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Galo did not enjoy listening to his parishioners confess their sins. Knowing the deepest, darkest secrets of his friends and neighbours was awkward, to say the least. He did, however, strive to give them some peace. Everyone deserved forgiveness.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Galo waited for the person on the other side of the screen to tell him when their last confession was, but there was only silence. A first-timer, then? The voice was too low for Galo to know for sure if it was someone he knew or not.
“Is there something you’d like to confess, child?” Since Galo was only in his early twenties, he found it ridiculous to call his parishioners that, but that was what he’d been taught.
Galo served as the priest for a small church in a poor outer suburb of Promepolis. Given his young age, Galo supposed the assignment wasn’t unexpected. No one would trust him with a larger parish. Still, Galo was determined to do the best job he could.
The person on the other side of the screen let out a sigh that was audible to Galo. “…I’m three hundred and forty-five years old, so this could take a while…”
“Lio!” Galo exclaimed. He pushed open the screen and, just as he’d guessed, a blond male was sitting on the other side of it, a mildly-amused tilt to his lips.
Lio lifted one foot to rest it on the bench and hooked an arm around his leg. He stared at Galo from under his fringe, eyelashes lowered.
Lio was sinfully pretty—and sinful was the right word for it. Lio was a young demon—young in demon years anyway—whom Galo had met a few weeks ago. Ever since their first meeting, when Galo had pulled Lio from the path of a car, Lio had latched onto Galo. The fact that Galo was a priest and Lio was a demon seemed irrelevant to the blond.
Lio had spent most of his demonic life living in hell but he’d recently done something to upset the management, and being stuck on earth among the mortals for a length of time Lio hadn’t specified was Lio’s punishment, from what Galo understood of the situation.
“Are you serious, or are you messing around?” Galo demanded of the mischievous demon.
“That depends. I don’t think you have the stomach to hear about the things I’ve done,” Lio replied.
Galo briefly stepped out to check if Lio’s presence would inconvenience anyone else, but he discovered that the church was empty. He was about to return to the confessional when Lio joined him.
Lio walked over to one of the pews and sat down. Galo couldn’t stop himself from admiring Lio’s figure in those tight leather pants. Lio’s style was dark and edgy—just what Galo would expect from a demon. What Galo hadn’t expected was that he’d find said demon so attractive.
Galo made a mental note to pray about that later—not that it would be the first time. Unfortunately, God had remained silent on the issue, leaving Galo to stumble through this strange relationship on his own.
Galo sat down beside Lio, feeling decidedly inelegant in his own white priest robes. While not on the job, he preferred to wear jeans and t-shirts, but while in church Galo thought it was his duty to look the part of a priest.
Lio adjusted the black cuff on one of his thin wrists as he stared up at one of the stained glass windows. This particular one depicted the Mother Mary with baby Jesus in her arms.
“She technically cheated on her husband, you know,” Lio said, his tone conversational.
Well, that was one interpretation, Galo supposed, but it was definitely a stretch. Galo could think of several retorts, but from past experience with Lio, he knew that it was pointless. Instead, he just murmured a prayer in apology for Lio’s blasphemy. It wasn't as if he could prove Lio wrong since all he had to go by was, as Lio would put it, 'an extremely unreliable and biased account of history'.
Lio snorted as Galo finished his prayer. “Do you really think God listens to you lot?” he asked. “Have you ever heard anything back from Him? Ever? What’s He ever done for you? Ever put in a personal appearance?”
“Well, no, but…” Galo trailed off, lost.
“He doesn’t care. He’s just a selfish prick. Even His angels are too self-obsessed to look beyond their own feathers.” Lio pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, removed one from the pack, then dropped the pack onto the pew.
“Lio,” Galo said warningly as Lio put the cigarette between his lips, then took out a lighter from another pocket and lit the end. “Smoking isn’t allowed in here. And where did you get those anyway? Did you steal them?”
“How else am I supposed to get them? I don’t have an ID and you won’t buy them for me.”
Galo moved further along the pew, putting some distance between himself and the smoke emanating from the burning cigarette. “You shouldn’t steal things, Lio.”
“It’s not like anyone got hurt.”
Galo shook his head and muttered another prayer, while ignoring the half-irritated, half-pitying look Lio gave him.
“Humans are such idiots,” he muttered. “No one up there—or down in Hell—cares about you.”
Galo sincerely hoped that wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true, right? Lio, despite being a demon, had shown that he was capable of caring. Why else would he be hanging around Galo all the time? And if Lio was capable of compassion, then so were the other Heavenly and Hellish denizens.
“Ultimately, demons and angels are the same,” Lio continued after another puff on the cigarette. “Demons are just more honest and less underhanded than the angels. Seriously, what have they ever done for you, priest?” Lio crossed one ankle over the other. “God didn’t give you a home. God didn’t raise you. God didn’t give you this job. Humans did.”
Galo sat in silence, unable to come up with an argument to put Lio in his place. Lio was right. Yet Lio was also a demon, and Galo had been taught to never trust a demon. So why did he find himself listening to Lio—and liking Lio?
Maybe Galo needed someone to listen to his own confession. Unfortunately, the only ear available to him was Lio’s, since God appeared to be deaf to Galo’s prayers.