and frantic, disgusted in himself for betraying his earlier fearless statements, he undid the straps holding him delicately amongst the blades. He winced as he fell to the floor, winced as he ran, and when he made it up the stairs, said a single word to the man disemboweling somebody in the kitchen.
“Sorry,” he said.
Then he fled.
Living after so many years of not-living, if even for an hour, ruined him for the rest of his life. He repulsed himself, wanting more, wanting that, thinking in spirals and going down, down, down. He drove to the church that night, enlightenment crashing upon him like a wave in frame-by-frame. Rain bounced off the roof of his car with no discernible rhythm. Around him, people drove, or not, streetlights turned, or not, wives got beat or sometimes not and there was no neat little order or purpose. Things happened. Sometimes they didn’t. As he looked at the world from behind his clear round glasses, he wondered if maybe…
Outside, in the gravel, rain on his back, he faltered. He had opened the car door, heavy, deluded, thoughts swirling and barely coalescing before swinging back and out of his mind, exploding; the inside of his head was like an action movie set. He had staggered to the church and fallen outside when his shoes touched the grass, the mud squelched under his chest and in his face but he couldn’t bring himself to get back up. Instead, he tucked his knees underneath him, bowed his head in front of the dark red bricks and stained glass windows, and imagined the rain on the back of his head was striking the thoughts from his brain.
He would never see that man again. That much he knew. He prayed for God's forgiveness and to forget the past week.