The Sin Box

“What if just got rid of The Box?” Lucy looked eagerly, fearfully at Clay.

“And not even write what you just said?” Clay asked, returning Lucy’s guilty glance. Somehow it was hard to make eye contact.

“To Hell with it.” Lucy got up from their living room sofa and strode to The Table. It was a spindle-legged antique with delicately curving legs and ornate flowers carved on the brim of the flat surface. There were also two drawers, one on each side of the square.

The Box fixed on top was heavy, dark wood carved in the shape of an opaque fishbowl. Like an absurd and sinister cookie jar, it had a round red knob attached to the life on top. This Box, too, was ornately designed. Blackwood on which were painted a number of scarlet hieroglyphs. Or rather, one might have thought them hieroglyphs of the ancient cultures, but for their modern touches. A stiff man with the head of a jackal predominated one side, but his

forked tongue, horns, and fiery tail curling gracefully around his supplicant’s throat were not on any pyramid walls in Egypt. Stabbed like a shish kabob on the three tips of his trident was the forlorn and drooping Bible, with smoke softly curling out of the pages as though it were bleeding to death. Around the lid itself were written Envy, Lust, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath, Deceit, Spite, and Pride.

Lucy, so named for the feminine side of Lucifer, their common ancestor, almost tiptoed to The Box and wavered on the brim of motion for a few seconds, a diver trembling with anticipation at the sight of sharks.

“Do it. Just do it!” Clay hissed. He still sat frozen on the couch. What would happen? No one could have told them. No one really knew. Lightning or the Tenth Plague, for all they could guess. But still, on the other side of sameness lay that question: What If?

As though electrified by this very thought, Lucy lunged forward and grasped the base of The Box tightly in her hands.

She pulled gingerly at first, but when it showed no sign of movement, she wrenched at the wretched thing with all her strength. Nothing happened. She opened her eyes, which had been clamped shut on the moment of decision. The Box was still there, staring grimly at her. The devil seemed to smile at her impotence. She tried again, baring her teeth in a snarl as she wrestled with the fixture. It had always been there. In every house, every building, every place where more than one person could be found. Clay jumped up and came to help. Not even the combined forced of their hands and muscles made the sinliest difference. The Sin Box would not be moved.

Lucy let go and stepped back, shaking her head and scowling. Clay followed her lead, but his expression showed more apprehension than disappointment or frustration.

“Luce, maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

“Maybe not, but now I can’t think of anything else.”

“Should you – we – write that down?”

“No.” Her voice was hard, hands turned into fists.

“There’s got to be a way. Where’s your lighter?”

“On my nightstand.” He didn’t try to stop her, but his heart was banging painfully in his chest and his large palms were beading with cold moisture.

Lucy nodded and almost ran down their short apartment hall to the only bedroom. On the nightstand was the lighter, an old-fashioned plastic type that let you see how much fluid you were working with. Lucy licked her lips. Her tongue felt thick and uncomfortably dry in her mouth. How is this going to work? I don’t know. What will The God do to us? I don’t know. But I want to know.

“How are you going to - ” Clay was asking as Lucy returned. For answer, she clicked the lighter and set the flame licking against the side of The Box. They waited for 20 breathless seconds.

“Is it catching?” Clay’s voice was shrill, like a cat’s claw running down a window screen.

“I don’t think so.” Lucy removed her thumb and surveyed the burn site, except there was no burn.

“It is wood, isn’t it?”

“I think so...” Clay and Lucy stood side by side, examining their adversary, running their fingers over it.

“Is it...cold?”

“Yes.”

“Paper still burns, though.”

Lucy looked at Clay sharply.

“You don’t mean. Burn the – the Sins?” Clay nodded. “But, what about – ”

“Maybe it’s just a legend.”

“The Sin Shack isn’t. It’s still molting. You can see the ashes powdering the snow every year.”

“What’s one burned house?” Clay asked impatiently. “Didn’t you ever sneak out there to peek in the windows or go demon-hunting?”

“No.”

“What about The Tree?”

“The girls never had to do the Crusade marches through the woods, did we? Just those Eve and Evil classes...But we saw the other one. Hell, had to dance around it crying and pulling out our hair.” Lucy stopped short, eyes darting from Clay to The Box as she realized what she was saying. They both were frozen, stunned like mice staring up at the descending jaws of fate. A shiver of doubt ran between them.

Lucy opened the drawer of the Sin Table and took out the pad of scarlet paper with its attached black felt pen. She wrote:

Sinday 3

Sinner 666-341 declares use of Lucifer’s domain in vanity of speech.

She groaned and amended:

in conjunction with slur on traditions of sinlessness.

“Does that count as two?”

“It counts as nothing.” Clay took the papers and set the lighter to the corner. The pad of paper burst into flames, and for a moment it seemed they were looking into the fiery depths of Hell itself. Lucy had hardly noticed the heats of the flames eating their way toward her fingers when Clay seized her wrists and shook the paper loose over the mouth of The Box. The rectangular pad got wedged halfway out of the round gaping mouth, but Clay stuffed it roughly, joyfully down into the belly of The Box.

