The priest passed over the remnant of smudging taint that fell upon the smooth floor. Not a word forced itself from between his lips as the memory of violence forever burrowed into the divide in them.
"Not a soul on this plane could contest your hardships… This has truly been a life of suffering for the both of you. Yet, I've never seen the pair of you fall into a pit too deep to climb out of." Father Bentley took rest on the stricken stool, righting it to then collapse with his full weight which relinquished cries of pain from its seat. "Although we conjure the worst of it, we stick through to the end. More arriving after each bout with the Devil, giving hope to us. You, I, and especially Lisa will discover a struggle unlike any other, yet we'll still remain whole. There is a greatness over this mound, just keep pushing and pushing until the Devil runs out of steam. Don't think that the sins committed now are the end all and be all to yourself."
The Father's eye drew onto the smidge at last acknowledging the gore of the evening. It was a sudden, quick movement that did not go unnoticed by Kage. Furrowing the child's brow as rampant ideas of judgment flocked into him. "Apologize for the number of sins then push forward again committing more sins all the same. It's a process we all must practice for if we can't move onward then there is nowhere left to go. We become empty as a person… I-If you think you are feeling an emptiness that cannot be overcome," The gaze changed to Lisa's comatose form, no longer lit by streaks of sunlight curing through a curtain leaving her form darkened. To the priest, she appeared no less than a casketed woman without a breath left. "Look toward Lisa, every second she stays in that bed she is fighting to persist on this plane. Despite the known pain… sh-she wants to live; go do so just the same."
Kage let what felt to him as calculated platitudes, soak into his skin. In the briefest of periods, he finally wrestled the truth of himself from the recesses of his self-doubt. Self-hate manifested in a grandiose manner that polluted a source of reason from conjuring in order to fight against the infestation. Rationality would allow him to come to its demand, yet unbridled corruption lay in its path.
"Father, why must I bear the brunt of this sin?" Father Bentley could utter no longer in this boy's current fervor. A child had no right wearing such an expression seen most often on dying soldiers in the battlefield. Bentley saw his mistakes clear as day and without a way out. In fact, they were multiplying as that expression creeped further into a wide smile accompanied to the drum of released tears, soddened, as the wet evaporated leaving nothing but ghostly tales. "I'm cursed. I've known this truth since my birth. When Mother died, I should have let no other come to my aid, that umbilical cord so fastened around my neck needed to stay in order to stop me. Father and even other mother understood the demon in their hands. Ignorant I became due in part to my foolish self, believing them to be at fault and not myself."
He stood to interject but was cast away before a remark came to his tongue. "Tell me, Father, have I told you the cause of my mother's death? Do you know already?" All the priest had left was to make his nerves scarce, sticking that chin of his into the plate of his collar bone. "Then, you do." Kage's head rested on the windowsill gazing out at nothing but the meadows of exhaust bringing forth a symphony of horns. No matter the sight, it would never evolve from filth.
"Once I was separated from her corpse the autopsy began at an irregular pace. My father had insisted on it right away, he wished to know the cause of his woman's death. But I know now that he already knew what they would find and needed it to be seen by someone other than himself. It was his proof to the world - of the monster he inseminated into a feeble girl. Ripping up her body they dug in an effort to assuage the newly titled father who showed little interest in the wailing newborn."
Kage gripped his fists recounting the vile, putrid, echoing coughs from the spectacled man which conveyed this revelation to his infant son. A face that bore the wanton desire of devastating hate. "Inside her cavity they found nothing, literally nothing - Her organs disappeared without a trace. Next, they inspected her womb finding the truth. A pair of handprints were carved out of the flesh."
Eyes stoned into place while a chill dawned upon his downcast chin illuminated the narrow bone structure in Kage's cheeks. Like a stone, his weight dropped carving the stilted features of his face ever clearer to an observer. "I don't believe a day didn't go by without my father telling me this story. That was probably the first time my resolve was tested in whether I would stay a slouch or reform to something greater. So, I chose to be greater. To repay for my sins, to atone, I would act the same as those icons saving people. There would be no rest from then on out and for my transgressions I shall sacrifice all I am to being the icon that saves all that is God's Green Earth."
Father Bentley had increasingly tensed himself while his attention stuck on the scissors beside Lisa's "Get Well" balloons. Whereas Kage was loose, not even taking the priest by the eye. Although the distance couldn't be more than a couple feet, to Bentley it was like the extent of a vast gorge already having swallowed some. The man flashed over the experiences with Kage's mother; never forgetting her beauty in each frame. The same beauty stood out when meeting her forgotten child so many years later.
Another sin which could be added.
"I sought the skies for so long, watching the heroes who gave their lives to protect us from villains. I was naive enough to buy into that crap. Destiny has a way of provoking such change in minds, or perhaps that is God." The befuddling prospect brought Kage to peace as he suggested the question for pondering. However, it was a mere notion passed to the side for another time. "I really don't know anymore, but if it is God then I can only guess as to what his plan may be and how I can factor myself into it. But then, I clung to that hope that despite myself, despite my body, despite the suffering I've already caused to Lisa, to you, and even my friends, someday I would be casting a spare glance down from the skies reminiscing on the hardship to be met by happiness." The sun shone, sparkling the gold metal of the crucifix strapped to the chain wrapped around Kage's neck.
The priest pointed with his whole hand, asking, "I gave you that necklace, did I not? Don't you remember what I said when you profusely denied it?" Kage's taught eyebrows slackened as he recounted the quote. "None of us are Devils or even Demons. They live to deny us our right to heaven, to feed on those thoughts that make us deter from God's will which we know to be true. You have the same right to wear that necklace as anyone because we are all ma-
"I WASN'T DONE SPEAKING!" Something sucked itself back into the ducts of Kage's face, whether it was sweat or crispy tears remained unknown to Father Bentley. But if he went to the boy's side at this moment, he wouldn't live to see the next day - Failing once again to save these poor souls.
