It’s The Sabbath – Non-Fiction

It’s the Sabbath, the holiest day of the week, and you go to mass like you always do. But there’s an unseen difference in this practice for you today.

Your bruised knees ache. You keep your coat on to try to hide the slowly-fading red blotches on your neck. You try your best to avoid the priest. You don’t feel like you can speak to him or even look at him for too long.

The last time you held eye contact with him was deeply unholy, and your memory flashes back to a week ago in the warm, dark study … his hands on your bare skin, certain and determined.

And his eyes, full of hunger and lust for your equally needy body. You watch him from afar, all the way in the final pew, as he stands in the pulpit. You try your best to hear what is being said and taught, but all you can think about is how he looks under those robes.

You are brought harshly out of your daydream when it’s time to take communion. You get progressively more nervous the closer the line proceeds. You wonder if your fellow parishioners can still smell it on you: the sweat, his cologne, the lingering smell of sex that you can’t seem to wash out of that shirt. Did anyone notice how you struggled to get on your knees to pray? How little you’ve been paying attention?

Suddenly, it is your turn to take Holy Communion. You hold your hands out in front of you, right over left, and wait for him. When he looks up at you and smiles, you feel your heart skip a beat.

“The body of Christ,” he says.

That voice is etched into your mind and cannot seem to work it’s way out. It’s more beautiful than a choir of angels, but reminds you of your most dirty, sinful acts.

“Amen,” you manage to squeak.

You feel yourself start to sweat as his hand comes toward you with the host. You panic — ‘what is he doing? I’m clearly holding out my hands.’

“Open your mouth,” he whispers, just barely audible.

You can feel your face turn cherry red and your heart is thumping in your ears. Nonetheless, you obey him, parting your lips and tilting your head back slightly. The last time you did this in front of him, he was teaching you how to take something else into your mouth.

You can nearly feel his hand gripping your hair again. Instinctively, you stick out your tongue, just barely beyond your lips. He looks deep into your eyes as he places the host on your tongue. You shiver, but take of it the way you know you’re supposed to.

He hands you the cup of wine, his satisfaction clear on his face with a smug grin.

“The blood of Christ.”

“Amen.”

You take the cup into your shaking hands and take a bigger swallow of the wine than usual.

You quickly walk around him with your eyes to the floor, on your way back to the pew you came from. Your overwhelmed mind wonders if anyone else saw that, if you looked foolish taking communion in your mouth for the first time in your life, and, most abashedly, if he still thinks about that night too. You wonder if he still yearns for you, the way you crave the gorgeous sins he presents to you.

The final question is answered when he makes a point to whisper to you again, like a temptation in the wind, as you pass him.

“What a good boy you are.”