The papers erupted in a dance of fire. The ashes and smoke

mushroomed up in poisonous green billows. Clay and Lucy were coughing, then gagging, then retching in each other’s arms. Blood burst from their noses. Clay could feel his lungs tearing with an internal flame, as though the smoke had filled him and poured on the

gas. Lucy was screaming. At least, he thought she might be. Her mouth was open, but no sound save the harsh cough gargled up from her sinful depths. Their eyes burned and tears of hot ash streaked down their cheeks.

Then their sins began to rise before them, charred paper floating up to be read. In Clay’s crude hand, writing golden red against the black:

Sinday 5

Sinner 666-389

Smoked another pack of sinsticks. Told Lucy it was the neighbors. – Deceit. Gluttony.

In Lucy’s cursive hand:

Went to the sinema without inviting Lucifera. Lied and said we were studying. – Deceit. Sloth.

Then sheet after bloody sheet, coming more quickly but still legible to their streaming eyes.

Looked at Lucifera as she walked away. Imagined the feel of her thighs. – Lust.

Clay tried to focus his eyes on his Sin Partner, but the tears and thick smoke blurred her.

Told Clay the Sin was really good. It wasn’t. – Deceit. Spite.

Broke the dishes so I wouldn’t have to wash them. Blamed it on the cat. – Sloth. Greed.

Took the $200 petty cash from work and blamed it on Evie. She was fired. – Deceit. Greed. Sloth.

Left Jezebel the cat outside and said she ran away. The neighbor’s dog ate her. – Deceit. Spite. Sloth.

Made out with Hezekiah in the office after church potluck. – Lust. Deceit. Gluttony?

Nailed Rahab. Told Hezekiah I saw her with his brother. – Double Lust. Spite.

Took Cousin Eva’s sin toys and took off all their clothes and set them up in a brothel. They burned all her toys and sent her to the convent. – Spite.

Now the smoke was clearing just enough for them to see each other. They both gasped and inhaled and doubled over, coughing violently at what they had seen. Their clothes were gone. They stood naked, ash turning their hair a ghastly white and their skin an ashy brown. The worst of it, though, was the apparition twisting itself around their exposed bodies: the livid, hideous serpent, whose tail grew out of their ankles and coiled its way around their legs. Its writhing coils clenched, squeezed around Clay’s bare chest, undulating around and cupping Lucy’s breasts. Then it stretched up around their throats. Its head, its eyes tore the screams from their tortured, hell-fired

lungs. The snakes’ eyes danced with a hot amusement, hunger, triumph. Its face blended smoothly into their own, their own faces just discernible under the writhing smile and reptilian head and flicking tongue.

Lucy, eyes full of a new and terrible knowledge, had just one thought left to her sanity. The razor rim of The Box gleamed in the embers, inviting her. She stretched out a hand and there was blood on her thumb before she even registered the slicing heat of the blade. Dark, heavy drops of blood spurted into the depths of the smoking bowl. There was a crackling, a spitting, a hissing. It worked. The drawer on the other side of the table clicked and slowly rolled out.

The Book had been right. About everything.

Lucy and Clay peered into the drawer they had never seen open. On a bed of red velvet lay a heavy snub-nosed pistol. Lucy picked it up with her bleeding hand, and it felt pleasantly heavy. In the barrel two copper cartridges glinted in the firelight. It was enough. Their snake eyes met briefly, and the one look at her Sin Partner was sufficient. They nodded. They tried to kiss lustfully one more time, but the feeling was dead. The tattoo was growing, brightening, so that their bodies were turning to green and red coils of sin and muscle and knowledge.

“You do it,” Clay said, and closed his eyes. Lucy placed the barrel of the gun to his ear, and pulled the trigger. The roar burst both their eardrums, and Clay dropped like a sack of concrete. He looked relieved. Lucy placed the barrel in her mouth, feeling the cold steel against her teeth and gums. The metallic taste seeped into her tongue. She squeezed the oiled, springy trigger, and dropped with the heavy relief of one whose sins are lifted off her soul.

The serpents grinned, and vanished.

The door of the apartment opened slowly. Four men in firefighter uniforms walked in cautiously, careful not to breathe the remaining fumes.

“Poor devils,” said the young man in front.

“Devils, yes,” an older man with gray whiskers replied. “Poor? Hmmph.”

“What’s the reading?”

“Toxins at 50%. Should clear soon.”

“Can’t be too careful. You remember what happened to Tommy and Ahab?”

The young man shook his head.

“Took off their masks too soon. Started screaming about demons stabbing them with their forks. Thought they were growing horns.”

“Aren’t they still in the psychiatric unit?”

“Hhmph.”

The firemen approached the bodies. The man and woman’s clothes were streaked with soot, their eyes wide open and blood dribbling out of their grinning mouths.

“What a mess,” said the old man, and he sighed as he lowered his stretcher.