And I had to die, I felt, as I reached out to my officer and snatched the revolver from his holster. Dying was the only way I was ever going to escape those eyes.
And dying was the only way to empathize with it in the way the monster demanded of me.
The soldiers clawed at my arms to stop me from thrusting the barrel in my mouth. Maybe that was why the bullet went wrong, up through my nose and into my eye socket rather than into my brain. Or, as I have suggested, it may have been the will of God that I should not have escaped my punishment so neatly.
I never much believed in God or in punishment, until after I had met that officer. Until after I had met that monster.
They are a monster in your country, aren’t they? Numerous and unified, rich and powerful. Can I blame them? They are a monster in Israel, smaller but tougher and with very sharp teeth. I have a deathly fear of both countries. Of their retribution. Monsters always turn on their makers.
You think I’m still insane, the way I’m talking. That after that night I never regained my sanity. But I did, my friend. I am sane now. In fact, I didn’t really go mad when I fell in the pit. It was up until that point—before I fell—that I was insane.
And maybe I was saved when they pulled me out of that hell. Maybe my eternal soul has been burned clean. But maybe not.
So that is my story. I see you don’t believe certain mysteries I’ve suggested. Just as the British officer didn’t believe me about the Rat Kings. And now that you know my past, you find me repellent, as he did. Repulsive, now that you know the truth about me. You can call me a demon, a monster. Something other than human. Just like we called the Jews and the rest. Anything, so long as you can say that I’m not a man like you.
Yes, you found my story a trifle unpleasant, eh? But like my officer…you wanted to listen.
Chapel
“You want TV tonight, honey?” A small gray-haired woman with a clipboard came walking into Devin’s room so quickly that it startled her. She had been gazing out the plate glass window which ran along one wall.
“Yeah…sure,” Devin said.
The woman inserted a key into the small color television suspended from its bracket, swivelled it so that the set was within Devin’s reach. “Watch a few Christmas specials, honey; take your mind off.”
“You work on Christmas eve, huh?” Devin asked with very little interest.
“My kids are grown and moved away, and my folks and brother are dead. I have one son right over in New Hampshire but he can’t come to see his mother until tomorrow night. He isn’t even married…but he chooses to be with his girlfriend’s family.”
Don’t complain about your son, Devin thought. At least yours is still alive.
“How much is that?” With a small groan she reached for her purse. The woman told her, and Devin counted out five dollars. “Expensive.”
“Well, there are four pay-per-view movies on every day, honey.” While the woman made notations on her clipboard Devin turned the dial through the small offering of stations. The woman said, “When I get home tonight I’ll watch the midnight mass. You should, too, hon…it will make you feel more at peace, y’know?”
I doubt that, Devin thought, so devout an atheist that she doubted even the historical existence of Christ, let alone the son of God part. “What is this?” she asked, coming to one channel. “Is this where they show the mass?”
The woman leaned over Devin to peek. “Oh no, I mean on regular channel Five. That’s hospital channel Eight—Chapel. That’s the chapel right here in the hospital. Right down at the end of maternity, here, past the cafeteria. They’ll have a service tomorrow, but not tonight.”
“Five dollars, and one out of what—eight? ten?—stations is a security camera view of an empty church.” Devin snorted a tired little laugh.
“Chapel,” the woman corrected her. She clicked her pen point in. “A lot of people who can’t get out of bed rely on Chapel, honey. It gives them comfort.”
To be so simple a soul, Devin thought. She smiled at the woman. “Merry Christmas. Nice to talk to someone. You seem to be the only person working tonight.”
The woman drew closer conspiratorially. “Don’t get sick on a weekend or Christmas eve, hon. I feel bad for you that tonight it’s both. Not even a room-mate, huh? What are you in for, honey?”
“My baby died.”
“Aww. Oh, poor kid. I had a miscarriage once. How far along? Few months?”
“Yeah. Few.”
“It’s hard, honey, but it’s God’s will. We don’t understand His plan, but…maybe the baby wasn’t forming right. Most miscarriages are because of that. Or maybe he would have died some terrible way when he was older, and God spared him worse. It’s a mystery.”
“Yeah.”
The woman squeezed Devin’s foot through the blanket. “Be tough, hon. And merry Christmas.”
“Thanks.”
The woman took Devin’s hand and pushed her five dollars back into it. She winked, and left the room at that same hurried pace. Devin almost felt the urge to call her back, and a moment later she began to sob quietly but heavily, as if she had been abandoned. She felt not only physically hollowed out inside, with her baby gone, but that her very spirit had been hollowed out as well.
Few months? No. Devin had been full term. Her due date had been next Tuesday.
Intrauterine strangulation. Her child had been killed with his very own life line. Not even two weeks before, a nurse practitioner upon examining Devin had told her everything was okay. The baby’s heart had sounded strong. Devin had heard it herself. “Slow,” the nurse had said. “Could be a boy.” She had been right. Devin had picked the name Christopher, if it were to be a boy.
Should she call Christopher’s father? Peter was way out in sunny California these days. He didn’t even know that she’d been pregnant. First the good news…now the bad news. But to Peter, which would be the good news and which the bad news? Would the death of his son be a tragedy, or a relief?
How could Devin know, when she had struggled with such questions herself these past months? Was it a folly, going through with this pregnancy? Was this really what she wanted…to be a single mother?
Maybe I should have had an abortion after all, Devin thought now. It would have been the same result. Only, she wouldn’t have had to go through twelve hours of labor had he only been two months old. Twelve hours of agony. Women coped with the pain because they knew there was a reward at the end. But Devin had suffered those many long hours already knowing that in the end only a different kind of agony would be her prize.
I’m sorry, Christopher, she thought. I should have killed you a long time ago. I would have saved us both the pain…
She couldn’t afford a plot for him, a coffin. Some people did that. But in her customer service job she made barely enough to scratch by. What would they do with him? She had to ask them…but at the same time she didn’t want to know.
She had held him. They encouraged that, thought it helped with the coping. His face had looked so tired, so unhappy, as if he had merely been disturbed from his peaceful slumber within. Devin didn’t think it helped her to have seen him. She wished she had never seen how beautiful he was. Had never smelled his wispy fine hair, making a spiral on the back of his head as if God had left his thumb print there.
Keep Your hands off my kid, asshole, Devin thought, unbeliever though she was. You condemned my son and hung him. Even if I did believe in You, I’m through believing now.