Page 15 of Remorseless Sinner

Gracie

I t was a bright morning again when my husband and I went back to worship the Eye of Nimhe.

Although it was still early on in my pregnancy, if I dropped my hands to my belly, I’d feel a tiny little baby bump.

Sometimes it didn’t feel real, but when my husband’s hands gentled cradled my belly, trying to see if he could feel the baby kick, even though I’d told him a million times it was way too early for that, joy curled in my spine, just waiting for me to let it free.

I had no option , I reminded myself sternly, when it seemed like I was taking too much pleasure in my growing bump, the fact that my stepbrother’s baby swelled my belly.

Because the Eye saw all. The Eye saw my secret wantonness.

And for once I didn’t care.

“Mom and Dad didn’t answer the phone,” I said as we rode over the soft green hills to the church. “I don’t know if they’re coming to church or not.”

“Perhaps they took advantage of my suggestion to leave town for a while,” Saul said mildly.

I said nothing. Maybe after a few years I’d feel differently. Right now I didn’t feel very forgiving.

My hand was tightly trapped in my husband’s as he stepped up first for the inspection of the Eye.

I’d never been there this early, because the virgins all had separate inspections, and I was astonished to see that inspections were necessary for those who felt moved by the Eye to give the sermon today.

The huge arms of the Eye detached, but this time when they swirled around a body they went right down to my husband’s crotch, the arms extending gleaming metallic measuring sticks.

Oh my god

What were they doing?

After a few moments, the machine rattled out a number.

I almost blacked out at the inches the tinny robotic view repeated.

No wonder I was so sore there today. And every day.

My cunt.

I had been taught sex was our duty as women. Pastor Mickelson said sex was to be given to men to keep them from sinning.

But Saul was getting lots of sex and he was just as wicked as ever.

I didn’t understand it, but perhaps my husband was so sunk in depravity that the ordinary rules did not apply to him.

Or. . . it was bullshit.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to. . .come, either.

No one had said anything about that.

Women were not allowed to touch themselves, in case the pleasure made them whorish. But Saul had forced me to touch myself, to orgasm, and now that I’d had a taste of the depravity, I wanted more.

It was horribly wicked, and I hated Saul for what he had done to me, the pleasure he had forced on me.

Didn’t I? Then why did my hand feel so safe and secure in his?

The other men darted glances uneasily at each other. Strangely, it looked like only the Elders were here at church today. No one else.

That number was clearly much bigger than anyone else’s. Pastor Mickelson swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

“Looks like I’ll be preaching the sermon today, boys,” Saul said in his deep voice.

Then one wavering arm detached, wending its way down jerkily to me, to my body, to my aching breasts and hungry cunt, and it would know, the Eye of Nimhe would know, that I was a wicked woman, an unnatural wife, a wanton who craved what her sick, depraved husband did to her. . .

But just as I was squeezing my eyes shut and waiting for the metallic probes to clamp down on my head, I felt a movement beside me and then a horrific crunching sound.

I popped my eyes open to see Saul’s fist clamped around the Eye, smoke steaming from between his fingers.

“No one touches my wife but me.”

“But—it’s a precaution,” the Pastor said. “To make sure she’s pure.”

“She’s exactly what I want her to be,” Saul said in a steely voice, one arm firmly around my waist.

I sat down in a wooden pew, but this time was different. Felt different.

My husband kissed me before heading to the pulpit.

“We will have to be cleansed before the Flood,” Saul thundered. “There is a great wickedness in the world and it must be eliminated. You all have fallen short and all must be made righteous.”

The Elders seemed to straighten up, look nervously at each other.

Saul’s deep voice rang out, echoing from the close-hewn dark rafters of the ceiling, seeming to fill the whole of the church, press down with inescapable power.

“ Repent !” he called out, his voice deep and powerful. “Repent or be hidden forever from the Eye of the Serpent.”

I heard scattered “amens” in the crowd.

But I didn’t believe a word of it.

I couldn’t feel guilty either.

Couldn’t anyone see? How could they look at my massive husband up front and think he truly was a good man now?

Wickedness seemed to leach out of him, soaking through his suit. It was nothing but a paper-thin trickery over his wolfish self.

Everything from the scar across his face to the way his big, rough knuckles gripped the pulpit, screamed depravity and evil.

“And the greatest sin of all,” Saul said, “is disrespecting my wife.”

He raised his arms to the ceiling as the great and terrible Eyes of Nimhe began to emerge, twining, winding, seeking someone to devour.

I heard the heavy oak doors to the church slam shut and somewhere, in the walls of the sanctuary, I heard a gurgle.

The Elders began to rise from their seats, panic wafting off them.

Saul raised a hand and pulled me beside him on the platform.

“This is wrong,” Pastor Mickelson screamed. “Stop! Eyes, I command you!”

But the arms swirled around his body, and then I saw them strike, the first metallic Eye knocking into his skull with a loud clang, the other long tubes begin to wind around him, faster and faster, squeezing and squeezing.

And deep in my vengeful soul, my heart gave a little leap.

All those years of submission to the Eyes, to inspection, to trying to prove my worthiness and purity. And it was all done so some dirty old men could grip their wrinkly cocks.

The Eye had always said it was good to show mercy to your Elders, to respect and to cherish them.

But my cunt clenched as I remembered that night senior year.

And I remembered there had been one chance.

Once chance to stop him.

I could have said, don’t do it .

Don’t kill my bullies.

Let them go.

But I didn’t.

He had looked back at me, that dark, brutal, wrong boy, to see what I wanted. To see what I thought.

To see if I approved.

And I had given it to him.

I even remembered my face splitting in a horrible wide grin as those tight, clammy fingers gripping me suddenly loosened and the other senior fell with a gurgling thunk, the years of bullying and torment melting away as his blood leached into the ground.

And I had approved of it.