Story first, blabbing later:
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At St. Anthony’s church in the middle of Kalihi, Charlie Smalls walked into the confessional booth and waited for a priest to hear her confession. She waited a good while, as the church was not currently offering services. It was only by chance that the resident priest happened to pass by and hear shuffling noises coming from the booth.
He opened it and was about to tell her that confessions were not being heard today, but she started first. “Father, I wish to confess my sins,” she said. “At least, I think they are sins. But then, God asked me to do them.”
The priest, Father Albedo Gonzalo, was taken aback, as he normally dealt with more mundane matters. A lie told or truth untold, covetous glances at a neighbor’s wife or husband. No one had ever come to him claiming that God told them to do something, sin or not. He looked at her more closely. Charlie had a small round face framed by a short bob. It had the effect of drawing more attention to her eyes, which at that moment were filled with a sense of sadness. Her shoulders drooped as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. He took pity on her and decided not to send her away. “My child, God never asks one to sin on purpose. Of what sins do you speak?”
She looked at him and held him in her gaze. He thought it was almost as if she were examining him under a microscope. He started feeling uncomfortable as her stare dragged on and was having second thoughts about not sending her away. Finally she smiled. “I’ve been told to kill those without souls.” And with that she produced a short wooden stake from her purse and plunged it down into Father Albedo’s chest, right over his heart. He cried out, clutching the stake as he fell to the floor. He lay there, writhing in pain, fingers scrabbling in a frantic effort to pull out the stake. It was no use. The stake was plunged too deep and blood was making his hands slippery. “I did no wrong! I wanted no part in it! Liberae sunt nostrae cogitationes!”
Charlie bent down over the priest, retrieved the stake and stabbed him again, three times in the same place. “Just making sure you stay dead. You don’t get to quit the game just because you don’t want to play, father. Legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus. We are all slaves of the law so that we may be able to be free.”
Then, she pulled his arms and dragged him into the priest’s half of the confesional booth, propped him on the bench, and closed the door. As she headed for the doors she noticed that some of his blood had spilled on her shirt. She pulled a hankerchief from her purse, wet it using the holy water in the stoup by the entrance, and dabbed at the stain until it became a faint red. She placed the hankerchief back in her purse then dipped her finger in the stoup, faced the altar and made the sign of the cross. “Thy will be done.”
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The above is from another story fragment that I wrote several years back. I really liked the scene but I wanted to find a way to put it in the same setting as my story from Dec 30. My story fragments all have their own protagonists but if I keep this up then the entire book would be filled with all good guys and no bad guys. So I had to make some character changes. As you can see, Charlie is one really bad and bad-ass guy. Excuse me, girl.