Page 1 of Of Angels & Absolution

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The Merciful

I pull my cardigan closed around me and duck my head against the wet, chilly wind as I hurry across campus toward the chapel. A twinge of pain pierces between my thighs with each step, as if my body is reminding me of last night’s sin.

It’s not nearly punishment enough.

Images flash through my mind as I increase my pace along the path through the manicured lawns, now a tawny brown for the winter.

The pain when they pushed their fingers inside me, piercing my chastity.

The sight of them standing over me, licking my virgin blood from each other.

The fear and shame and pleasure when the doctor stood over me and pushed a sleek statue of the Virgin Mary inside me.

My pulse pounds harder the nearer I get to Father Salvatore’s confession booth.

I can’t tell him. What will he think of me?

But how can I not tell him?

I have to tell someone, to get it out if I have any hope of absolution, and I don’t have any friends, thanks to the three boys who made it their mission to ostracize me from the rest of the student body at Thorncrown University. Three boys who have made my life hell, who sacrificed me for their sins, who devoured my purity like hungry demons. Three boys who killed my best friend.

Probably.

The fact that I’m doubting it unsettles me. If they didn’t do it, then I got them sent away for nothing. If they didn’t do it, their anger—and by extension, my punishment—is justified. Because if they’re innocent, then they’re not the bad guys. I am.

I wish I knew what the police found, what evidence. My testimony alone couldn’t have sent them away. But since it was a juvenile case, it was never released to the public. I’ve devoured details of other juvenile cases online—a girl who took her life after being bullied, whose parents and friends posted details and kept her memory alive as they added to the fire of outrage, taking shots at the bullies until their parents got involved and posted more details in defense and retaliation. A boy who was beaten at school and every witness posted a video of themselves recounting what happened, but conveniently no one had thought to video the actual event.

But Eternity’s parents never posted anything. They were quiet, retreating to their private grief. No shots were fired at the boys who took the blame, and in turn, none of their parents posted anything that could be called a clue. No one even took to the internet to drag me. The only shots fired at me were bricks through the windows.

No one really knows what happened except her killers.

Having let those thoughts to distract me, I’m calmer by the time I reach the small Catholic church on the edge of campus where mass is held, and where, last night, I was strapped to a cross and violated until pleasure overcame me. My cheeks burn with shame at the thought, and I duck my head and hurry through the quiet sanctuary, my footsteps echoing in the high ceilings, the comforting, familiar scent of incense lingering in the air along with faint traces of that smell that all old buildings earn over time.

In daylight, in this holy place, last night’s earthly debauchery feels far away, more like a dream than anexperience. I couldn’t possibly have come here and been defiled by a statue, a man in a plague mask. I couldn’t have been touched, my purity erased, by my own brother, a brother I’ve loved for so long I can’t pinpoint the moment that love changed into something less than innocent. I couldn’t have watched him taste my blood off the fingers of my childhood friend, one who violated me in a different way six years ago.

If it really happened, I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

A throb squeezes at the sinful place between my thighs, and I close my eyes and take a breath to collect myself before stepping into the confessional.

I pull up short, a gasp clogging my throat.

My brother is sitting there already.

I start to back out, but he grabs my hand and yanks me inside and down onto his lap. The breath I was holding escapes me, and I open my mouth, but he clamps a hand over it before I can make a sound.

“Do what I say, or I can’t protect you from what will happen.”

My mind is spinning, and it settles on the most terrible image from last night—not what happened here, but what was waiting when I got back to my room. A human tongue, nailed to my door, along with a warning to keep my mouth shut.

Is that what will happen if I disobey?

If Saint didn’t put it there, who did? Who wants me to keep quiet if not my brother? It must be the boys from the Quint, but what do they want me to keep quiet about, exactly? I already spoke the truth that got them sent to a juvenile detention center. Are they scared I’ll tell what they did to me last night?

I nod mutely, my heart pounding wildly in my chest. Saint is so near, so warm and animal and alive, bringing back the primal, visceral sensations of last night, reminding me it wasn’ta dream. In this place of high ideas and ritual and sanctity, they desecrated my flesh like savage beasts.

“Good girl,” Saint says. “Now take off your panties.”

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