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Riquet simply cannot pray enough.
Indeed, God is not merely a room in his household, but the very foundation that keeps the home together—he kneels before his little bedroom altar crammed delicately with an array of colourfully sacred statues and icons, muttering his twentieth Hail Mary. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. His trembling hands rub against the thick lace of the altar as he squeezes his eyes shut and recalls a verse from Psalms.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This could, perhaps, refer to Christ—exegetically speaking, a common interpretation is that it refers to the multitudes that failed to believe in Jesus Christ’s message before realising that salvation is by His grace: Christ is, after all, the foundation upon which the world is built.
It is much like religion’s place in Riquet’s life. Christ’s glorious image was once a motley collection of fears pushed into his mind by the cloistered faith he grew up in. Holy Mary, mother of God— it is now something so essential in his life that he cannot reject it. God is the reason everything happens, and Jesus is, too, his cornerstone: he knows that he can rely on Christ any time he needs a divine audience.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
So why now does he feel that Christ has severed a connection? He can’t explain the light that swells within him when he prays. Rather, the light that ordinarily would swell. Today, he prays out of fear. He has been praying out of fear recently—his mind is occluded with spinning images of a fiery hell. Nothing could be so clear or so hot in his mind. Even as he ponders the Hail Mary, he can feel the flames lapping at his knees and climbing up his body as he is yanked into the brimstone oblivion.
Amen.
Twenty is not enough. As a number, it barely scratches perfection—perfection may be found in seven. There is a theological basis for this, but he understands that much of it lies in hermeneutical ideas that he does not necessarily subscribe to. Yet he must achieve twenty-one. It must be a number that is right .
Otherwise—no. The thought of murdering his parents floats into his head. He can imagine Nero with the blood seeping out of his chest, a knife driven into a vague cavity. He can imagine the guilt chewing at him as he watches the dim light fade from Nero’s eyes as he hurtles into death, his expression growing blank and frozen. He can see it and he hates it but he can’t get it out of his head no matter how hard he attempts to replace it with Christ and Christ and Christ.
Twenty-one. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…
He knows that this compulsive prayer is borne out of a groundless fear of sin, a completely illogical formation of doubts and self-castigation. Nobody is sinless, but all are redeemed in Christ. That is what he knows. Why, then, does he feel the eyes of God burning into his back in his attempt to cleanse himself of sin? He knows the commandment: Love your neighbour as you have loved yourself. He follows it so lovingly. But somehow he is so impure. There’s a pervasive feeling of filth that crawls all over his body and he doesn’t know why but he can’t get rid of it no matter how hard he prays.
Blessed art thou— he recalls a lurid scene. What if he might kill Bradley someday? What if he leaves the room and suddenly loses control in the hallway, busts the door open, and goes on a rampage and kills his parents with his own tiny, thin hands? What if he goes so far as to desecrate their corpses, ripping apart their bones and digging into their muscle?
He needs to use the bathroom.
When he steps out of his quaint, barely-peaceful bedroom, he is careful to whisper the Lord’s Prayer as he slips by his parents’ room a little faster. He washes his hands off seven times—even the flesh must be free of sin.
It’s a sweltering, golden morning and Bradley is out buying groceries. Nero’s just made Riquet a pleasing risotto—it’s certainly a nicely-made lunch, and the scarcely-scorched risotto is of a most glorious texture. Riquet loves the grains’ every contour, allowing the taste of mushroom to pour down his tongue. He almost feels like he doesn’t deserve something so good after all his sin.
Bradley is out buying groceries and Riquet can’t stop thinking about what would happen if Bradley were suddenly beat up by a bunch of strangers at an aisle of fruits. Reasoning? Absent. Just the horrifying, yet somehow mechanical, mental image of blood bursting and bruises forming in a sea of endless red-on-purple on Bradley’s skin. He shouldn’t be thinking this, but—no, what about if Bradley were out on the street and got hit by a car? He would be crushed completely by the force of the car and its weight on top of him as it attempts to speed past the scene.
It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.
Seven is incredibly reassuring, almost instant in its relief—he’s expressed how unreal this is, how this couldn’t possibly happen to Bradley, of all people. But the violence continues to rage in the back of his mind and there’s no way this could happen but he just has to be sure and he needs to make up for thinking such horrifying things in the first place.
Hesitant, he scoops the last morsels of risotto on his plate. Clearing the plate feels like sin but everything feels like sin.
