JACOB
The spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Timothy 4:1
Three days had passed since Annabelle died. The confessional had been removed from the parish, a new dark box replacing it that was donated from a larger city. I'd stared at the striations in the cherry stained wood for over twenty minutes, my head leaned back against the wall, my hands folded in my lap while I waited for any person to feel the need to confess. I wished I could take pleasure in the momentary solitude, but more and more that cramped space felt like a coffin, the clerical collar I wore a noose that threatened to choke me with my own lies.
During the day, I still wore the smile of the parish priest, I still wandered the sanctuary waiting for the moment a parishioner needed me. I hadn't prepared the homily for Sunday Mass, and I hadn't been able to see beyond the darkness that continued to fill me.
Even as I waited, Eve was fresh on my mind. I’d left her bound to my bed, her body exposed, her mouth gagged and her legs spread. My last demand was that she remain in place, waiting until I found the time to play with her again.
The man I was before she walked into my life was gone, replaced with a shadow of who I wished I could have been. There was no hope inside me, no guilt, no emotion, no sorrow. There was only the driving need to take, to taunt, to find joy in the pain I delivered.
In that, Jericho had won. With very little effort, he'd stripped me of the humanity I’d embraced and believed could be whole again. He'd stripped away the cloak I once wore to reveal the darkness that had always been a whisper beneath the surface of my lies.
Left to my imagination inside a box that let in very little light, I thought of how Eve was displayed over my bed, my cock growing hard with anticipation, my hand working to free the button of my pants because there was no shame left anymore to warn me that my actions were wrong.
I had half a mind to drag Eve into the box, to bounce her over my lap rather than wrap my palm over the turgid flesh of a cock that only wanted to be sucked and fucked, licked and stroked, tasted while it worked to torment all the good little girls.
I was a monster, and as my hand stroked from the base to tip, as my fingers squeezed and my mouth opened on a pleasured moan, I allowed my eyes to close and witness the truth of what I'd become.
So close to the moment that my balls would tighten and my climax would cover my hand, I grit my teeth and stroked harder only to hear the door open on the other half of the confessional where I sat. It wasn't enough to know someone sat on the other side of the thin divider, not until a low voice rang through with accusation in its tone.
"I've come to talk to you, Father. Stop being a coward and open the damn screen."
My hand stopped, my climax balancing on that edge, but not providing the relief I sought.
"Mr. Prete," I answered, the hint of sex in my voice.
"Open the screen, Father. We need to talk."
The thought crossed my mind to be honest and tell him I was jacking off. To ask him to take a hike so I could finish myself off. Sorry, Sir. But I can't help your daughter. I'm too much of a monster to save any souls.
Shoving my cock back in my pants, I reached up to slam the small door open. "How can I help you?"
"Tell me what my daughter said to you before she died."
I turned to trace the shadow of his profile with my eyes. "She said she was damned."
Technically I shouldn't have said that much. I'd refused to tell the police because I was bound by the seal of confession.
"I know she was fucking someone, Father. I found her diary, but she didn't list a damn name. I need a name."
"A name won't bring her back," I offered, my tone without any hint of comfort or emotion.
Something slammed into the wood divider between us. I assumed it was his fist. "Tell me what my daughter said."
Annoyance filtered through me, sharp and scathing, it was a fire fueling the monster, the smoke choking out the man I'd been before Jericho returned to my life. Like a film I couldn't wash away, it festered and split me open, reaching in to infect every organ, every cell, every tendon until I was consumed within its rancid mouth. What it spit out was a toxin filled with turmoil and pain.
"Are you sure you want to know?" Although my words had been a question, the tone of my voice was edged with warning. I'd lost control, lost all sense of morality, lost everything with each passing day. The truth that I was helpless to save another, that, by design, I was a man who lived to deliver pain, left me open and exposed to the temptation of surrendering myself to the ministrations of my evil.
Whereas Eve was a pure soul clothed in the shell of her darkness, I was the wolf in sheep's clothing, the threat you didn't see until it was too late.
"I'm sure. Just tell me before I rip you out of there and force the words out of you."
Striking flint against stone, his demand had been the spark that ignited the bastard inside of me.
Clearing my throat, I ripped the clerical collar from my throat, dropping it to the floor while I told him what he insisted to know about his precious daughter.
"She was fucking someone, Mr. Prete. Annabelle told me that she enjoyed the feeling of a man's tongue on her cunt. That she wanted a cock shoved so far inside her that she could feel every inch of it pulsing with the need to cum. She wanted whoever it was to leave bite marks on her breasts, wanted his fingers driving her to orgasm, would have sucked off Satan himself as long as she had the opportunity to get off. Your daughter was a whore, Mr. Prete. She fingered herself while giving her confession, her small breathy voice broken up with how good it felt to touch herself. And then after she came, screaming with pleasure as she bounced over her hand, she took out a gun - one I assume she pulled from your unlocked collection - and blew out her brains with her fingers in her body and her come dripping down her leg.
“If you want a name, I can't give you one, but I'll leave you with the mental picture you just told me I was too much of a coward to give. I hope it's enough to lighten the weight from your shoulders. Maybe it's even enough to get you off tonight while you’re riding your wife with thoughts of Annabelle in your head."
"You son of a bitch!" he bellowed through the thin wood. I could hear the door to his side slam open, watched the door to my side rattle as his fist banged against it time and time again. Red swam in my vision, a color I hadn't seen in many years, but demanded the violence be released against the man on the other side.
"Get out here and say that to my face, you piece of shit! How fucking dare you say those things about my daughter?"
Laughter shook my shoulders, the sound filtering out so that I knew he could hear it over the volume of his voice. "You asked. I answered. Now get the fuck out of my parish before I throw you out."
He sobbed on the other side of the door, his angry fists no longer a brutal force against the wood. A better man would have offered comforting words, but as I'd learned, as had been illustrated for me so fucking clearly, I wasn't a better man.
Tired of the charade, I opened the door and walked past the sobbing father now balled over himself on the sanctuary floor. I was done with this job, done with the parish, done with everything except for the woman tied to my bed, the one who waited patiently for days as I remembered who I was, remembered the darkness inside me that perfectly complemented her light, remembered the monster beneath the surface who could deliver the pain she'd been taught would be her salvation.