The Winner: Part Thirteen

The phone rings and I don't answer it. When the answering machine picks up, it's my mother. Her voice sounds crackly through the overseas line.

"Hey Poopy. I just wanted to give you a call and let you know I'm doing okay down here. Sorry about the last time I called. I was going through a really stressful period with my weight loss and surgery. They counselors have done an extra hard job making sure I'm mentally fit and assuring me I have the strength to lose weight and change my body in a way that matches my indomitable will. I just wanted to call and let you know I'm okay. I gotta go into surgery again to get my excess skin cut away and tightened. I'm getting implants and a bone shaving too. I'll call you next week. I'm almost finished here. I can't wait for you to see the new me. Love ya, Poopy. Hope everything is going well."

I start to cry when I hear her voice. The Poopy she thinks she loves is not the Poopy I really am. I am pathetic. I wish I was dead.

This has been a strange week for me. After watching the video with Sergei, I felt numb, almost sick. I couldn't sleep. Images of that movie kept going through my head. I couldn't process what was going on. I wasn't equipped to.

After another two days of staying locked inside my loft, my only human contact being with the pizza delivery man, I decided I needed to exorcise these feeling by confronting them. I took the DVD, which I hadn't touched since watching it at the Lazy-U, and stuck it in my Playstation and watched it again. I felt sicker after watching it, so I played it again and again. I ended up watching it for about four hours straight until I was completely desensitized. I forced myself to eat some cold pepperoni pizza while I watched it and managed to keep it down. Watching that horrible video actually calmed me down some.

Since I hadn't taken my Armani in to get the vomit stains washed off it, I went to the mall and just bought a new one. Afterwards, I went out for an expensive sushi dinner at a restaurant where it cost seventeen dollars for a single piece of maguro. I suddenly felt powerful, on top of the world. Why all the fear? I had gotten away with murder.

Something changed in me. I felt like a different person. Everyone I met, I looked at them and knew, "I could have you killed if I wanted" and laughed a little. I held my head up high for the first time, knowing that I'd crossed a barrier that few of the people who had always looked down on me ever had. Death, of course, was nothing I wasn't familiar with. I'd seen more gruesome deaths than most people would ever see, but Luke was different. Luke was one person I knew would be alive if it wasn't for me. The feeling was better than sex. I walked around with almost a skip in my step.

The paranoia subsided, but the nightmares remained. Every time I fell asleep, I began to have vivid dreams of Luke being tortured to death. The first few times, I dreamt I was in that basement, burning, cutting, torturing him to death, his screams ringing in my ears. I couldn't sleep more than a few hours without that scene popping into my head.

I tried watching the video again; thinking that by doing so I could remove it from my dreams but it didn't help. I stopped watching the video altogether, wondering if by repeating it so many times I was just making my situation worse. That didn't help either.

My mood was wearing down again. Last night, the dream changed again and instead of it being me who tortured Luke, I was the one handcuffed to the chair and Luke (with his face burned, his hair singed off and his eyes radiating fury) was bearing down on me with the knives and blowtorch. He ran the blue flame over my chest I don't think I actually felt the pain in the dream, but I did feel the panic, the cold, desperate, helpless sense of panic.

"This is what you deserve you fucking cunt dropping..." Luke said, but it wasn't Luke anymore. It was my mother, breathing spit and gin and halitosis in my face. Her doughy face twisted into mask of hate I hadn't seen since I was young.

That's about when I was thrust screaming back into consciousness. My sheets were soaked through with sweat and I felt like I was freezing. I went into the shower to try and warm myself up but I couldn't get rid of the chill that took over my body. I sat on the floor of my bedroom in the bathrobe. I was exhausted, but I didn't dare try and sleep again.

Of course, my mother calling me just now didn't help my state of mind...

I've been sitting on the floor for hours, but now I feel the desperate urge to get up and get out of the apartment. Even though I'm pretty sure my mother won't call back, I don't want to risk it. I throw on a red t-shirt, a black hoodie, and a pair of Tommy Hilfiger jeans that I've never worn before and leave without even taking my wallet with me. As the door to the loft slams shut behind me, I get the weird sensation that I may never return.

The trip on the elevator to get to the ground floor seems interminable. Outside, the weather is clear and sunny and unseasonably warm and cheery. In other words, diametrically opposed to the way I feel. Even the weather seems to be mocking me. I walk around downtown aimlessly. I feel hungry and figure I should get something to eat, but I don't know if I can keep even a light meal in my stomach right now (and without my wallet, it's not like I can buy lunch anyway). I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going. I have no place to go to; no place that feels like home.

I walk for an hour. I don't even think while I walk, I just walk. Bums come up to me asking for spare change and I can't even work up the energy to go and tell them to go fuck themselves. A green Escalade almost creams me as I numbly through an intersection. The driver calls me a "dumb pig-fucker" and I don't respond. I just keep walking.

