CHAPTER SEVEN:
FOR I HAVE SINNED
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When a baby enters the world fresh from their mother's womb, the first sound they hear is of their own cries. Their tears are the first to touch their skin, rendering them the smallest amount of comfort. They are born from pain to inflict pain—to abuse, to maim, to assault, to kidnap, to corrupt, to blackmail, to ruin, to murder.
A parent cries their loudest twice in their life: once when their child is born, and once when their child has died.
Eddie will never forget the night he heard the cries of a mother who was not his own as he stood from a distance, his murder weapon parked in his father's garage with blood dripping from the grill.
He remembers seeing her look to the sky, cursing the person who stole her young child's life. He remembers coming home to see his father with a belt in his hand, ready to give him another one of his daily beatings.
This time, it was different.
This time, Eddie felt numb.
Running from home felt like the smartest thing to do at the moment, and he doesn't know if he'll regret the decision or not until he reaches the pew of the church he's started to believe feels more like home than his own. When he gets there, the sight of the boy he hasn't seen in a month graces him, and regret floods his body.
He doesn't want him to see him like this—a monster in the making.
"Father Pike?"
His voice is broken, a direct parallel to his bruised ribs and ripped skin. It doesn't take long for him to drop the car keys in his hand and fall to the floor, his knees hitting marble as he hunches over to let out a silent cry. There is a pair of hands that drags him up and gently places him at the pew, and he looks up for a second to meet the eyes of the last person he wants to speak to.
"What happened, Eddie?" Father Pike rushes over to the kid immediately. He takes the keys from his hand, hands them to Damon, who has an inexpressible look on his face, and gestures for him to sit down beside the shaking boy. "Did your father—"
"Father Pike," he cries, and the pain from the gashes on his back subside when he thinks of the heinous crime he committed an hour prior. "I did something really bad, and I tried—I tried so hard to make it better, to confess, and he didn't let me. He told me I'd be next if I even thought about telling the cops, and he—he did this. But his abuse means nothing anymore. I'm gonna be the one going to Hell. There's no... God, there's no salvation for me—not anymore. There's no atonement, Father."
The crime can't leave his lips.
It isn't the blood on his clothes or the glass lodged in his skin that gives him the need to leave this world and its suffering behind. It isn't even the atrocious nature of his father, who comes home after a long day of work to let his anger out on his son. It's the utter blasphemy of his deed, of the irreversible act that's banished him to Hell.
"There is no sin that cannot be absolved," says the priest as he rests a loving hand on the boy he's been thinking of as a second child. "There is no sin that cannot be atoned."
"There is," he presses through his hot tears, and he revels in the burn they give his split lip. "My sin—my sin cannot be atoned. There is no Heaven for me... not after tonight. I—I committed the biggest sin in the Book, Father. How am I going to live after this? The little boy... I was just having some fun with my friends, I swear. We didn't—we didn't know it was gonna happen. And his mom's cries... He came out of nowhere. I didn't see him. I swear I didn't."
It's now Damon's turn to comfort him, and he does so in the only way he knows how. Not allowing the boy to protest, he brings his arm around his frail body and lightly pulls him to his side. Immediately, the boy ignores the burn of his back and shoves his forehead into his shoulder, letting his sobs come out shamelessly.
Neither boy knows what to do at that moment.
Eddie's too weak to lift his head up, and he doesn't want them to see him cry anyway. Damon's too stunned to say a word, and he would curse himself to Hell if he let himself say something that'd make everything worse. So, the two of them remain in their positions until the third person in the room decides to speak up.
"It was a mistake, son."
But it wasn't, he wants to scream out. Nobody told me to drink, nobody told me to get in that car with the idiots I call friends, nobody told me to turn into a killer overnight. It's all my fault, Father—can't you see that? There are no mistakes in murder.
"There is a story from Psalm 32. Do you know it?"
From the cavity of Damon's shoulder, Eddie shakes his head.
"David killed a man for the sole purpose of stealing his wife," he begins with a voice calm as the tides despite the circumstances laid out before him. "And you wanna know what happened next? He was forgiven, because he truly felt guilt envelope his body, and he repented with all of his soul. 'Seek the Lord while he may be found... for he will freely pardon.' Isaiah 55:6. I was wrong in what I said to you—there is one sin that is unforgivable, but it is not yours. It is the sin of turning your back on God when you need Him most, and refusing to open your heart to accept His forgiveness."
