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I am a murderer.I shouldn’t feel that way. I furiously wipe a stray tear from my cheek, trying to justify what I’m about to do next. I’m pro-choice. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. And these aren’t embryos I wanted. I didn’t consent to their creation. Taking my eggs and making these embryos was as much of a violation as anything else that’s happened to me, only my family intendedthisparticular transgression to be a life sentence.
My mind races with a jumble of fragmented thoughts.
Well, what are you going to do, Avery? Take them back to the clinic you just robbed at gunpoint? Keep them in your goddamn freezer next to the mint choc chip ice cream?
No. Fuck that. It’s time for this to end.
It doesn’t escape me that I don’t know whether I can have more children or embryos made, ever. Whatever drugs they secretly gave me to stimulate my ovaries to release dozens of eggs when I was a teenager has probably damaged my fertility somehow. And the doctor at the hospital didn’t think the IUD my rapist partially dislodged did enough damage to completely destroy my uterus. But we won’t know unless anduntilI try to fall pregnant one day.
I can’t ever imagine trying. Can’t fathom bringing an innocent child into this fucked-up world of mine.
I bow my head over the canister. I also can’t imagine the damage I’d do if I were to turn these embryos into babies and make them my children.
Look at what my father did to me. What my family did to me. I swore I wasn’t like them, but that’s not true, is it? We have the same cursed blood running through our veins. The same brand of poison. Those kinds of terrible things that lurk beneath your skin until they burst out one day and take everyone by surprise.
The mausoleum is suffocating. I can’t just fucking leave the vial here—not in this monument of death. Nothing can grow in the mausoleum. It’s not supposed to. I’m not worried about them growing in here. I am worried about casually dumping them in here for somebody to happen upon one day. It’s not fair. Something so monumental needs a proper sense of finality, an ending to a beginning.
It’s time to rip this band-aid off before I chicken out.At the very least, these embryos deserve to be properly laid to rest.
With a few sharp motions, I unscrew the canister and yank out what’s inside.
Which turns out to be a fistful of colorful sticks. Syringes? They’re strange. Cold. They were never mine, were they? Not really. Even if one or two or three of them were placed in my womb to grow eventually, they never would have beenmine.
The sticks are so cold they’re hurting my hand as I burst out of the mausoleum. Rain spits from the darkening sky and as I go around to the side of the mausoleum–to the spot where my father had five red rose bushes transplanted from my mother’s glorious garden at home– it starts coming down in earnest. Raindrops fall on my hair and my shoulders and run down the inside of my dress while I use my bare hands to scrape aside the dirt in a small patch between two rose bushes. I shove the sticks down into tightly-packed soil that hasn’t been disturbed in a decade and then I cover them back up, patting the dark earth down, laying to rest a future I never wanted, never asked for, but one that still breaks my heart.
I’m so sorry.
* * *
Ilimp back into the mausoleum, the tears on my face mixing with the rain running down from my soaked hair.
I’m dirty. I’m fucking filthy.
I need to confess.
I gather the duffel bag, the empty canister, and the Christian Louboutin pumps I discarded when I arrived, making sure to lock the mausoleum on my way out. It’s a short walk to the chapel in the middle of the grounds of Holy Cross from where I am, but in the rain, in bare feet and thin clothes, it feels like forever. I don’t mind. If anything, the water pouring from the sky feels cleansing. Under this deluge, I’m alone, and it’s as if it washes away my sins.
The rain picks up, lashing against the roof of the church, and I feel like a half-drowned rat walking down the main aisle to the confessional booth. There are no children singing today. As I approach, a priest I haven’t seen before hustles out from the back, takes one look at me, and rushes into the confessional booth.
I make it there a few seconds later, opening the door and easing myself into the small space.
It feels good, sitting down in here. Not claustrophobic like I thought. More protected than anything. Nobody in the world except me, God, and this priest knows I’m here. And Elliot, I suppose. Nobody is tracking my phone. I’ve purposely purchased a cheap burner phone from a gas station, and given nobody the number outside of Elliot and Nathan. There are no other people here, save one lone car in the parking lot. It’s a rare treat to be so anonymous, so off the grid. It strikes me as ironic that I have to hide in the middle of thousands–millions–of dead and buried people to get the solitude I have always craved.
The priest opens the small solid screen separating us. It reveals a thinner, latticed screen that allows us to see each other a little, but not really make out many features. A sob wells up in my throat, but I swallow it back.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been...” How long has it been? “...Some time since my last confession. Since then I have committed mortal sin.”
“Go on,” he says in an accent I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s not Mexican. Colombian, maybe? And is that a note of strain in his voice? Probably. No doubt they questioned every member of this church at some point while I was missing.
I lean back against the hard wood of the confessional booth and close my eyes. “I threatened a woman today. I said I was going to shoot her.”
“Did you actually shoot her?”
“No.”
A relieved sigh. “Go on.”
“I was kidnapped. Does it count, Father, as a mortal sin if I had a lot of premarital sex against my will? I definitely was raped. And tortured.”
