Gradation

April 21, 2016 In Jim We Trusted

How has it come to this? I've never, in all my thirty years, thought I would be the one to sneak into a house in the dead of the night. Isn't there usually thunder booming and rolling in the background? No, I am alone in this endeavor. Can't say I honestly mind though. I'd be alone for a thousand years if it meant that my Alta could fly free with me. I've been trapped since I first saw her float into the church with the other parishioners, looking as ethereal as the God we were there to praise. She looked as if God himself had entrusted in her the entire galaxy to hold in her soulful, doe eyes. She was, and continues to be, a silhouette I could praise for millennia to come. I would build her millions of shrines even if everyone else was crazy enough to deny her of her basic right to be worshipped as the Goddess she is.

When one finds out that their very reason for existing is compromised, even the most pure soul would get riled. How was I to react when I find the markings of an unjust hand laid upon her fair skin? I meant for her to leave. We could have been happy together. He would never have been satisfied with that though. He would never let her leave. The pure white, lacey bonnet she wore couldn't be tainted by him. He won't let her delicately gloved hands be free to roam, soar to better worlds. What else is there for me to do but this?

This isn't murder. The thought has never crossed my mind. I live under God and would never break his word. My reverence for him is not so fragile. What I am about to do is a rehabilitation of the soul. To mend the broken. To right a wrong. To finally set my angel free. For my Alta to take flight once again. They will understand, they will. When they see her luminescent presence as an other worldly deity, they will rise to the same revelation I have. Her petite, dainty frame is only a glimpse of her true self. Everything she is and could be is locked away because of seven simple letters that when put together create a satanic incarnation, p-g-l-e-g-w-a-s.

Francis Henry Welpaggs is the keeper of the key to her cage. There is always another way though. The righteous way. Send her to where she deserves to be. I've thought plenty about what I'm doing. Where she'll end up. I considered the Garden of God but, it's not good enough. Sin was able to slip through the cracks of divinity and taint the fabrics of paradise. The Greeks believed in a place called Arcadia. A place where everything is pure and in harmony. A place where only the pure and virtuous could reside. A place of true, palpable paradise. The only place good enough for an angel like you.

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The streets were barren as the church bell rang heavily. No one bothered to care about or even glance at the paper that day, or any other day for that matter. Everyone had already heard the story of the new reverend's descent from brotherhood. They already heard of how he stalked clumsy little Alta Thea Welpaggs and her father, Francis. How he was found in her room clutching her white crocheted bunny made by her deceased mother. They were filled with disgust for his deceit. He was a trusted member of their community and he betrayed them. Even with him miles away, locked up and hopefully paralyzed with a plethora of pills stuffed in his face, the town felt sick and violated. Willard, New York's Psychiatric Center was much too close to them. Anywhere would be too close.

No one doubted his strong brown eyes or his clean-cut raven hair. They all grew accustomed to the way that even outside of the church he wore his stark white clerical collar and deep black button down. They grew used to the Bible that he was never seen without. They trusted him with everything. He saw to the marriage of both of the Jones twins. He christened the Larson's third child. He was there for everything except for the funeral of little Alta.

There wasn't a dry eye in the pews as Alta's father gave his tribute to his lost daughter in the form of a eulogy. No one could avoid the sadness or the pity that sank into their bones for the man and his departed child. He has lost his wife and now his only child, his only baby girl. The only questions left were, why would their trusted reverend, Jim Jones, do this? Why would he defile their Utopia in such a way?

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Okay, so for this story the prompt was to choose a place that was rumored to be haunted and write a story involving that place. The only catch is that we had to incorpurate at least two items from a suuitcase my teacher brought in.

P.s. Welpaggs is supposed to be an accronym for the 7 deadly sins. I just threw the a in there to make it sound a little better. Also, Alta is a name referencing to the "high grace" of Mother Mary and Thea was the Greek goddess of light and mother of the sun, moon, and dawn.

                                                                                                                                          ~Bunni <3