Warm streams of water slide from his hair down his neck, heating his skin before breaking against the tiles. And yet the long-awaited sense of cleansing refuses to come. His skin already aches from the amount of soap he’s used, but he still can’t bring himself to stop. It feels as though even if he were to tear off his own skin, the sin would not wash away. The second the warm water touches him again, the memories return—Elias’s hot, forceful hands gripping his legs, his arms, his waist, while wet lips traced over his flesh. Thoughts of unbearable sinfulness are crushed by desire—carnal, base, utterly filthy. Desperate to root it out, Felix twists the tap and drenches himself in ice-cold water until he can no longer feel his fingers and his teeth begin to chatter. It isn’t enough.

  The day feels like punishment. He has sermons to preach, confessions to take, God’s word to carry—but Felix has never felt so far from God. Elias arrives—of course he does—and sits, as always, in the third pew, staring straight at him. Silent, simply watching, as if savoring his torment. Savoring the way Felix flinches and turns away whenever their eyes meet, the way he avoids him like something dangerous. But had Bauer held that gaze for even a second longer, he might have noticed there was no pleasure there. No—Huber looked stricken, like a young man whose bride had run from the altar. But Felix doesn’t care. Truly doesn’t. Lewd and utterly filthy memories flood his mind. They birth a new, terrifying sensation, as though his thoughts now belong to someone else—someone not him at all. It makes him want to sever his own head just to stop it.

  By evening he is forced to return home; the urge to escape the parishioners is overwhelming. He is terrified he will stain them with his sin. Molly doesn’t ask what happened—thank God—but she does stare, stunned, as her husband rushes inside and locks himself in the bathroom. The slippery lump in his throat, stuck there since that night, comes out with the vomiting. His whole body shakes so violently he nearly collapses. Molly finds him later on the bedroom floor, kneeling before an icon with a rosary in his hands. She snorts, slams the door, and walks off to the kitchen, unwilling to listen to the flood of prayers spilling from his mouth. Felix doesn’t sleep that night, spending it instead at the foot of the cross.

  No matter how he tries to distract himself, Elias keeps slipping into his thoughts—Elias so accessible, so open, so unbearably beautiful. Felix feels his gaze at every Mass. It sears straight through him, igniting a heat that drives him to hide in the shade of the garden—yet even there his heartbeat refuses to slow. He clutches the rosary until his knuckles ache, repeating the prayer, but the words keep being drowned out by thoughts of sinful pleasure.

  “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Leviticus 18:22.” His father’s voice echoes in his mind, and his wrists—hidden beneath the sleeves of his cassock—throb with phantom pain. Abomination. All of it was an abomination. It soaked into his body and bent him toward sin.

  Felix slaps himself across the face and presses his fingers to the back of his tongue as though sin could be purged so easily.

  If this trial was sent by God, could he survive it?

  Katarina once walked in on him like that, but he cut off all her questions with a single request: “Don’t ask and don’t tell anyone. Please.” Despite her worry, she respected him too much to go against his wishes. So she watched his self-punishment in silence. And Felix truly stopped pitying himself.

  At home, he found an old hairshirt and wore it beneath his clothing every day, tightening it as much as he could. The coarse fabric tore his skin until it bled, pressed into his ribs, but Felix didn’t know what else to do. Once, the rod and confession had been enough—but he was a grown man now. And how had such a repulsive sin caught up to him after so many years? He asked himself this every sleepless night he spent kneeling on the cold floor.

  *  *  *

  “What’s happening to you?” Molly asks softly after several long days.

  “I don’t know what you mean, or why it concerns you,” Felix replies flatly as he wraps his hands in bandages before Mass.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Don’t pretend,” she sighs irritably, though her voice still sounds faint. “You look awful. I haven’t seen you eat once. You don’t sleep… and because of that you look like—”

  “Like what?” He freezes and lifts a heavy, cruel gaze to her. “Like someone you can treat no better than a piece of furniture?”

  “Felix, I just…” She tries to say something else, but instead leans weakly against the countertop she’d been wiping down and falls silent.

  “It’s all right, Molly,” he says gently—almost tenderly. “Keep pretending you’re a caring wife. It suits you.”

  “Why do you treat me as though I’ve done something to you?” she asks in a tight, strangled voice, staring at a kitchen cabinet as though afraid to look at him.

