Page 2 of Sinners Atone
No doubt she’d have believed him at first, back when he was telling her all the shit every mother wanted to hear. That her first child would be born to lead, and her second would take the silver spoon in his mouth and turn it to gold. But when he placed his hand on her swollen belly and declared her third son the Devil, she’d soured into a skeptic.
“Gabriel …”
I press harder onto my bleeding stomach, letting out an acidic hiss. I was wrong. The worst part of dying isn’t watching your life flash before your eyes, it’s hearing it ring in your ears. And tonight, not even the sound of sins could drown it out.
A guttural wheeze shoots from my lips, melts into a bleach-white puff, and blows all nine summers out of the clearing.
Nine winters bring silence and a blanket of snow. My retinas burn from the sudden contrast, and I look to the gray fog hanging beneath the forest canopy to escape it. But there’s no relief up there, just a familiar face, a familiar expression, and a familiar fucking smirk disappearing behind the faceted crystal of a whiskey glass.
A new voice sears the back of my neck.
“I told you so, Maria.”
And then comes the familiar fury.
Alonso Visconti was so certain I’d be bad, so certain of his prophecy that he’d refused to name me after an angel like my brothers. Something about blasphemy and poor taste. But my mama had a way of making spite look pretty, and named me after her favorite angel of all.
“Oh, Gabriel.”
The bastard was right from the jump. While my brothers gurgled, laughed, and crawled, I bit, hissed, kicked. One of my earliest memories is stabbing a cousin with a butter knife atSunday lunch, and I can’t even remember which one because I’ve tried to kill them all at some point.
I slam my head against the tree, trying to shake my mother’s voice out of it. But it’s too late, it’s already crawled into my brain and made itself at home. “Gabriel” playson a loop over and over and over. All three fucking syllables because she only ever said my full name, and never with a hint of irony. If anyone, including myself, dropped the last two, she’d tut, pick them up, and stitch them back on.
I don’t know if she said my name the way she did to try to convince God I was good or just to piss off my father. If the latter was the case, it worked.
For the first nine years, he called me nothing at all.
From the tenth on, he called me The Villain.
My lungs seize, and my next inhale is desperate and wet. When I throw my head back to gulp more air, the darkness eats at the edges of my vision. Right on cue, it swallows all nine winters, all the half-drunk hot cocoas, and the half-built snowmen with wonky carrots for dicks.
When The Beginning ends, the darkness will take everything.
The last pinprick of light swims before my eyes, then disappears, plunging me into the black abyss. Silence doesn’t follow, it’s just bittersweet memories yelled through a megaphone, and when I can no longer stand it, a roar of frustration lights a path of fire up my throat.
I slide a few inches down rough bark, panting.
My stomach slides south too, and my gaze reluctantly follows.
There’s that glow from the streetlamp again, only it’s not. It’s too small and too low, dancing against the dark at chest height. I give my head a shake, squeeze my eyes shut, and when I open them, the light has fractured and sharpened, taking the shape of fire.
Birthday candles. Ten, striped blue and white.
They flicker in the wind, pushing the darkness from my vision until all I can see is light. They slow my heartbeat, steady my breathing, and for a moment, life isn’t leaking out of me from the six-inch gash in my stomach.
The last time I cheated Death, I swore when it found me again and flashed this part before me, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Said it the time before that too. Yet here I am, my inhale locked at the base of my throat as if I’m saving it for later.
The backs of my eyes sting. Guess dying makes you a sentimental pussy. It’s got me wondering about stupid shit, like alternate realities and butterfly wings and what would have happened if I’d been the first or second child. If I hadn’t been born at all.
Seconds pile up into minutes, and I’m still holding my breath, chest convulsing, lungs burning, doing it anyway. The flames turn a darker shade of orange, pulsing in and out of focus. My lips tingle and my head spins. Instinct rises, and before I can squash it, blood and breath splutter from my lips, snuffing out the candles.
Darkness engulfs the forest again. I wipe my mouth and glare out at it. It glares right back and whispers,What did you expect?
I huff out a weak laugh. Yeah. Mama could have said all three syllables until she was blue in the face, it would never have made a difference because my father had sealed my fate.
I was born bad, and I’ll die in the dark that made me the worst.
Fuck this.
