Work Text:
"Did you ever notice how in the Bible, whenever God needed to punish someone or make an example, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?" - Thomas Daggett, 'The Prophecy'
"And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them." - Revelation 9:6
“... Judas, huh?”
There’s a scoffing from the next room. Monsignor John Pruitt feels his brow crease.
“Riley?” he realises. Something of a smile tugs at his lips, half-relief, all-gratitude. He strides toward the door, a lightness in his step with the revelation. And revelation has to be the word for it. Embarrassingly, he had doubted God, doubted the angel, doubted fate and why it chose to bring Riley Flynn to the church last night. His gut began churning in the early morning, promising little good. He was somehow certain the boy was gone.
John’s hands are clean of it, metaphorically speaking. There’s a bit of gore caught between his fingernails but otherwise his body has been scrubbed raw. He feels no guilt. No shame or regret.
But maybe, deep down, there was disappointment in imagining his old alter boy dead.
“What a miracle,” the priest exhales, entering the room. “I thought—” and his breath catches. A whimper escapes instead.
“Monsignor,” Riley greets. He’s sitting on the bed, perfectly nonchalant. John staggers back, his nose— so sensitive now— screwing up with the sudden reek of it. “As I live and breathe.”
There’s humour in the words and for obvious reasons. The room smells charred. No. More, accurately, Riley Flynn smells charred. His skin, where there is skin, is blistered and raw; and where the bone lays naked, it’s clear that his skeleton has been singed blue. The flesh of his chest plays peekaboo with his ribs. It’s blackened, mostly, but some patches are red or even pinkish. The lesions bubble and froth. They spit yellow fluid, like puss.
Where the angel had been magnificent in its unearthliness, Riley is just ghastly.
John scrabbles backwards out the door on his ass. Panic overtakes him. In his haste, he snags his hand over a nail— its head pokes from the floorboards and stretches the fat of his palm. The skin tears open and he hisses in pain, ripping himself free. The wound will heal. It hurts all the same.
The corpse stands. Skin sloughs from its thighs and clings to the bedsheets. It has the consistency of PVA glue but doesn’t seem to bother Riley in the slightest.
On the contrary, the sight of the melting man bothers John an awful lot. He scoots back another foot or two but his jeans are abrasive against the wooden flooring. Awkwardly, all frenzied limbs and shaking knees, he forces himself up and darts toward the exit.
At the very last moment, just as he grabs the handle and almost, almost pulls it open, the futility of the act occurs to him. It feels like defeat. He can’t escape this house— not now, in the daylight, where a single step out the door will lead him to an end like Riley’s.
“Why are you running away, father?” the creature is standing in the doorframe. Smiling. Even without lips, John can tell he’s smiling. “I thought you were the one who insisted on having courage.”
“You killed yourself,” John mumbles. He looks at Riley’s feet, but there are no shoes to stare at, not anymore. Just bone and liquified leather. “Corinthians 3:16. You are God’s temple and his spirit dwells in you, and anyone who destroys that temple shall be destroyed by him.”
“I’d argue that the temple was destroyed when you and Count Dracula tore my neck open.”
The priest flinches. “Do not confuse the blessings of an angel with the stuff of human legend.”
Riley doesn't so much as blink. Can't, without eyelids. Instead he begins approaching again, slower this time. John can’t discern whether the movement is predatory or cautious. He finds himself shaking from the shoulders down and clasps his hands around his knees, which are tucked into his chest. He feels so small. John is the bigger man, sure, but Riley doesn’t even look like a man anymore.
He’s an abomination.
“You said,” the corpse muses, coming closer and closer. The stench penetrates sleeve, skin and bone, passing through the arm John tries to shield his face with. Sour liquid rises in his throat. “That I spat out—” and Riley spits then, right in front of his feet. A solid, fleshy teardrop hits the floor and smoulders through the wood. It leaves a steaming hole. “God’s gift.”
“Was that your uvula?” John asks. Tears sting in his eyes.
Riley grins. “Part of it. I think I swallowed the root. The thing came loose once my throat started melting, you see.”
It’s too much. John pitches sideways and heaves. Through his retching all he can hear is awful, unpitying laughter. Minutes pass this way. It’s overwhelming. The stink, the sounds, the strange and unholy shame he feels… together they form something blasphemous. A black mass of the senses.
“A gift, you called it—” Riley continues. He’s still grinning while the contents of the priest’s stomach hit the ground. Maybe it’s the only expression he can perform now his mouth has been cauterised with a Glasgow smile. To make matters worse, his left eyeball starts thawing. White trickles down Riley’s face just as vomit trickles down John’s. John rubs the residue from his chin with the back of his hand. It’s blood. Sour, digested blood. “It fucking killed me, father.”
