Unquiet Intervention

V: Love, Ecstasy, Terror

One instance was illicit passion, bloodied shirts, jarring trapdoors and burnt pastry. It was wickedly shrouded by a world so corrupt and vile, that its cruel deeds would forever remain a mystery.

The next instance, on the other hand, was the sight of the intimidating altar, a few steps higher than ground level, which only made it appear even more cold and unnerving. It was an obscene place to settle on changing paths, especially when that same world outside hadn't decided to change one bit.

The world was still as ominous and invasive as ever.

Sweeney Todd decided then and there, that he loathed churches. They revolved around change - whether better or worse. They were a place to not only pray, but to find forgiveness, and most importantly acceptance...

... and therefore, were the last places in the universe that the barber wished to visit.

He was sure that a few people behind him had noticed how strange he was acting - he was stood like a stoic statue, his eyes peering up as far as they would go so that he wouldn't have to move his head.

Considering the situation, he was also sure that they probably presumed it was him having cold feet.

Yet their presumptions couldn't have been farther from the truth - being in such a holy place was absolutely soul-draining for him. He hadn't visited a church for a number of years; he wasn't exactly the religious type, rather a man of... morals - twisted morals, to be more exact. But it wasn't just the fact that he couldn't relate to the place through belief, something about the atmosphere made him feel uneasy.

Perhaps it was because for one moment, he truly did wonder if a higher power was judging him in such a holy place of worship. If anything, he knew that he was the worst of any sinner. Especially out of all of the strangers sat behind him. A higher power judging his actions was fine with him, he was beyond caring... it was more the very idea of a divine intervention that he was concerned about.

What if he was finally going to be punished now that he was in a holy house, under the watchful eye of a higher being?

Then again, hadn't he suffered enough?

He clenched his hands into fists and crossed them over his stomach, trying to steady his breaths in an attempt to halt one of his violent episodes.

He hated himself all of a sudden. All he wanted to do was squeeze someone's neck until he could see their pressurised veins bulging from the constraints of their eyeballs. He clenched his jaw, his brow twitching in an attempt to fight off the urge to scowl.

Whenever his anxiety spiked, all he wanted to do was to slit the odd throat to feel better, but unfortunately this wasn't exactly the time or the place. He had to keep his true mad self restrained to the darkest depths of his mind, and unfortunately because of this, he did feel that what was to come was perhaps not completely his honest self.

It wasn't just the looming ceremony ahead, his mask of neutrality or the unsettling ambience that caused his nerves to set on edge, it was also the fact that the church behind him was - quite literally - packed from pew to pew. He'd only been settling in Blackpool for a few months now, and he still hadn't ventured outside all that much - it had been quite an unpleasant surprise to be greeted with practically half of the town's populous.

He continued to stare ahead with his aching black eyes, the sludge-like mess of wax candles adorning the width of the alter distinguishing the illusion of a holy union. The flickering flames of the diminishing candles spoke more to him than anything, they bypassed his apprehension completely and somehow the imperfection of them made him feel more grounded. He wasn't completely satisfied with his mood, but it was one that would do for the time being.