by Lily White
“I remember.”
Why did it feel like ages ago when it had only been months? Why did I feel so much older now even though I hadn’t yet had another birthday? Is this what they mean when they say it’s possible to age years for every day?
His fingertips dragged across my scalp, not painfully, but with just enough pressure that it massaged the skin. “Then you’ll remember how impressed I was with your inability to lie. Every word that leaked out of you was truth down to the bottom of your soul.”
Swallowing hard, I dragged a breath in and released it slowly. “I know.”
His fingers fisted my hair, the scalp burning suddenly, threatening to release every follicle from the strength he used to pull. My face jerked up so that I was looking directly at him, I had no choice but to give in to his violence as he brought his nose down to touch mine. “Why, now, do you think you can lie to me and get away with it?”
He’d spoken the words so softly that they were barely a whisper, and I realized that it was in the moments that Elijah was quiet that you had to fear him. When he was loud, his skin was hot and his soul was on fire. But when he was cold, a sheen of ice cracked across the air, splintering and crawling until my body shook beneath its frigid temperature.
Another lie worked its way up my throat to settle on my tongue. Snapping my teeth shut, I fought to keep from voicing it. He would know. He always knows. I had no choice but to swallow the lie back down and endure whatever punishment I deserved for spying.
When I was silent, he released the pressure on my hair, my scalp still pulsing with an ache I knew wouldn’t go away for several minutes. “Did you enjoy sneaking around and watching me without my knowledge? Did it make you feel accomplished or strong? Lying to your husband like I didn’t deserve better from you?”
Tears welled in my eyes, the lids blinking rapidly to force them out and down my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I was just curious –“
He released me altogether and stood to pace the floor by the bed. “Did you miss him? Is that it? Are your fantasies about him so thorough that you were excited to see him again? That demon from the side of the road. The one who almost stole you from me, who wanted to take every part of you that belongs to me alone?” Stopping suddenly, he pivoted on his heel to glare at me. “Would you like to see him again?”
My head shook before I could utter the word “No.”
Elijah’s lips twisted into a wicked smile, his eyes blazing with the need to punish, to teach a lesson, to dominate. I’ve seen that fire behind his stare so many times, and each time only led to a lesson more horrifying than the last. Instinctively, I moved to avoid him when he lunged toward me, but the haze of sleep slowed me down, the weakness in my body from having been sick for what felt like weeks. Wrapping a strong hand over my wrist, he pulled me from the mattress, ignoring the cry of pain that shot from my lips when my hip impacted the floor.
“Get up,” he demanded, the frigid temperature of those words freezing me in place.
Shaking my head again, I did so with the knowledge that my refusal would only anger him more. There was no denying Elijah – especially when he was like this. I was going wherever he wanted me to go and seeing whatever he wanted me to see. Refusing only made the journey more painful. But yet, there I was, crying and shaking my head, silently begging him to let me go. Why couldn’t I just get up and do as I was told? What remnant still existed of the girl I once had been before he transformed me that night in the cabin? I wanted to find that piece inside me and shake it free. Wanted to become the wife he needed, the one he promised me I could be.
Jerked from the floor, I was planted on my feet, turned toward the door and shoved forward. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where he was leading me. Quickly he led me down the same halls and around the same turns toward the sanctuary that I had traveled earlier. Without speaking a word, he stopped me before the large double doors that led inside the room where I’d earlier watched Elijah and two other men punish the man who had attacked me on the side of the road so many months ago. Hadn’t the beating he’d endured that night been enough? Why did Elijah feel the need to hunt him down, drag him to the compound and punish him all over again?
Was it because for the original sin the man had committed against me? Or was it because I’d taken what happened that night and held on to it as a sinful fantasy?
I wasn’t sure that killing the man would free me of the memory, would vanquish the lustful thoughts I had about another man forcing himself inside me. Even now, I shivered at the memory, both the fear that I’d felt and the heat of his skin pressed against my body.
“Are you ready to face your demon again, beautiful girl? Are you ready to vanquish him from your body entirely? To chase the fantasy until it dissipates into the ether, disappearing into Hell where it belongs?” Elijah’s chest pressed to my back, his hand reaching around to splay over my stomach. “Are you excited to know that I’ll give you this one final moment with him so that you can finally say goodbye?”
I shook against him, both mortified and anxious, trembling with my own dark needs and anticipation for a release. It had been so long, so lonely with him gone, and despite knowing what horror awaited me in the room beyond those large double doors, I found myself enjoying his closeness, his touch, the whispered threat against my ear. I loved this man, fiercely and without question, and I’d come to understand that if I couldn’t have his tenderness in return, I was willing to enjoy the abuse he offered.
It didn’t matter to me either way, just as long as it was his hands against my body, his breath brushing my ear, his power pumping between my legs each time he reminded me what it meant to be his wife.
