ORIGINAL SIN
Author's Note: Finally, I got around to typing up the first chapter of this. More chapters to follow!
Disclaimer: Batman and related characters are the property of DC Comics. I write these stories purely for the love of it and am making no money from them.
"Tell me how, you know now, the ways and means of getting in underneath my skin…you were always my original sin…" - Elton John
Outside in the city, the sky itself seems heavy. The yellow-grey clouds push down on the steeple of St Michael and All Angels , as if they are trying to puncture themselves on the dirty golden spire and let out the warm, thick rain to fall like tears on the baking streets below.
It has not rained for days. The still, oppressive weather continues unabated, unseasonably hot, even for late spring. Tempers amongst Gothamites are frayed to breaking point: the newspapers comment on it. Incidences of domestic violence are common, sales of alcohol and painkillers are booming, and in the alleys even the street children fight until the muggy atmosphere saps their energy.
Inside the church, it is almost comfortable by comparison. St Michael and All Angels is the oldest building in the district by far, sticking out incongruously into the sluggish lanes of city traffic like a slumbering grey animal. On each side, skyscrapers that shine with their skins of bright metal and glass rear up into the overheated air. The little church, with its tiny strip of churchyard and broken lych-gate, is a remnant from a bygone age, robbed of its authority and grandeur by the neighbouring modern tower blocks.
Modern air-conditioning, however, has nothing on the inside of a well-built catholic church. The priest, Father Henley, regularly finds himself having to encourage the vagrants and loafers who treat the nave as a convenient dosshouse away from the unbearable heat to move on. He often has to point out that yes, although God is merciful, just and kind, He does not necessarily look kindly upon teenage junkies shooting up in His pews and dumping used sharps in His font.
Father Henley's dream is that one morning he will wake up, walk down to the church and when he walks out again in the evening he will somehow miraculously have been transported to the streets of a far more rural parish, a long way from the uncaring tourists and the endless, mindless vandalism.
So far, a miracle has not been forthcoming. It is almost midday on the Tuesday of a week that shows no signs of breaking the oppressive spell of weather, and the vagrants have been gently persuaded out of their new hiding lace behind the roodscreen. St Michael's is empty under the syrupy heat, the old stones and timbers seeming almost to hold their breath.
The heavy wooden doors swing open cumbrously: a light step falls on the warm stone steps that lead down into the welcome chill of the nave. A genuine supplicant before the Lord has entered His house. Her hesitant move forward, sidestepping the font and focussing on the golden lectern with its shining arched wings, seems to break the tension. With a real visitor at last, one with a genuine need and desire to be there instead of the dozens of tourists and addicts who crossed its threshold every month, the church breathes again, lives again.
The woman is plainly if expensively dressed - elegance and simplicity are written in the fitted lines of her cream skirt and little summer blouse. The right sleeve of the blouse is pulled into her palm where she grips it tightly, despite the sweat that is gathering there, and when she stumbles, very slightly, on her dainty white kitten heels , she gives a little cry of alarm utterly disproportionate to the shock of the event.
Like many people who find themselves drawn as true believers to the house of God, she has come here in a time of personal crisis and fear because she can think of nowhere else better for her to be. She regains her balance, moves forward swiftly and to the left, and steps decisively into the tiny confessional booth, closing the door behind her.
The confessional is the second oldest fitting in St Michael's, and has suffered somewhat over the years. Like the oldest, the roodscreen, it bore the brunt of the attack of woodworm during the seventies. Carefully treated, it survived, and weathered the roof leak of the nineties without more than a little warping of the door frames and a few odd water stains on the red seat cushions inside. The warped doors now require a little golden hook inside to keep them shut, and the woman's well manicured nails receive a few scratches as she fumbles with the hook and fastens it. Her own breathing, fast with fear, echoes back at her as she finally settles back in the confines of the cubicle. It slows. She starts to relax. The cool of the church air feels good on her flushed face. For one short moment she closes her eyes, and it feels as if the world and all its cares have dropped away, leaving only this blessed coolness and silence.
