Chapter 15 Scarlett
Scarlett
Things were growing worse with each passing week. They kept getting closer and closer, and today?
I guess this was their present.
What better way to celebrate the birth of their God than to feel their semen running down my thighs, over my butt, across my back. What better way to celebrate than to feel their scratchy, horrible hands scraping over my skin.
Thomas always hated when they covered me in that stuff, but he had been watching lately, as if his version of taking out his anger was watching them do this to me.
It always took them longer these days too. When I was younger, these…sessions, they only lasted 20 or 30 minutes, but now?
It didn’t matter how much I stretched, how much I prepared, standing in one position this long always left me sore. So sore that I could barely walk.
But better me.
It was better that it was me.
Last month, there had been an influx of children to the church. They had been so excited. Kids so small, I could see their beautiful little faces when they ran by. No younger than four. Such light in their eyes, such beauty.
I had thought it so exciting that we finally had some kids running around. It made the church seem less like Hell and more…warm, but then…
Two weeks ago, Thomas did not take me to the Back Hall, but I did see Pastor Masters talking to a small group of those children which had left me feeling worried and something else. It was like a burning in the pit of my stomach, this new feeling. It felt familiar and wholly new at the same time.
A few years ago, I never would have worried about whether or not they were taking kids into the Back Hall, but now?
So many things were changing. I’d like to believe they would never do such a thing, but there was no way to know for sure anymore.
Not unless they spoke of it, and they were being very careful with the words they now used.
Anger and hatred ran through these people like the plague, and it was getting harder and harder for them to hide it. As if the demons they read about in the Good Book were now infecting them.
I knew what would happen if they were paired with a bad Pillar.
A bad Leader. I wanted them to have a good life, and they wouldn’t get that if they remained here, especially with what was happening.
I didn’t want them infected with demons too.
I wanted them to be happy, to never lose those smiles or that laughter.
I wanted them to fly away like the hummingbird I saw on the poster in my changing room.
They deserved to be like that hummingbird.
But how long would that little laughter last if they remained here?
When the last Leader was finally done, Thomas allowed them all to clean up and leave before he forced me to a stand, pain erupting in my thighs, in my stomach, my arms, and across my spine. I hated it.
Being a Favorite was bearable up until that church burned down. Ever since then…
He led me back across the hall, gave me a bucket and a cloth, and I was to clean myself up and make myself look as good as new before we left the Back Hall.
Better me, I kept telling myself. Better me than them. It would always be better me than them.
The water he gave me was always so cold and there was never enough. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I could never rid myself of the feeling of their semen on my skin.
But at least I was still pure.
That’s all that mattered now. My purity.
It took twenty minutes alone just to brush out my hair. I didn’t add a braid this time, it was pointless. Adding a braid, wearing red, it was all aimless. It didn’t matter whose Favorite I was, it would all end the same.
Them penetrating me over and over again. All of them. Their semen inside of me. Stealing away every ounce of purity I had, splitting it between them all, their penises going into me over and over and over again.
It made me want to throw up.
Three and a half years and all Azrael was to Pastor Masters was a transporter. As far as I knew, he never requested to go to the Back Hall. He never pushed, but I was long since okay with it now.
Why would I want him standing with the others around me pulling on his penis until he orgasmed? His noises getting mixed in with theirs.
This was for the best. The imagination was a terrible, horrible place. It’s where I needed to stay. It’s where I had to stay until my last days.
However soon they would come.
When I was finally done, my church clothes back on, my hair pulled tightly back, I walked out of the room to the hall where Thomas was waiting for me.
Everything was starting to feel different inside of me now too. Maybe the demons had infected me, but rather than making me colder, like everyone else here, they only made me tired.
I suppose that was the point though. The more tired I was, the more compliant, and that’s what they liked. It’s what they had always liked.
Thomas shoved his phone away and clicked his tongue, heading for the door that led back to the sanctuary.