  “Can’t you guess?” Felix’s calm tone, so out of place, sounds almost mocking. “Can’t you remember where you spend your evenings, and whose house you run to while I’m at the parish? Who you dine with, whose bed you share—if not your husband’s?”

  Molly jolts as though struck by electricity, her head snapping up. Her usually blank eyes now churn with a storm of emotions—from confusion to raw hurt.

  “What are you talking about…”

  “Only the truth, Molly. Does the truth sting?” His gaze—artificially calm—meets her boiling one. “This is what’s happening to me. And it’s your fault. Was I asking too much? Simply be faithful and be a good wife—that’s all that was required of you.”

  “I didn’t…” Molly grips the counter, her strength failing as she forces out words she had hoped never to say. “I never cheated on you…”

  “Of course. You’d never stoop to something so crude. You prefer a gentler way, don’t you? Just looks, little smiles, harmless dinners… everything so easy for you, isn’t it, Molly?”

  “Oh God…” She breaks. Like a beaten dog she turns her gaze away and collapses onto a chair. Thin fingers clutch the faded hem of her dress, and tears blur her eyes, burning her throat. “I can’t do this anymore. What’s wrong with you? You’re… you’re a monster.”

  “Perhaps.” Felix adjusts the sleeves of his cassock by the door. “But at least I’m an honest one.”

  This question has haunted him since adolescence. What was wrong with him? Maybe his life would have been different if he had been normal. If he hadn’t been so vulnerable to this awful sin. The lump rises in his throat again, the air turns hot and suffocating. He escapes the house quickly, leaving his wife to cry alone at the table.

  At Mass he can’t focus at all. His thoughts scatter—Molly’s words, Elias, Scripture—an unending torrent. Stopping it is as futile as a rabbit trying to halt a rushing river. He can’t concentrate on prayer or confession, stumbling over words, losing track, barely listening.

  Everyone notices the priest’s condition; it is impossible not to. He hears anxious whispering, feels worried eyes on him. Only Katarina asks after his health, and receives the same answer every time: “I’m fine. You’re imagining things.” There is no point telling anyone. No one could help him—and perhaps they would make it worse, condemn him, commit him… Who knows how sins like this are treated. If they are treated at all.

  He doesn’t go home right away. A cold rain has begun, so he drags out the walk as long as possible. But all good things end. He barely manages to get wet before finding himself again in his kitchen.

  Molly isn’t home. Just a cold dinner on the table and a note saying she will stay with a friend he knows too well to worry about. Supposedly something important needed her help. Felix doesn’t even call to check—as he usually does—because he simply doesn’t care anymore. Even if she is with another man—let her go. Perhaps it’s for the best. He crumples the note and throws it away, collapsing into a chair. His head feels unbearably heavy, and he has to hold it up with his hand. The steady tapping of rain against the roof lulls him toward sleep, but he must not sleep, not yet. He hasn’t redeemed enough to deserve rest. He thinks about dousing himself in cold water again and resuming his prayers, when a sudden knock interrupts.

  Felix stands too quickly, panic surging. Has Molly come back? Has someone grown so worried they’ve come to have him committed? Paranoia blooms from lack of sleep. He takes a deep breath, exhales, and goes to the door. But opening it only makes the fear worse.

  Completely soaked yet radiating his usual confidence, Elias stands on the doorstep. He braces a hand against the frame immediately, preventing Felix from slamming the door in his face. He’s smiling. Smiling with such disarming ease that resisting him feels pointless. He’s dressed far too lightly for this weather: just a red shirt and jeans, without his beloved leather jacket, almost without any of his usual jangling accessories. And his lip is split. Easy to miss at first—his face always attracts attention—but any imperfection stands out at once. Who would dare strike someone so beautiful?

  “You won’t let me in, will you, Father Felix?” Huber asks casually, tilting his head slightly.

  Felix says nothing. He can’t find the words. He expected to be terrified at the sight of Elias—terrified the way he is of his own thoughts. Yet standing there, he… relaxes? Too much. As though relief spreads through him.

  “Do you need help?” Felix asks. His voice cracks, betraying his weakness, though his face remains stern.

  “No. I’m just curious whether a priest will let a sinner into his home.”

  The answer comes painfully slow. Felix knows that if he lets him in, it will change everything—because it will mean too much. But he also cannot turn away a bruised, rain-soaked man into the night.

  He says nothing, but steps aside.

  And lets Elias in.