After an undeserved swallow, he asks Nero: “How is Dadley doing?”
Nero is sitting on the other side of the gingham-covered table, scrolling through some Reddit forum on his cellphone as he drums his fingers on his lap. The tiny noise of Nero’s fingers makes its way into Riquet’s ears, and the sound is not at all irritating. But he is tapping in sets of two. He won’t make a multiple of seven easily like this. In his head, he counts…one-two, three-four…
“Doin’ fine.” Nero shrugs. “Why?”
It feels as though Riquet’s pulse should rise to an unholy level and he should be feeling distinctly sick to his stomach, but none of that is happening. It’s an absent kind of anxiety coursing through him as he asks again: “Are you completely sure he is doing alright?”
“Yeah.” At this point, Nero is knitting his brows together and taking cursory glances into Riquet’s face. Almost as if he thinks it’s such a bizarre inquiry.
The fear that Bradley might literally be getting murdered right this instant cannot be assuaged.
“How do you know this for certain?”
“Textin’ him now. Why so much concern?”
But Nero cannot know why. If Riquet admits all the dark thoughts he has, Nero will believe him to be insane for sure. He can’t handle the potential horror of Nero’s shame to call Riquet his son. Why would Nero love his son who wants him dead? He doesn’t want Nero dead. He thinks about what would happen if Nero drove the car off a cliff. He would die dreadfully as the beat-up car rattles down the air and crashes into the ground. It’d kill him. Maybe not on impact—it would hurt so terribly Nero would simply beg God to take him.
“I’m sorry,” Riquet says, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry, I’m—”
“What’s there to apologise for?” Nero pats Riquet’s head with a firm hand. “Just a kid being concerned. I get it. It happens.”
Nero does not get it. Riquet excuses himself and prays the rosary seven times.
Riquet holds Mitile’s hand at the park and thinks about strangling him. It’ll be gruesome, a decadent terror in which Mitile’s neck is stretched to its limits as his skin pales blue. The thought finally makes his heart race, especially as Mitile scoots up next to him and starts rattling off words he’s too busy having horrible murder thoughts to actually comprehend.
All Mitile is doing is closing the distance and engaging in lovely conversation. Something about how sertraline works. Neurotransmitters. Something. But Mitile is dying in Riquet’s head and none of the words are coming in. Neither is the light unfurling in between the leaves of trees. Neither is the abundance of grass gathering around his feet. He is wearing shoes even if Mitile is barefoot, because he knows that going barefoot will lead to contamination. He will die of a communicable disease from the nasty, moist grass from the park.
That grass will kill Mitile from the inside out. Mitile is rambling and rambling about how sertraline shows relatively high activity as an inhibitor of the dopamine transporter, or perhaps about how it is 98.5% bound to plasma proteins in the blood.
“Did you know that sertraline may interact with grapefruit juice, making the medication less effective?”
Mitile waves his hand, soaking his bare feet in the soft grass as he stares directly at Riquet. Riquet can feel those eyes scorching the side of his face like God’s own eyes as he stares at Mitile’s dirt-dotted feet. Is it not Mitile who taught him of all the pathogens that the world is steeped in? It is. Mitile taught him about sporotrichosis. Sporotrichosis is rarely severe, but he can imagine Mitile heaving as his lungs collapse. He does not know how sporotrichosis works.
That grass, no matter how velvety, is going to kill Mitile. Absently, he shakes his head.
“Riquet?” Mitile tilts his head, his forehead creasing. “You okay? You’ve been acting really weird.”
It’s all Riquet can see now, his hand drifting away from Mitile’s. When he goes to hell, Mitile will come with him. Mitile will burst into hell with his heart dripping out of his chest, all thanks to the knife in Riquet’s hands. He does not understand why Mitile is in hell. Riquet knows he deserves hell—but Mitile is good. Mitile is pure. He’s never been stuck in the thought of bloody murder and hellfire.
“Riquet?” Mitile swallows. “I’m right here. You look…kinda lost.”
He can hardly hear Mitile. They are swallowed by the flames. He wants to reach out but all that is above them is blackness punctuated by fire. There is no ground but heat. His head spins—he does not even believe in the idea of hell as a fiery no man’s land in which mankind is tormented for eternity. God is too loving for that. Yet he is here, blackened skin curling away to reveal a raw layer beneath.
