𝑼𝑴𝑩𝑹𝑨

𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑷𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑭𝑶𝑼𝑹𝑻𝑬𝑬𝑵

Carrie sat at the front pew, looking up at the stained glass windows. A tall statue of Jesus stood in front of the windows against the crucifix cross. She looked around and saw there was no one there. She was alone. Not surprising to her. Then, she looked down at her open journal and saw a poem she wrote when she was in school. She recited the poem in her head.

Jesus watches from the wall
But his face is cold as stone
And if He loves me — as she tells me
Why do I feel all so alone?

She spotted another poem on the other page and recited this one in her head too.

Everybody's guessed
That baby can't be blessed
'Til she finally sees she's like all the rest

Carrie lifted her eyes back to the statue. It was the only thing dominating the chapel, fully four feet tall. The Jesus impaled upon it was frozen in a grotesque, muscle-straining rictus of pain, mouth drawn down in a groaning curve. His crown of thorns bled scarlet streams down His temples and forehead. The eyes were turned up in a medieval expression of slanted agony. Both hands were also drenched with blood and His feet were nailed to a small plaster platform. This corpus had given Carrie endless nightmares where the mutilated Savior chased her through the dream corridors, holding a mallet and nails, begging her to take up her cross and follow Him. Years ago, these dreams had evolved into something less understandable but more sinister.

Tears foamed her eyes, making her vision blurry.

"Lord," she began to whisper. "Am I really going to burn in Hell for this? For all of this?"

She glared up at the statue. She wanted an answer from Him. "Am I always a sinner?"

No response.

"Tell me!" She yelled at Him.

Still no answer.

Carrie's nostrils flared as she stared at the statue, her eyes welling more with tears. Her fists clenched on her knees and her heart raced in her chest. Her first thought was to throw the pews across the chapel and smashed the statue and windows, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.

Then, she felt a presence sitting next to her. Carrie saw a woman sitting next to her, and she was familiar to her. She was slim with a gaunt face, auburn hair, and green eyes. She was wearing a shapeless black dress with a pair of black gloves fully covering her hands.

"Mama?" Carrie asked, glancing at the woman.

She was just looking straight at the statue. Her lips twitched, seemingly reacting to Carrie's voice calling to her.

"I should have killed myself when he put it in me," she said clearly. "After the first time, before we were married, he promised. Never again. He said we just... slipped. I believed him. I fell and I lost the baby and that was God's judgment. I felt that the sin had been expiated. By blood. But sin never dies. SIN... NEVER... DIES!" Her eyes glittered.

"Mama, I-."

"It was all right at first. We lived sinlessly. Slept in the same bed, belly to belly sometimes, and I could feel the presence of the Serpent, but we never did." Mama began to grin, a hard, terrible grin. "And that night I could see looking at me That Way. We got down on our knees to pray for strength and he... touched me. In that place. That woman's place. And I sent him out of the house. He was gone for hours, and I prayed for him. I could see him in my mind's eye, walking the midnight streets, wrestling with the Devil as Jacob wrestled with the Angel of the Lord. And he did come back and my heart was filled with gratitude."

She paused, grinning her dry, spitless grin into the shifting shadows of the chapel.

"I don't want to hear it!" Carrie shouted and rose from the pews, and they shook.