2. Bless Me, Father
Stavros
"B less me father, for I have sinned—"
"Stav—"
I made a soft growl at the back of my throat, cutting Zach off. "It's been…two and a half months since my last confession."
"We don't have to do this in here," Zach murmured, his shadow shifting through the screen of the dark confessional. "If you want to talk—"
"No, like this." I pinched the frayed knee of my jeans between my fingers, grimacing at nothing. I didn't want to sit across a table from Zach and his pretty-boy face, eerily beautiful mismatched eyes watching me as I talked about…about her .
"Where's Kais?" I asked, realizing I didn't want to be talking to Zach about this at all. Zach was… well, he was also a topic I felt similarly guilty about sometimes, and talking to him about this was all a little too closely related.
"Scouting the border," Zach said. "Is this about him?"
"No," I said immediately. "I've been…having lustful thoughts."
In spite of everything, in spite of the world we lived in, the roles we played, Zach still had it in him to laugh. Well, snort at least.
He cleared his throat and his hands ran over his thighs in the booth next to me. "Stav, you've gotta be kidding me with this."
"It's different," I muttered. "They're dreams but…not normal ones."
I expected him to laugh again, and harder, but this time he was serious. "What kind of dreams?" he asked, voice pitching up with curiosity.
I scowled. "What kind of dreams do you think?"
"Hey, you wanted confession, man."
I groaned and bent forward, my elbows on my knees, hands scrubbing my face.
"Man or woman?" he asked.
I blinked, suddenly wanting to peer through the screen. Had I ever mentioned being bisexual before? I didn’t think so. Zach knew me, knew my…habits with a couple of the women in town. But I was glad he didn’t sound judgmental as he asked the question.
"Woman," I said. "Beautiful, but…you know how in dreams someone you know might not look the same, but you know it's them anyway? Or a stranger in your dream might look like someone you know?"
"Mm." Noncommittal agreement.
"Well, she's unfamiliar on both counts."
"What happens in the dream?"
"It's not about that," I said quickly. She has me pinned to the bed somehow, even though there are no ropes or cuffs, and her mouth runs over every inch of me like she's inhaling me…
"What does she look like?"
I scowled at Zach's open curiosity. Fuck. I should've waited for Kais. "It's not about that either."
"I'm confused about what this is about then, Stavros," Zach said, voice taking on weight.
Zach wasn't a little dude, but he was undeniably young , at least in mine and Kais' eyes.
Still, he had a command to him, and you could see the faces of the community brighten when he gave sermons full of hope, as if he could infuse it into them.
He'd come of age at the end of the world and it hadn't beaten him in the same way as the rest of us.
Maybe you could adapt to the apocalypse if it happened when you were a kid.
"Maybe I'm not confessing the lustful thoughts," I said.
"I…these dreams are like waking up somewhere else.
I don't remember what's going on in the world in them.
I don't remember anything but her, and it's like she's…
real . And she's all there is. It's a fucking relief, honestly.
" Zach hummed again. "Two nights ago I drank half a fifth by myself just to fall asleep faster. "
"Did you dream?"
"Oh yeah." A good dream. A long dream. Full of her and empty of anything else. "I hate waking up."
Zach sighed and fabric rustled as he slouched in his seat. "What happens in the dreams?"
"Zach," I growled. "I'm not gonna fuel your wanks, okay?"
He laughed, but it was a slightly nervous sound. "Come on, you wanted to confess. Is it guilt?"
"Of course it's guilt!"
"For having sex in a dream? Or for preferring that your whole world is a beautiful woman touching you rather than the shit we actually have on our plate?"
"For…wanting to dream and never wake up again," I said.
Zach was quiet for a while after that. "Are you confessing suicidal thoughts?"
I let out a slow breath. "Not suicide. I think I'd take a coma though, if it were a safe bet."
"It's okay to be weary, Stavros. To be angry. God is…"
I tuned him out after that. God was testing us.
God wasn't giving us more than we could handle.
God knew that we—Kais, Zach and I—had the situation in hand.
That was Zach's favorite line. He liked to feel chosen by God, as if Hell had risen up from the depths to wash the slate clean for us to start over.
Except that Hell hadn't gone back down again, and I was pretty sure they wouldn't until they'd dragged every last living soul back with them.
