Work Text:
He understood he was going to hell the second he realized his mistake. Lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the church, a dime sized bullet hole in his head. He could feel the bullet still lodged in his brain slowly being pushed out the hole where it entered. He could practically hear the brain tissue reconstructing itself, like an awful stretching leather sound mixed with the sloshing of a thick liquid.
While his body repaired itself, he could not will himself to move. Try as he might, any attempt to get his arms to lift, his chest to heave, his legs to push himself into a sitting position, left him feeling as stiff as a marble statue.
He could feel his words catch in his throat when he tried to speak, only half aware of the chaos that was ensuing around him. Beverly’s voice was there, as was screaming. He couldn’t see it nor could he hear it exactly, but he recognized somewhere, somehow, that there were dozens of sets of teeth ripping into any exposed flesh they could find.
John blinked and it was as if he had jumped through time.
Suddenly everything was as still and quiet as he was, but the peace only lasted a minute more until Bev’s voice broke the silence again.
“Open the doors,” she said.
And John found himself able to move, just enough to turn his head to look over at the wretched woman and the man she’d turned into her henchman. He opened his mouth to speak and his words were still caught at the base of his throat so instead he simply shook his head, hoping and praying and begging that Sturge would listen to him.
He did not.
“Faith and courage,” she said.
And he willed himself again to attempt to sit up, managing to lift himself an inch or two off the ground this time, but still his words would not come out, they sat unmoving, lodged deep inside of him.
“How else does the gospel spread?” she said.
And he recognized her words. He’d said them, once, to her. When he opened the doors of the rec center to let Riley Flynn go free.
John blinked and jumped through time once more.
This time, however, when he opened his eyes, the stillness and silence proved he was truly alone and not instead surrounded by unmoving bodies like he had been the first time. And this time, when he willed himself to move, he actually did.
He sat up. He looked around the empty, blood-strewn church. He pulled off his chasuble, crawled a few feet to the right, and sat on the steps.
John looked out at the open church doors, and thought to himself:
If God is real, and He allowed this suffering to happen, I do not want an eternal life in His presence. Cast me down to Hell, clip my wings and burn me alive. Anything, anything, away from your Heaven.