Redeeming Rhys (2 page)

Readers, please note that this tale has graphic depiction of abuse including but not limited to; rape, physical torture, emotional abuse, murder, strong language, sexual degradation and humiliation. This book is not appropriate for readers under the age of eighteen, those who are easily offended, or any who have not read dark books before. Also, if you are uncomfortable with religious elements portrayed in literature, please do not proceed. Reader discretion is highly advised.

Those who cast the first sin will always be haunted by the darkness.

“BLESS ME, FATHER, FOR
I have sinned. It has been sixteen days since my last confession.”

“Thou shall spill the sins from thee lips, boy. Release your turpitudes and you will be granted penance from my tongue by the grace of God.”

Fourteen-year-old Rhys O’Brien sat behind the black-screened veil as sweat beaded on his bruised brow. The priest couldn’t see his face, but judgement was not something he was supposed to do anyway. If Father Sullivan could have seen Rhys’ face that hot summer’s day, he would have gasped in bewilderment while praying to the heavens above for peace for the demon who instilled such damage on the boy’s face.

Rhys winced in pain as he clenched his jaw, fury building deep in his gut. He was not accustomed to such a sentiment, but the night before had changed everything for him. The unfair ways of the world had always acted out behind the scenes, making him understand he was just wearing a mask and playing the role of good little boy.

But the good little boy had been destroyed, and a very bad boy was birthed the night before. No amount of Hail Mary’s or Our Father’s could change that.

He nervously clenched onto his Grandma Pearl’s rosary, blessed in Medjugorje, while his fingers ached with brutal reminders of the sins he committed mere hours before.

“Speak, dear child of God. Unleash your sins and cleanse your soul. Allow redemption to bathe you.”

Rhys wished he could cry as Father Sullivan’s words bellowed loudly in his fucked up brain, but he was not sad. Rhys knew no amount of explaining would make the priest understand the cruelty that had been bestowed upon him. He was certain no one would believe him, let alone the horror that was left behind, scattered pieces of lives taken. He had been given a rite of passage to purify his black heart, yet his tongue remained tied to the devil himself as images from the night before danced around, magnetizing him with fear and dread.

His heart sped up in his chest while he tried to barrel oxygen to his constricting lungs. He briefly let go of his grandmother’s rosary to run his fingers through his dirty-blonde hair, a nervous habit he had since he was a little boy, only to feel the gash on the side of his head. Echoes from his step-father boomed loudly in his ears like unwelcome demonic cheers while panic rose high in his throat.

He dropped the rosary on the ground, feeling trapped between his actions and the gateway to forgiveness from God and Father Sullivan. But nothing is ever what it seems. People are always hiding behind something. He had known that since he was six-years-old when his mother remarried a fiend himself, transforming her from an angel to a dirty, disgusting beast.

Rhys’ icy blue eyes sparkled with distress, uncertainty, and hatred. He briefly opened his mouth, again being submersed in discomfort as recollections from the forenight flashed before his dysfunctional mind. Oh, what a travesty for a boy to hold onto faith during times of hell. But that would soon be let go. Even during death, the devil still had his words. He wished he could take a deathly blade to God’s servant before him. Father Sullivan was a mockery of his faith.

“Rhys, you must speak your sins to the ears of God’s servant if you want absolution to find you.”

Rhys let a grin of malice graze his full, chapped lips, standing behind the black veil, while he allowed the scent of their blood from the terror before to fill his lungs.

“Penance doesn’t find little boys like me, Father Sullivan. Only hell.”

The horrors of one’s past can never be forgotten.

RHYS O’BRIEN SAT IN
a dilapidated hotel room off Rural Route 880 in Picketsville, Tennessee. The aged floral wallpaper was peeling from every side and there were water stains marking the sagging ceiling. Rhys was surprised that a pesky little varmint hadn’t made an appearance yet. He wasn’t a high-rolling criminal, dealing sparkling cocaine that yuppies snorted up their noses while driving around in Cadillacs. No, he stole. He killed. He took. He did what he had to do to survive… to feed his belly along with the need he didn’t like to admit that he had.

The overwhelming smell of mold flashed him out of his murky thoughts, making him nauseous. He was grateful he hadn’t eaten a meal yet as the acidic bile rose slowly in his stomach up his throat. He gagged the unwanted contents back from his throat to his grumbling belly, tossing his gaze across the room to the brown, outdated panels that hung loosely from a bent curtain rod. A small amount of brutal summer sunlight shone in, and his eyes nervously watched as the little particles of dust danced in the air so gracefully, yet still he was reminded of the worthless life he had been leading.

