Heavy Blood

17. Izuna

I couldn't remember how I'd gotten home that evening. One second I stood over my dead brother, the other I was on the mattress in my room in the cathedral. I changed the bedsheets to have something to do, put the old ones in the laundry basket in the bathroom. When I came back, I was still crying. I went to the kitchen, found ingredients and made a batch of cookies. I had no idea why. I had no memory of how I knew the amounts of oats, flour, butter, raisins, baking powder and vanilla, but the kitchen ended up smelling amazing, and I placed the cookies on a rack to cool. I was completely on autopilot. It was all very bizarre. I went back to the bedroom, sat down on the mattress with a plate of three of the cookies and a glass of oat milk and ate and drank. It was delicious. I found my notepad, and before I knew it, I started writing a letter to myself. That letter was filled with so much hate, so much self-loathing, so many angry words and despicable comments that I started crying out of pure sadness of how mean they were. It broke my heart that I could be so cruel to myself. Tears dripped onto the paper one by one, and soon, I was a crying, snotty mess.

I had no memory of getting into the stone room, but I found myself standing in the middle of it. Suddenly, I was naked. No memory of undressing. It was cold. So cold. Cold and clammy and very much like a cellar. I went to the hanger where Tobirama hung his discipline and traced it with my fingers. It was covered in his dried blood. I broke off some of it, took it to my mouth, licked it. I had always liked the rusty taste of blood. I took the rope down from the hanger. I was suddenly naked. My brain did not give the order to my arm to lift it; it was as if it did it on its own accord. Before I knew it, I had whipped my back once. My knees buckled underneath me, and I fell forwards with a scream. I was trembling, and my teeth started to shatter. I felt hot, then cold, then hot again. And then the pain caught up to me. A white-hot burning sensation started in my back, and spread out, slowly but steadily. It got worse and worse and I panicked. I waited for the level of pain to reach a plateau but it didn't; it kept increasing. I roared out of pure pain; it was as if someone held a burning sword against my back. I screamed out for Tobirama to come and help me. How? How did Tobirama do this to himself? So many times, every day? Again, my hand acted on its own accord, and another slash was created over my back. I found that once I started, I couldn't stop; before I felt the excruciating pain from the previous rash, I beat myself again, and again, and again. The terrible bullying from my letter to myself came back to me. If you paid for the experimental treatment, he might have lived. He might have suffered less. You money-hungry whore. Somewhere deep inside me, there was another voice; a kinder, different one. You did everything you could. You did more than anyone else in your situation would. You went beyond what is realistic for your big brother. Immediately, those thoughts were pushed back by my arm, that let the rope slash down my back a sixth time, a seventh, an eighth. After thirteen times, I felt my cold cheek against the cold floor, a trail of drool running down from my bottom lip.

And that's how Tobirama found me.

I loved him. God, I loved him so much. My love for him almost made me believe in the God he so whole-heartedly believed in. I could somehow see why he did. How could coincidences create something as beautiful as this man?

Tobirama had first taken care of my back, cleaning it and put soft dressings on it. Then, down at the altar, clad in his full priest robe, hot as hell where he would definitely go after this because Father, he had sinned, he started walking around me, tying one of my limbs after the other to the fence around the altar on my left side, and the heavily decorated crucifix with statues to my right. And he was chanting while doing it, his voice so deep that if I hadn't heard it that day I came here with my class, I wouldn't have believed it belonged to him, forming words in Latin that rolled over his tongue beautifully as he prayed while he tied me up. The whole situation was so kinky that I almost died. Once he was done, he just stood there for a while, looking down on me. I looked right back at him, panting. He walked over to the side then, opened a tiny cabinet in the brick wall I hadn't noticed before, and took a bottle and a beautifully carved gold-covered goblet out. He then walked towards me again, steps steady, his robe flying behind him, his long, purple collar glistening in the dim lights. I swallowed.