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“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen,” someone recites next to his ear: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
A beat of silence passes. Strahm doesn’t recognize this voice; it’s deep, melodic, almost. The vast majority of laypeople he meets with don’t fit neatly into the ‘fully grown man’ syndicate unless they’re about to bitch about the missus. Even better. “How long has it been since your last confession?”
“Ah… this is my first time.”
His hands are clasped in his lap, shifting just slightly to get into a more comfortable position on the hard wood of the confessional bench. First-timers can be a handful, always bursting into tears over the unforgivable sin of eating someone else’s leftovers. He braces himself for this one.
“Alright, son.” Strahm grimaces at the stupid sobriquet highlighted in the script that he can tell the big man upstairs is threatening to strike him down over if he doesn’t follow to a T. A driving motivation in all of this was to get away from the possibility of ever having to call somebody his “son”, but then again, his eyebrow only twitches every other time he’s addressed as “Father”. Small victories, isn’t that what he’d been told in Cokewhores Anonymous? “Go on.”
There’s a sound like hesitation, and all over again Strahm bites his tongue in the coming frustration that whatever basket case he’s got on the other side of this partition is going to have him going home tonight wondering why he’s yet to leave the priesthood a colorfully worded resignation letter. He smooths his palms over his stole.
“Priest-Penitent confidentiality, right?”
His least favorite question. “Nothing like a HIPAA violation, but the Seal of Confession does bind me to secrecy, yes. Your sins will remain in this booth.” There’s calculated practice in this little spiel.
The stranger seems relieved at the reassurance. Strahm can’t see him through the perforated opaque window separating them, but he does find himself wondering what kind of face that husky voice belongs to. It’s a sort of guessing game he plays with himself during particularly long or uninteresting confessions– if he’s expressly forbidden from casting judgment, what else is he to do?
A throat clears, and it isn’t his. “My name is Mark.”
Strahm has to squeeze his eyes shut to keep them from rolling so far they get stuck in the back of his head. There’s a time and place for formalities; he doesn’t care to know this guy’s name before finding out about the gritty details of his grievances. He holds his breath so as not to say something unbecoming of a man of the cloth. He does have a reputation to uphold, whether he particularly wants it or not. “Okay, Mark,” he concedes through grit teeth. “What do you do for a living?” All he can do is hope that the sarcasm translates through the barrier between them.
Evidently the sarcasm goes over about as well as speaking in tongues, because the stranger– Mark, apparently– answers with his entire chest: “I kill people.”
Huh. That isn’t one he’s heard before. Strahm allows the silence between them to thicken before he wets his lips thoughtfully. He thinks he’s heard it all: infidelity, stealing, homosexuality, and, very occasionally from the ailing and uber devoted, blasphemy. It’s easy enough to tell them what they want to hear. Be honest, make amends, God will not smite you for sleeping with another man, God will not smite you for using his name in vain. Murder, though, he doesn’t have that screenplay. Strahm almost smirks; Guy’s just a nutjob. Do the stupid dance and get his ass carted off to Alcatraz.
“Kill people?” Strahm shifts fake-thoughtfully on his side of the bench. He pretends to mull it over. “The Lord isn’t a big fan of that, really.”
Suddenly Mark is fluent in sarcasm. “I wouldn’t be sitting here if I were running around granting blessings, Father.”
There’s no outward condescension in his voice, but Strahm can hear it regardless. His eye twitches: strike one.
“That’s quite a confession,” Strahm says after he clears his throat. “Why do you do that, Mark?”
Something like a shiver hisses on the other side. “I like to.”
Strahm just barely chokes down a scoff in disappointment. All this burdening of a reject-pastor with fabricated murder stories and he won’t even be humored with a “devil made me do it” motive? No “deliver us from evil” bullshit to chuckle at, just an unabashed admission of sadism when he doesn’t even get paid to sit here and play therapist? Not even for a day off from presbyterianism. He’s gotta make sure he has this right. “You like to kill people, Mark?”
Mark snorts brutishly. “You an undercover fed or something? Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Threatened by the police? That’s rich for this lunatic. “Just making sure I heard you,” Strahm replies hastily with thinly disguised skepticism. “Why not tell someone closer to you about this?”