Perhaps this endless loop of Godless thought is hell. Is hell not simply a separation from God?
A piercing scream. “ Riquet! What the heck—”
“Pray with me,” Riquet replies, almost in a daze. If Mitile is hell-bound, then he must entrench himself in the same rituals as Riquet. Cleansing the spirit through prayer—“Let’s pray the Lord’s Prayer seven times.”
Blank face. Mitile looks utterly confused, his jaw dropped wide open as his eye twitches. It’s like he’s looking for the right response to that.
But all he says is: “Why?!”
Riquet draws a sharp breath. “You will understand later. I am trying to save you.”
“You know I’m not that religious. And you’ve never forced me before…”
All the colour has drained from Mitile’s face, his eyes blank as if hit by some insidious terror at Riquet’s suggestion. But if he explains, Mitile will absolutely think he’s gone mad. He’s not mad. He’s only trying to save his life and his soul. If he goes to hell, so be it: someone as good as Mitile cannot follow.
“I cannot explain.” Riquet grips Mitile’s hand, raising their linked hands as his hold grows tighter. It pains his paling joints to maintain this kind of choke. He cannot imagine what it must be like for Mitile, whose fingers are crushed in Riquet’s. Mitile squirms, but all Riquet can do is close his eyes and begin to pray. “Our Father, who art in heaven…”
In an awkward, flailing snap, Mitile tears his hand out of Riquet’s grasp—desperately untangling his fingers as Riquet continues to mutter the Lord’s Prayer with more and more fervour. Heat boils in his gut. He grabs his wrist this time. It’s better he leave a vague, strangled red mark on Mitile’s skin than wrap his hands around his neck and watch his face fade into blue. He’s thinking about it. He could shove Mitile’s face into the ground…
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will—”
A slap cracks across Riquet’s cheek and he forces his eyes open.
Mitile himself looks horrified. “I’m really sorry. But…”
He shakes his head, eyes cast down on the green-brown splotches on Mitile’s feet. “You do not understand. You do not know the truth that I know…it’s been revealed to me, and I’m really just trying to save you.” He puts his hands up, repentant. “I don’t want to hurt you, Mitile.”
Dumbfounded, basically—that is what Mitile looks like. It’s as if he isn’t even sure what facial expression to craft in response to that. He knows how insane he must sound to someone like Mitile, who doesn’t know the hell in his mind. Mitile just doesn’t know how close Riquet is to killing him and how far he is going to prevent this murder. He makes the sign of the cross.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“What truth? What?!” Mitile leans in, his chest puffed out as he inches dangerously close to Riquet’s face. He thinks about snapping his neck. It would be so clean. In the name of… “You’re talking in riddles. You’ve never been this, you know—”
“Devoted?”
“Yeah! You’ve always been devoted, but…not…no, not in this weird apocalyptic way! I mean, you were like that before we met, but…I thought your Scriptural outlook—”
“All I want to do is save you from me and from hell.”
Before we met. Riquet remembers the threats his old church inscribed onto his heart—how his salvation was on the line at every turn, and every forbidden thought would simply bring him closer and closer to his second death in the lake of fire. That human-crafted fear does not exist anymore. Why did God create this fear on His own? What kind of punishment…
“Why you? Why do you need to save me from yourself?”
“I am going to murder you someday.”
He blurts the forbidden sentence out and Mitile freezes in his tracks, then slowly pulls his head away from Riquet. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Agony is painted on every crevice of Mitile’s face. Riquet knew it—he shouldn’t have said anything.
“What do you mean?”
With a deep breath, Riquet confesses: “These past few weeks, I have been having so many thoughts I cannot understand. All these thoughts show me killing you or one of my parents or going to hell, or perhaps getting sick and dying…so I have to pray again and again until the thoughts go quiet, or maybe wash my hands. I don’t want these thoughts, but I am so scared I am going to kill you or someone I love—and I thought about you in hell with me, so I had to…” He chokes on his own tears. His tongue is laced with salt. “I had to make sure you would be saved too.”
“But you know they’re not real, right?”
“Logically, I know they are not. I don’t believe in hell. But they feel so real, it’s like God is punishing me.”
Mitile shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t know what to do…”
Burning. Not just hellfire. Not just the eyes of God. But Riquet’s skin as he curls up beside his cool pillow in the deep illumination of night, somehow ashamed of his own cleansing. Perhaps it is how he has clearly waltzed into obedience of this illogical, faithless demand to wash his hands clean of every thought. Perhaps it is the bleeding of his hands, flesh chipping off his skin and peeling away. Blood leaks out of the middle of his palm and he almost believes he may have been blessed with stigmata.
