“Don’t lie to me father. I am trying to negotiate with you. You won’t escape. You won’t get your way. I will get mine, or you will be left here to rot.”
“Why do you think I would grant you absolution? Shouldn’t you wait until you are on your deathbed?”
Gramps walked back to face Father Mike. “I can’t wait any longer. The pain is incapacitating. I can’t breathe and wake up gasping. Death would be merciful for me. I have been a good man, father, and I know what waits for me on the other side, so I don’t cling to this world the way others do. However, I can’t kill myself; I am Catholic to the core. I don’t want to die with sin on my soul. That is where you come in.”
Father Mike scoffed. “You want me to absolve you?”
“Yes, father.”
“No chance.”
Gramps shrugged. “Eventually, you will see things my way.” He kicked another rod and drove another blade into the priest’s shin. It bit into the flesh, and penetrated the bone. Father Mike howled in agony, which only drove the Heretic’s fork further into his chin.
“You are still thinking you can get out of this, right?” Gramps smiled. He held up more papers from the briefcase. “I have detailed records of your past, father. Stuff the church tried to cover up. Victims are very willing to talk when they have access to a safe and sympathetic ear, father.”
His smile grew as he could tell Father Mike was straining for an excuse. “I have taped interviews with three kids who had been under your lead in Connecticut, father. The police have those tapes now, along with this.”
He held up a wad of paper. “Transcripts; of an IM conversation between
[email protected] and brandon1445. You thought Brandon was an 11 year old boy you were going to have come over. Trust me; it took me and my geek friend a while to concoct a believable story to make you actually think he would agree to come over for sex. An eleven year old boy, father…”
“You bastard…”
“Judgment is reserved for God, father. I am showing you this because, your life is over. So is mine. God chose for me to come home. I chose for you to sit in judgment before God. Father Mike, your life is over. Before I picked you up, I sent all of this to the police, and my friend called them. Right now, there are police cars near your apartment, waiting to serve you with a warrant for child molestation and rape. There are media people there too. Your life is over.”
“And for this, you want me to forgive you?”
“No, no…” Gramps chuckled. “I did nothing wrong here. I ratted out a pedophile; there is nothing wrong in that. It is, in fact, one of the greatest of goods. I want to be able to confess my sins, and receive my last rights before you kill us.”
“WHAT?!” Father Mike shouted. He growled in pain as the fork dug a half an inch into his chin. He began whimpering pathetically as blood began to pour down his neck, making his clothes sticky.
“Yes, kill us.”
Father Mike was consumed with panic suddenly. It felt as if the walls were closing in on him. He completely withdrew within himself; his mind flooded with images of his crimes, he couldn’t block the visuals of police men laying his life bare in front of others, the congregation of his church gawking in horror at the photos in his apartment.
He struggled against the machine. Metal whined and squeaked as he lurched back and forth, from side to side, trying to loose himself. Blades burned as they cut into his chest and back. He screamed a falsetto note when one slid into his right eye. Another pierced his left elbow; Father Mike felt a pain he knew was waiting for him in the darkest pits of Hell. In the small, barely-there part of his mind that was lucid in that moment, he marveled that no one in history had ever experienced such pain.
He finally began to regain a measure of composure after a few moments. He assessed his wounds as best he could. He had lost an eye, and there were blades full buried in his left elbow and right knee. He could tell that in some areas, he had been stabbed or slashed, and the blade had retracted, ready for another attack.
Gramps watched quietly, detached. “Are you quite finished?” he asked, then let the reality of the situation sink in before he continued. “Father Mike; near your right hand is a console with two buttons. When I remove the fork, you will be free to look around. You will see that one button is marked ‘Freedom’, while the other says ‘Hell’. ‘Freedom’ is connected to several gasoline bombs and blocks of C4 located throughout this old house. The other is connected to the machine you are sitting in.”