The same pain enters Damon's chest, except it's worse this time. It's the kind to bring bile to his throat, adding to his agony.
It's as if someone's taken a branding iron straight to his skin and left it there—it burns so bad. He bites his tongue to redirect the hurt, hard enough to draw blood. It barely helps, but it does enough for him not to shove Eddie off him and run out of the church like he did the last time he saw the boy.
I need to be here. I need to be here. I need to be here.
The words race in his mind and he repeats them over and over again, convincing himself to endure the scorching pain. He moves his eyes to focus on the boy who's holding onto him for dear life, and makes his mind up when he feels the cold of his tears seeping through his shirt.
I need to be here.
There is only one reason he can't get up and leave the church.
For Eddie.
Nothing matters to him more in that moment. He can will himself to forget the fact that the boy he's hugging has committed one of the most serious crimes known to man; he can will himself to bear the burn of his chest to hold him in his arms for the rest of the night.
"We need to clean your back," he speaks into his hair. This causes Eddie to lift his head up, and Damon finds himself missing the heat of his body. "Just 'cause you think you deserve this doesn't mean you do."
He remembers that the priest who has kept him silent company for the past month carries a first-aid kit in his office. It had come up when Damon came into the church one day with a cut on his finger from chopping up vegetables for dinner with his roommate, a girl he hadn't given the priest the name of yet. Father Pike had led him up to his office to disinfect his wound, and not an ounce of his soul had forgotten the good deed.
One look from the holy man was enough for him to stand from the pew and leave the two with a reassuring glance as he made his way to the back of the church, on the look-out for the red box that saved him from a run-in with sepsis.
"That's the most I've heard him speak," Father Pike comments to Eddie after he leaves, a kind smile on his face. "Though you believe you are a monster, Eddie, the impact of your soul tells me something different entirely. Even I haven't gotten more than a sentence or two out of that kid at once. Everyday, he comes to the church to sit at the same spot he met you in all those weeks ago. You and I both know the kid isn't Catholic. I think it's clear he's been trying to see you all this time. He's never had a conversation with me before tonight either, but you show up and he suddenly knows how to speak. Your soul calls to him, son."
Eddie remains silent, but he lets his words sink in.
Damon has been coming to the church everyday, to a place with values he doesn't even believe in nor follow, for him?
The thought doesn't make any sense to him, but it soothes his injuries and offers him the smallest amount of comfort. It brings a smile to his face despite the predicament he's found himself in. A boy he's met once in his life has pushed everything aside to look for him on a daily basis, and he didn't run away from him when he hinted at his crime. Either he's crazy, or he's completely fucking insane.
When Damon comes back with a box and a determined look on his face, Father Pike gestures for him to sit back down as he rolls up his sleeves. It's at that moment they're able to see the tattoos crawling up his arm: a serpent, a name Damon can't make out, and...
"A crescent," Damon whispers, his words unheard by the two others in the church.
Eddie hisses in pain once Father Pike begins to sanitize the wounds on his back, and Damon's too distracted by the priest's tattoos to notice his hand's being death-gripped by a kid he barely knows.
Why does he have the Moon tattooed on his arm, and why hasn't he mentioned it before? More importantly, why didn't he mention it earlier when their topic of conversation was—quite literally—the Moon?
Damon knows why.
His gaze moves to Eddie, more specifically on his hands, and he finally notices that his fingers are clasped together with the boy who's crying in agony. He tries to pull his hand out of his grasp, but Eddie just squeezes harder, and he then ceases his effort to rid the boy of this comfort. Instead, he takes his other hand, grabs a dampened towel from the box, and begins to dab at Eddie's face to get rid of the semi-dry blood.
The two of them remain in this position for quite some time, Eddie with tears in his eyes and Damon with no apparent emotion in his. It's a silent sort of understanding the two have between each other—a set fate where, when one commits the unthinkable, the other will be right by their side with a keen eye and a box of medical supplies.
And one path amongst all remains certain: In a world of misery, Eddie's found his first constant in a boy who carries unspoken sins of his own.