I was never allowed a phone. Mother said that’s where the demons came from. That using one would only make my mind as impure as my body would be if I was penetrated.
All I was allowed these days were some books.
They were all about the church, about God.
To reaffirm what Pastor Masters had been teaching me most of my life.
I had read all of them multiple times, memorizing them front to back because it was part of my purpose.
I had to be the perfect Favorite, the perfect wife.
I had to honor my husband and keep him honorable.
My entire life was always leading to that day.
A day I had been dreading ever since I could remember.
I used to hope all the time. Hope that things would change.
Hope that Thomas would go back to being kind if I was just good enough.
Hope that the lashings would stop, that the nightmares wouldn’t haunt me.
Hope that the entire church would burn to the ground, the screams of everyone inside echoing around the world like some sort of beautiful melody.
But my hope had died a long time ago. Another feeling had been slowly growing under my skin, replacing it, slinking through the exhaustion that was resting its head in my veins, and it burned.
I wondered more and more these days if I would ever escape this place in any other way but death.
And sometimes, when it got really quiet in the middle of the night, when no one could hear my thoughts, I wondered how beautiful it would be to fill this church with the blood of everyone who had ever touched me.
Those thoughts weren’t meant to be in a woman’s mind. The Good Book said as much, but I couldn’t stop them. No matter how hard I tried, they just grew and grew and grew. The worse the demons living in this church got, the worse those thoughts became.
Maybe I was infected.
And maybe I didn’t care anymore.
I followed Thomas back through that door, my hands folded at my hips, and I immediately felt the warmth of those eyes land on my skin.
I was too exhausted to feel that skip of my heart that I always felt when his eyes skimmed over me, but I did feel a slight twinge of confusion.
Why was he still here? It was after church hours; he shouldn’t have been here.
“What are you still doing here?” Thomas asked him. “Everyone’s busy.”
I wasn’t close enough to see his shoes, but I knew exactly which direction he was in without him ever having said a word.
“I can see that,” he said, his voice sending a soft shiver down my spine.
He sounded far away. Perhaps sitting in the pews.
His voice had changed over the years, I had noticed, but more so over the last few months, just like everything else.
It had become more volatile, more sing-song, but I didn’t think anyone else could hear it, not unless he threatened them like he liked to threaten Thomas.
The tsunami was nearing. Inching closer day by day, and they couldn’t hear the warnings.
Maybe they didn’t want to.
I didn’t know what Azrael’s plans were, how deep they went, but I knew this church would suffer because of it.
He wasn’t a spy for the Elders, so maybe he was something much worse.
Something they wouldn’t be able to track. Something sent from the deepest parts of this world. Something with a mission to take down this church for good.
But don’t you know, Azrael, where one burns, five more pop up. You can’t take down this place, no one can. Not even The Family has been able to touch it, how could you?
“Can we not sit here and speak to the dear heavenly father?” Azrael hummed. “Here I thought this was a hospital for the sinners. Is that not what the Good Book says?”
Mark 2:17. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but the sinners.”
It was almost time for my monthly check up, I just realized.
Any day now. Perhaps next Sunday. I wondered what they would find.
Despite the soreness in my muscles and a few scratches from the Leaders, I didn’t think anything was wrong with me, but he liked to check between my legs too and sometimes, that scared me.
I didn’t like what he did. It never felt right.
“The doors are locked for a reason,” Thomas replied tightly. “You are not welcome when the service is over, you know that. The doors will reopen at five. That is when you can speak to him.”
Because by that time, we would all be long gone. All of us. There wouldn’t be a shred of evidence in that Back Hall once those doors unlocked this evening.
But was he truly here to pray or was he just tired of waiting for Pastor Masters to give him access to those sacred doors? Maybe he had questioned Pastor Masters about going back there, and maybe he had been declined, and that’s why he lingered.
