Chapter Twenty-Two #2
I crack my sore eyes open just in time to see a shadow shove the other men away, and I am surprised to see them allow it. The voice that reaches me is muffled and slurred in my ears, the hands beneath my ribs like brands of fire as I cry out from the pain.
“Just doing some clean up is all, Louis.” Louis. I cannot help flinching away from the hands trying to help me up, pushing at them when they only hold on tighter. “You see? Even now she fights. Why do you protect her so much when she’s nothing more than an animal?”
“Stop this, Fitz. You’ve done enough. Dora—Dora, let me help—”
Dora. Dora. The Devil's Delight.
Dora. Dora. Get close and she bites.
Dora. Dora. The Devil's Delight.
Dora. Dora. May the Lord's grace strike.
The name is a brand searing the skin of my back. It is a cross weighing down my shoulders that I no longer wish to bear, the nails in my hands crucifying me to a life I have never asked for, a body I have never wanted.
“Le'me alone,” I manage to slur out as I push myself onto unsteady feet.
Blood pools from my mouth and nose, staining the front of my shirt and vest. I cannot help but think it a waste, cannot help but wonder if Azizi would lick it up if she were here.
Would she be proud of me? Would she smile and kiss me, knowing that I fought back?
Knowing that I let the monster out, even if just for a moment?
Would she want me to keep fighting? To push myself away from Louis and dig my teeth into Fitzwilliam again? Do I want to?
“Please,” Louis insists, though to my relief, he doesn't try to touch me again. “At least let me get you home—”
“What's the meaning of this?”
Papa.
I lurch toward the familiar voice, my feet barely registering my commands as I stumble and shove my way past Louis for the comforting arms of my father. "Papa."
“Oh, my boy.”
His grip is tight and warm. It hurts, presses on every bruise and every cut, but it is a welcome pain. The comfort of a den where my hunger can rest, where my beast is once again locked away so it cannot finish the hunt, no matter how much it wants to.
“Just a bit of rough housing between men,” Fitzwilliam assures him, and I can hear the smarmy grin on his face as he and his friends begin to back away. “A bit of a welcome to manhood, if you will. Come on, Louis. Let's go.”
I do not look at him, because I know in the end he is not on my side. I know, regardless of how he claims to enjoy my company, that Louis will always choose the easy route in life, rather than the right one.
My father's arms tighten around me as Louis proves me right, his footsteps slowly receding. “I'm sorry, Do—Theo. I'm sorry,” he says as he passes us by. I do not bother offering him a response.
“Those little bastards,” my father spits, his anger like a coiling snake in his old muscles. “When their mothers hear about this, oh why I ought’a—"
“Papa.”
“Yes, my boy?”
“I'd like to go home please.”
My father sighs, presses a kiss to my bloody, dirt-covered hair, and nods. “Of course, son. Of course.”
It worries me, how easily I can succumb to the hunger.
I can still taste Fitzwilliam’s sweat on my tongue a day later, can still feel the fleshy muscle of his hand giving way between my teeth.
It’s not like the times Azizi offered me a drink, where a few glasses a week has kept the monster placated and held at bay just enough to pretend it isn’t there.
This is deeper, more dangerous. Like the wolven thing inside me has finally had a taste of what it wants and refuses to turn back.
It had been so easy to let it take over, to let the primal fear swallow me up and let the hunger run free.
It makes me sick, so much so that I spend the next morning on my knees in the washroom, my fingers shoved down my throat as far as they can go—as if I could reach the piece of Fitz still in there and pull it back up.
My body quakes with every violent heave, the air frigid on my fevered skin. My muscles ache; my head is swimming.
And God, I am so hungry.
When I sneak out from under my father’s worried gaze, I cannot look at the butcher's across the street without my mouth watering and my knees going weak.
I cannot pass Patricia Le May on her way to deliver a parcel and not imagine her beneath me, my teeth sinking into her pretty, freckled shoulder, her blood dripping into a bowl I've set aside for Azizi as I tear her skin from her bones.
Perhaps I was foolish to think I could keep the hunger at bay forever by merely feeding it scraps. A starving dog will still eat its master even when given bones to chew on.
Father Thompson is not in the confessional when I arrive at the church, for which I am grateful. I’ve no doubt he has heard of what happened, and the thought of what he might do in response nearly has me retching again on the steps of the chapel.
Instead, I kneel at the base of the Savior's statue and press my forehead to His feet in hopes that He will hear me. The position sends knives of pain through my cracked ribs, and my head spins with every movement, but I squeeze my eyes shut and hold my fists to my chest, my mother’s old rosary twisted between my fingers.
“My Lord, forgive me, but I fear the demons are back, and I am not strong enough to fight them,” I say in a quiet whisper.
“I dare not question your wishes for me, and if it is my burden to bear this demon, this monster inside me, then I will do it as you command. But please, please, there must be a reason for it. There must be something I am meant to do with all this suffering.”
He does not answer me of course. I am nothing but a spec of grain upon His path, expected to do my duty and serve Him with no questions asked.
But I have so many questions.
“Is this all I am meant to be?” I ask Him, pressing my forehead into the stone so hard it hurts.
“A beast in the skin of a man pretending to be something I am not? Is this a punishment for a crime I have not yet committed? Am I to be like Cain, stained by death and outcast for the rest of eternity?”
Tears choke at the back of my throat as one of the sisters passes behind me. I can smell her even from here, can almost taste her on my tongue. The beast in my stomach growls. My teeth itch. I swallow the spit pooling beneath my tongue.
Not for the first time, I consider that this is in fact God's plan for me, and that it is my struggle that He wishes to see.
Father Thompson has said it plenty of times.
“God gives us problems, and He bids us to be strong in face of them. To trust in the Lord thy God and know that it is in His Grace and His Glory that we will be forgiven in the end.”
But will I be forgiven? Is it the will of God to make me suffer in my starvation for all my life, and then when I am finished, to welcome me into Heaven's embrace and tell me I have done well?
What kind of love is that? What kind of love is given with such heavy stipulations, such terrible, painful conditions?
I think of Azizi, and I see her thriving.
I see her glowing skin when she has drained another person of their life.
I see her bloodied smile when she breathes her next breath and is happy to be alive.
If she is a servant of the Devil as Father Thompson would suggest, why is she allowed to be so happy, so full, when I am left gaunt and miserable?
“I wish nothing more than to trust you, my God,” I mutter into the stone, watching as my tears drip down and stain the marble below me, "but I am finding it harder and harder to do when I am hurting so very much."
He does not answer. I am disappointed but not surprised. I cross myself and mutter my final prayers.
I leave my rosaries behind at the base of the Savior's feet.