Nightly Services

I took a short morning break from working on Mind Breach to churn out a little vignette for you guys. It’s short, and rough (no proofreading or spell-check for this guy!), but I thought I’d share it to give an inside look into my first-draft process.

First drafts aren’t always coherent, and rarely any good, but that’s okay. They’re the base, the mold you’ll be working from. Whittling away at the fat and clunky passages until you have something glittering and shiny worth looking at.

This passage was born out of an interesting play on words I thought up the other day. Can’t share that play here without giving away the story, but it’s an interesting exercise to take a simple sentence and construct a story around it. I challenge you to try it and share the results in the comments section.

Nightly Services

Joe ain’t a saint, but he’s a good man. He takes my confession and offers penance. It’s the same as every other night, stretching as far back as I can remember anymore. My sins are simple, but persistent. I get to him with hands already shaking. White knuckles closed tight, half moon circles gouged into my palms. Oily beads of sweat wreaking of despair trace highways through the dirt caked to my cheeks.

Joe stares down at me with stone hard eyes, his pupils like filthy black ingots that’ve been dragged through as many gutters as mine. There’s no judgment in those eyes.

The world judders as my own pupils track on the larger man towering over me. His face sags, sallow cheeks refuse to hang tight to the weary bones beneath as though his body bears the weight of countless confessions from men too weak to carry their own sins.

Joe ain’t a saint, but he’s a good man. He can’t absolve my sins, but that’s not why I come. He can help me forget.

For a man like me, forgetting is the best you can ask for.

In a darkened corner of this neon cathedral, men like me sit at red vinyl pews cracked with age and use, saying prayer to the blood of our lord. Their prayers go unanswered; God stopped coming here along time ago.

So we go to Joe. Our priest upon who’s shoulders we can escape this purgatory, if only until the sun rises.

The choir leans against a wall coated like a jigsaw puzzle in strips of yellow wallpaper. It belts a tune through tired speakers, an unintelligible moaning that fits the general mood of this place. Indecipherable words mingle with a discordant melody, saturating the air and pushing away the silence.

That’s good.

Red lights flicker behind the choir’s fogged glass. Worn buttons on the front give the illusion of choice, but nobody here has a choice. We’re here ’cause we have to be. Compelled by a demon deep within, forcing us back here night after night. Driving our irredeemable souls ever onward to a place God don’t even look anymore.

A broomstick of a woman sits in a broken wooden throne, leaning her head against the choir. Her eyes twitch beneath closed eyelids; drool trails from her mouth before pooling in her lap. If anybody notices, nobody cares. Shoulder length hair dyed red like the fires of hell is plastered to one side of her face. A hook nose bent twenty degrees in the wrong direction might have been beautiful once.

She’s the closest thing to an angel we got around here. If given the chance she’ll pickpocket your heart. But if you’re hanging around here, there’s probably not much in there to steal anyhow.

Joe places a fogged glass full of clear liquid on the altar before me. The world narrows, drawing tight in around the corners. My heart drags itself along to a ragged cadence.

The sour odor of sweat dripping off my temple reaches my nose. It mingles with the room’s heat, pressing down on me with an almost too real weight.

I pry my fingers open and take the glass between two shaking hands. Cupping the chalice of my lord, I stare down into a fluid that has the power to exchange fear for courage.

A band-aid for my soul.

I’ll have to rip it off in the morning, but dawn is a long ways away. Right now, bathed in the fluorescent glow of worn neon lights flickering their gaudy beacon of hope, I can’t be bothered to care about morning.

For now, I have sins to drown.

“Lord have mercy,” I whisper into the rim of my glass. He won’t, but it don’t hurt to ask.

I drain it in a single swallow. It burns on the way down, a purifying fire of absolution. This is my penance.

There’s another prayer on the altar waiting for my lips before the first is even in my belly.

Joe ain’t a saint, but he’s a good man.