That is a heretical thought, one thought only by those who purport themselves to be false prophets. The vision of hell has become mechanical—it is the same fire every time licking his skin and decimating every layer into flaky black ash.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
He presses his knees into his chest, recalling the soap bubbles that clouded over his hand in the bathroom. Soap is a precious resource and he cannot keep doing this. Somebody will notice the bits and pieces of skin falling away from his hand, dry cracks ridging his knuckles between lines of seeping blood. Somebody will notice how quickly the soap runs out.
Bradley knocks on the door and doesn’t wait for Riquet’s response.
He sits beside Riquet on the sparse bed, looming over his bunched-up body. Riquet shoves his hands beneath his body and contorts his elbow just enough to cover the bloodstains on the side of his pyjama shirt. It’s an uncomfortable position
Concerned. That’s what Bradley looks like, and that’s what Bradley always is when he randomly comes into Riquet’s room with that face, somehow firm and pleading all at once.
“Kiddo, you’ve been acting weird as shit lately.”
“I guess I am just stressed.”
“With what?” Bradley scoffs. “Y’all are on break. Not like teachers are giving a fuck ton of assignments over the break, eh?”
“They are.” Riquet knows this is not true, but he must come up with a lie. “Faust is making us do this commentary on any one scene in Hamlet , and I am having a lot of difficulty reading the text, and—”
He rolls his eyes. “Bullshit.”
Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. How did Bradley even know? Good God, he’s going to hell. If he wasn’t going to hell already, then he definitely is now. How could he lie to his own father? His hands are screeching for some kind of relief, the chapped skin nagging at him. Tender. Every time he shifts his body, his hand scorches itself inside out as if pierced by a hot needle.
All he can do now is tell the truth. He sits up, careful to tuck his hands underneath the thin blanket. “Yes, I am lying.”
Bradley pulls his legs up on the bed and sits cross-legged, slinging his arm around Riquet. Riquet clenches his fists and eases the blanket up to cover the dried-up bloodstains on his shirt. But it doesn’t seem like Bradley notices the uncomfortable positioning of the blanket—he scrunches up his nose, his forehead creasing as he bares his sharp teeth in a twisted cringe.
“But why?”
“I—” The words simply get lost in his throat as if blocked. He would say what he has been thinking. He would confess that he has had visions of hell and murder and that he needs to pray and avoid and physically clean himself of sin. But he can’t. He can’t lie lest he risk further hellfire, but he can’t tell the truth either. “I don’t know.”
“Tiny talked to me earlier,” Bradley says matter-of-factly, tipping his chin up as he takes a glance at Riquet. “He said ya said some scary shit.”
“Well, I was expressing some interpretations of a particular theological concept,” he replies, technically true. “Mitile is much more accustomed to the clinical, non-eternally-damning interpretations of pharmacology, so it’s natural that explanations of things like hell may be terrifying for him.”
“Ya don’t believe in hell.”
“Yes, and?” Riquet tilts his head, purposely forming his mouth into a doubtful frown as he furrows his brows. “That does not preclude discussion of it as a theological concept. There are many Christian interpretations as to the Biblical idea of hell, and I was only—”
Bradley squeezes his eyes shut, clenching his jaw. “Ya made him pray while ya said some cryptic fuckin’…I get if yer becoming more devoted to God or somethin’, but ya can’t just force it on other people. I respect yer belief, but the things ya said to him—I dunno, kiddo, it’s just some horrifying stuff.”
“Hell is naturally horrifying,” Riquet maintains, “for it is said to be a state of total separation from God, and perhaps even a place of eternal suffering.”
“Yer scared of goin’ to hell?”
He’s unsure of the most honest way to evade this question. He could literally just kill Bradley. That much is true. He knows that thought of just carving out Bradley’s tongue with a knife isn’t something he wants—or that is right. But he can’t stop thinking about how massive of a burst that would be. All the blood. How blood from the throat might spill out like chunky red bits of a raw egg. God, that is disgusting. God, why are You doing this to me?
“…Yes,” he admits.