Then she hears the shift of a body in the other side of the confessional, the gentle swish of clothing being settled comfortably, and she takes a hurried breath.
"Father?" Are you there?"
"I'm here," says a mellow, male voice, sounding as weary as she with the heat, and with that comforting edge of solicitous concern that all priests seem to have. "What can I do for you?"
She tries to dredge up her memories of the ritual.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned….it, uh….I mean… I haven't…"
She senses the priest's gentle shake of his head.
"Don't worry about that. I know why you're here," he says. "After all, you're in the confessional, aren't you?"
She almost laughs. "Yeah…I guess I am. So do I, like, just…?"
"Just tell me what's troubling you," he says, patiently, "and we'll see what happens from there, shall we?"
"Okay." She seems almost disappointed. "I am a catholic, you know, Father. Since I was a child."
"God is aware of everything, my dear." He falls silent, creating a void of sound which she is suddenly desperate to fill.
"It's my boyfriend, Father," she says. "He…he's dead. He died yesterday, and I don't know what to do."
Silence from the other side of the booth.
"When I say died, Father, he was murdered. And I want you to hear me out before you tell me to go to the police or anything, because I spent all night thinking about it and it isn't an option."
She stops, almost defiantly, but all the priest does is clear his throat slightly and waits for her to continue.
"He's back at my apartment now. It's terrible. I couldn't sleep there, so I went to a hotel. I don't want to go back. The heat…you know…I just can't face it." She sounds oddly dispassionate. Her fingers roam over her knees, automatically brushing down the short cream skirt. "There wasn't as much blood as I thought there would be. In the movies there's always lots of blood."
Again she pauses.
"Don't you want to ask me how he died, Father?"
"I'm not here to ask, child, I'm here to listen."
"At first I thought he'd used the kitchen knife." Although he specifically hasn't asked, she has to tell him. Keeping the words in has been like holding a mouthful of slow poison. Now it all bubbles out like rank-smelling foam in an unstoppable stream. "But it wasn't. I counted all the slots in the knife block, but they were all there except the one I left in the sink after chopping the tomatoes on Sunday night. Normally I'd've washed up straightaway, but…" She stops the drift. "And there was so little blood, just a little trickle, just under his chin. I though it was his hair, just a curl of his hair, trapped under him when he fell.
"So I went to turn him over, and Father, I knew he was dead the moment I did. There was so little blood because it was like a nosebleed, just a bad nosebleed, except that his face looked wrong." She gives a hiccup of suppressed, hysterical laughter. "I didn't know what it was at first. Any kid on any street corner could have told me, but you don't think, do you? You don't see things where you don't expect them, you know what I mean?"
"I know what you mean." His voice is oddly flat, but she's too worked up to notice.
"Pez dispensers!"
A thin stream of dust trails down, sparkling in the filtering sunlight, in front of her face. "A Pez dispenser up each nostril, jammed up so far all you could see was the stupid cartoon head. Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald. Mickey had a blood clot on his face so big it made him look like he had no eyes.
"Funny isn't it, Father, the things you notice?"
She leans back against the worn wood, tilting her head up to stare at the ancient ceiling with its pinprick woodworm holes.
"And so I knew he was dead, and who had killed him, and it was my fault, my stupid fault. If you've heard of the Joker, you'll know why I can't go to the police. They can't do anything. They keep putting him away, but he's too smart, he keeps getting out."
"Why would you think it was your fault?" comes the question from the shadows behind the screen. The priest's voice has an edge to it now, understandable given the circumstances. The woman lets out a hiss of breath through her painted lips and brings her feet back sharply to drum against the base of the confessional seat.
"Because he was only being what I wanted him to be, Father. I wanted a man who was somebody. I didn't want to be a girl on the arm of a two-bit car thief. I wanted Ben to be a name I could use in conversation at all the right parties and that people would gimmie a bit of respect.
"I wanted a man who could beat the devil himself. So I brought the devil to our door."