Page 1 of Penance

T he rain beats down on the floor to ceiling stained glass windows. It sounds like a million tiny fingers tapping at the glass, like children begging to be let in.

No, not children.

They don’t need to see what I’m about to do.

Demons.

They’re demons, come to take me away, to where I belong.

The rumble of thunder growls in the distance, cavernous, like the warning snarl of a predator.

I wonder how Mercy’s handling it.

Mercy never liked thunderstorms.

I should be there to comfort her, like I used to.

I should be, but I’m not.

Maybe one day—one day very soon.

The crack of a close by-lightning strike shakes the ground beneath my feet, and I sigh, turning away from the windows and making my way across the dining room.

The floor is gritty and creaking. Above my head, the paint on the ceiling is peeling.

There are holes in the plaster, and every time I take a step, more dust shakes loose and rains to the floor.

It’s a shame, really.

It would be a beautiful house if it was properly cared for.

It was built in the late 1800s, a Queen Anne Victorian with 6 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. By many of today’s standards, it’s a gorgeous mansion—on the outside, anyway.

It’s fallen into disrepair, not that I’m surprised.

The man who owns it is easily one of the worst people to haunt the face of the earth—to me, anyway.

Maybe for other people too.

Or, maybe I only see him that way because of what he did to me.

As I pass the dining room table, I reach over and hit play on my phone.

‘Father Figure’ by George Michael begins to play through the speakers, the upbeat music echoing in the house around me.

I smile to myself.

The music is a little fruity and weird, but somehow it fits.

Grabbing my tumbler of bourbon off a side table, I step through the living room and make my way to the basement door. I hate that damn place. It’s horrible, with weird bugs and spiders and shadows that shift and dance around me.

It’s not the shadows that bother me, it’s the bugs.

Spider crickets, they call them, or sprickets. Demonic little hellbeasts that grow as long as my dick and can jump as high as my fucking chin.

No thanks.

I’m not afraid of most things—anything, really—but I’m not a fan of bugs.

Truth be told, I’d rather do this anywhere else in the house, or hell, even outside if I knew no one could see me. But I don’t want to ruin the floors that will be mine some day, and blood is annoyingly hard to scrub out of hardwood that hasn’t been properly taken care of.

With a sigh, I pop the basement door open, and the smell of must and piss greets me.

Great, he pissed himself. More for me to clean up.

Grumbling and spitting curses, I make my way down the creaky wooden steps to a basement that’s concrete and dirt floors. When my bare feet nestle in the soft earth, I look over at him, illuminated by the soft, flickering glow of a single light bulb swinging overhead.

I look at him—really look at him—for the first time in a long time.

This man, this ‘savior’ that has haunted my nightmares for as long as I can remember, has been reduced to a sniveling, shivering, piss soaked thing, with snot and tears leaking across his face.

So much for a scary monster, I guess.

He’s gained weight since the last time I saw him, and a disgusting amount of it. He looks like Porky Pig in a suit, with thin, wispy white hair barely covering a shining, bald liver-spotted head and eyes blue with cataracts. Those eyes used to be green.

Once upon a time, they were green, and I remember that well. I remember the way he stared down at me, the way the forest of his eyes blurred into a watercolor painting as tears filled my eyes and I fought to hold back my screams.

‘Take your punishment as the lord intended’ he said to me, and that’s when I felt my skin rip open.

That’s when the pain became too much and I felt like I was going to pass out.

That’s the moment I lost hope, until I looked up and saw Mercy’s hazel eyes, wide and disbelieving, staring at me from the doorway.

She ran away and left me there.

I sigh, shaking my head and forcing the thoughts away.

No.

No, I couldn’t think about that right now.

I had too much to do.

His wire-frame glasses sit sideways on a wide, bulbous nose that’s suspiciously red on the end. Maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve gotten to him before the skin cancer did. It will be a quicker, more merciful death, not that he deserves that.

I lift the tumbler to my lips and drain the rest of the liquid, feeling it slither down my throat and catch fire in my belly until it’s burned down every limb. Just as I dropped the glass to a nearby table, I hear the beat of the music over my head climb higher, and the lyrics float down to me.

I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mine.

Hands.

I look down at my hands, flexing the fingers and cracking my knuckles.

I wasn’t small back then. I was a pretty tall 14-year-old.

I wasn’t as tall as I am now, and my budding muscles had been nothing compared to what they were now.

I used lifting weighs to distract me, to dull the pain with something physical rather than mental.

Mental pain was far worse than any muscle tension, tear, or soreness, but the distraction was enough. It was enough to keep me sane.

Sane?

Was I even sane anymore?

It made me stronger, physically at least. Mentally, I felt just as weak as I had been back then.

I was still struggling with the weight of my memories, heavier than any dumbbell I could lift.

The gym became my safe place, the place where the clanging of iron equipment drowned out the noise in my head.

I wanted to be stronger.

I wanted to make sure that could never happen to me again.

I didn’t want to feel that again.

My hand balled into a fist, and I swung hard, landing a punch right square in the middle of his jaw. He screamed, and a splash of blood whipped across the room, splattering over one of the concrete walls—rust, to mingle with the grey.

“Do you remember now?” I screamed, and I swung again, this time smashing my knuckles into his nose, until I felt something snap and pop under my fingers. “Do you remember what you fuckin’ did to me?!”

“I’m sorry!” He screamed, his voice a high-pitched screech that echoed in the small space and came back to slam me in the face. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Draco! I—”

“Sorry?!” I screamed back, but I didn’t hit him again. I couldn’t. Not if I wanted anyone to believe it was suicide in the small chance that they found his body when I was done with it. “You’re sorry? You’re fuckin’ SORRY? Sorry doesn’t mean anything! It never does!”

“Dear God,” he whimpered, and his head lolled forward onto his chest, dripping snot and blood and drool down the front of his white dress shirt. “God, forgive me for my sins. Thy kingdom c-come, they w-will—”

I didn’t want to hear it anymore.

The hypocrisy, the bullshit.

It was too fucking much.

Turning, I grabbed the noose off the nearby work bench and stretched it between my hands, feeling the weight of it dangling from my fingers.

“There is no God,” I told him. “Not anymore. No one is coming to save you.”