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But he could have told my brother or even Angel. Maybe it’s one of them.

Maybe he told Saint I wanted him to do it, so he is, but he’s too ashamed to let me know it’s my fantasy come true. The thought sends heat throbbing into my aching, mangled core, and suddenly, he’s gliding in and out smoothly, quicker now. Is thiswhat it feels like to be his, to receive his claim, both agony and ecstasy?

Or… What if it’s not them? What if it’s a stranger?

My body goes cold, and my thighs clench, though they can’t move from their spread position. My core tightens in fear and resistance, and his breath hitches in the silence. His strokes become more erratic, quicker, more urgent. He moves easily in my slickness, slamming to my depths over and over, the only sound that of my muffled pleas and the wet, visceral slap of our bodies joining. It’s obscene, carnal, and somehow ancient, like the sound of animals feasting on their kill.

I’m reminded of the noises I heard in the tunnel on HAVOC night, and the full knowledge of what they were doing right under me makes me feel dirty in a new way. Because I knew what they were doing before, but now I trulyknow.New slickness coats the shaft stretching my tortured flesh when I realize it could have been me that night.

Instead, it’s another stranger, like it would have been then. Except then, I would have known it was one of the Hellhounds. Now, it could be anyone in town who goes to midnight mass. What if it’s the person who keeps leaving messages on my door, who I’ve seen dart behind a bush or a building when I turn. He’s been following me. Is this what he’s been waiting for?

And who is he?

And when is it over?

He takes me in totality, in silence, fucking into the depths of my bound body. He’s a god receiving his sacrifice, accepting it with gratitude, devouring and decimating it, body and soul. Suddenly it feels like an unbearable indignity that I don’t even know who he is, that he’s taken this from me and will carry that knowledge forever, while I will forever remain naïve, seeking the answer like I do the killer.

Is it the killer?

My skin crawls, and I start to struggle again. He’s wearing gloves. Is that to keep his DNA off me? I try to feel if he’s wearing a condom, but I don’t know how to tell, having no basis for comparison. A shiver wracks my body, and I sob aloud behind the gag. I remember the news, the articles that mentioned semen in the clothes they found. Was it really Saint’s, like he said, or was it the killer’s? Is this what happened to her, the final indignity before her death? Is this history repeating, or a punishment for not leaving her buried in the past? Saint told me people in powerful positions wouldn’t want me to find the truth. That they would know I was looking.

Suddenly, I remember that Sincero boy in here alone, silent.

I know who you are.

Is that why he’s silent while he takes me? How much would he love the knowledge that he’s fucked Saint Soules’s sister? How much will he gloat? Maybe he’ll keep going until they walk in, just to see their faces.

In the silence, I can hear him breathing, quick and shallow, as his thrusts grow more urgent. They hit my center, fill it, split it in two all over again, before it can recover from the last stroke. He pumps into me harder, crushing me against the railing, each thrust brutally deep and seared into my brain like a brand. Tears spurt from my eyes again when he grinds in a final time, and somehow, impossibly, he pulses thicker, deeper. I shriek into the gag, tears streaming into the blindfold, my whole body shaking with unending, unendurable pain. I feel his release like a blood sacrifice, hot and messy and deep as a death blow.

He didn’t wear a condom. Instead of relief that I’ll have evidence, all I can think is that he’s inside me, so deep inside me I’ll never be able to get him out with a thousand showers. He’ll be there forever, lodged too far for anything to expel. Not evenan exorcism will remove what he’s done to me, get rid of his claim on me, his flesh buried in my flesh, our bodies joining in this carnal way that can’t be reversed.

And just when I think it can’t get any worse, I hear a door open somewhere. The man pulls out, and I hear quick footsteps, and the door beside the altar clicks shut, and he’s gone. I wait for the shame to overtake me, the humiliation that someone will see me this way, the fear of what comes next.

But it doesn’t come.

My body is still filled with his heat, but I’m cold all over. I’m so bone tired I think I could sleep and never wake, and yet, my mind is sharp and alert. My heart is racing, and yet, I am calm, still. Fear seems far away now. There’s nothing anyone can do to me now that will hurt, that will heal. The whole congregation could file in and take me like communion, and I would remain untouched.

I’m aware of the contradiction, and a sense of quiet settles over me, a sense of awe.

I had been waiting for that, dreading it, craving it, for six years. Now it’s done. It’s over. I have lost the thing I thought I wanted so much, that I’ve sacrificed so much to protect, and I realize it was never mine at all. It was a burden someone else placed on me before I understood, something they told me was a blessing. It wasn’t a blessing. It was a curse. I never asked for it, never wanted it. And now, I never have to carry it again.

It doesn’t matter who was here, who was inside me. His identity doesn’t matter. He will always be my savior.

What he spilled inside me wasn’t a killing blow. It wasn’t a deadly poison.

It was a baptism.

His release also released me. I still feel the pain in my body, but inside my mind, my soul is quiet.

For the first time in six years, maybe in my whole life, I feel no shame.

Finally, I have been absolved.