He thinks about hell again. He can only describe his own pervasive, savage thoughts so much without teetering into repetitiveness, but the repetitiveness is a key feature of them. And it is not boring, but terrifying. It’s an endless loop of hell and blood and hell and blood and his hands feel dirty again but he clenches his fists beneath the blankets because he knows Bradley will see his hands if he gets up to wash them. The liquid soap in the bathroom smells like green apple. Perhaps if he hides and rinses his hands well enough, he can return and the smell won’t be too strong. Hell. And hell.
It’s been silent for a few seconds now.
Bradley knocks his hand on his lap. “I just don’t get why yer so scared of goin’ to hell. I mean, if anything, I should be scared outta my mind.”
“Well, you have probably been responsible for people’s deaths before…”
“Definitely got into some dangerous fights and shit. Did hard drugs, fucked shit up…I cuss every sentence and I’m generally just an asshole.” Bradley chuckles. “But I ain’t scared of going to hell. Ya haven’t done any of that. What’s yer justification?”
“First and foremost, you are an atheist,” Riquet reminds him. “You do not believe in God, much less hell. You have nothing to be afraid of—but each and every of my actions hinges on pleasing God…I need Him to be able to forgive me, you know?”
He unwraps his arm from around Riquet’s body and rests it on the bed. It sends Riquet’s heart flying when his large hand inches near his own small one. He’s almost afraid Bradley will reveal his hands.
Bradley makes an odd, flailing hand gesture he can’t interpret. “But do you think God’ll forgive me for all that? And being a faithless bastard too?”
“Of course,” Riquet says, adamantly. “God loves everyone. He would want to save everyone He can.”
“So why’re ya terrified as fuck of going to hell?”
Riquet looks away. “Because I’m a bad person.”
“But ya do everything good—yer the best kid we could ever ask for. And yer real nice to Tiny. Ya treat everyone right. Why?”
He shrugs, wringing his hands. “I just feel like I am.”
“Ain’t I worse?”
“You don’t understand...it’s just—”
His hands slip his mind and he attempts to gesticulate. He bares the red flaking of his palms, all for Bradley to see.
“I just ain’t…” Bradley seems lost for words. He’s drawing his fingers over Riquet’s rough palms, pressing his fingertips deep enough to electrify a sting surging through the surface of skin. Honestly, he looks horrified—it’s like his eyebrows can’t decide how deep to furrow, or whether he should frown or smile awkwardly. “I don’t get what happened.”
“The soap in the bathroom,” Riquet admits, some hesitation festering in his gut. “I use the liquid and the bar soaps.”
Bradley lets go of his hands and shrugs. “What? Ya allergic or something?”
‘No,” he says. “Well, I wash my hands often nowadays. There is some sort of bug going around in school, and a lot of people are getting colds.”
“Yer on a break.” He’s just baffled at this point.
This tense conversation seems like it has lasted hours. It’s only been minutes, and Riquet is inclined to shove his hands beneath the blanket again instead of absently laying them out on the bed for Bradley to gawk at in their full bloodied glory. He needs to say what he’s thinking, but it’s not something he can say, but he’s committing a sin by lying about it, but revealing his secret would be his own castigation. Bradley is going to die and burn in hell. He’s not, but he is.
“Pray with me,” Riquet says. “In the name of the Father…”
“Gimme a good reason for it,” Bradley prods.
“Because I spend nearly every day and moment thinking about all the horrible ways you and Dad and Mitile could die and all the ways I could kill you all and how we are all going to hell.”
Sometimes he truly does just say words. Sometimes he says things that are far too true and he does not want to say them or hear them or even think about them ever again and now he has said it and now he thinks the door is unlocked and he needs to go check on it so nobody murders Bradley and Nero in the night.
Bradley sputters. “I, well—”
He goes silent, and Riquet asks: “Is the front door locked?”
“Nero locked it,” Bradley says, completely dazed. His eyes are drawn blankly open as he searches for the appropriate hand gesture to make, forming some kind of shrug with his sharply-raised shoulders. His fingers go limp. “I—well, I…the fuck.”
Riquet shakes his head, clasping his red-scarred hands together before his chest as if in prayer. “I felt as though you would react like this—Mitile was also lost when I told him about it, and I think that Dad was a little confused when you were at the grocery and I kept checking in on you because I was worried you had died already, and I…no, I knew.” His voice cracks. “You don’t have to understand, you just have to accept it, I think.”