"What does she look like?"
I stirred and shook my head. "It doesn't matter. You're right. It's just dreams. At this point I'm lucky to be dreaming about a beautiful woman that can't stop fucking me rather than the horrors that ought to be working their shit out in my head at night."
"Just tell me," Zach pressed.
"Jesus Christ, Z, just borrowing a fucking magazine," I laughed.
"Dark hair, pale skin, kind of slight, but with those almost fake looking curves, except they're real, right? Cause you've weighed 'em in your hand."
I sat up straight frowning. Was that just…? That was coincidence. That was just a standard fantasy girl that guys thought about then?
"Weird eyes," Zach said softly. "You can see them almost glowing sometimes. Little bit gold, little bit red, sometimes even green."
"The fuck, Zach?" My skin crawled, ice and spiders raising goosebumps and making my hair stand on end.
The eyes had given me chills the first time I'd seen them, but lately I'd enjoyed reading them.
Red was when she was impatient, desperate to get me inside her.
Gold was kind of usual, but glowed brightest when staring up at me from between my legs as she ran her tongue up and down my eternally stiff cock.
Green…in the pausing moments, ones where it was almost like we were both satisfied, resting together. And then she'd start up again.
"Mine always start mid-kiss, like I'm just kinda waking up with her already there. Do you try to talk to her? I used to, when they started. ‘Bout two weeks ago, yeah?"
I sat up like a shot and banged the door of the confessional open, swiveling on my heel and throwing his open.
Zach was just sitting there, frowning to himself.
He was dressed in his robes—Kais and I figured he hadn't really gotten to wear them before the Rising, and anyway Zach still really had faith.
His hair caught the light of the candles on the other side of the room, little shimmers of gold in the honey.
One blue eye and one almost amber flicked up to meet mine.
"You…" I couldn't find the words.
"She doesn't ever answer, does she?" Zach asked. "She doesn't make a sound. I can feel everything , but it's like the world's on mute."
The only time there was a sound was when I woke myself up with my moaning. I gaped at my friend, some combination of shock and horror and…there was jealousy too, wasn't there? She was mine , this crystal-clear perfect woman of my dreams that didn't make a sound and never seemed satisfied.
I'd become almost obsessed with her, that was what I was confessing. I was possessive of a fiction.
And it wasn't even entirely my own.
"Kais?" I asked.
Zach's eyes widened and slid away as he thought. He shrugged. "He hasn't said anything, but I wasn't planning on saying anything either. Do you think the others…?"
We—well, mainly Zach and Kais—didn't take too many confessions from the small community of people we protected.
I wouldn't have let anyone call me a priest at all if it weren't for the fact that it reassured them.
I helped kill the demons that circled our borders, but I didn't give sermons on Sunday like Zach, or go door to door like Kais to check on families and the injured and the women who cared for abandoned children.
From what I could tell, Zach and Kais were pretty lenient on some of the old traditional sins.
How could any of us judge each other for being angry with God?
We were an abandoned flock. And the three of us held the group together with protection and listening ears and understanding more than the structure of a faith that had failed us.
"If anyone was going to hear anything, it'd be you or Kai," I said, shrugging.
I turned and looked around the church. It was an old beast of a building that we'd found when we moved our community out of the city and into rural Massachusetts three years ago.
Half the stained glass was broken, repaired with old windows, and one of the men had done his best to restore the large crucifix hanging high behind the dias.
It was a half-hearted replica of the parish I'd led in Boston before I'd stepped down.
"Even the two of us…it's not a coincidence, Stav," Zach said, drawing my gaze back to him.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels. I regretted the confession. I'd marred the one good thing in my life from the past two weeks, the past year.
It came pre-tainted, you just didn't want to see it .
"What are you thinking?" I asked, but my thoughts were already turning in an ugly direction.
"It was strange enough before. Too…specific, explicit. I've never had sex," Zach whispered, and I tried to fight my smile.
This poor kid. Like he thought it was a secret.
If he weren't so good with the flock, so good at killing the fucking demons, I would've tried to talk him out of his collar to go out and live a little. As much as he could at least, in this half-world. There were a couple girls his age in the community, and a couple of women a little older, who absolutely panted up at him when he gave sermons. There was me too, although I wasn’t sure if he’d want to hear that.