Reaching around me, Elijah’s breath was hot against the side of my face, his heart a thumping drum against my back. Slowly he turned the knob and pushed the door open, the sanctuary coming into view with low lighting and the flicker of a thousand candles. Only once had I seen it so beautiful, so mesmerizing that it trapped the breath in my lungs making it impossible for me to breath in the scent of incense that was a haze of swirling smoke through the room.
The stygian silence reached out to embrace me, drawing me into the room as Elijah led me from behind. They worked in tandem, the two threats, the anticipation and fear, the cavernous space and the cold man standing at my back. Before I could look over to where I knew the two crosses stood, Elijah’s hand came up to cover my eyes.
“No peeking,” he whispered, “I want this to be a surprise.”
Walking me farther into the room, he led me around the benches, chairs and pews, guiding me without so much as letting my knee bump against any of the furniture. It was just like Elijah, so angry that he felt compelled to punish me, yet still watching out not to damage me by mistake. Every bruise, every lash, every mark he left on me was with intention, it was an art to a man like him, the type of branding that screamed to any person who saw it that I was owned by a powerful being, that he had left his calling card as a means to keep the demons at bay.
Except for one man, that was, the one I knew he was leading me to see. He hadn’t noticed the mark of God left on my skin, he hadn’t cared that I was an angel born on this Earth to chase the darkness away and help lead humanity to the light. He’d been blinded by what he thought was my innocent faith without realizing that the power I carried inside me came from the right hand of the Almighty – the new chosen one – the new savior – Elijah.
We stopped finally, Elijah once against pressing his body to mine. Without removing his right hand from my eyes, he used his left to tilt my chin, position my face where I would see the sight he’d created for me, where I would flutter open my eyes to be embraced by the truth of his ultimate power.
His breath a beat against my ear, he didn’t speak or make any other type of sound, but I noticed the slight increase in his heartbeat, the way his lungs drew breath harder, letting it out with only a hiss of soft sound. Finally, my head was positioned where he wanted it, the room still silent, the nightm
are ready to be revealed.
The heat of his hand pulled away, the cold air in the room coming in to crash against the skin of my face, and when I knew he was ready for me to see what he’d done to a demon who dared to touch what belonged to him, I opened my eyes…and screamed.
ELIJAH
I don’t think I need to explain the symbolism behind my display of a liar and thief, of a charlatan and criminal, of a man who lured people in to his seductive web with promises of safety and security all while knowing he’d take what was good in them and expose it to the scavengers and predators that exist in this world.
It wasn’t necessary for me to spell out the hatred I held inside myself for more years that I wanted to count of a fairy tale told for centuries that, to the good man, would come peace and happiness. Because beneath the robes of those good men existed the demons, beneath the skin of their faces was the mark of the beast waiting for the moment to come out.
Being a child in an abusive household is never easy. Hearing the screams of your brother, the deafening silence of your mother, the terrible, punishing words of a father who swore his allegiance to God and Jesus.
Running out the front door, I would go in search of something that could save me, of a protector, of shelter, of one comforting hand that would promise that it hadn’t been me who caused the hatred inside those pristine walls and the small unfinished room with dirt floors. I’d found that promise, and all it cost me was my sanity.
Every day, I was overjoyed to leave my family home in route to a parish I believed was a sanctuary from the horror I lived beneath the roof of my father’s house. I would jump out of my mother’s car and race to the large wooden doors, fighting against the wind that held them shut so that I could hide inside amongst the golden crosses and jewel boxed relics. I would look up to the doves that were painted into the stained glass windows and bask in the glow of candlelight as I breathed in the incense. I would look up to the music director and the gentle priest with hope in my eyes that one day they’d notice the bruises, that one day they’d approach my father to tell him, “Enough.”
Every day I’d appear with that hope in my heart, ignoring the grumbling of my brother who didn’t see the parish in the same way. He abhorred the routine, hated the Tradition, had already grown weary of the world to which we’d been born. But not me. I had hope in a story, in a fable, in the imagery I’d conjured of a strong God sitting in the Heavens looking down at me with love in his eyes.
I’d believed in Him harder than I’d believed in anything, and when the time came that the bruises were noticed, the belief I’d held in the Almighty and his messengers had all but destroyed me behind closed doors and secret meetings, on my knees that were burning against pristine carpets, and on my stomach as I leaned over the desk of my parish priest.
For years, YEARS, those men had used me and had relied on my father’s wrath to bind my tongue.
“He’ll only beat you harder if he finds out.”
“Good luck, boy, there is nowhere you can run.”
I believed their lies just as much as I’d once believed that God would look out for me and protect me from evil. Once the illusion had been stripped away from my innocent mind, I’d never believed in another thing again.
Not God. Not good. Not evil. Not redemption.
For a boy that was only temptation, there was no absolution.
I was a filthy whore. A petulant child. A mockery of what it meant to be decent and faithful. I was only nine when the sexual abuse started, and by thirteen, those men had shaped me and formed me, beating me down with punishing fists and heavy cocks, until they’d broken me enough to create a monster.