“I have nobody left,” Mark regales, and although the statement should be weighted with grief, there isn’t any tangible emotion in the simple sentence. Strahm hears the faint descent of a zipper. Guy must be taking off his coat. I’m really on this now.
Strahm clears his throat again. “Sorry to hear it.” He can sympathize with loss; this total crock of a story, though, is essentially a personal affront. He’s not stupid but maybe Mark is if he really thinks that seasoned serial killers run off to houses of prayer to recount the grisly details of their latest murders to preemptively hungover clergymen. The migraine is already raring to go right behind his eyes. “Tell me, then: what do you like about doing this?”
He’s almost about to knock slowly on the partition to ascertain whether Mark is still with him in response to the resounding silence. To punctuate the quiet is a far-off sound of fabric and polyester against itself. “Everything,” Mark murmurs suddenly, sighing in a way that Strahm might clock as dreamily were it not for the context of the situation. “I like… the noises they make. I like it when they scream.”
Strahm grimaces in the privacy of his side of the confessional. There’s another sound like shifting mere feet away and he has to wonder what about a criminal disclosure has him moving around so much for. Nervous about a police investigation in his future? He did this to himself. There’s no way Strahm is letting this guy go without a call to the station, even if he’s obviously making shit up. He’s dead-set on opening up the holes in his story like swiss cheese. “Why not put on a horror movie or something then?”
If Strahm’s hearing is still as good as his latest checkup believes it to be, he thinks he can make out Mark grunting softly. “It’s not real. It has to be real.”
“Some actors are very convincing,” Strahm argues, biting back a shift in tone to keep from making him appear accusatory. “Okay, I get it. I’ve heard similar arguments in justification of pornography.”
Mark’s tone is breathy to begin with, but the laugh he huffs out is downright airy. “Do you watch pornography, Father?”
Now it’s Strahm’s turn to shift. “I’m not in the habit, no,” he lies through his teeth. What else is a guy to do if he’s promised a one way ticket to Hell for breaking a vow of celibacy? Not that he really cares; he’d just rather not hear it from every single one of his fellow ecclesiastics. “It’s reprehensible.” Another lie. He won’t risk compromising even the shoddiest of his devotion to some freak with nothing better to do on a Thursday evening.
“Is it more reprehensible than murder?” Strahm can tell that Mark is gritting his teeth, clearly holding himself back from saying or doing something. It only works for so long; there’s a hushed whimper clear as day that wavers through the partition. What the fuck is he doing? “I think they’re on par. What’s not pornographic about having somebody’s blood on your hands?”
Try ‘all of it’, Strahm wants to spit back at him with a string of profanities layered with such malice entirely unsightly for a so-called man of God. He wants to rip the stole off his neck like it pains him and throw it to the ground, maybe stomp on it a few times for good measure, set fire to it and watch it burn until nothing remains of his brush with divinity but a pile of smoldering embers. Whatever cloth it is that ministers et al. are cut from, that material doesn’t exist within Strahm. He’s nothing but sacrilege smeared on a bed of impiety. This isn’t what he signed himself up for.
“You do this for sexual gratification, then?” He’s considerably less bored than he tends to be during these things if he can momentarily put aside the repulsion. He tries. He can’t.
What are the chances he’s being serious? Then: Don’t be fucking stupid.
Mark moans following another shuffle on his side of the booth and automatically it hits Strahm like a strike from the very man of the hour. He casts a defeated look up toward the ceiling, his scowl in the starring role. Surely Jesus Christ didn’t die for this.
“Sure,” Mark concedes, audibly winded and no doubt sporting a predatory grin based on the way the word curls around the side of his mouth. His voice is an octave lower all of a sudden, lecherous in tone and dangerous in vibrato. “It gets me so wet.”
Strahm isn’t sure if there’s a single nerve in his body that isn’t lit up like they’ve all got fire under their collective asses. So it’s clear the guy is just here on some sick and twisted pleasure-seeking trip; Strahm clears the 911 dialed into the phone in his head. He’s not a real threat– just some bum wanting to rub one out, probably too broke for a whorehouse. The feeling returns to Strahm’s hands and he feels his clerical collar suddenly a little looser around his neck.