Bradley shakes his head and presses a firm, hair-laced finger to his temple. “Nah. Ain’t inclined to accept that yer suffering. Yer going through so much goddamn pain and not tellin’ anyone…”
“I told you. I told Mitile.”
“And Nero?”
“He probably knows at this rate,” Riquet admits. There is no way Nero has not noticed something wrong. “But now I realise that I should not have told you because none of you even know how to deal with it.”
“Yer right,” Bradley says, pressing his lips into a thin smile. “We don’t get it. We ain’t professionals when it comes to anythin’ like this. But maybe there’re things we can do to help, yanno?”
Almost immediately, Riquet’s body crunches up into the bed. He lies down, pressing his knees up to his neck and his arms encasing his legs as he squeezes down onto himself. “I just don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Brad told me what ya told him last night.” Nero shrugs. “Was like that too when I was younger. Always obsessed with whether I’d kill a guy or what. Then I’d check and check and check all the doors and the oven and all that shit…Waste of time.”
Riquet backs himself up against the crammed sofa, attempting to half-focus on the muted crime drama on the television and Nero’s words. His hands are not bleeding as badly, but his skin is a scorched, scabbed wasteland. “So you mean you experienced the same problems?”
When he glances behind him, he can see that Nero’s chopping some large, fragrant white onions on a cutting board on the countertop, knife glistening beneath his fingers. The thought of Nero lopping his own fingers off scrambles into his mind and chews at its crevices. Nero’s a good chef. He won’t do that. One can never be too sure. It is irrational. In the name of the Father…
“Yeah. Probably not exactly the same; everyone’s different,” Nero says, shrugging as he slides chopped onion bits into a glass bowl and moves onto some smaller red onions. Balance. “But I know I’d worry ‘bout all this weird shit—numbers and murder and all that. Really sucks to see ya go through the same thing.”
He frowns, his train of thought having been stopped mid-Lord’s Prayer. “I truly wonder what you did to even help yourself out of that situation. It seems as though all I know how to do is check and pray.”
Shaking his head, he says: “Those’re things ya shouldn’t do.”
“But I need to pray because I love God and I want to talk to Him.”
“All things rock in moderation,” Nero says, peeling skin off a red onion. “‘S great to pray. Just ain’t great to pray all of a sudden ‘cause yer scared you’ll kill everyone otherwise. Get it?”
“But I really am—no, you’re right. It is quite an irrational thought,” Riquet admits, tuning out the cold, clinical crime drama on television as he stares out the sunrise-tinged window. “I don’t want to say that these thoughts are irrational because, on the off chance that they are true, I may have failed by not warning you.”
“Want me to tell ya none of the things you’re thinking are true?”
Riquet sighs, grabs the remote, and shuts off the TV. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Nero says, dropping chopped red onion into his little glass bowl. He puts a mesh food cover over his glass bowls and walks over to the living room, standing over the couch with his hands flat on the backrest. Riquet can feel Nero simply looming over him. “Guess ya want me to tell ya nothing’s gonna happen—that all your nightmares and intrusive thoughts of killin’ us, going to hell…all that. Ya want me to tell ya none of it’s real.”
He shifts, sunlight moving over his skin as he crawls to the opposite end of the couch. He cannot have Nero standing over him like that. He might lose control and murder him. But he admits it: “I would like nothing more than for you to tell me that everything will be alright. I need the reassurance that I am not a bad person. I am not going to kill anyone, right? And I won’t go to hell for these thoughts, right?”
Leaning over the couch and thumbing a threadbare pillow, Nero bares a quick smile. “Ya gonna ask me for that reassurance again tomorrow?”
Riquet shrinks. “I will try not to, but I most likely will.”
“Asking for that reassurance…eh, ‘s a vicious cycle, ya know?” Nero pivots and sits himself on the couch next to Riquet. He smells strongly of onions and garlic and his smile is so soft, so pleasant—it’s a great thing Riquet’s hands are far too bony and small to strangle him. “Ya keep asking and ya keep asking and it feeds the fear. Ya get the safe feeling, then ya feel anxious again. ‘S the same thing as all that prayer.”
“I understand that…but I want to keep praying.” Riquet shakes his head. “Some of it is really just to stave off the fear of sin, but some of it makes me feel like I am closer to God.”
“Ya gotta find that medium—prayin’ when ya wanna talk to God, not ‘cause you’re scared you’ll go straight to hell if you don’t,” Nero says. “And we’ll all be here with ya while you figure out that medium.”
