FATHER MICHAEL

Whoever was behind  the confessional screen was breathing rapidly.  Father Michael raised his eyebrows.  People usually held their breath during confession.  

The figure was barely visible through wooden slats.  Father Michael squinted.  He waited for the customary “Bless me father for I have sinned,” but it never came.

“I’m going to tell you everything.”  The voice behind the screen said.  The priest’s forehead tightened.  He knew who the man was--well, the man had come to him before, every week for the past two months.  Of course Father Michael had not seen his face.  But he had never sounded quite like this, and he had never skipped the opening line before.  He had also never confessed anything, which, to his shame, irritated Father Michael.

“I must tell you everything.  If I didn’t, you’d use it against me.”  The man panted.  Not knowing what to say, Father Michael said nothing. “So I must tell. But first I have a question.  Will you answer it?”

“If I can.” A sharp laugh burst from the man behind the screen, as if the man's lungs were full of barbed wire and rat traps.  It was always the same black laugh.  

“I saw--in a movie--a man confess a murder to a priest.  And the priest wouldn’t turn him in because of his oaths.  If I were the man and you the priest, would you turn me in?”

Father Michael’s heartbeat quickened as the air seemed to stop circulating.  

“Would you Father?”

“I don’t know.  You’d turn yourself in, if you were sorry enough.”

The man spat.  Then he laughed.  “That’s good, you don’t know if you’d keep your own oath.  You don’t know much.”

“No one does.”  The father squirmed in his seat.  He felt he may start sweating.

“No, least of all you.  How could you give your life to a wish, a fantasy?”  Father Michael could see the man turn his head to look into a corner.  Part of him thought that the man only came here to insult the Church.  He didn’t know or care that Father Michael had his own struggles.  Men like him never did.  In a softer voice, the man said.  “I think a lot.  I’ve killed people eighteen times over in my thoughts--is that a sin, Father?”

“Yes.”  What else could he say?  They had had this conversation before.  Father Michael would have liked to have called a doctor, but the man refused.  At the last session, the man had walked out when the priest suggested it.  Father Michael could hardly call the doctor on his own.  That would violate the sanctity of the sacrament. Besides, this man just liked to talk.  He talked and talked and talked and wouldn’t let Father Michael go.

“I thought so. You hate me don’t you?”

“It’s not my business to hate.” The father said.  The words flowed; a response he’d given a hundred times, that had never been less true.  It was not untrue, but he did not know what to do with this man, and no one likes discomfort.  

“That doesn’t stop anyone. Won’t stop you.  God knows what you think of me right now.” The priest’s lip twitched.  He wished the man would begin already.

“What if I haven’t killed them yet?”  Father Michael could barely hear him.  

“What?” He asked automatically, even though he knew what the man had said.  The man leaned closer to the screen.  

“I haven’t killed him yet.  Can I be forgiven? Am I safe?”

“You’ll have to come back after.”  Father Michael said.  Ah, too harsh, you shouldn’t of said that, he thought.  For a moment the man was silent, confused.  Then he laughed.

“You don’t think I’m going to?”

“How should I know what you’re going to do? I wish you would see a doctor.”  Father Michael adjusted his collar.  His grasp on his composure was thinning.  Though his voice remained even, it was taking every ounce of effort that he had.  The man laughed again.

“I came to you didn’t I?  Ask God then.  Tell me what I’m going to do. Why don’t you ask?”  The man lept to his feet and put his hands against the wooden screen.  “Why don’t you tell me?”

“You wouldn’t want the answer.”

“You’re right. I don’t like any of your answers.  You don’t need answers you just believe blindly.  God likes you; he gave you faith.”  The man was walking back and forth waving his hands.  Shadows smacked Father Michael through the screen.  Father Michael heard the door open and shut.  The abruptness caught him by surprise and he frowned, rubbing his head.  He began to pray, for the man, for himself.  

Later that afternoon, he received a call.  The final sacrament, Last Rites they had once called it, now it was the Anointing of the Sick.  A man was dying, he had been stabbed, by who it wasn’t clear.  It may have even been self-inflicted, they said.  His family had a history of mental imbalance. He was not conscious, but the family wanted to have Father Michael there.  Though he often had calls like this, Father Michael could think only of the man in the confessional, and how sharply he had left.  Was the man he had thought of killing himself?

At the hospital, Father Michael was dragged by a little old woman to the bedside of a man who was about twenty-five.  Father Michael was struck by the pallor of his skin and the glistening of his lips.  Was this the man from the confessional?  All the irritation melted to guilt as he looked at the barely-living form on the table.  It was times like these, acute times of human misery, that he felt lost in the enormity of life, incapable of faith or lack of it.

“Shouldn’t he be in surgery?”  Father Michael asked.  The mother covered her face and sobbed.

“Evan advised against it.  He said that his brother wouldn’t want that.”  Father Michael glanced up.  

“Yes Father. I said that.”  The man spoke into the ground.  Father Michael knew the voice.  As the heart monitor flatlined, the priest stared at him.  As he felt his legs wobble beneath him his mind was invaded by the incredible terrifying feeling of fear.

“God have mercy.”  The priest said.