Small flash fics dedicated to the characters and relationships of the Midnight Mass miniseries, written with the help of the special words of Writober 2021 ♥
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(John Pruitt / Mildred Gunning) •••
It takes a lifetime to love something so much that you can't unstick it from your heart anymore and, over time, John has tried to convince himself that the only thing that feeds the flame of love in his, is God.
Merciful, he who is eternal and who created the world and keeps it. He that is immanent and transcendent. He is the light of the human soul, pure and splendid and without sin. John resembles him, because he created him in his image and likeness, like every human being who walks the earth but, unlike the almighty, John is stained with sin, and it doesn't matter if he is a messenger of the Lord. He is a man, he always has been and always will be; he can sin and redeem himself, he can forgive whoever is in communion with God, who uses him as a mirror and gives him that power but, in the end, John sins and continues to sin, because he has love to give, and his greatest fault is that he's not having dedicated it completely to who it should have.
She is as beautiful as spring - the only season there in Crockett that does not bring storms and is tinged with sunshine and flowers. Mildred is always beautiful. She's always will be ... even when its spring ends and begins to wither. John is convinced of it.
She enters the church with a smile that smacks of too many things, and she is like the angel Gabriel, the herald of visions, the messenger of God; bearer of good news, shining like a ray of light in the heart.
Yet Mildred, at the moment, is not bringing good news. She approaches him, towards the altar, and John does not return that smile that perhaps, thinking about it now, she was not even looking for.
She has a white veil in front of her face, but he can see her so well that she feels dying. He would like to fall to his knees and pray to God to burn him alive, at that very moment, only to not see her go away with a man who is not him. He would like to run away, close his eyes, plug his ears like a little children who listen to their parents arguing and, God forgive him, in Mildred's lap there is a child and he – or she – belongs to him ... this destroys him. along with too many other things.
So, as she approaches, arm in arm with an excited father who tries to keep tears in check, John divides himself between the man and the divinity. The mind reaches God, turns off, and leaves room for the priest who, because of the sin he has committed, pays the highest price: see the love of his life marry someone other than him.
«You have chosen God and not me. You couldn't expect me to expect you forever, John,» Mildred told him a few nights ago, on the last night they spent together, before saying goodbye forever. «No one else can marry me. It's just you, here in Crockett ... I wouldn't want me either but, you know, my father cares about that staff.»
«God was before you came.»
«And yet here you are», she replied and, with one finger, took off his white collar and made him a man. She kissed him gently, yet John felt inside that gesture an anger that God has forgiven him anyway, granting him the strength to switch off, to split up, to migrate into a different body and look at himself from the outside while he binds the woman he loves to a man who is not him and, be cursed every day he has lived, will regret her all his life.
The End
Author notes:
Nothing else to say except that I thought about the fact that John had to marry Mildred with another man because he was alone in Crockett and so I thought this was very, very, very, very sad ...