He wiped the sweat pooling over his brow and threw the glass ashtray at the sputtering air-conditioning unit that had proven to be useless in the midst of a grueling summer heat wave. He needed another release, but it was too soon. He was a man with few rules, but he always abided by one. Never commit a sin close to another. And certainly never take goodness when the blood of someone else still reeked on his hands. The withdrawal of depravity made him sick. The tailspin of events was cruel, but he had created it. He didn’t often allow himself to think back to what would have happened if he continued to live within the hellacious paradise he used to call home. Instead, he subsisted with his sins that tarnished his black soul and continued to run.

He had been running for ten years. Not only had he been fleeing from the first sins he had committed, he had been making more to live and feed the demon that was winding its way throughout him, tainting him with its ugly with each passing day. He often wondered when he partook in such acts if it was who he was destined to become; a man full of unthinkable needs and malevolence. He regularly thought back to how ironic it was to wish for forgiveness one moment in his mind before Father Sullivan, but that second would never come because the devil had his tongue. Gripped, muted, and disbarred from a worthy, graceful life. Gone was the good little Catholic boy who kneeled and prayed every Sunday in Mass. Absent was the quiet son of God who begged for forgiveness for others every week, silently pleading to the angels high up to have the terror stop.

That boy died the night the others did. Only one got away. Rhys couldn’t stand to take the knife to her perfectly white throat while staring into her dark, brown eyes. Her silent tears meant something to him. They, after all, had shared moments only they could understand. He tried to make himself hate her, back then and still to this day, but his fucked up mind at twenty-four-years-old still dreamt of her when he fell into black slumbers. Anytime his piercing blue eyes caught sight of something sharp and hurtful, he would recollect on her lifeline and how he had it beneath him. He could still recall how it felt when his hand was wrapped around her neck, how it felt when the vein that supplied her little body with a fruitless life beat mercilessly under his grasp made his heart shudder and his cock throb. Perhaps he had started to transform into a monster himself in that moment in time.

There is something to be said about control, especially when it comes to human lives. The ability for one to suck away meaningless breaths while giving others another chance made Rhys’ mind tango viciously with the actions that took place that fateful evening. There was only one thing that remained constant.

The face that lived.

He sat in the corner chair of the shit motel, puffing on his cigarette and flicking the ashes onto the stained maroon carpet while staring at the door knob. Paranoia was always present, considering the things he did to persist. There were many people after him, but he was a quiet monster. One that lurked in the depths of madness while basking in the sorrows of all his yesterdays. He rarely spoke, unless it was under a black ski mask demanding money from a trembling gas station attendant while pointing a sharp vane at them, or while whispering into a girl’s ear, telling her that monsters were real. Because they were, and Rhys made them see that. He made them feel it. He made them remember it too, every painful part, they would remember. Beyond the lunacy, he often concocted words in his dysfunctional, violent mind. Sentences and words that he would convey to the one that got away.

Words that would allow him to get the redemption that he craved before Father Sullivan. She could be the only one to grant it to him. After all, she was the only one who understood the truth that was swallowed under the disgusting, dirty lies. But Rhys knew she hated him. He thought he hated her too, but hate was not something that made you feel like he did.

Hate doesn’t make your cock burn with need. Visions of bloody, bad things shouldn’t make him hard for her, but they did. He would often lie in bed at night before his eyes succumbed to deprivation, remembrances of her scream and how it resonated perfectly in his ears and made goose-bumps prickle over every inch of his skin. Oh, how lovely that sound was. His rough, murderous hands would dance along his tattooed stomach as he thought back to that night, remembering how her full, bleeding lips opened deliciously, begging him to stop and spare her life. It was often too much for him until his hand slipped beneath his torn and tattered jeans. He would fist himself, grasping his hard cock tightly, painfully so, until he was suffused with nightmares, exploding in his hand. Hate doesn’t feel like that, does it? No, hate is something much deeper, more feral and black. Rhys knew what hate was like. After all, he was responsible for tearing it away to make it stop. But incubi such as those will never terminate to tantalize him with their ways.

Even when insignificant hearts cease and the real life nightmares stop existing, they will always be there reminding him of the first encounter with death.

Rhys could have taken her life that night just like the others, but he didn’t. Instead, he let her go. She had something worthy of a second chance, and it would constantly plague him. That second chance would also come around to haunt him often, making him question the darkness that had consumed him. The same kind of dissoluteness that he had grown to admire. He had been living with that for ten years while his heart still yearned for her. He wished that he wouldn’t remember those moments, full of dreadful acts and hurtful blows, but there was a certain softness about her. The way she moved under him while crying for him to stop. The way she would shudder and plead for their tormentors to halt, but what the silly little girl didn’t realize was one thing.

They
enjoyed it and deep down, Rhys did too.