Hi guys! So this piece is much more melancholic and thought provoking than what I usually write, and here's just a warning for those averse to such things: it deals with religion, God, etc. This piece is not meant to push any which religion or personal view onto anyone, but rather meant to give a (hopefully) somewhat accurate depiction of what the spiritual life of a cop must look like. Most police officers that I know have a very strong faith in God or at least somewhat of an acknowledgement of a deity.
Hopefully you all enjoy it. Oh, and another warning: there are character deaths in this piece. Please, please review, I'm always eager to read all of your comments.
"I went to church yesterday."
Oliver Shaw looked sideways at his younger partner before resuming his lunch.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"How was it?"
How could Dov Epstein describe his return into the hushed, sacred halls? He had gone early in the morning, long before the first mass was scheduled to begin, but the dark, heavy doors were open, always open, just as he remembered. He had entered, the smell of oak and dust mixed with the ever-so-slight twinge of spices pervading his senses. The sunlight streaming through the stain glassed windows created a multicolored dappling on his skin and the cobblestone floor below.
He had taken a seat in the last pew, the wood hard and cool. It was silent, the very air seeming to hang heavy with tendrils of an otherworldly presence. He closed his eyes, placing his hands on his knees, swallowing thickly. The musical notes of a robin floated through the cracks into the church, reaching his ears, the sound crashing around him like a terrifying wave.
A robin had been singing that day, at that exact moment when it had happened. He didn't want to relive it, didn't want to see during the day what his mind repeatedly played again and again during the night, but the images came, faster and faster, until he dropped to his knees and let out a strangled cry that echoed through the hall.
"Say hi to daddy," Edie encouraged. "Say hi to daddy!"
"Daddy."
He froze, his mouth half open.
"Dov," his wife whispered.
"Yeah. I know."
"Daddy." There is was again, that beautiful, two syllable word, the first that had ever been spoken by his baby daughter.
"Hey, sweetie. Hey Andy. Do you want to come to daddy?" He wanted to hear her say it again, wanted his late best friend's namesake to speak that miraculous word that made his heart do little palpitations that probably weren't very good for his long term health.
"Daddy."
He began to laugh, joined by Edie, and then joined by little Andy, who he picked up and spun around in the air, the sunlight hitting her auburn hair, creating the most beautiful fiery color he had ever seen. He had never been happier than at that moment.
He was crying now, crying hard, crying for only the second time since he had arrived home ten hours after his baby daughter had uttered her first word, his name, the name she would be calling him for the rest of her life. Ten hours after he had left for his shift.
"Edie? Darling, where are you? I brought Chinese home, hopefully you didn't forget it's Friday night and cook something instead. Edie?" He was starting to become frantic, rushing around the first floor of the house before moving to the second.
The bathroom door was slightly ajar, the drip-drip-drip sound hitting his ears before he entered the room. He prayed it was water, prayed so hard.
It was blood. Edie's blood. Edie's blood that was spilled across the tiled floor. Mixing with Andy's blood.
He dry-heaved, desperately needing something to come up, to ease the bile that was roiling in his stomach, clasping the back of the pew in front of him as he lay crumpled on the stone floor. The memories, the images stopped, but the tears didn't. He screamed, the voice rising hysterically not his own in sound.
"Why? Why? Why?"
He babbled the one word question over and over again, but no answer came, no bright light, no angel descending to comfort him.
"I hate you! Why did you do it, why did you let it happen..." The anger he had directed towards the men who had taken the lives of too many, far too many people he had loved was now directed at Him, the one who could have stopped it all but did nothing.
Andy McNally, his best friend, his confidant, killed in the line of duty in a bust gone wrong. Her first week on SWAT.
Sam Swarek, his friend, his mentor. Killed a month after his fiancee's death, wrapping his car around a telephone pole, the gaping hole left by Andy's absence unsuccessfully filled by alcohol.
Michael Barber, Traci and Jerry's son, killed by a bus. Six years old.
Edie Epstein. Andy Epstein. His beautiful, sweet, breathtaking wife, dead at twenty six. His gorgeous, awe-inspiring baby girl, dead at a year and two months. Both murdered by the Twin Pines killer, who the police, who he, Dov Epstein, had failed to apprehend in his four month long, nine victim killing spree. The number had stopped at eleven. Edie was ten. Andy was eleven.
Andy McNally, ten months ago. Sam Swarek, nine months ago. Michael Barber, six months ago. Edie and Andy Epstein, five months ago.
"Jesus...Jesus..." he whispered. His heart hurt so much. So, so, so much. It was excruciating, living with the pain, living at all.
He didn't know how long he knelt on that floor, or how long he cried, pouring his sorrow out on the sacred floor of the church. But he stayed for the first mass. And the second mass. And the third mass.
He spent the better part of the day in that church, sitting in that last pew, listening to the sermon, listening to the hymns of old sooth him.
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart...
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence, my life...
Thou my best thought, by day or by night...
He didn't know where he stood on Christianity, where he stood on religion in general. He still believed in God, yet was still angry with Him. He didn't understand why there was hurt in the world, why people died, why people were allowed to kill. There were still things he didn't understand, and probably never would.
What he did know though, was that he was filled with peace when he listened to the praise sung by worshiping parishioners, was filled with a quiet little joy when he read some of Jesus' words spoken in the Bible.
He had fallen away from God after high school, eager to kick the dusty confines of religion for an exotic new world. He didn't know if he would ever reconcile fully with Him. But he did know that right now, in this moment, God was what he needed. And though looking back today, faced with the trials and evilness of the world's most heinous crimes and criminals, it seemed implausible, even silly, but he could have sworn that yesterday, in that church, God had mourned with him, had felt his pain, and had lifted him out of his ever growing black pit and somehow set him right side up, a little askew perhaps, but right side up nonetheless.
"Epstein? How was it?"
"It was safe."