His gaze dips down to his lap as he fidgets with his dried fingers, chipping skin away around his fingernails. “Thank you, Dad.”
“And maybe…let’s find someone ya can talk to ‘bout this, alright?”
When Riquet looks up, he’s almost certain Nero is about to cry. He’s not used to seeing him so outwardly emotional—the way the corners of his eyes crinkle, wet with tears as his lips tremble. But Riquet is a little confused. He tilts his head.
“But I can always talk to you, can’t I?”
“I don’t always have the answers, kid,” he says, sniffling. It’s unusual, too, to see Nero wiping tears out of his eye. “Hate these onions Brad bought, so strong they’re makin’ me cry…but ya get what I mean. I’m great for emotional support. I love ya. Good to rely on a dad. But I’m not a genius. I can be here with ya and know how ya feel. I’ve been there. But maybe an outside perspective would help, eh?”
Riquet shakes his head in disbelief. Really?
“You are not crying because of those onions.”
His voice cracks. “Yeah, ya got me.”
“And an outside perspective—like a doctor? You mean a…what does Mitile call them—a shrink?”
“Yeah. Not the word I’d use. But yeah.” Nero smiles. “The kinda doctors that do good for the mind.”
His gut churns. He isn’t really sure how he is supposed to respond to that, really; he isn’t quite sure how much he is allowed to treat this like a sickness. A sickness of his morality and salvation, perhaps. But how could this be borne out of his mind? How could one on Earth heal this bedlam? Maybe he deserves to go to hell. A doctor does not know that.
But there is something moving about Nero smiling through his tears. His soft smile is almost forceful—his lips twitch as he tries to grin with his teeth. But he begins to weep again.
Even if it were a sin to think about all this evil, is his guilt not compensation enough? Would it not be worse to hurt and be hurt? Riquet can see the pain washing over Nero’s face. And he can remember Bradley’s harrowing concern for his hands. Mitile’s expression of horror at his compulsive prayer is still so fresh in his mind. Does God not only wish for love?
Nero leans in closer, crossing his arms. “So—uh…sorry, so—would ya wanna try seeing one of those?”
Some hesitation festers inside Riquet. But he nods. “Yes.”
—
Riquet’s prayer that night is tranquil. He brushes his hands over the colourful altar in the corner of his room, feeling the tough material of the saints standing on the lace. When he takes a glance at the ornately-painted Jesus on the wall, he feels as though Christ is staring right at him. Perhaps if he looked at the painting yesterday, he would have felt a fiery gaze of judgment.
Tonight, he feels as though Christ glances on him with kind eyes. His face does not morph into a devilish image. There is no hidden hell, no fire burning past the sacred heart. Only love.
As his hand settles over Mother Mary’s gold-shimmering halo, he weeps and prays.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The urge to repeat the sign of the cross six more times wrenches his insides. But he resists. It is not magic. It is not a miracle. But it is a beginning.
He prays for a few things.
First and foremost, he prays that he will see Mitile again the next day, or perhaps the day after that—and he won’t be too freaked out, so he’ll be fine hanging out with Riquet. Perhaps Riquet will be able to more adequately explain what is happening to him.
And he prays that Bradley and Nero won’t worry too hard. No. He prays that they will have no reason to worry. Riquet clasps his hands together and prays that his own burden will be light. He has his own cross to bear, but he only hopes it will not be irrevocably heavy. He can only hope it will not be the yoke that drives a wedge between him and himself and the world and God.
Of course, he prays that whoever helps him handle the sick, imaginary hell in his mind (for it is not sin, nor is it theological truth) will be kind. He hopes they will understand and that they will help. But Riquet knows what he is up against: healing is no permanence. The pain may flare. But perhaps he can ease himself into peace.
Peace. That is what runs through his mind when he prays. It is as if a connection once severed has been mended, the distance between him and God stitched together by the calm of prayer. His final amen drives away the doubt and simply proves one thing: it was his all-encompassing fear of sin in visions of hell and murder that had brought him away from God.
It is this calm that brings him closer. For a moment he imagines he could kill Nero. Somehow the image is alright with him. Somehow it isn’t so bloody. And somehow it passes like a sigh. There is no sin embracing the image of murder. It slides by with calm. He realises this is a huge step, but not the only one.
But he is still moving forward.
He makes the sign of the cross— In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
And he only does it once.