"And now it is I.
I have been blessed and cursed... for now I possess the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
I will forgive those who deserve freedom.
I will damn those who have damned themselves.
I will learn to live after love has died.
I am the sin eater."
-Alex Bernier
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The Order
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Also Known As: "The Sin Eater"
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Please Note... This story contains massive spoilers for the movie, "The Order". The story basically explains the entire film.
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READ AT YOUR OWN RISK !
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How do you return to a life that you once thought normal, when everything you once did is no longer the same?
How can you go back to the way things were?
How do you begin to live again, when so much that you are and that you know has been lost to you?
When does life once again start to mean something?
When do the clouds of darkness break and let the radiance of the sun shine down upon your face once more?
So much has happened...
And it is both a blessing and a curse...
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It's You And Me... Till The Wheels Fall Off
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A Short Story By, LegolasLover2003
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It has been one year to the day since her death. One year and I still grieve for her. I still feel the warmth of her skin and can still taste the sweetness of her lips. I wanted nothing in this world, nothing save for her. Yet she was stolen away. Murdered, by a man... if you can call him such... who wanted me. William Eden wished for a successor, a second, an apprentice. I wanted nothing to do with him, until that fateful day. Until the day when he killed my love. Then... then I wanted more than anything to kill him, to rid the world of his being. To avenge Mara, though I knew it would never bring her back.
I had been a priest once, a Catholic priest of a dying order. Alex Brenier is my name. My mentor, Dominic, and my close friend, Thomas Garrett, were the only other two of our order. Now, Dominic is dead. As for myself... I gave up my right as a priest for Mara Sinclair. Thomas keeps our order alive, as much as he can.
But this is not about Thomas, nor about our order. Far from it. This is about the love that I found and that I lost. The one person in this world who truly meant something to me.
My love... Mara.
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"Mara..." her name escapes my lips as I sleep.
I dream of her often, but never more than I have on this night. Woken by a burst of lightning from my window, I sit in bed and stare into the gloom which penetrates the panes. The wind howls, lightning flashes, and the rain pelts everything outside... but it bothers me not at all.
With a sigh I rise from my bed, walking to the chair at the side of the room and donning my robe. It is a chilly night, a cold and stormy evening which could frighten even the heartiest of men. But me... well... I have little to be afraid of anymore.
I have seen more things than I wish to think of. I know more secrets than any can learn in ten lifetimes. I know of the sins of men since ages long gone by. Murder, thievery, and lust; just to name a few. I see them with my waking eyes. I dream of them in my slumber. Though sometimes... sometimes I can escape the dark pull of those loathsome thoughts and traverse into a world where I could have been happy. A world that might have been, if I had only known...
Mara is in those dreams, those beautiful and glorious dreams which I ponder for days after waking. Those dreams where I can still touch her, smell her, see her... I can feel her with my entire being. Those dreams in which we may walk under a bright sun as she carries a lone sunflower, her favorite, or we sit together, wrapped in a blanket to keep the chill night air out as we laugh and talk of everything we have ever experienced. Life always makes for a good conversation.
Sometimes I even dream of my life before the Sin Eater found me. Of times gone by when Thomas and I might meet at a café and talk about this and that, life and work. Thomas is a good friend, though I see him seldom now. He has sworn to find a way to reverse this power I now have... this abomination, as he calls it. He is partly true. A blessing and a curse is upon me. Now he is away, somewhere in a library perhaps, looking through old manuscripts and texts, the likes of which have seen no daylight for centuries untold.
But always my thoughts drift back to Mara, to the one woman whom I have ever loved.
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I found her, within the room which we had shared. It had belonged to Dominic and had become the living area of Mara, Thomas, and myself during our ordeal of locating the Sin Eater. Books were piled high upon every table and chair. The stairs were littered with them and other parchments. There was no electricity, Dominic had not believed in it. There was a bathroom, and a bed room, and a rather comfortable couch. That couch was where Thomas and I had slept, before he was attacked by a demon beneath the streets of Rome. When I found Mara, Thomas was in the hospital, recovering from the incident. I had visited him just earlier and, as I returned to what we rightly were calling home, I came upon her.
She had been painting... painting sunflowers. She was an artist before so much bad had happened to her. There was a passion in her for flowers and painted them often. But sunflowers were another story. It was not until we proclaimed our love for one another and I had brought her a bouquet of sunflowers, that she had ever painted them. She had told me that she had not the guts to show their beauty as she saw it. And she saw everything in a much different light than you or I or any other I have ever known.
The mirror was broken, sunlight streaming in through an open window, her blood covering the wooden second story floor. Her paints lay about her, as was the canvas, smeared and splattered. The red of her blood mixed with the bright yellow of sunflowers... of sunshine... reminding me of a happier time.
The shock was so much... She was alive, yet dying. I had renounced my rights as a priest, and I could do nothing to ease her passing. I could not take her confession, unless...
Next to her lay a green drawstring bag. It belonged to William Eden, the Sin Eater. I had seen him perform the ceremony only nights before, and I had vowed not to become him no matter the cost. Yet, Mara's soul hung suspended, and without the ceremony I could do nothing for her.
Quickly, as I knelt beside her, I emptied the contents of the bag. The charcoal, the bread, the small wooden cross, and the even smaller bag with salt inside, dumped onto the floor next to us. I picked up the charcoal, quickly writing the Aramaic words for "Blood In. Blood Out." at her head and her feet. I do not remember much, for I was shaking and nearly unable to collect my own thoughts. How the process of the ceremony came to me I still do not know. But I placed the small cross atop her forehead, and the bread and salt just inches below her neck as tears of grief fell from my eyes.
