God & Sinner

1. Fire and Brimstone

Fuck. It was the first word that came to my mind, and perhaps the most fitting. Beyond that I was having trouble remembering, but it was slowly coming back to me. A flash of metal and a loud noise and then it was all over. Too fast, I'd been driving too fast, I hadn't seen the light. I wasn't sure how to describe it, how to say with complete certainty that I was not being airlifted by helicopter to the hospital, or in an ambulance receiving lifesaving support. The way I felt, it was ethereal, weightless, and somehow I already knew that I was dead even though there was only the darkness.

I tried to open my eyes to see—but did I even still have eyes? Yet there was nothing; nothing in front of me and nothing behind me. I wasn't falling, but I wasn't flying. I was suspended, waiting, an agonizing eternity as I tried to rationalize it in my head. Wasn't there supposed to be more to the story? Pearly gates and streets of gold, or some other beautiful imagery plucked from a children's tale? On the other hand, I supposed I was lucky to find neither fire nor brimstone. Not yet, anyway. Maybe this was all that waited for me for the rest of eternity, just the darkness and suspension. Fuck.

At least my mind was still with me, keeping me company. Was that supposed to happen? I was aware of myself, of what had happened, of where I was. That didn't seem quite right either, and I debated it further. I debated it for hours, for days, for years even it seemed until finally there was something other than the dark. If I did not have eyes to see I was still somehow able to know the moment the nothingness ceased and I was no longer alone. It was a light—that was all—a glowing warmth that sprung up from nowhere to rest before me and bathe the pieces of a body I couldn't see.

The light spoke to me, but he did so without words and without sound. He had no mouth, and I had no ears, and still I knew what was being said to me without effort. Like ink pressed into the pages of a book, it was carved into the skin I no longer had. And I was afraid. How could I not be? The voice was not loud, he did not boom—no, he was soft, gentle, whispering lovingly to me. Maybe that was worse, the things he was saying might have been easier to digest had he been angry, had I been prepared to guard myself. But I was open, and I listened, and I was afraid.

"You have sinned." He whispered, and my mind was bound with terror to understand that he knew all that I had done—all that I had ever done. From start to finish, an entire life played out in an instant. Now there was more than just him in the darkness, and around us were all the memories that I had formed. Not one thing was forgotten, and we watched them just as I had through my own eyes once upon a time. Some were beautiful, filled with childlike wonder, and others were the things of nightmares—things I'd worked hard to never let anyone see before. But I understood the ones he was talking about, because I had always known of my sin.

"Yes. I have sinned." I agreed, finding a voice that I did not possess. It was strange, I should have lied—to deny the accusation. Yet I found that here I could not, even if I wanted to. Indeed I was terrified of the voice, of having all my life spread out before him, knowing what it would bring me, but I found that I wanted to be honest. What was the point of anything else now? No matter what would happen, there was at least peace in knowing just how things would end.

"Do you understand the price?" He asked, and it was almost like I could feel him focusing elsewhere, watching the spectacle that was going on around us. And I knew just what he was looking at. I had only recently turned thirty, so much of my life ahead of me, and already I'd spent most of it in the very sin that I could feel him watching. There it all was, plain to see, me growing from boy to man and how quickly I grew to lust after those of my same kind. How many times I'd given my body, and taken others, without care. Like it meant nothing. Until James. We were in love, and even though I'd always known it'd lead me here I'd still spent the last ten years with him. He'd be wondering why I hadn't come home now.