Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Warren
My head was pounding as I came to, dizzy and disoriented. I opened my eyes slowly, grogginess trying to pull me back into unconsciousness.
“Ah, you’re awake. Good.”
I looked around, seeing that I was tied to one of my wooden chairs, ropes digging into my wrists and ankles. Robert crouched in front of me, holding his worn Bible in his hands.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
Robert sighed, shaking his head. “Someone needs to. You continue to flaunt your disgusting, sinful ways and make no effort to change. It is my duty to help you find your salvation.”
Anger simmered beneath my skin. Of course he had turned up after my amazing night with Levette, like he sensed my happiness and acceptance of myself and had to come to ruin it.
“How are you going to do that?” I questioned. “You tried to kill me last time and look, I’m still here, brother.”
“I let my own feelings cloud me last time,” Robert said, standing up to his full height. “I will not make that mistake again. This time, I will help you to realize your wrongdoings before I send you to where you belong.”
“What makes you think you are better than me? You think God would be proud of you for beating your family? You think our father made God happy when he used to beat me and Mama?”
Robert slapped me across the face with the back of his hand, momentarily stunning me. “You do not get to pass judgment, you sick freak. I know what you get up to, the demons you let into your bed.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. His words reminded me so much of what I had said to Levette, of how I had spoken of myself, that it helped me to see just how wrong we both were.
If my inner voice sounded like Robert, it meant most certainly that those trains of thought were beyond comprehension and utterly foul.
“You do not know what you are talking about. Do not be so quick to throw out accusations.”
Robert hit me again, this time the strike causing blood to pool in my mouth. “Liar! Thou shall not bear false witness before the Lord!”
He struck me again and again until I felt the crunch of bones snapping in my nose, blood gushing out and down my front. Robert looked satisfied with himself as he opened his book and recited passages of scripture.
“I was there last night,” he said, wiping my blood from his hands with a handkerchief.
“I saw what your demon did to Father Baylis. That hell creature you allow to defile you killed a good man of the cloth before his eyes, and what did you do? You threw yourself at him like a whore. Are you not ashamed?”
“Was he a good man?” I questioned, spitting out blood as I laughed. “Let me guess, Robert, since you’re defending him—was Father Baylis part of a secret organization of the church? Are you?”
Robert grabbed a fistful of my hair, tilting my head back as he growled.
“He was a good man! All of the Guardians are good men, just trying to spread the Word and help deliver those who need it. You should have come to us and allowed us to help you find redemption. Instead, you got in league with the father of lies.”
It hurt me to hear how deluded he was. I could hear the reverence in his voice, how deeply he truly felt his own insanity. He had taken preachings and twisted them to fit his own narrative. It was abhorrent and went against everything the true word of God said.
“Do you hear yourself? God teaches us to love one another, but you and your band of fantasists are murdering people. Do you think that makes the Father happy? That he looks on you and your friends with pride?” I spat my blood at his feet.
“You should be the one feeling shame, dear brother. You judge and you determine justice when it is not your duty to do so. People like you push people further from God. The corruption starts with you.”
Robert, his temper no longer restrained, began to beat me.
By the time he was done, I was wheezing for breath, my face cut and bleeding, my barely-healed ribs probably broken again.
Looking at him, I did not recognize the boy I had been raised with.
He had turned his own anger at the world into a way to inflict pain on others.
If he did not want to feel his own shame, he would project it onto someone else.
“You know,” I told him through gasping breaths, “you can beat me all you want. Kill me if that is what you intend to do. It will not change who I am. If I meet the Creator, I will gladly accept His judgment of me and pray that He knows my heart and the kindness that can be found there. I will thank Christ for His forgiveness, for allowing me the chance to redeem myself and all I have done. But you? Robert, you are tainted in hatred. Perhaps it is you who should be on your knees and begging for forgiveness.”
Saying it aloud made me realize how true it was.
I was not scared to meet my end; I would be going to my eternal home.
I would own my sins, my choices. People like Robert and the other ‘Guardians’ would have a more difficult time with their choice to convict others of sins that they were also committing.
I wondered how many of the sect drank alcohol, visited brothels, committed adultery—every single human committed sins every day; why should they decide what was more or less shameful?
Only God himself could put a price on sin.
“You are unworthy of even speaking to Him. All of you delinquents and oddities are abominations, sent by the Devil to corrupt the world. It is better than you are gone for the sake of this world,” Robert sneered, hitting me so hard in the stomach that it stole my breath.