[Reaction.]
He wasn't meant to be in town, even. He had been staying away and real far, and tonight was impulse. There was something he needed to see. Well, more like there was something he needed to suss out if he could find, and he was skulking late when the world quit itself for a second. And, given things happening as of late, he wasn't real surprised, not even in that blip of a moment as things went all dark around the edges. But this wasn't the shivershakes. There was something on the other side, and then he was himself, but not himself. The words coming from his own mouth, those he knew. He maybe mouthed them along wherever he was stood, but there wasn't any awareness of that.
He was admonishing, using holy words in a way not intended, and he wanted to pull away, to shift, to not be there. But he wanted to be there all the same, and that pressure he felt made him scream, and it was his scream alongside someone else's.
He could smell the dying man's hair, and his belly threatened to turn over on itself. He felt like rocks, heavy limbs, just like after the demon talked through him. But this was different, and could be this was what happened when he wasn't tied up when the shakes came. The snap of jaw made more bile rise, but there was no mistake that the bile was his own.
He gave himself up to it, then. To the church and the familiar scents, and to the unfamiliar feeling of hate that seemed to fill every crevice of who he was. To committing a vile sin. His heart warred inside him, and no one was winning that battle.
And then it passed, and he fell to his knees. He was on the dock, a dock, but he didn't feel the wood splintering into his palms. " O loving and gracious God, have mercy. Have pity upon me and take away the awful stain of my sin. Oh, wash me, cleanse me from this guilt. Let me be pure again. For I admit my shameful deed-it haunts me day and night. It is a sin against You and Your infinite mercy," he recited in a jagged voice, a whisper of words, and he could still taste the hate green and vicious on the tip of his tongue. He pressed his forehead to the dock, and he wept.