Then he stops, and then he thinks about it: he’d be so, so incredibly wrong to engage, but who has to know? He thinks back to his earlier HIPAA comparison. He’s not allowed to disclose the topics of conversation, but unlike a doctor, he’s not contractually obligated to report anything confessed to him in this little wooden box. He’s bored anyway, and what’s he got to lose? Strahm can play along.
He clears his throat for the third time, this time ensuring that Mark can hear him. He slips back into Father Strahm like it’s nothing more than an employee uniform. “Are you here to repent for these killings?”
Something squelches with the wettest sound Strahm could conjure up at any given fact. Mark gasps sharply, stuttering out a stabilizing breath. “Can’t repent for something I’m not sorry for,” he pants, “but yeah, Father, make me regret it.”
Strahm’s other eye twitches again: strike two. Whatever he’s doing just a hop skip and a jump away is doing something sinister between Strahm’s ribs. When he strains his ears he can just barely hear a trill of whining underneath all that shaking breath, that panting chest. What he wouldn’t give to get a look at the other side, even if only to quell the rapid-fire facial guesses flipping wildly through his mind. That white little collar suddenly feels a hell of a lot tighter.
“God forgives because we repent,” Strahm offers, merely reciting what he’s been told several times before. “You can’t be forgiven for this if you can’t find it in your heart to repent.”
It’s becoming unclear whether it’s the pretend-murder this guy is getting off on or Strahm’s flimsily executed God-speak. He doesn’t even get as far as punctuating his sentence before Mark groans and there’s a continued lilt to that wet sound he’d first heard just moments ago. “Am I gonna have to beg for it?” He sounds desperate, clearly lacking something he’s fiercely in search of. Regretfully, Strahm’s pants are beginning to feel about a size too small around the waist.
He bites his tongue. He’s a little too far gone to put the brakes on now, but what is he supposed to do about it? Just sit here and keep pretending like he’s got his head up his ass or lean into it and play along? He absentmindedly checks his watch. Might as well have a little fun with it.
“Do you like how brutality feels, Mark?”
Mark makes a noise like a mortally wounded animal. Strahm rests his open palm firmly between his legs to keep a little bit of his unfortunately steadily growing arousal at bay. This guy is incredibly vocal; Strahm’s weakness, apparently. He whimpers again. “Yeah. Fuck, I do.”
It’s really not such a bad thing to listen to. He doesn’t even have to imagine what kind of face Mark has to know his voice is doing all the work for him, and it’s certainly working on Strahm. He’ll keep the guy talking and maybe get a nice little conclusion out of it. “Then yes, the Lord will ask that you beg his forgiveness.”
Mark chokes. “Please, God,” he mumbles, clearly in it with his dick and not his heart. He’s playing Strahm’s game, at the very least, and it’s a hymn to his ears regardless. “God, I’m sorry, it just feels so fucking good.”
Licking his lips, Strahm decides the situation calls for a little more pressure. He presses his hand down on his clothed groin, hissing quietly under his own friction. “Is that all you can offer?” Strahm antagonizes. “You’re a humiliation in His eyes. ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’.”
Mark is sounding more strangled with every word he’s trying to get out. “I’m not lying, Father,” he wheezes, “not lying. I got– got the fuckin’ videos. To prove it. Watch ‘em every night.”
Great. Not only is Mark delusional enough to think he’s actually some piss-poor Michael Myers, but he’s watching some type of fucked up snuff and taking all the credit for it. Shame he’s got a voice like a sex hotline operator. “Do you?” Strahm considers undoing the button of his pants for a little reprieve. “What is it you do to these people?”
There’s shivering besides him and Strahm imagines the full-body shiver that must have brought it about. “Get ‘em to come back home with me. Pick out something to use. I like– like when it’s bloody,” he finishes after a grunt. “Just… stab ‘em. Sometimes I open up their necks to see if the head’ll come the rest of the way.” It’s a sick fucking image, but the poignant arousal in Mark’s voice almost convinces Strahm to forget that he’s sexualizing decapitation. “Love the way they cry. When I can feel them all dying.”
