The Merciful
I’m alone. The church is quiet, so quiet that my every breath echoes in the cavernous silence. Heath left me. He hurt me, violated me, and yet, he didn’t go further than I allowed. He stopped when I told him to stop, didn’t take what I asked him to save. But then he left me here, like this. The chapel won’t be empty for long. Midnight mass is tonight, the Christmas service. Families will be coming in to sing These Three Kings and Silent Night , to hear the story of Jesus’s birth.
My friends will be coming. Aunt Lucy. My parents.
I can’t do this.
It’s not just people I know who will see me. It’s strangers.
Children.
I thought I could be a match for my boys, that if I toughed it out, weathered their anger, let them take their revenge without complaint, that I could be one of them again. I let them beat me at every game, let them blackmail me to keep me close when really I wanted to be there, to be forgiven, to finally hear the truth from their lips. But I haven’t found the truth. All I’ve found is my limit.
I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough. They’ve finally found my breaking point.
I let Heath tie me here, but I can’t let the whole church see me like this. Shame is one thing. Humiliation I can endure. But this…
I can’t do it. Even if it means Heath never forgives me, I’ll have to take that chance. I can’t endure the punishment he chose. If I had known this was the only alternative, I would have let him take the last shred of my innocence, even if it wasn’t in a bed on my wedding night. Even if it was on the floor in the hall like an animal. There are more important things than chastity after all. A sin worse than lust, shame greater than the one I feel for not being able to control my body’s urges and desires.
I thought if I obeyed their orders, that would be my penance. I thought they could absolve me. But this is not absolution.
Heath said people would start to arrive in thirty minutes, which means I have about ten left. I fight down my rising panic and begin to test the knots, tensing and releasing my muscles, slowly loosening them. It feels like it’s been an hour already. My hip bones are grinding against the wooden railing, throbbing with pain. My shoulders ache. My insides feel raw and burned where Heath stabbed the handle of his knife into me, and I’m shaking all over from cold in the drafty church.
Still, the knots are coming loose. I’m going to get away.
And then I hear a door creak open.
In the echoing cavern, I can’t tell where it is. Where he is.
Was it the first parishioner come to worship?
A priest coming to prepare the mass?
Or is it Saint?
Did Heath go and get him for me, tell him I chose him, that I’m his to take. He won’t do it here, not like this. He’ll untie me, carry me home like he did before. He’ll tuck me into bed, kiss my forehead. He’ll tell me he loves me, that I passed the test, that I was willing to do even this to prove myself. Maybe that was all they needed, to know how far I’ll go, that I was ready to sacrifice it all.
I only get a moment’s warning, a soft footstep in the nave, a slight echo like water dropping in a cave.
A blind flash of the most crippling hope burns through my humiliation. Maybe it’s Father Salvatore, even one of the other priests, here to rescue me.
Then someone is behind me, so close I can feel the air moving against my wet legs, my wet center. I struggle to breathe, fear knifing into me in sharp, clean strikes. I scream behind the gag when a hand lands on my hip. My whole body goes tense, and I forget to work the knots slowly, yanking at them frantically instead.
I hear fabric rustling, and I curse Heath for the blindfold, curse him with all the hatred and vitriol and violence I’ve kept bottled up all this time. I yank harder, a high whining sound escaping me. I hear the unmistakable sound of someone spitting, feel a hot glob of wetness land in the most shameful place, running down my crack, settling into the burning entrance Heath tormented earlier.
And then I feel the hot steel of his cock notched where Heath’s was. I scream behind the gag, trying to jerk my arms free. A big, gloved hand rests on one hip, as if he’s trying to reassure me, and then the pressure starts. It sends a searing pain into me, and tears pour from my eyes, soaking the blindfold. A thumb and finger open me, trying to fit me around him. Heath’s girth stretched me, but I’m also swollen, and I can’t tell if this one is Heath again or someone even bigger.
He has to press so hard my thighs are bruised with the force against the railing. His thumb makes small, comforting strokes on my hip, as if he’s reassuring me. At last, something gives, and he pushes inside my entrance, shallow like Heath was. Pain ripples through my skin, but he’s not done. He presses deeper, opening another inch. I’m so full I think I’m going to tear in two, but he keeps going, a steady, unbearable pressure that sinks him in another inch, then another. It feels like he’s slowly grinding a foreign object into my body, one that’s unnatural and far too large, like pushing a baby back in.
I feel the moment he meets some blockage inside me, and I think he’s done, he’s reached my depth. He draws back, giving a few slow, powerful thrusts, forcing past the tightness, breaching my depths. Agony crashes in waves over me with each slow drag back and each new, unapologetic intrusion. He’s so deep I think he must have ruptured something inside me. I can feel him all the way up to my aching stomach, my expiring heart, my tear-clogged throat. He’s not just inside me. He invaded me, and now he’s taken every part of me.
A sob wracks my body, but to my horror, I feel the first soft throb of pleasure at being stretched to the limit on his next pass. Suddenly, I imagine the three boys walking in, finding some stranger taking what was theirs. I imagine Heath slicing his jugular, his blood spewing over me like a geyser, and the straining eases when he drives in slow and deep, forcing past what I think I can endure. I imagine the devastation in Saint’s heart when he realized he threw me away and now this will never be his, and my own wetness eases the strokes along with the blood and what’s left of Heath’s release. I imagine Angel, my sweet, gentle Angel, going feral and letting slip the side of him I’ve never seen, the one he keeps for the gang. I hear his breathing deepen into a sigh, and pleasure mingles with the pain when he pushes in slow and deep, filling me so completely I want to scream I can’t take it.
The hand that held me open is now wrapped around his shaft, and I feel it press solidly against my flesh each time he drives in so deep I start to panic that he’s going to puncture my insides. I realize with a slash of crippling fear that there’s more. He’s holding back at least a few inches, wrapping his fist around it so it won’t go deeper than my body allows. A shudder goes through me, and another sob chokes out of me behind the gag.
He keeps going in the same slow, relentless, methodical strokes, claiming me anew with each thrust, taking the very depths of me over and over again, as if reminding me that I will always be his in this primal way, that I can never give this to anyone else. He’s the first and only man who will take this from me, claim it, possess it. It’s his. I can never get it back. He owns this, and he always will.
His hand on my hip drags me back an inch from the railing, and the new angle makes blackness swim in my vision. I choke out a strangled cry, then try to stop myself, scared I’ll drown on my own tears from hanging upside down like this. I try to focus on thoughts instead of the devastation of my utter helplessness.
He increases his speed fractionally, pumping into me with measured strokes, taking me with ritualistic efficiency, as if I am the wine this evening, as if this is the breaking of the bread and not the breaking of a girl. I hang there, unable to stop him from taking the one thing I asked Heath to leave me. He claims it over and over, erasing any hope that I could forget who it belongs to.
Except I don’t know.
I can’t tell if it’s Heath, if he came back knowing I won’t know it’s him. I’ve never done this before, can’t judge how he’d feel inside me. I search for a sensation that might give away the piercing, but I’m stuffed so full that’s all I feel. The stretch, the fullness, the agony and the sliver of pleasure snaking along it.
Heath knows I’m here. He’s the only one.
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 this what 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 truly know. 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 na?ve, 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 even an 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.
Thank you for reading Of Angels & Absolution !
This chapter is a one-off that doesn’t affect the plot, so it’s optional and just for fun. It takes place a few weeks before Christmas.