“You have a choice. You can grant me my wish, and then hit Freedom. The house will explode, killing us both. I will go to heaven, because I will be clean of sin, absolved. If you hit Hell, the device you are sitting in will disassemble, just fall apart. You will be free to go, but all that will await you is prosecution and incarceration. And men like you don’t last long in prison these days.”
“The third alternative is that you don’t grant me my wish, in which case I will leave you and you will die slowly.”
Father Mike fought back another wave of panic, and was trying to think up whatever excuse he could to not have to choose. “You have to be repentant; you have to truly believe you are sorry for absolution.”
“Oh, but I am father. I truly wish there was another way for you. I studied you closely, hoping to find some fragment that would separate you from the others like you. Some single thread that would imply that you are sick, and wanted to change. But you don’t. You like hurting children. You feed off of the hurt and perversion. I saw what you have on your computer, father. Children should never have to see or do those things…”
Father Mike shrank back into the chair as far as he could. For the first time since he started molesting children, Father Mike felt shame for his actions. So deep was his desire to retreat into himself that he barely winced when his movement caused two more blades to dig into his lower back, once less than a half inch from his spine. He hadn’t thought about the pictures. Any of the other evidence, he was pretty sure he could lie his way out of, but the pictures were damning evidence. He had thousands of them, and videos.
The worst part was that he was clearly in many of them.
Father Mike was in agony. Blood oozed from his many wounds, his eye felt as if it had collapsed; deflated. He understood the genius of the old man who watched him, passively. He would take days to die from his wounds if left.
“Okay.”
Gramps looked a little surprised. “I will grant you absolution. What are your sins, my son?”
Gramps pulled a seat up right in front of Father Mike and began with “Forgive me father, for I have sinned.” Mike was surprised at how minor this man’s infractions were throughout his life. Not holding elevator doors when he could have, using the lord’s name in vain a couple of times, and stealing a pen from a bank, all said with such frankness, the priest didn’t doubt for a second that he was telling the truth.
When the old man had finished his litany of minor infractions, leading up to the assault, kidnapping and imprisonment of the priest, Father Mike forgave him without penance. He then read the old man his last rights.
When he finished, Gramps sighed. He removed the Heretic’s fork from Father Mike’s neck, and bound the wound it had caused. He also freed his right hand and said “Think hard about your choice, father. You have a chance to make things right.”
With that, Gramps walked out of the room. Father Mike was left alone with his thoughts. He looked around. The room was dark and grimy; this was apparently an old abandoned house. The machine he sat it was framed in shining surgical grade steel. An array of blades was pointed at him. The old man had shown a great deal of restraint, had he used the machine to it’s full potential, he would have been stabbed in easily twenty different places.
He went over his options. If he released himself, he could try to run for it. Maybe he could hide, or go to Mexico. He looked down at his leg. He had a blade buried deep in his shin, so he wouldn’t be running anywhere fast. He no longer had any depth perception. He would need medical help, and if what the old man had said was true (and he hadn’t confessed to lying about it), there would be an APB out for him, so he would be caught at any hospital.
His head hung low. He knew what he had to do, and it terrified him.
Gramps sat in the room next to Father Mike, listening to him look over his surroundings and think. He watched the beautiful sun as it set below the horizon. The sky was filled with rich oranges and reds. Gramps smiled as he thought about the sunsets in heaven. He could not wait to see them. He only hoped Father Mike made the right choice.
He would sit in judgment before God and burn in hell for his sins anyway. Adding suicide to the list would only seal the deal.
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, smelling the sweet night air. Perhaps, he would have time for one last cigarette. He pulled one out of his pocket and stared at it with affection. Sure, they had killed him, but they had given him great pleasure during his life. He smiled at himself. It wasn’t a sin, but it should be, he thought. Gramps lit the end, and took a long, exultant pull, tasting every last wisp of smoke as it passed into his lungs. It was a flavor he had missed for years.
There was a click that was not his lighter.
The explosion of the old house was felt over a mile away. By the time fire crews arrived, there was barely anything left to put out.