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Eyes on the bastard beside me, I clench my jaw. “You fucking touch me, and I’ll cut your dick off.”
An obnoxious laugh from behind skates along my spine. “She ain’t gonna cut off shit. I got her arms. Go ahead, you have my permission to touch her. Don’t be scared. I’m just a loving boyfriend fulfilling my girl’s secret fantasy.”
With a smile that I can’t tell is real, or meant to appease Calvin, the guy reaches out and grabs a handful of my breast, kneading it in his palm.
Gnashing my teeth, I focus on his face, imagining it smashed and bleeding.
“Oh, yeah.” Calvin groans, prodding his jean-clad cock into me. “How’s that feel, love? ‘Sat make you hot? How bout we lay you out on the table here and let every one of them fuck you, just like the girl in that story? I’ll be a gentleman and hold you down, so everyone gets a turn.”
“Stop! Fucking stop it! Quit fucking touching me!” A hand slaps across my mouth, and I bite down into flesh, nails digging into his fingers with my arm free.
“You can make all the noise you want, bitch. Let’s not forget what happened the last time the police came, based on a complaint.”
The last time, my neighbor ended up with slashed tires and a broken finger. Even if I screamed bloody murder, I doubt any one of them, except Mrs. Garcia, would bother. And unfortunately, she sleeps without her hearing aide in.
“Man, leave her alone.” The young guy sitting opposite Calvin sits guarded, his fingers entwined. Clean cut, wearing a button-down shirt, with his hair gelled back, he doesn’t look like the other two thugs. He looks regal, maybe someone important. Another mysterious contact. “I didn’t come here to play touchy feely with your girlfriend. I came to play cards, and if that’s not happening, I’m out.”
“Listen to MisterI-Only-Fuck-Supermodelsover here. What? My girl isn’t hot enough for you?”
“She’s a bit too hotfor you, asshole. But I wouldn’t touch your sloppy seconds if someone paid me. Now, let’s get to playing cards.”
A round of laughter bounces off the walls, and my arms are set free. Calvin pushes me off his lap, laughing with the rest of them, and I stumble toward the door. “Get the bed warm for later,” he says, resuming his shuffling of the cards. “If you’re lucky, I’ll bring a cucumber to bed with me.”
Tears fill my eyes as I make my way toward the bathroom, their obnoxious laughter trailing after me. Once inside, I close the door behind me and slide down the wall.
“Hey, don’t be too long!” Calvin’s voice bleeds through the door. “Tony’s gotta piss!”
I cradle my head in my hands. If I could go back eight years, I never would’ve handed over my soul to the devil. I’d have died of starvation first.
3
Damon
Through the back door of the rectory, I make my way down to the lower level. Father Ruiz, who covers the Spanish mass, lives in the upper level of the building, whereas I opted for the basement. Even when the two of us are here, we rarely run into each other. A large family, full of siblings and cousins, occupies most of his free time, so the only fleeting moments we happen to see each other outside of church might be during morning prayer in the chapel, or in the kitchen, when one of us is cooking. Otherwise, the place is essentially all to myself, and my gray Chartreux, Philippe, for whom Ruiz doesn’t care much.
A half renovated rec room passes on the right, in which all my workout equipment awaits abuse. My bedroom sits adjacent to the guest room at the end of the hall. At some point, a seminarian is expected to occupy the extra space, but for now it’s quiet and vacant. Stillness I would’ve appreciated as much as on any other night, if my head wasn’t all over the place.
Without flipping on the light, I stride through the darkness to the closet at the opposite side of my bed and tug the dangling chain, which flicks on the bare lightbulb inside.
Staring off, I remove my clerical collar and shirt, leaving only the white tank beneath. I can still hear the man’s raspy voice. Smell his breath. The cigarettes and whiskey. Not a drop of remorse on his words. No, he took joy in hurting a child, an innocent lamb, without consequence. And if he’s telling the truth, that child lies buried somewhere up on Angel’s Point—an admission I won’t know to be true for certain, until I’m able to investigate tomorrow at first light, before morning mass.
Massaging the blossoming ache stabbing at my skull, I breathe hard through my nose. My mind is chaos. A battle between my duties as a priest, my commitment to the parish, and my instincts as one who’s already seen the worst parts of hell. As much as I believe we’re all deserving of God’s mercy, there are those among us, wolves amongst the flock, who are, by their very nature, unrepentant predators, the kind that seek out the most innocent and vulnerable.
He could be out there, harming another child.
I slam my fist into the wall beside me. Rattling comes from within the closet, while the slivers of pain shoot up my knuckles. Gripping the doorjamb, I rest my head there, spasms shooting across my jaw with the grinding of my teeth.
Every cell in my body, the parts that make me more man than priest, beg me to hunt the man down and throttle him in vengeance. That very thought is an affront to everything I stand for, but I already know I’m not like my fellow priests. My past alone makes me different, but my thoughts, and my reasons for answering the call, were never fully aligned with other seminarians. While they sought to devote their lives to helping others know God, I sought to escape the violence in my head, to craft and mold my anger and pain into something less destructive, and find peace in the aftermath of that single night, when everything in my world was ripped away. Everyday is a struggle to contain the ire, to keep those skeletons buried deep inside of me, and this man, this unremorseful sinner, broke the ground with his confession, unleashing all that rage.
But still, even the deeply rooted nature of my being stands in conflict, becausea confessor is forbidden to use knowledge acquired in confession to the detriment of the penitent. This is what canon law states. This is what priests have been martyred for centuries to protect. Nepomucene, Magallanes slip behind my shuttered lids, all the names of well-known priests who chose death over revealing a confession in times of war and at the threat of torture, while I bite back the enmity burgeoning inside of me. I’m not permitted to report him to the authorities, even if it called to me more so than the rage snaking through my veins, coaxing me to harm another man.
After all, the sacramental seal is inviolable, an act of confidentiality and trust, a privileged encounter between God and the penitent.
I made a vow to uphold the trust of my parishioners. To protect them. A vow that others before me suffered brutal torment and cruel deaths to defend. One that, should I choose to break it, would result in automatic excommunication from the church.Latae sententiae.
And what then? I’ve become all too familiar with what happens when everything is gone, when I’m left alone with my thoughts without distraction, or purpose. One cold breath away from death. I’ve been there before.
I did as I was tasked—to urge him to go to the authorities.
