Embedded Files
Morning light streamed through the slanted slats of the sanctuary’s domed mahogany louvres. Glowing streaks of the sun fell across my face, touching my dull black hair with a golden sheen. I was slumped against the wooden bench, legs crossed, hanging my arms on the backrest. My weight pressed into its hard edges. The pain was made unstimulating by time.
The entrance doors to the sanctuary opened behind me. I heard the sound of footsteps proceed down the aisle. Footsteps of one person. A middle-aged man. Could be on the older side, judging by the weight of the steps and the sauntering rhythm. The clarity of his footsteps clacking against the polished concrete floor led me to think he was wearing dress shoes. His footsteps stopped as he took a seat on the bench across the aisle three rows behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder at him. Eye contact. He shot me a quick nod and a wave and looked away.
Straggly grey hair, pale complexion, quite plump. He was wearing dress shoes, too.
Let it be known that if I had misjudged the footsteps that I heard, I would have chopped my ears off then and there. Despite that being an affront to God.
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Over time, more people came in, filling in the rows of benches radiating out from either side of the stone podium at the end of the sanctuary. Potted plants were placed regularly around the room, their lush greens in harmonious contrast with the dark stone and mahogany. The sanctuary’s ceiling was made from wooden boards and glass panels, which let in a lot of natural light but also meant that the sun would glare right in your eyes a lot of the time.
When the assembly seemed to be just about full, Priest Ibaramoth entered, striding dutifully down the aisle, carrying a leather-bound tome in his left hand, readjusting his ivory service visard with his right. Daylight glinted off of his chain-fastened cuffs. His white robes flowed down to the ground, crimson chasuble rippling behind him with each step up to the podium.
The ritual proceedings went as usual from then on.
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At one point, Priest Ibaramoth started talking about a man he claimed to have met once five years ago.
“He was a man, as typical as any one of you here today, who in that time was tight in the clutches of a demon. Through no fault of his own, he had lost his day job over a dispute with his boss, and subsequently ended up losing the love of his sweetheart. He slipped down the treacherous slope that we know as depression, and soon his nights were spent drowning his sorrows in rum, and drowning his wallet in casino debts.”
Priest Ibaramoth’s sombre voice emanated throughout the sanctuary. I could feel his emotions from behind his visard.
“On the night of my contact with that man, he had been turned away from the bar he frequented, due to concern for his health from the bartender’s end. So he stood in the coldness of that night, gazing at the empty waterways of the town. I was heading home that night when I came across that man, and I saw a malevolent darkness enveloping his soul, a wicked smoke that obscured from him the light of the divine. What I saw was but a man, tormented by what can only be attributed to the absurd.”
Now Priest Ibaramoth spoke with a renewed vigour. He stepped forth with an air of pride.
“I taught to him every way of God. At first it did not seem as if things would change. But, gradually, good things began to happen here, and then there, and before anybody knew it, he had become a successful expert in trading. So it was, that as the ugly duckling endured a harsh winter before it became a gracious swan, this once-poor man reached upwards and pulled himself out of the depths of misery, and now walks alongside the many who have achieved joy in God’s grace.”
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Not much time passed after then, and people began to empty out from the church aisles and leave to wherever it was that they were going.
As for me, I had no idea where I was going. Only God knew.
I didn’t know and I couldn’t have known, and that was because I had no job for which I could dedicate my hours, and I had no home in which I could sleep.
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