“Reprehensible,” Strahm repeats himself. “You’ve secured your place in Hell. The Lord will grant you no forgiveness.”
Mark’s following moan is the most debauched of them all thus far. “How about you, Father? I was an altar boy. Don’t you guys in the robes love that?”
Strahm’s zipper comes down as slowly as he can manage so as to disguise its sound. He scrunches his nose for such a perverse implication. Mark seems to be full of those. “Don’t patronize me,” Strahm criticizes pointedly. “You’re a miscreant. Devil fodder. You’re a disgrace to the church.”
There’s another howl like he’s been struck. “I can’t stop,” Mark heaves. “Makes me feel so good. They stop breathing all of a sudden and– shit. I keep things. Look back at ‘em later and I need it all over again.”
Now Strahm is at the very least under his slacks and above his underwear. There hadn’t been any telltale snapping of elastic before Mark had gotten noisier, and Strahm’s heart jumps into his throat; did he come wearing nothing underneath? He groans quiet enough to stay contained to his side of the bench. Part of him hopes his pastor catches wind of this so he has a valid reason to finally call it quits. “There’s evil in you, evil that God can’t cure. You’ll be hand in hand with Satan before you ever come close to seeing the gates of Heaven.”
“Father,” Mark is sobbing out now, “please. Please.”
Strahm squeezes himself gently through the thin layer of cloth still protecting him. “Go ahead, Mark,” Strahm woos. “Continue this selfish pursuit of pleasure. The blood under your nails won’t restore your purity or your reverence. You’ll have to grovel at His feet if you ever think about coming into my church again.”
Mark sinks his teeth into his whine. “You saying there won’t be a second date?”
Strahm sneers. “Make plans with your hand.”
Evidently that’s all it takes before his penitent is gagging himself on a slew of groaning and mewling. Strahm curses under his breath, quiet enough to pass off as a completely different word were he to be questioned by divine authorities on it. His straining hard-on, though, that’s not so easily concealed. Mark sounds to be oxygenating himself through the aftershocks of an obvious orgasm and Strahm has a slinking suspicion that he probably isn’t going to stick around for act II. Hanging a priest out to dry should be a punishable offense in and of itself– can the Bible be amended?
He doesn’t dare to say anything until their breath exchange has evened itself out. There’s something horrendously irreligious hanging stagnant in the air of this consecrated booth. If Strahm weren’t so stimulated he may have grown nauseous at its scent.
“Are you still getting into Heaven, Father?” Mark snarks when he’s got his breath all the way back. A shifting of fabric almost oppositely mirroring the sound made at the start. He really is just going to zip up and slink away.
“He tells me I’m His favorite,” Strahm says disparagingly. “I meant what I said. I don’t want to see you in my church again.”
Mark huffs. “I meant what I said, too. I got every tape on a shelf in the living room.”
He’s still gonna try and drive this home, huh? “Go home, Mark.”
“I got a case with your name on it,” Mark rasps, and Strahm almost thinks he can see his fingers brush the lattice separating them. “Waiting to fill it.”
There go Strahm’s eyes finally rolling loosely into the back of his head. “Don’t count on it,” he quips while rubbing at his eyes. “Go home.”
Mark chuckles something vindictive. Strahm’s blood runs cold. “Goodnight, Father.”
He clutches at the rosary loosely hanging around his neck. “Goodnight, Mark,” and then as a hasty afterthought, “give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.”
“His mercy endures forever.” Mark punctuates the call-and-response with the sliding shut of his side’s curtain and Strahm’s eye twitches one more time: strike three.
Strahm makes a quick enough job of zipping himself back up and buttoning his slacks like nothing had ever been amiss in the first place. One of his trembling hands is threaded through loose strands of hair against his dampening forehead. That little collar is staggeringly unrelenting in its grip around his throat.
Later when Strahm returns to his apartment and sheds his clerical skin, he’ll flip a coin: heads and he calls the police even if this Mark character happens to be bluffing, tails and he returns to the confessional the very next day.
It will land on tails.