I stop for a moment and realize I'm across the street from a cathedral. Normally, I wouldn't give a shit, but I stand there transfixed by the architecture; the wooden doors painted gold and the gargoyles leaning ominously over the ledge of the spire. I don't know why this fascinates me since I have a deep contempt of religion, but I don't feel that contempt now. In fact, I feel curious. I jaywalk to the other side of the street and walk inside.

The interior of the cathedral looks even larger than the outside. There is a bowl of holy water sitting atop a large white pillar next to the entrance, as well as a large rack of candles. From the stained glass to the ornate crucifixes with a bloody Jesus tacked to them, everything was neatly clicking into my stereotype of what a Catholic church would be like. Since it's a weekday, the pews are empty save for one or two homeless people nodding off weeklong drinking binges and an old man who moved his mouth as he prayed with his hands clasped in front of him. I find an empty pew and sit quietly, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Maybe I'll just sit here for a spell.

I hear a door open to the side of me and see a well-dressed man in a business suit step out of a confessional booth. I watch him out of the corner of my eye as he briskly walks to the entrance, dips his fingers in the holy water and crosses himself while mumbling what must be a prayer under his breath. After he has left, the old man slowly gets up and shuffles across to the confessional, shutting the door behind him.
I can probably count the number of times I've stepped in a church in my life on two hands. Religion always seemed so stupid to me; a crutch for mouth-breathing morons who need a higher power to tell them what to do in their lives. I'm pretty sure the reason I've been drawn to this church is so I can confess. It's not that I suddenly believe in God all of a sudden, but I realize that I have this thing hanging over my head that I can't talk to anyone about (well, maybe Sergei, but who wants to talk to that asshole?) At the very least, maybe talking about it might get rid of the cold sweats and the night terrors I've been having.

The old man comes out of the confessional after about ten minutes. After he leaves, I wait for a minute to see if anyone else was waiting before me. When I'm pretty sure it's all mine, I nervously head into the booth, close the door behind me and sit on the small wooden shelf.

I'm not sure what to say, seeing as I've never done confession before. "Um, bless me father, for I have sinned. Um...what else do I need to say?"

The priest sitting behind the screen looks young; younger than I'd imagine a priest to be. "How long has it been since your last confession?"

"Actually, I've never done this before."

"Are you a new convert?"

"Yes..." I blurt out, but I suddenly feel uneasy about lying here. "I mean, no. I'm not a Catholic or anything...let me level with you, padre--I'm not even a Christian. In fact, I don't even believe in god."

The priest is silent for a moment. "Then...why are you here?"

"I just...need to talk to someone. I feel guilty and I need to talk and I figure this is the place to do it." I look directly at him through the screen. "Now, even though I'm not a Christian, you can't tell anyone about what I say here, right?"

The priest nods. "I am forbidden by the church to break the sanctity of the confessional, regardless of the beliefs of the sinner."

"You promise? You're not bullshitting me, right?"

The priest looks at me through the screen, vaguely annoyed. "What is this sin you feel the desperate need to confess?"

I take a deep breath and sigh. "Well, it's a long story..."

And so I start at the beginning, about how I was a down-and-out ex-con who was sent to jail unfairly. I tell him about winning the lottery and how in one stroke, my life suddenly had the potential for coming out okay. I tell him about Apple and how I fell in love with her watching her dance that night at the titty bar all alone. I tell him about how I came to hate her when I realized I would never mean anything to her because of her stupid, scummy boyfriend Luke. And of course, all of that is just a rambling set up to explain what I really wanted to get off my chest: how I paid to have him not just murdered, but tortured horribly first.

The priest says nothing as I go through the whole sordid tale. He says nothing after I finish. He just sits there and collects his thoughts. I don't feel better having said this all aloud. If anything, by doing so I am confronted with just how terrible it really is.

After a moment or so, the priest finally speaks: "Is all of what you said to me true?"

"Yes, father. All of that really happened?"

"If it's true, then you should turn yourself into the police."

I shake my head. "No. I can't do that. I can't go back to jail. Besides, going to jail isn't gonna bring him back."

"You're right. It won't," the priest says. "But you must be held accountable for your actions. Are you sorry you had this man murdered?"

"I don't know," I say. "I'm not sure I'm unhappy that he's dead. But if I had to do it again, I probably wouldn't. These nightmares really suck."

"Son, why did you come here today? What did you think I was going to tell you to do?"

"I...I don't know. I just figured I needed to get it off my chest and then I'd feel better."

"Do you?"

"I'm not sure yet."

The priest turns to look at me through the screen. "You mentioned to me earlier you don't believe in God, but then why do you think that what you did is such a thing that can be made better by 'getting it off your chest?'"

I don't say anything. I don't know what I can say.