“You ended your own life, Riley,” his voice comes out hoarse but earnest. He forces himself to look the corpse in the eye— the intact one, that is. “You made a choice.”
“And what about all your ‘predestination’ and ‘fate’ and ‘god works in mysterious ways’ shit? Why don’t they apply when it comes to you murdering me?”
Riley kneels down, leaning in. It reminds John of a time long ago when the boy still respected him, when the boy was still a boy. When there was awe in his gaze and the only death he could fathom was that of a rodent. The contrast couldn't be more stark. He hears a shlick sound as the creature's shins seal against the floorboards. Their proximity is a wretched thing. Up close Riley smells of ruined meat and copper and something rancid. John imagines it’s the stench of a rotten soul.
“I had no choice. Don’t delude yourself. You didn’t present me with salvation, you presented me with another rummer and told me to drink. You and your god gave me nothing. You just took, and took, and took. I can’t repent anymore. I can’t hold the woman I love, or tell my mom how grateful I am, or smooth things over with my dad. I’ll never be able to watch my brother grow up. You thought I had nothing— I know you did, don’t shake your head, that’s why you thought what happened to me was okay. I had nothing, I was nothing. Who cares if another alcoholic bites the dust? But even when I felt like I had nothing, other people had me. I was wanted. Loved. Those people were my purpose. And you stole my life before I could even thank them for it.”
Both pupils are melting now, sliding down Riley’s skull in waxy tears. The hollows of his head stare accusingly at John but the priest stays silent. He feels his lips quiver. It’s hard to breathe. Every time he does, his air caresses the corpse’s face and disturbs its molten surface. They're far too close.
A piece of chin slips off and lands against John’s shoe.
“I’m— I’m sorry you died,” he blurts out. He thinks he might be sick again.
If Riley had eyes, he would roll them. “You know that’s not what I want to hear. ‘I’m sorry I killed you’. Say it nicely enough and I won’t haunt you until the day some Good Samaritan stakes you. Or opens the curtains, I guess.”
“I didn’t kill you,” John insists. He’s stammering now, banking back as far as he can, but Riley only moves his mutilated face closer. “I freed you Riley, and if you had accepted it—”
“You trapped me. You bound my feet and abandoned me in the hope that I’d die of exposure. Don’t take me for an idiot. You never expected me to survive the night.”
“No, I did, I did…”
When did he start crying? Why did he start crying? He did the right thing. He’s supposed to feel, simply wants to feel, at peace with what has happened. It's all a part of God’s plan after all. Inevitable and unavoidable.
“Some prophet you are,” Riley sighs. Disgust warps his tone. Distantly, John wonders if his vocal cords have begun to dissolve. “Maybe that’s why you need me to be your Judas. Imposter syndrome and all that.”
A low whine tears from the priest’s throat as the corpse draws impossibly closer. The odour is unbearable and the view of its empty eye sockets even worse. Then he feels hot, sticky skin nudging against his cheek, clinging there like silly string. Riley’s mouth pulls back as quickly as it came and John is left reeling. He scratches off the residue before it burns him.
It was a lipless kiss, just as Jesus received in the Garden of Gethsemane.
“You always imagined you’d make it to heaven, didn’t you Father?”
The smell begins to wane and Riley transforms. New skin unfolds over his bones, his blackened flesh pales, and the whites of his eyes climb back into their sockets. Hair emerges from his skull in brown tufts, stopping short of a quiff but a little bit longer than a buzzcut, looking soft to the touch. The bags under his eyes bleach to nothing. His lips regenerate, plush, and turn up in a weary smile. All the crust flakes from his body. He seems the picture of health and yet he’s still dead.
Right?
Unthinkingly, John reaches a hand toward the boy’s face. It passes through his brow. Riley laughs without humour. He tries to do the same thing and for some reason, this time, it works. He’s able to cup the Monsignor's face in his hands and thumb at the ridges of his cheeks. The gesture seems intimate. Tangible. He can touch John even if John can’t touch him. Why would god leave his priest at such a disadvantage? For all he knows, before a demon?
John squirms back, agonised, and Riley’s hands drop from his face. "Later, maybe,” the apparition tells him, almost gently. It’s a lie. If there is a heaven, the priest forsook it while Joe Collie bled out. “But today? I’ll show you purgatory.”
And for an unbearable, fleeting moment, Monsignor John Pruitt tastes grief.