Eight years passed that I endured the abuse while my twin somehow escaped unscathed. And at sixteen, when Jacob and I had tasted our first girl in the basement of that parish, I understood then how good it felt to be the one to punish rather than the one cowering beneath the weight of abusive men.
Their laughter had always echoed in my ear. My father’s raised voice always chased me back into their clutches, but I’d come out the stronger man in the end when I’d decided to killed them, one by one.
First the music director, but he’d already been dead by the time I got to him. Then the priest. It was interesting to find out that he too had suffered an unfortunate demise after I’d searched for months to find him. Figuring the Church had done a decent enough job of covering their crimes, I felt robbed of my opportunity for violence, but I couldn’t deny I felt a keen sense of happiness after discovering that both men had been shoved into the bowels of whatever Hell devoured them.
My father, well, his death wasn’t exactly planned, but after he’d refused to accept his part in the sexual abuse I’d suffered, after he’d failed to acknowledge that if he’d just listened he could have stopped them, he took an unfortunate tumble down the steep, winding stairs. I never intended for that to happen, but then what can be done with a man who will confess his sins to God behind closed doors and in secret while refusing to admit them to his own flesh and blood?
Churning within the mist of all the memories that crowded my head was one symbol that stuck out, one ruse, one lie, one image that was the cause of it all.
Eve’s scream tore through the sanctuary ripping at the silence, the volume of her cry like music to my ears as I stared up at that symbol to witness it brought to life.
Oh, yes, those Romans were masters of inflicting the worst of pain.
So absorbed by the sight of a man nailed to a cross, his chest shredded and bruised, his blood still dripping slowly from where he’d been attached to that thick wood, I’d failed to notice how Eve sank to her knees, her body withering at my feet as her forehead was pressed to the floor.
I was mesmerized by the image, my eyes glimmering with the same soft dance of light the candles had given the room. There he hanged in all his brilliance, suffering the same guilt, defeat and humiliation that I’d been forced to suffer for believing his lies in the first place. It didn’t matter that the poor bastard hanging wasn’t sent by Heaven itself, it meant nothing that nobody had believed him the actual Son of the Almighty, what mattered was that he represented the absolute truth about what the world was about.
Don’t believe that lies that good men exist, not in family, in politics or religion. Because, in reality, there is no such thing as a good man or father, just an interloper whispering beautiful lies while dragging you into their Hell.
There was no good in this world, only the wicked, and they were the most beautiful, the most charming, the most deceiving where they sat in their thrones of absolute power.
While staring up at a condemned man who represented everything in this world that I hated, I laughed out loud to realize that it had been me who destroyed him – that it would be me who unveiled the lie and brought His Church to the ground.
My body thrummed with excitement as I stood there staring, my eyes darting between the man slowly dying and the woman kneeling at my feet. Lifting my head so that all I could see was the dying man on his wooden cross, I pursed my lips and whistled so loudly that he could no longer ignore me.
His eyes blinked open, the life in his eyes fading until hazy, but there was still some shred of him left that would enjoy the last experience I had for him.
“Do you remember this woman on the floor in front of me? Do you remember my wife?”
He couldn’t answer back, I knew that, but still, it was fun to throw questions out. I wondered if the bastard could even see with the blood dripping down his face, the crown of nails that we manufactured since we didn’t have thorns readily available.
Eve was whimpering still, her poor little mind shocked to oblivion by the sight hanging before us. Stripped down to nothing, this man had been positioned over the cross, a white towel draped over his waist as if I gave a damn about modesty. His hair was long and he was missing the beard, but I had to ignore that slight mistake in the image.
Candlelight lit the majority of the sanctuary, but at
the base of his particular cross, I’d positioned floodlights pointing up at his body to highlight every bruise, every lash mark, every cut. It was so glorious as to be holy, so implicitly wrong, but I admired my work regardless. He was the symbol of what I’d known about the men pretending to be Godly, the bastards who drag you in to their safe little webs and devour you while shredding you with sharp claws.
I grew hard just at the sight, ready and able to render my beautiful girl pure by removing this bastard’s power from her body and filling it with mine.
“Stand up, Eve. Don’t cower in the face of evil when you are strong enough to face it. This son of a bitch has no power over you. Only me. Only the one true God.”
The man’s eyes blinked, his head lulling to the side as he attempted to understand what was happening below him. I was sure he found it difficult to breathe due to the position of his body, that he was consumed by the pain of the nails hammered through his feet, and of his shoulders slowly dislocating. His weight would eventually kill him, his body sagging ever lower with each hour that passed. And here I stood, staring up at a symbol that had once held all the power, to show the world that I was stronger and smarter than their precious God.
Whimpering and sobbing, Eve attempted several times to push to her feet. Once she stood at her full height that was inches shorter than me, she faced the monstrosity I created as the symbol of the Faith she believed I belonged to, like her.
Leaning over, I pressed my mouth to her ear. “Tell me again what this monster has done to you.”