"You may feel that you are apart from God, but God is not apart from you. God speaks to you through your conscience and your conscience is what will eat at you because of what you did."

"Well, I'm sure my conscience will eat at me whether I turn myself into the police or not, so I'd rather not."

The priest sighs. "Yes, your conscience will still torture you even if you turn yourself in. That is God punishing you for what you have done and it is right that you will suffer. But I promise you: you will suffer more if you do not hold yourself accountable for what you did. Turning yourself in will be your first step towards righting this wrong and though you will suffer for it, possibly for the rest of your life, it is the only way you can be forgiven."

"I still don't see how that will make things better."

"The woman you told me about. The one whose lover you had killed out of jealousy; she doesn't know he's dead yet."

"I don't think so," I say. "She hasn't returned my calls in weeks. I don't think she ever wants to talk to me again."

"What is more cruel? To let her live her life not knowing what has become of this man she loves, or to know what happened, no matter how ghastly he came to his end? The latter choice may be harsh, but it will eventually allow her to move on with her life. You say you hate her, but that is just the flipside of love. They are more alike than they seem. If you ever loved that woman, you will let her know the truth and give yourself over to have justice served."

Again, I'm speechless. Everything the priest says makes sense to me, but I know that I can't turn myself in. After my experience in jail, I know I can never go back there.

"I can't go back to jail."

"It is the only path to forgiveness," the priest states.

I shake my head. "I'm not gonna turn myself in, and I think it's hypocritical of you to keep telling me to," I say. "After all, do you priests turn yourselves into the cops every time you blow an altar boy?"

The priest whips his head angrily towards the screen. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," I say with reflexive snottiness. "I mean, sure, touching little boys might not be on the same level as having someone killed, but I don't see Dateline specials trying to catch murderers. Can't I suffer just as effectively out of jail as I can inside it? Hell, you said it would be worse if I didn't turn myself in, maybe that's the way to go..."
The priest groans. "Would you please leave?"

"Why? I'm still looking for redemption. I'm just trying to see if there are other options."

"Oh, quit the crap..." the priest sneers. "Go now. I'm pretty sure everything you've said here is a lie."

"No it isn't," I protest. "Why would I lie about that shit?"

"You think you're the first person to get off on making up crazy stories to tell in the confessional? Just recently I had some loser in here claiming he'd set a briefcase nuke to blow up the city in twenty-four hours because Satan told him to. That was obviously a lie. I get people like you in here every other week buddy. Your shtick is nothing new. You're just another sick, lonely asshole. Now leave."

"I swear I'm telling the truth!"

"Leave or I'll call the authorities and have you arrested for trespassing."

I'm quaking with anger now. I stand up and bang my head on the low wooden ceiling of the confessional. "Fine. I guess I must have struck a little to close to home with that altar boy remark. But I wasn't bullshitting you! I had the sonofabitch killed! Me, no one else! Remember that you boy-raping piece of shit!" I scream at him through the screen before kicking open the door.

I storm out of the confessional and I think the priest yells at me; something to the affect of never come back. I don't stop to listen to his crap. My yelling has the drunk who starts wheezing and coughing. I pay him no mind and head straight for the entrance. I give the pillar holding the holy water a swift kick, trying to knock it over, but it must be bolted into the floor since it doesn't budge and I break my big toe in the process.

"FUCK!" I scream, jumping around until the pain in my foot subsides to a tolerable level. The priest exits his side of the confessional and says he's calling the police. I spit in the bowl of holy water and hobble out the big, gold painted doors.

I limp as fast as I can until I've got about four blocks between me and the cathedral, then I slow down so as not to exacerbate the pain in my toe. Where to now? Well, I guess I should go home. Where else am I gonna go? I'll go to the hospital to get my foot looked later. Every time I step, a pulse of pain shoots up my leg and my anger at that priest, at god and the world in general flares up. It doesn't feel nice, but oh well. Anger feels better than depression.

After limping along for ten blocks, I finally end up back at the building my loft is in. As I walk in the doors, I notice a woman crying and desperately pressing the buzzer. She turns to look at me as I come inside and I see her cheek is swollen, she has a black eye and one of her front teeth has been knocked out. The woman's face is so battered that it takes me a second to realize that it's Apple.

"Ohmygod Poopy, it's you! Thank God it's you!" she runs over to me and nearly tackles me with an embrace (forcing my balance to my wounded foot, causing it to shriek with pain; I wince). "Please, you have to help me. You're the only one who can help me. I'm begging you, please HELP ME!"

"Calm down, Apple. Jesus..." I say. I'm more puzzled than worried right now. I'm sure she wouldn't be so glad to see me if she knew about Luke. 'What the hell is going on?"

"It's my children. They took my children. My babies! Please, you're the only one who can help me get them back! PLEASE POOPY! HELP ME!"