Simon Linden (dirty_job) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-05-11 23:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | #flashback |
it's just a matter of days and not a matter of taste
Who: Adair and Simon
When: October, 1955.
Where: An abandoned church in Nevada.
Simon had always done his best to be a good churchgoing man. He hadn't always managed to find the time to attend Sunday services, but whenever he had, he'd felt good afterwards, peaceful and whole. He'd traveled all around the Southwest, and there hadn't been a church he couldn't walk into without feeling a sense of home. He had nowhere else to anchor himself to, wandering from job to job and state to state as he did, but he had his faith, and he had the people who were always willing to smile and pray with him even if they didn't know his name.
He'd avoided that after what Adair had done to him. As desperately as he'd craved the comfort of a warm wooden pew and a good hymn, he knew he wouldn't be welcome anymore. How could he defile a place of worship like that, letting good Christian people shake his cold, dead hand in fellowship when he wouldn't be able to look at them without thinking of how their blood would taste? He'd tried to pray alone, begging for forgiveness, but the words of the Our Father had tasted sour in his mouth and made his throat hurt, and opening a Bible had made his skin crawl with a horrible foreboding feeling. He'd thrown the book across the room in guilty revulsion, but not before staining the thin onionskin pages with tears of blood.
He'd sworn he wouldn't let Adair bring him back. Not this time. He'd do fine on his own, eating once a week when he couldn't stand the hunger any more--he knew he wasn't being remotely discreet about it, and he realized that it probably traumatized his victims even more when he spent five minutes apologizing profusely to them before biting them, but it was better than sitting in that darkened house and taking the meals Adair brought him. He didn't know what she'd done to those poor people beforehand. And he didn't give a damn about the 'dangers' she kept trying to warn him about. What dangers could there be now that he was stronger and faster than any human he knew? And what punishment was there that he didn't deserve?
Now, though, as he struggled feebly to free himself from the altar his captors had handcuffed him to, he could almost laugh at the thought of how stupid he'd been. It was easy to be noble and say that he'd accept the pain stoically as penance for feeding on humans, but when it came down to it, he knew he'd give anything right now to be free of the tubing jammed carelessly into his veins. For all he'd tearfully yearned for God's forgiveness for the things he'd done, he had to get out of this place. The late-afternoon sunlight pouring through the church's windows was nowhere near the worst of it. From the moment the hunters had hauled him through the doors, the holiness of the ground had made his entire body scream with the need to be somewhere far, far away. By now, he was too exhausted to scream, hovering just on the edge of consciousness. He slumped in his bonds, eyes closed, waiting for them to drain more of his blood or finish him off for good.
If Adair wanted to take him back this time, he'd let her. Anything to be free of this.