Sin For Me

WEDNESDAY

May 24th, 2017

12:20pm

The church was deserted; a quiet metaphorical shell in which to gather your thoughts and calm your mind. It seemed to be empty more than it was full those days, which was an advantage for those not fond of human connection. Early afternoon in the middle of the week was the best time for self-reflection.

The man enjoyed it more when he was alone; just him, the soothing sound of silence, and the thoughts he had brought with him. When it was like that, he didn’t need to explain to anyone why he was there, and he didn’t need to listen to the priests try to coax him into confessing his sins.

Many, many sins.

The interior smelled of decomposing wood and freshly-blown-out matches, a peculiar combination of scents but one that grew on him the more he was exposed to it. The more times he frequented the church, the more the smell became associated with freedom and tranquillity.

Church time was his time. Praying was his outlet.

Even though he was born and raised here; in the small, attractive town of Stardew Falls, Ohio, he’d always felt like an outsider. He always felt like he was a guest. The advantages of living in such a small town never caught up with him – never appealed to him in the first place. He preferred to be in the big city. He liked blending into the crowd and to be somewhere where no-one knew his face or his name. But in Stardew Falls, a town in which the population count struggles to reach the thousands, he felt like he stuck out like a fly on a wedding cake.

But this time he had to be here.

He didn’t mind being the fly – it meant he could ruin the whole cake with a few little actions.

He didn’t pray in a conventional way; didn’t kneel and didn’t hold his palms together. He had bad knees in his old age, so he preferred to sit on a bench and bow his head with his hands together close to his lap.

He had a system that he developed early in his adult life and always stuck to. It was always the fifth bench from the front in the middle of the row. Every time his parents brought him there as a child, he’d always sit in the same spot. He’d occasionally open his eyes, stealthily, and glance either side of him to see if everyone was praying – and praying the ‘right way’.

His mother would often catch him and slap him on the wrist as soon as they left, even though that meant that she was opening her eyes too, but he never called up her on it, lest he catch another beating. She was a devout Christian and wanted her son to be the same, pressing bible verses into him during breakfast and supper, beating him if he didn’t follow the strict rules of the house. She was the type to force her feelings down the throats of atheists, judging their ‘bad mental choices’.

He could remember one day where they were all sitting around the dinner table having an afternoon meal when his mother and father had started talking about a chapter in the Bible, he couldn’t remember the specifics. His mother had turned to him to ask him to recite a verse from that chapter to make sure he was learning properly. He managed most of it, but he mixed up a few words. His mother had scolded him instantly, batting his plate off the table, spraying lukewarm food all over the kitchen. She dragged him into the living room and took him over her knee. There were plenty of days like that, it almost made him scared to go home from school. He couldn’t help that he didn’t remember things very well, he’d always been an underachiever.

She had set him on his path; the path that lead to him sitting in a church on Siccamore Road in the middle of a May afternoon. His first victim.

He didn’t feel too strongly about God in his younger days; he felt that there were better things to which he could devote his young brain. Even now, although he believed, he didn’t believe as strongly as his mother had. He didn’t believe that non-believers would be rained on with hellfire, and he didn’t believe that non-believers should convert if they didn’t want to be stuck on Earth during the apparently forthcoming Rapture.

He believed that God had a plan for everyone; the simple side of Christianity, and that His plan cannot be changed. Anything bad that had happened or would happen to him, he couldn’t complain about or get angry over because there was nothing he could do about it.

Looking back on his turbulent and traumatising childhood, only now could he see that this was the path God had put him on and the punishments were unavoidable. It had taught him valuable life lessons.

Every time he came to church, he always began prayer with his favourite quote from the bible.

“I trust in the Lord with all my heart,” he whispered to himself, “I will not lean on my own understanding. In all my ways, I acknowledge You, for You will make my paths straight.”

Finishing his ritual, he began his regular talk with God. On this day, his prayers took on a slightly different tone than usual. While he’d usually pray for the stereotypical stuff – to continue to put food on his table, clothes on his back or to simply remain healthy. On this occasion, he prayed for forgiveness. Forgiveness not for what he’d done, even though he’d done some horrible things in his life.

Instead, he asked forgiveness for what he was about to do. What he did before was forgotten in the eyes of the Lord. God had spoken to him back then and told him that that woman was no longer a valid part of His plan. She just had to go; the same way his mother had.

But this time was different.

This time he felt like there was a lot more at stake, it was a lot easier to get caught in this generation, what with the advancement in forensic technology. Back then, it was so easy to get away with things, however serious they were.

No, he didn’t want to be just the focus of another episode of that Forensic Files show.

He didn’t want to be the inspiration for an episode of CSI.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to go through with it, he’d spent way too much time preparing and he’d come too far to back out now.

Along with forgiveness, he also prayed for peace; not a conventional wishing of peace because he didn’t give a crap about a war he wasn’t involved in or a country he wasn’t living in. He prayed for good old mental peace – a clean conscience – the strength to push on through adversity. To go through with his plan, he needed to have no distractions and no conflicting feelings, regardless of who got hurt in his way.