Words slipped from my mouth, words I had only heard once in my life. I was a learned man, I knew Italian, Latin, and even Aramaic, which was the language of Christ. But to recall the words which William had spoken that night was a strange thing to me and, before I knew it, the ceremony had already begun.
Mara's body jerked slightly, her chest rising up as I took the bread and the salt from her and hesitantly put it in my mouth. My eyes grew wide as something suddenly took hold of me. Mara's arms clasped around my neck as her sins, few as they were, flooded from her into my own body, my mind. I could see everything... I knew all that she had done and thought. It was as if I had become her.
When I looked down once more, Mara was starring up at me. I struggled to speak, to find my voice, but it was useless. I had eaten her sin, and the shock of it all left me both speechless and breathless. Mara's eyes rolled back and she fell limp in my arms. I set her upon the blood stained floor, laying over her and trying to draw my own breath.
Mara was gone... but one thing remained in my mind.
Suicide, a mortal sin, was nowhere to be found. Her sins had not included that awful act. As I lay upon the floor, gazing at the lifeless form of my beloved, I realized the awful truth of it. The truth of everything...
William Eden had murdered Mara for the sole reason of forcing me to perform the ceremony, to give me a taste of what it felt like to be the Sin Eater.
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As my memories flood through my mind, I look out at the horizon. The sun is rising over the faraway hills, glittering upon the land and giving warmth where it had been stolen away by the night.
Mara's murder is strong on my mind. It had happened just last year on this day.
As I begin to get dressed, I look at my reflection in the mirror. The same me, day in and day out. Immortal now, until I pass on my curse, or until Thomas finds some way to rid me of it. Today, I will go to St. Peter's Cathedral, to not only pray for Mara on this anniversary, but to pray for my friend's success as well.
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I remember the pain and the fear I felt within that church naught but a year ago. When I murdered Eden. Thomas was there, though he came too late. He knew that with the instrument of William's destruction, I was not simply killing the Sin Eater... I was to become him. The sins and deceits of countless centuries flooded through me and, as I lay on the floor convulsing, I knew.
My mother's death, my father's death, even the death of Dominic... they had all been a part of the Sin Eater's plans. Dominic shaped me, teaching me the ways of our order and instructing me on being a priest. My parent's had born me, apparently that had been enough for Eden. And Mara... sweet and innocent Mara... All she had ever done was love me. Yet she too had been a hitch in William's plan and he murdered her for it.
I knew then what was blinded from me all along. And now... now I must live with the rash consequences of anger and hatred. If I had but stayed with Thomas a while, long enough for him to regain his speech, things would have turned out differently.
Thomas had gone through an ordeal during my first performance of the ceremony. He had tried to find the answers which I was so desperately seeking, and was hung and nearly killed because of it. He had found the second half of an ancient parchment. The first half, we had found in Dominic's house, what we had been calling home at the time. That first piece had stated how to kill the Sin Eater, but it was only later, in the lair of evil, that Thomas discovered what the second half meant.
To kill the Sin Eater in such a way, was to become him.
Now... I am the Sin Eater, though I do not exploit it for profit or power like Eden had. No... Eden was dead and so were his ways. He had shared many common aspects with me, but this one remained my own... I cared.
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Within the cathedral I kneel, praying for those whom I must. I exit and look up at the bright sun above. On the corner of the street, a young girl stands with a cart of beautiful flowers.
I walk over, smiling slightly. "Do you have any sunflowers?"
She nods and hands me half a dozen of them. I thank her and pay her for the flowers, then continue on my way.
There is a graveyard not far from the church. That is where Mara is buried.
I look upon her grave, the ornately carved headstone glimmering with dew in the new morning. There is a small wreath of flowers atop the mound, most likely left by Thomas on one of his recent trips back. I smile once more and set the sunflower atop the burial mound.
"Mara..." I whisper and kneel next to the foot of her grave. "It's you and me... till the wheels fall off." I shake my head as I smile sadly and hold back tears of grief which threaten to overtake me. "It's you and me... now and forever. Those wheels... they'll never fall off... Never..."
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I go where I must.
I do what I must.
I will not save those who do not deserve it and I will rescue those who need to be.
I will continue to do this, until a way to rid me of such a power is found.
I will continue to live and to breathe.
I will continue to try and move on with my life, as hard as that may prove.
And, I will continue to be the one thing I wish I had never encountered.
I will continue to be... The Sin Eater.
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THE END
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Disclaimer: I do not own, "The Order" nor anything related to it. I also do not claim to know any more than what the movie spoke. I have only seen it twice, once last night and again today. I do not own any of the characters nor the storyline. I simply told it through the eyes of the main character, Alex Brenier.
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Author's Note:
Thank you for reading this story.
I do appreciate your reviews as well, thank you.
This movie got a bad rap from the critics, but if you take the time to watch it, to pay attention, it is a very good film. The music is fantastic, the acting is brilliant, and the storyline is not at all as confusing as the magazines made it out to be. In fact, I wasn't confused, though I do admit I had a couple of questions in the end.
I plan on doing another short story about "The Order" dealing with Alex and Thomas before Alex became the Sin Eater. A bit lighter and funnier, since this one was so dark and depressing.
So, look for "Spaghetti-o" coming soon to fanfiction.net!