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FORGIVE ME
J.R. GRAY
TRIGGER WARNING
This is generally dark and contains lots of blasphemy.
There was brutality in his love.
1
RECONNECT
We were friends once upon a time. Two scared kids sheltered in the back of the church, a massacre bonding us in blood. Ripped out of his arms and shoved into two totally different lives, but never did I think he would turn into this.
I didn’t know him. He stood over us like a God, exalted and beautiful. A smile that would have school girls fawning and grown woman swooning. He spoke the word of God—while I sat, a sinner.
The same start took us in wildly different directions.
He was forgiveness while I was vengeance.
Both doing the Lord’s work, or so I told myself.
We all had to sleep at night.
We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t speak aside from my weekly confession. He pretended not to recognize me behind the screen. Or maybe he didn’t, our friendship existing in another lifetime—one most would try to forget. But if that were the case, would he have condemned my sins? He should have given more than a couple of prayers as my penance after I confessed to atrocities that would turn the stomachs of even the most heinous villains.
I’d grown to cherish our time. Pouring out the worst of me, hidden behind a screen in a dark confessional, in graphic detail. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for my job, and I was well known for accomplishing my task, no matter the difficulty or the odds.
Then he’d forgive me. Or act as a vessel of it. My penance a pittance. It almost felt wrong, but the sessions became addicting. I couldn’t help imagining what could have been, had our families not been ambushed that night.
If he had kissed me and no one had died.
It kept my hope alive while I sat in the back row in the shadows of the choir loft, a single face in his nameless crowd of thousands. For he was loved, and in these modern times, for a Catholic priest to be as loved as this, was rare. Religion more outdated and dying with every year that passed, but not in this sleepy town on the Eastern Seaboard. Week after week, every seat in the antique church was filled. But it wasn’t just that. Father Anthony got his parishioners to help with the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter. They came out in droves for toy drives, and when Father Anthony needed them, they came, checkbooks in hand.
I’d never seen a man of God bring out as much good with zero judgement as Anthony did.
Like he hadn’t started life a villain.
In a life where I’d lost all belief in anything, he felt like a life raft for my damned soul.A single fresh breath of peace before I returned to my hell.
Maybe that was his whole appeal in a world of selfish sinners. We clung to his holiness. As if our reparations could be purchased.
I laughed, but quickly stifled it with a cough when it drew the attention of my fellow parishioners. Anthony’s eyes lifted from the text he read, seeking out the cause of the disturbance. They never landed on me. Like he avoided looking in my direction in any public form. We were strangers, after all. No matter how much we’d shared as children or in the confessional, it didn’t change the reality of our lives.
They could never collide.
Not when I was as good as a ghost and he was the light I’d been taught to hide away from.
Mass ended. First Friday with standing room only. The line for confession stretched the length of the church and moved like molasses. Inch by inch, hour by hour. Absurd after an evening mass on a Friday, but not for Saint Joan of Arc Catholic Church.
There was always a line here.
Every night of the week, he drew crowds like a celebrity.
They’d tried splitting the work, bringing in another priest to hear confession to take some of the load off Anthony, but it remained the same, with people willing to wait hours for a few minutes alone with him. I’d always wondered if they waited for the same reason I did week after week. For twenty minutes of heated breath exchanged behind a screen.
