She would go after breakfast, wearing her best suit and only the most exquisite of perfumes. Men turned and looked at her, in awe of her confident strides as if she were their regal queen. One day, she would be. Since Marissa shat on her and made her feel worthless, Mercy had let her production suffer. Not now. Soon, she would sit on the throne of her own empire.
Everything was so clear now. Between her lust for pleasure and her greed for status symbols, Mercy could find a way to crawl out of her hole and sin her life away again. Oh, lust and greed. Those two things existed in perfect harmony.
Or so she thought on her way out of a small café, where she ate a scant lunch of bagel and cream cheese. She stepped into a department store because she could not help but purchase a few “needful” things for her home. Her rather dingy home, if she did say so herself.
It was while she polished these new items in her bedroom that she sensed a visitor.
“Are you going to continuously stalk me?” she asked Acedia, without turning to confront the moonlit deity.
Light traveled across the wall as Acedia wandered toward the window. Her long train of beads attracted Mercy’s coveting nature. “I have to make sure you are adjusting well,” Acedia said. “I see that Avarice has fulfilled her purpose.”
“Man, I forgot how much I used to love gemstones.” Mercy lay back on her bed and studied a ruby in her hand.
“As with anything, Mercy, you must be careful. These gifts are to help you win back your life. Yet there is a danger to overindulging, as you quickly discovered.”
“Eh, my bank account can handle it for now.” About time Mercy started spending her hoarded savings!
Acedia receded into the corner of the room, turning into a waft of gray smoke. “Don’t succumb to the sins, Mercy. If you let them control you before your journey of healing ends… she will take you.”
By that point, Mercy flipped through a catalog, giggling at the clothes, the fineries she could have. She heard Acedia in the back of her mind, but she was from another astral plane.
Mercy didn’t know what she was talking about. She had her libido back, and she had her will to treat herself to things and other worldly pleasures. Perhaps she could die happy now.
Die.
Something scratched at her throat. A shadow, crawling down the wall and freezing Mercy’s body for a split second. It disappeared as quickly as it came.
In the corner of the room, Acedia prayed for Mercy’s soul.
TO BE CONTINUED…
In installment two, SLOTH, now available!
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SLOTH
(Sins of Mercy #3)
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No one is more productive than Mercy, who is cursed with the gifts of desire and avarice. For a week Mercy has not slept a wink, opting to instead put in overtime at work, clean her house every day, and probably train for a marathon, too. It’s to the point her coworkers are noticing her for all the wrong reasons. Again.
That’s why the next sinner to visit her is Sloth, a lethargic beauty who invites Mercy into her dream world. What Mercy discovers on the other side of consciousness is a world where anything is possible. Anything except actual sleep!
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Life has not been kind to Mercy: her girlfriend is gone, she’s unappreciated in her corporate job, and depression has always haunted her. That’s how she came to stand on the bridge where she meets Acedia, the deity who oversees the Seven Sinners, bringers of peace and carnal healing.
MERCY’S LIFE IS ABOUT TO CHANGE… FOR THE BETTER.
Hildred Billings is a Japanese and Religious Studies graduate who has spent her entire life knowing she would write for a living someday. She has lived in Japan a total of four times in four different locations, from the heights of the Japanese alps to the hectic Tokyo suburbs, with a life in Shikoku somewhere in there too. When she’s not writing, however, she spends most of her time talking about Asian pop music, cats, and bad 80’s fantasy movies with anyone who will listen…or not.
Her writing centers around themes of redemption, sexuality, and death, sometimes all at once. Although she enjoys writing in the genre of fantasy the most, she strives to show as much reality as possible through her characters and situations, since she’s a furious realist herself.
Currently, Hildred lives in Oregon with her girlfriend and dreams of a cat.
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Avarice Page 6
