Page 4 of Remorseless Sinner

Gracie

I could have killed Saul godsdamn Brennan.

How dare he show his face here!

How dare he talk about breeding me!

I’d taken my pill this morning, hadn’t I? Dammit, in my rush to get to church I’d forgotten.

I was trembling with rage and fear as we reached the baptismal tank in the sunken recesses of the sanctuary, the dark waters swirling menacingly in the tank, slapping the invisible sides.

Such a massive space that I couldn’t see where the waters began or ended, or how deep they were.

I tried to slow my steps, but Saul was right behind me.

Ever since the day I met him, I knew he’d be my greatest temptation.

Always making fun of the Eye, tempting me to disbelief, with his twisted lying mouth, his lips tightened with bitter cruelty.

I had resisted Saul then, and I’d resist him now.

He would never turn me from the path of righteousness.

I reached hesitantly out for the rails, but Saul’s knee hit the back of my thighs, sending me face-first into the water, and I went under with a sickening smack .

The baptismal tank was dark, frightening, the water cold.

Flailing my arms, I went to raise my head up, struggling on the slippery stone at the bottom, but I felt a firm, big hand on the back of my skull, trapping me underneath.

“Say you’re sorry,” my disgusting stepbrother growled in my ear.

Panic coursed through me and I opened my eyes in the murky water to see his big body in the baptismal tank next to me, his thighs spread apart, one big hand firmly holding me under.

Always how it had been. Saul solid and unmovable, me flailing and weak.

It infuriated me, and I tried to aim a kick at his massive thighs, but in the water I was all tangled up in the heavy baptismal robes.

I flailed uselessly about, feeling myself swallow water and start to sink, the watery outlines of the Congregation just a blur through the glassy tank.

They would all watch me drown in front of them, because I was already promised to my brother and what he said went.

Just when I thought my lungs were bursting, he raised me up.

“The Eye will cleanse,” Saul boomed out as I gasped painful shards of air into my lungs. “The Eye will cleanse you of all unrighteousness.”

The Congregation murmured in approval, their voices rising like a hum of bees, like the rattle of a snake’s tail.

But his eyes as they gleamed at me were anything but righteous. I knew that even though the baptismal robes were thick, they were plastered against my breasts and hips and Saul with his wicked eyes was looking at me.

He had a firm grip on the back of my gown, but my limbs felt weak and heavy in the sopping robe. If he let go of me, I’d sink like a stone to the bottom.

The Congregation chanted and I saw Mom and Dad, their hands raised to the sky. Tears streaked down Mom’s face.

I felt so choked with an unaccustomed rage that I could barely have spoken.

How dare they! How dare they all take his side! I had been nothing but faithful.

“Repent,” Saul said.

“Never,” I choked at him, and his bright white teeth split apart the tanned planes of his harsh face.

“But I know you’ve been wicked,” he said.

And he dunked me under again.

The congregation was chanting.

“In the name of the Eye, in the sight of the Eye, in the palms of the Eye. Blessed is the punishment.”

Saul pulled me up, my lungs bursting, my hair streaming down my face.

“I can do this all day,” he said maliciously.

“You expect me to say sorry for turning you in?” I choked, spitting up water. “You tampered with my birth control.”

Saul’s grip tightened on my baptismal gown, his massive fingers around the back of my throat.

I felt panic spike through me.

“And you only got on the Pill to piss me off and keep me from taking you. But I’ll fuck up those pills again.

And again. Every time. Because you belong to me.

Every part of you. Your juicy, succulent womb was made for filling up with my babies.

Don’t you think that’s what this fucking metal eyeball wants you to do? ”

“No! No!”

Saul chuckled.

“You thought you got away with it, didn’t you, Gracie?” he asked me, his voice lowering to a deep rumble.

I shuddered to feel him so close to me, my hair plastered to my forehead and back, the waves now slapping at me, Saul’s big body churning up the water, the waves hitting me harder each time. Dragging me under each time.

“Get away from me,” I whispered.

I felt frozen with fear. I was not a brave person.

What I had done seven years ago was a desperate attempt to make this obsessive dangerous man leave me alone.

Seven years ago my rough, big stepbrother got caught tampering with the birth control pills my family doctor had prescribed. Instead of the hormonal birth control that was supposed to be there, he had substituted some kind of vitamins instead.

At first, our parents argued strongly for covering it up, but I was frightened.

There had always been something wrong with the way Saul looked at me.