"There was no happiness over the hardships. Only lessons stood prominent for me to learn. God called me to humble myself, whether that was in the form of a dream or the countless scars decorating my body. Scars that never cease to alight by fire, others slashed and still seeping a crimson ink. I was never being tested but warned for my foolishness to strive over what God had destined for me to become.
And now, we are here. Now, I am here. All that's left is to atone." Kage abruptly stood from the stool no longer wondering what lay outside in that grimy view of the open world. A claustrophobic illusion created to twist the mind into believing it lived a deeper purpose.
He walked to the door but was blocked by Bentley's looming body which could smother the boy if he tried. The wavering pupils and discomposed jitter to his hands screamed out the man's fear of what would occur if he allowed Kage to leave the room.
Cramming his mind with phrases, citations, aberrations from no single teachings of the Lord and His holy book but films delved with hidden meanings. Somewhere in that vastness of knowledge, something procured itself. Not from such recited lines but his own thoughtful honesty.
"Boy, when have I ever told you to atone?"
"Pardon?"
The grip tightened as Bentley seethed through gritted teeth, "When did I, when did anyone ever say that you have to atone?" Kage began with an open mouth but ceased as no example came to mind, instead casting his face to the floor ruminating in an unknown expression which deserved not to be seen. "Not once has anyone worth a fucking damn ever told you that you don't belong on this planet. That you don't deserve to make mistakes, feel the guilt, and manage. We all make mistakes, sometimes graver ones than you could ever imagine."
Bentley fell to Kage's height forcing him to stare himself straight. Time had not been kind to the priest, wrinkles were forming by the day just as his hair whitened alongside its thinning nature. Immense weight was held up by that man's shoulders. A weight that stared him dead in the eye begging for an answer on whether he was the same man he used to be. Tied down by promises followed in succession by death.
Bentley never in his life felt bound to them. All until one mistake brought a promise greater than God's word.
"Kage, I've made mistakes. At a point I wanted to atone for all that I had failed to do, and all I had succeeded in accomplishing. But… I was made to realize the truth; we all have a purpose. Each and every single one of us were created to serve not just a function, but to be free - live how we wish. That is the guilt we bear which God has given us all. There can't come a difference if we keep giving up, there will never be any change but a cycle of despair. Don't you see that, my boy?"
A brief silence passed over the two of them. Kage, deep in thought, analyzed Bentley's lip micromovements while he spoke while the glazing sweat formulated so brilliantly on his forehead then swept over the man's cheeks and chin. Yet, before Kage could disregard the priest's plea, a question appeared at the tip of his tongue. "How did it happen?"
"Huh?" Bentley asked with a quizzical look.
"How did this realization come to you? I've thought I had so many in the past few years of my life, so what makes mine less than those you've had? Are you telling me that you've experienced a longer life and thus are able to come to an adequate distortion of reality."
Teeth clenched and eyes twitching he heard unmistakable shatters in the recesses of the hallway, but why hadn't the Father remarked on them? No one could see the world as he had seen it since his birth. Not once was he ever alone. Whether it be William passing on his memories, Claire cursing his flirting glances, Lisa striking his heart until death was wrought, or his own Mother, stomach yanked open and entrails trailing behind her footsteps, they were with him since the beginning.
Each of their words processed in his mind no longer leaving him to decide, they had taken the steering wheel so far back that Kage couldn't even tell the time from whence he would be awakened to act independently. From the moment of his birth, he saw these strange figures begging for his undivided attention.
When he vomited from sickness the blood in his bile swirled into maleficent grins and halfhearted cheers. These things wished for his pain to extend further and further until death was the only reasonable end. Until his ninth year did these figures remain unfamiliar, but from then they took on his father, his sister, his dead mother, his torturous stepmother, and so many others.
But they ended at six persistent people spelling the misdeeds he should commit down his hearing canal. Yet, what shall lay before his lying eyes but that of a greater something taking the existence of a young girl. She stood in the corner, shaded in a cold darkness, tapping the sole of her sandal to the wall. Although not a word was spoken between these two, Kage sensed a bond with this girl. In his brain she was like family but couldn't be for he had never seen her before that day. Indeed though, as soon as her eyes met Kage's did a shock run along his spine. Much the same way, the girl hopped with a perplexed expression then faded with the scratchy surface to the walls.
Kage cowered, lowering his voice to a near inaudible mumble as his hands splayed through his scalp. "Is it simply that I have decided on the right course but all of you are demons sent by the devil? Demons whispering in my ears telling me to rape, murder, to give it all up, to keep striving for my dream despite the bloodshed, is that truly what is real? So, if my realization built on this mess of thoughts is not as profound as yours, explain to me how that is so?" He abruptly cast his gaze onto Bentley.
And it was only then, did the priest experience the brunt of Kage's released aura. Foul, the thing was, nearly drawing bile from the man's stomach. A lesser man would crumble beneath its pressure suffering untreatable breaks in their body. Luckily enough, Bentley had a collection of encounters with Evolved in his lifetime. However, in the sinewy thread-like fog pouring out as aura, faces were seen and among those faces came a wide jaw howling in agony. The aura fed off of its host so was the reverse.
A labored heart and slackened jowls, Bentley poured out the remnants of his heart including the sins. All in an attempt to avoid the degrading process unwinding inside the boy.