Part Nineteen

The church didn’t have much of a lock on its front door – perhaps because it faced the street, or because the church hadn’t enough faith to leave it altogether unlocked, but enough to put up only a small impediment to the would-be desecrator. I was in with just a credit card, and I didn’t even worry if someone on the street might see me. The door banged shut, the sound echoing through the vacuous space within, and I stood staring into the darkness, listening to my slow breathing.
What was it that had driven me to get in here in the first place, I wondered in the darkness. I’d had a whim to confess my sins and receive my penance though I in no way thought that I’d done anything wrong. It was as if the bells of the clock had called out to me, and I had followed without question. When I was turned away at the door, it simply made me angry and I decided that I would go into the church anyway, and that I would confess my sins anyway. Who needed a priest?
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, the exit sign and the street light humming a minimal amount of light from above the door and through the window, I fumbled around the foyer looking for a candle. Catholic churches were full of candles, right? And sure enough, right there next to the balcony stairs, a rather large, decorative candle on a rather large decorative candle holder. I was hoping for something smaller, more easily carried from room to room, but it would do for now. I lit it and went in to look around the place, the soles of my shoes making minute, listless echoes in my wake.
After strolling around for a bit, fiddling with little things like crosses and bibles, and taking in the whole of the place with a smug grin on my face, I decided to go ahead and make my confession. I had noticed the confessional when I first came in – a single room in the foyer of the church, unlike many of the churches I had been to that had them lined up along the wall. Maybe there weren’t that many sinners around here, so they only needed the one confessional. I found a few smaller candles on my way back to the confessional and switched them for the larger one before I went in.
“Forgive me father, for I have sinned,” I said as I sat in the chair in front of the screen. The room was close, cramped, and suffocating. I disliked it immediately. But I was determined to go through with my confession, to follow my whim to its end. I think the priest was supposed to say something like, “What are your sins, my child,” so I imagined him saying as much to me. “Well, let me think,” I said, my voice snuffed out and muffled in this cramped room. And I thought about it. I thought hard through my last few days, then my last few weeks, then my last few years. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to church, any church, and I don’t think I’d been to confession since I was a child. I started there. “I haven’t been to confession in a long time, father.” And I had no idea what the priest would say at this point. He probably would try to disguise his yawn and his boredom and simply nod his head. “I haven’t been to church in a long time either,” I said. Again, a nod or two, a suppressed stretch of the arms and legs. I tried again to think back through my days and years, but I could think of nothing besides the occasionally cursing. “I have cursed a few times,” I said, realizing now that I should have been kneeling all this time on the kneeler right under the screen. I knelt hurriedly, bumping my head on the screen. “Sorry,” I said, imagining the priest now not only yawning furiously, but rolling his eyes too. I was such a lame sinner. Thinking back again, I could imagine nothing else important to confess, so I said, “That’s about it, I think.” Since I again didn’t know what the priest would say at that point, I imagined he moved straight into penance and gave me three Our Father’s and two Hail Mary’s. I crossed myself and stood up, moving around to the priest’s side of the screen.
I looked at the empty seat on the priest’s side that in my imagination had been filled by the terribly bored priest. I sat in the empty chair and yawned and stretched too. It was late. I was thankful that I would not be spending another night face down in the street, that I could stretch out and go to sleep right where I was and be quite safe and warm. It was a relaxing feeling. I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded my head down to my chest, closing my eyes. My jaw ached a little, and the stiffness was returning to my neck and knee. I sighed and made every attempt to completely clear my mind and just relax for awhile. Thoughts and memories dropped away. Feelings and notions faded into the darkness. In that uncanny silence I could hear the blood pulsing in my veins and this sound comforted me. But it grew.
At first it was only the comforting sound of my blood pulsing in my veins. Then it was a rhythm, an unchanging, steady thrumming. A whisper crept in, Yes. And the thrumming intensified with a pounding beneath it. Another whisper, Yes, Yes. My temples throbbed, my heart raced, and the thrumming played out through my body like an electrified band. Yes, Yes. Again, yes. I sighed again. A hero’s work was never done. I pulled out my sharpie and got to work.