"We share the same secrets as kids. And grow up to face the same fears as adults." -fw.
When Amelia May loses her father to cancer, she is forced to separate with her only sibling and move in with the McKays, a wealthy high-class family. She slowly...
"Take me to church. I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies. I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife. Offer me that deathless death. Good God, let me give you my life." —Hozier.
Chapter Theme Song: 'Take Me To Church' by Hozier.
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Amelia
There was a ball weighing on my chest. A ball of terror, dread, and trauma. Just when I thought my brain couldn't get any more debilitated, there came another incident that would undoubtedly scar me for life. I couldn't tell what was more traumatic. My father's pale skin and sunken eye sockets, Jacob's pulpy eyes and gummy brain matters, or the man in the alley's slashed neck and hanging tongue.
Forgive me for I have sinned. It was a prayer taught by Reverend Morgan, the man in the cassock at the church we would visit on Sundays. The day I had covered for the triplets, declaring that neither they nor I knew anything about the disappearance of Jacob Whitaker, I had later uttered an orison in the dark loneliness of my room. Forgive me for I have sinned.
I wanted to live righteously. I still wanted to meet God and ask Him why he had taken away my family at the tender age of ten. But at every minute, second, and hour that flew by...I felt my soul falling farther and farther in the burning pits of a place I couldn't crawl out of. My life felt damned and cursed. Like my essence was hanging from sharp hook wires, fire melting through my body and tearing every inch of skin apart. And I could feel it. I could feel the scorching flames. I was far away from heaven—that was for sure.
"Amelia?"
"Amelia?"
A rough hand waved in front of my face, and I floated back to reality, my head turning mechanically in the direction. The type of movement that seemed more like the stiff neck of an antique doll than a human being with a beating heart. And I probably could have passed for a lifeless doll. My eyes were dull, I could see my reflection in the transparent flower vase behind the man's head. My body felt soulless, and my mind was hardly present. I was still there in that narrow, freezing alley. Still sitting on the dirty ground with folded legs and blood dripping from my coat and hair.
But I was clean then—in the present. Not inwardly, but outwardly. There was no blood, no stains. I was dry and sitting in the 'comfort' of a small police office, the photos of smiling children on old, fading calendars, the suffocating scent of papers, and the aroma of overly sweet coffee—all telling me I was there. You're here! This is now!
"Are you sure you didn't see the man's face at all?" The man's eyebrows, with thin streaks of white, rose all the way up to his hairline as he opened his hands on the polished desk.
I shook my head, staring straight at him but not seeing him at all. I told him I didn't see this man's face, but yet this bobby kept drilling me. My testimony wasn't going to change; it couldn't change because I truly had no idea who this mystery person was.
