[memory] What: Memory Will characters be viewing the memory or experiencing it?: Experiencing it Warning, this memory contains: Violence, dark themes.
You're reminded of a psalm. You found him in the church, but not in the confessional. You tell the psalm to the man as he tries to buck you off, twisting his body against his pinned arms, his pinned head. "Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain." No guards are coming now. No one hears the man as he screams. You're not in the confessional, and the man keening into the marble floor by the altar thinks he has nothing to confess. Every muscle in your body is tensed, coiled, cold, bilious. Had you the power, you could drool acid into his eyes. No guards are coming, but he screams again, long and loud, and you lean onto the hand on the back of his head, twisting higher with the hand that holds his wrist.
He is face down. "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." It's an admonishment. You twist, twist, and he stops the shouting. You can see the man's whites, the veins in them, the flecks in the shadowed blue of his irises as they dart up and away, the froth coming over the edge of his lip. You are a rock on his back. You are the press. He won't beg for more weight. He won't face death with dignity. You sink on him, as if the gear has been turned another notch.
The pressure is unbearable. You feel it, too, the pressure, the need to scream. You do, you scream into his ear so loud it echoes on the windows, so close to him that the tip of your nose touches the damp roots of his hair. You pull back. You have a strength so sharp and clean it is too much. Somehow, you are the heaviest you've ever been, and it hardly takes the edge off to push his skull against the italian marble, until it cracks, until it splits.
You hear the sound, look again. He is still alive. He is whimpering and, you see you have only broken his jaw.
The muscles in your arms loosen. Your body softens, relaxes, and the man in the collar moans. "Lord, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them?" You take his jaw in your hands, and he screams. You set it his lips together again. You slide your fingers under the fine silk at the back of the collar, grasp tightly, and lift. His weight is nothing. You take him with you, toward the cross behind the altar, to the door to the vestry, and his toes barely skim the ground. You hold him up, so he can look at his lord as you take him away, if he likes. "They are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow."
But you are tired of psalms. You toss him over your shoulder as you open the door at the back of the hall. "I know a good one," you say. It comes to you lightly, almost settling on your tongue, melting away. "If a foe were rising against me, I could hide. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship at the house of God, as we walked about among the worshipers."
The vestry beyond is close and dark - rows of hanging vestments and soft red carpet. The church echoes behind. "I like that one," you say, and he is talking, talking out of his broken mouth about forgiveness and about God. As you close the door to the church, the memory fizzles away. "Now, what do you say?" you hear yourself asking. You can no longer see the seen, but the words are in your mouth. "Sorry - more weight?"