He had to have made the oath to become a Pillar, to become a transporter, but I suppose everyone else broke it. Why shouldn’t he?
I no longer felt any hope, but the Queen of Hearts would never have given up. She would have found a window, a secret door, a key hidden in the back of a drawer behind a false wall.
Maybe my key was hidden in those nightmares I was having.
Azrael seemed to be drawing this out, which only verified my idea that he was here collecting other kinds of data too, just not for the Elders. Maybe the Back Hall was the last thing he needed to put the nail in the holy coffin.
“And yet, here I am,” he sang, his voice closer.
My tired heart fluttered. Maybe I would get to see his shoes today.
“Clever me,” he said, a smile touching his words. “Are you going to tell daddy-dearest? Or are you going to take your pretty little pet and disappear?”
My eyes flicked up enough to see his knees from where he was nearing us yards away before they fell back to my feet. “No,” I thought, my heart ripping from my chest. Did anyone see?
“I couldn’t help it, please forgive me,” I begged the Lord. “I’m sorry, it was just for a second, just a—a moment.”
He had called me pretty. That word with his voice sounded so much more than it had coming from Thomas’.
“Tell him what?”
“That I needed an extra prayer session, of course. That I needed a few extra moments to praise the great God Almighty for His blessings, glorious day!” he proclaimed, his voice echoing through the room, through my soul.
I could hear the hatred dripping in his voice when he said those words. The sea was churning, the waves building, the storms brewing. The tsunami was nearly here, everything coming to a catalyst of misery because why?
Why was this happening? Why was Azrael Thorin here? He had his own Favorites so he had to have been a part of the Church of Daylight. Maybe they had wronged him in some way. Wronged his Favorites.
There were so many stories in the Good Book about God testing his people, was this one of those tests?
A man out for revenge against those who hurt his Favorites?
Favorites who got caught in the crossfire between The Family and the church?
I had never heard of such a thing in this life, a Pillar caring so much for their women, it seemed impossible.
Would I be one of those he hung on the cross? Punished for not being the perfect Favorite? For being attached to this place? Would we all be punished for breaking the rules? Would we all burn in Azrael’s version of holy fire?
“Do you think this is a joke?” Thomas asked, taking a step forward. “I don’t care what your agenda is, you don’t deserve to be here and as soon as I am able, I’m going to file a petition with the Elders to have you excommunicated. You don’t deserve to be a Daylighter.”
I think that’s why Azrael liked playing with him so much. Because Thomas had guessed at the truth a long time ago, but his father and the other Leaders didn’t take him seriously enough to listen. They write it off as jealousy while Azrael collects his information.
“Do what you have to do,” he hummed and walked past us.
Thomas growled under his breath before he clicked his tongue. My feet began to move automatically.
But just as Azrael and I crossed paths like ships in the night, he leaned in, his scent flooding my senses. “No braid today, little sinner?” He paused. “Pity.”
My heart leaped into my throat, and I felt a muscle around my eye twitch. They wanted to widen. My lips wanted to part, but my autopilot was far more powerful than any words said to me by any man, even him.
He had noticed.
He had given me a name.
Little sinner, that was me. But why? Did he see my braid as rebellion? It wasn’t, I was allowed. I was allowed one braid I made sure of it. Nothing in the Good Book said I wasn’t allowed to have one braid. Thomas said. Thomas said I was allowed, so I was. I made sure of it. I was sure of it.
Had I committed another sin then? Was I impure?
No, if I was impure, Thomas would have said. I would have been punished.
So why that nickname? I had never heard him call anyone else anything but their names. Their first names. Except for Daffodil, Little Mouse, and Wild Rose.
Did that mean he had intentions? That he had intentions of making me his Favorite? Would he make it official soon? Would I be one of the ones he sought revenge for? Was I, for some reason, chosen to be protected by the tsunami itself?
He had noticed the braid.
He had noticed me.
And now that I was under his gaze, I never wanted to leave.