Author's Note: This is based on the song Holy by Frightened Rabbit. Do yourself a favor and look it up.
When Quinn was little, the only thing she didn't like about church were the seats.
The wood of the pews were so stiff and uncomfortable, the opposite of God: of love, faith, and hope. The rigidity of the bench permeated her body and she'd sit fingering the lace on her dresses, trying to focus on Him instead. She used to fidget, but sharp glances from her father put the fear of God in her more than any priest towering above her. Quinn squirmed, yearning for the softness of the God she thought He was supposed to be. She stopped squirming in church and would stare into the grain of the wood for hours, trying to avoid his God like the disapproving glances of the man sitting next to her.
Eventually the pews just became a part of her; her posture molded to it over time and there was nothing soft after that. As Quinn grew, her father became hard like those pews, stiff and unforgiving, rough like the wood of the cross she felt nailed to. Her father carried the weight of a god, like the God above; the lines between where He ended and he began blurred.
His God and her God warred within like Jacob and Esau, but they were both in the room that night like the alcohol in her blood. And when Puck rolled off her - at the dull ache between her legs - she was finally in body like the sinner she felt at heart.
When did He become as unforgiving as her father?
Quinn had faith, she just didn't know if she was deserving of it. She didn't know what else to do without it, it was ingrained in her bones, burning in her blood, like the sins she knew she carried.
It was hard to let go of the fear of living under him in lieu of an unknown god. What was she without them? Fear imprisoned her, and every morning at breakfast when her father snapped the newspaper open, she'd jump and touch her belly - was this the day she'd leave home for the last time?
Quinn felt like God that day when she sacrificed her own child, giving Beth away to someone that wasn't her; a future away from herself. But all she saw were his hands and her holes and Quinn finally felt more like Jesus and less like Abraham and so she let the wholeness of that emptiness ache.
It never stopped aching.
New York brought it all back, reminded her of who she was and of where she's never go. She wasn't made for cities and dreams and a haircut seemed like the most daring thing she'll ever do: a last-ditch desperate "fuck you" to him being right about her this whole time. Quinn feels the ghost of him echoing on her neck like her hair in the breeze and she wonders if this is what amputees feel like; when parts of you are gone and missing but they still hurt.
New York passes just as feelings of grandeur always do, and routine returns with blunt the force of nothingness.
Three weeks later into summer, Quinn's standing in line at the pharmacy and turns to grab a last-minute pack of mints. She tenses when she sees the shoes out of the corner of her eye. Her spine straightens and in an instant she's back on that pew, back automatically aching from sitting in it too long. Quinn knows those shoes, she spent Sundays memorizing each eyelet and mark in the brown polish, trying to avoid looking at him the way she can't help but openly stare at him now; terrified, like caught prey.
Her father's gaze is steely and he stares at her evenly with thin lips and a twinge in his jaw. Her eyelids and chin tremble and she hates that his face can be as strong as hers is weak. Fear grips her like he used to and before she can break away, his cool eyes leave hers and he stares at the cashier, looking past her as if she never existed at all. She's trembling, her chest is seizing, and the mints tumble out of her hands. He's nailed her into place with just as little as not looking at her and just like that she's a sinner again.
Its not until a stranger taps her elbow to ask if she's all right that she realizes he's left. Numbly Quinn walks to the exit but in her haste, her purse catches boxes of hair dye stacked at the end of an aisle. Her father's eyes still burn like peroxide and she desperately, blindly grabs a box.
If she doesn't want god to find her, then she'll make sure he doesn't recognize her.
Lying on the hospital bed she wonders if she hid from Him too well. Here she is on this bed, broken and bleeding and alone. Days pass in a haze of drugs and pain, throbbing dully from within. She's not sure if its the accident or just her.
It isn't fear that thunders through her veins this time but anger. Angry that they both left her: god and the God of her father. What have they done for her after all this time?
Judy's practically worn through the seat next to the bed but he's not here. She hasn't seen her father since that day at the pharmacy when he looked at her like a stranger. She was too afraid of a life without him and a life without Him. He wielded God like a weapon and part of Quinn remembers thats wrong; that its supposed to be about love and forgiveness, but her father starved her of that and now she can't get out from under it.
Anger is comforting and she holds onto it the way she grips the bars in physical therapy. She thinks of how he looked at her in the pharmacy because Deuteronomy told her to love the stranger for we ourselves were once, and the weight of his hypocrisy is choking her.
She'd rather be a sinner than a saint in his eyes; she's so tired of being terrified all the time and where has her fear ever gotten her, anyways? Maybe his God has abandoned her. Maybe her father has, too. But this time she's alone because its better this way; because it's far more comforting than either of them have ever been.
Maybe this time she's alone because she chooses to be.