Something not brotherly at all.

It was forbidden, but I always had a fear that. . .he didn’t care.

That, even though he went to services. Even though he sung the hymns. Even though he read the texts.

That Saul was an Unbeliever.

And Dr. Meier supported me. This wasn’t some juvenile prank. We were 19 years old and Saul was charged as a man with medical tampering and sent to prison.

When Dad went to pick him up a few years later, though, he wasn’t there. And no one knew where he had gone.

And no one had seen or heard of him ever since.

Maybe I had hoped he wouldn’t come back.

But, deep down, I couldn’t shake that feeling that I knew. He’d never leave me in peace.

I should have known he would come looking for me.

“Did you think I’d forgotten? What you did?”

“What about what you did to me?” I retorted.

His face hardened.

“Gracie, you are not and have never been allowed to be on the Pill. You were made to be filled by me. You were made to bear my children. Now get out and get ready for the ceremony. You’ve been cleansed, baby.”

When I emerged from the pool, my teeth chattering, my feet and legs feeling so frozen I could barely fit one toe in front of the other, my mother was there, pulling me into a small room off the baptismal floor to put on my clothes again.

“I don’t want to marry him,” I whimpered, as she shoved my turtleneck shirt over my head again.

“It is the only way, Gracie,” my mother whispered.

“But he’s my brother!” I cried.

“ Stepbrother,” she corrected. “You’re not related at all.”

“Why is this the best way?” I asked. “Why?”

But she wouldn’t answer me, her face looking pinched and stern as she turned away from me.

And when I told her I didn’t have any panties, she shook her head.

“You’re not allowed any for the ceremony,” she said. “You know that.”

Oh hell

Not the Watering of the Boot.

Not the public humiliation of having to do that to Saul.

This wasn't at all what I wanted. How I had dreamed of my wedding.

Instead of a beautiful, pure white gown, long lacy sleeves that my mother had sewn, and lace covering my face, I was here in a gray turtleneck and long gray skirt, my wet hair soaking my clothes, clinging sticky and wet around a throat that ached from my stepbrother putting his hands on me.

And then I was walked to the front of the church, with Saul in that dark suit right across from me, the rest of the Congregation waiting, silent and watchful.

I felt alternately chilled and heated.

“She has run away from you,” Pastor Mickelson said. “Are you sure you want to marry her? She may be consumed by wickedness, every inch of skin tainted by whorishness.”

I felt myself tense as Dr. Meier nodded in agreement, my hands clenched in puny weak fists at my side.

How could my parents believe him and his wife? How could no one believe me ?

I had been serving Nimhe since I was a little girl. Cleaning shoes, doing cooking, cleaning, scrubbing for church events, as was a virgin daughter’s job.

How was it that no one believed me?

I did not want to look at Saul.

“Yes,” he said, his deep voice ringing out, his eyes mocking me. “I do want to marry her. I have every confidence that I can control her wanton behavior. I will take every inch of her and fill her with blessings.”

My stomach twisted inside me.

This was a nightmare!

“Sit down at his feet,” the pastor said, and I obeyed.

My heart was still beating fast from my run, and I trembled too hard to run again.

How was this happening?

“Do you swear by the eye of the Almighty serpent, to guide this woman? Do you swear to take on all her wickedness and her whorishness as your own? Do you swear to be responsible for her sin?”

“I do,” Saul said.

And I had to sit there and take it, let his vow wash over me and sink into my skin like a heavy dreadful weight.

I gasped out as my final objection, “ He is the sinner, not me! He is the sinner.”

I did not want to look at Saul, but something in his dark eyes compelled me, and I could not look away.

“Silence! He has made a reconciliation with the Eye.”

With a grinding saw-like sound, I heard one of the mechanical arms come down from the ceiling, each Eye at the tip of it blinking with an uneasy intensity.

Then another detached.

And they all came down from the ceiling, swirling around Saul in an astonishing display of the blessing of the Eye.

At first the massive metallic arms were slow and jerky, then they began to swirl around Saul’s head and body, never touching, but making a satisfied hum and he raised his arms as I gaped up at him in astonishment.

I couldn't understand it.

Who could think he was truly a believer? He had his arms crossed, the fabric tight against his massive chest, and there was something casting a shadow over me, a thick bulge below his belt that made me tremble in fear.

Tears started to the corners of my eyes, clumping in my lashes and falling down my cheeks.

“It is done,” they said to Saul, in the ceremonial words.