By the time he’d finished saying all he had on his mind, he was satisfied. It was a good prayer, he thought, and he knew God would come through for him. As long as He understood why he was hurting these people, then all would be forgiven and forgotten and he would be rewarded for his loyalty.

He opened his eyes, looked up and slowly drew a cross with his fingers down to his stomach and across his chest. He placed his hands around his knees and gingerly got up from the bench, remembering to pick up the satchel he’d brought with him. He put the bag over his shoulders and left the church, emerging onto Siccamore Road and immediately being clobbered by the intense heat. It was a sledgehammer of electromagnetic and ultraviolet radiation that attacked him as soon as his tan leather boots touched the broken concrete of the sidewalk. He could feel the frail grey hairs on his neck being seared off in real-time.

The area around him was empty, the only other thing on Siccamore was to his left in the direction of the town border, an electrical power station that was seemingly abandoned a long time ago. People never really used that road unless they were overly religious or just wanting to get out. It was usually the latter.

He looked both ways to see if anything was coming and then crossed the road, taking the short walk towards the centre of downtown and the main area of population.

Downtown wasn’t too busy for the middle of the day. There were a few people hanging around Sindew Plaza, the area that connected each direction of the town. There was a gleaming, bronze statue of the town’s founder, Roman Sindew, in the middle. Some of the people were taking photos with it. A petite girl with a thick head of natural auburn hair that she had to keep wafting away from her face was stood in front of it, posing for a photo with one hand on her hip and throwing up the peace symbol with the other. Her friend, a taller, ginger girl that had quite broad shoulders, was standing on the edge of the stone island holding her phone like it was an expensive camera.

Stupid kids, the man thought.

“Oh my god, delete it, I look so ugly,” the ‘model’ said to her friend, clearly the more attractive of the pair, after going over to study the shot.

“Um, excuse me? You know you look so hot in that skirt,” her friend replied, “That’s so going on Instagram. You’re gonna get so many likes, I’m so jealous! I always get way more likes on photos when they have you in them.” Both girls let out a little chuckle before sitting down in front of the statue, leaning on the base.

Other residents were going from store to store around the plaza, searching for the best bargains and deals. A sign outside a liquor store on the opposite side of the statue told the man that he could buy one bottle of alcohol and get another one half off, but he wasn’t much of a drinker. He didn’t want his mind, and his conscience, to be tainted by that poison. He also wasn’t too keen on the taste of any. The store neighbouring that, with the highly original name of Sporting Central, was advertising a belated offer on Cleveland Cavaliers merchandise: STOCK ALMOST GONE! TO CELEBRATE THEIR FIRST TITLE IN 46 YEARS IN 2016, GET UP TO 46% OFF SELECT GOODS! ONLY WHILE STOCKS LAST

None of that interested him in the slightest, so he just kept his head low and continued past the shops and activity and toward the quiet, residential area. He could see his destination in the distance, past 2nd and 3rd street, which meant the real beginning of the day was approaching.

The sweat beads were starting to slowly swim in every direction through the nooks and crannies of his forehead, finding better shelter as he furrowed his brow to block out the sunlight. He could feel his heartbeat quickening in short bursts. He knew it’d only be getting hotter as the afternoon progressed, a thought he wasn’t ready to entertain.

As he walked down through the bustling parts of the human congregation and into the silent residential area, he felt like he was being watched. He felt eyes from every window that he passed.

They know what you’re about to do. You won’t get far. What’s the point? You’re only going to fail. You’re too predictable. You know what happens when you try to be a big man. You’re pathetic.

He shook his head firmly; he knew not to listen to that voice. That voice couldn’t control him, at least not anymore. He stood still and squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds to get his bearings back and then continued down the road. Passing several junctions leading to dead-ends of houses and homely cul-de-sacs, he reached the beginning of Sterling Boulevard.

He knew the general layout of the area, he’d carried out plenty of research, but this wasn’t a typical street. It was circular, like a giant doughnut of stone, with the perimeter decorated by attractive, middle-class houses. The centre contained a small grass island with a metal plaque nailed to some concrete, but he had no idea what the plaque read. It wasn’t there the last time he visited, all those years ago.

There was plenty of forestation to his right, with a dirt walking path leading through the centre to what he assumed would be the waterfall that borrowed its name from that of the town itself, along with Bilson Cove.

Now he knew his escape plan.

In a house at the bottom, in the middle, he could faintly see two people hugging in the front room. It looked like a couple, the female at least 6’0” or 6’1”, but when the man turned away, the female turned the opposite way and shrunk considerably. She must have been standing on something, so that had to be his daughter.

At last, he had found what he had been looking for.

The man opened his satchel to make sure everything was there, counted every item one at a time, certain that he’d packed enough. Satisfied, he closed it again and looked back towards the house, studying the surrounding area. He smiled wryly, savouring the last moment of equanimity.

“Here we go,” he muttered to himself, then disappeared into the forest.