Repentance for Your Sins

The man stared at the crumpled sheets of yellowing paper with fiercely glinting eyes, the frown deepening upon his features. 

That damn bitch found a way to do it again--to make his life a living hell!

It was bad enough she was retiring, and now, this. He was being laid off. Effective immediately. 

The quaint little bookstore on the corner of Fletcher's street was bankrupt. Its doors were closing, its employees terminated, and its manager was retiring.

He flung the note aside, raking his fingers through his hair, he paced the tiled-floor in a fit of rage. A slew of nonsensical ramblings tumbled past his lips, mingling with curses directed at the woman responsible for this: Ilya Petrova, the little bitch!

"I should've expected this! This whole thing was fixed from the beginning...!" He grew more agitated. "How many years did I spend behind that counter? How many goddamn years! And look! There's nothing! No final check, no explanation, hell...there's not even... She didn't even leave a thank you card for twelve fucking years!" 

He slammed his fist against the wall. 

"That son of a bitch did it again!" 

It felt good to feel the stinging pain of his knuckles splitting and see his blood smearing the drywall. 

He found himself imagining Ilya's face crushed beneath his fist--and felt better. Her beady eyes staring at him from beneath her glittering spectacles, the annoying mole on her eyebrow that grew a single hair, the wrinkled folds beneath her nose. He wanted it to be her blood now staining his white walls.

He slammed his fist against the wall again. Damn her! Curse her to hell!

Gradually, his ragged breath eased, and he retrieved the letter. Staring at the messy signature scribbled across the bottom, he felt another surge of anger. The penmanship was sloppy like the writer had been in a hurry to finish quickly. A seed knotted his gut. 

She couldn't have been bothered to take care while writing his name. Her oldest employee! She treated him like all the other ignorant pricks who worked there...fucking scum!

His anger peaked. 

Wrenching the drawer open, he fisted inside its contents until he produced a silver blade. Holding it up to watch it shimmer in the afternoon sunlight, he stopped breathing. 

She was going to pay. 

Anguish suddenly overwhelmed his weary, overworked limbs. He dropped the knife, stumbling backwards in the apprehension of the thoughts crossing his mind. 

"No, no," he mumbled, anxiously turning away from the horrific scene. "No! That's horrible! I've known her for years...she's like a mother to me! She's...it's been years...I could never do that to such a thing! I was just a kid...I was...no..." 

He sought the words he was looking for, then miserably hung his head in silence. He couldn't do it. 

He could never commit such an act. 

But, for years, Ilya and him and built a relationship from nothing. To get this sort of treatment...it was the worst form of torture imaginable. It was unbearable! It was sickening!

Worse than the things he brooded over in the dead of night. 

Ilya had never spent a day behind that dusty old counter! Her knees never ached the way his did! She never hunched over a register! She never bruised herself stacking books! 

She'd never done anything but sit on her fat rear-end in the backroom and stuff muffins down her throat! While she retired in luxury, he would be on the streets and broke! He didn't deserve this!

It was horrible...it was...it was...

"Criminal!" He howled.

He retrieved the knife and a black coat, ripping the letter to shreds as he stomped out the door. 

"She's going to pay for this! I'll make amends with her! She's going to pay!" 

. . . 

The letter went unnoticed at the woman's doorstep for many hours. 

She found it tucked beneath the door in a little pink envelope. There hadn't been an address or a name marking the letter. It didn't even have a stamp. 

"I must've missed whoever came by," she murmured to herself, feeling the slightest twinge of guilt. 

The letter smelled faintly of worn pages and something flowery; A scent that always encompassed Ilya Petrova. 

Hesitating, she cracked open the letter and began to read its contents. Once she began, she couldn't put the thing down until she drank up every word, and checked several times to see if there were more pages. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks. 

Now, several minutes after reading, she was empty. Heartbroken.

How many times as a child had she visited the old lady and her bookstore? She'd practically lived in the worn leather armchair, leafing through the newest books while the other kids played outside. She'd spent hours in that shop visiting other worlds in the pages of a book, and now, it was all over. She would never see it again. 

Getting a job there seven-years-ago had been her fantasy.

And the end had finally come. 

She felt as if she were closing a thrilling novel. Like she was waking from a long dream and tasting the bitter note of reality.

Ilya's neat signature was splotchy with tears and smeared with red lipstick. Wiping her streaming eyes, the woman sat upright in her chair and puffed out her cheeks. 

"I'll miss it," she said aloud. "I'll miss it all. Thank you, Ilya, for giving me the greatest years of my life." 

Standing up, she grabbed the basket of muffins she'd been saving as a gift and pried open the rusty door with her other hand. 

"I want to tell her that," she affirmed. "I want her to know how I feel. It'll be my way of making amends." 

And in her haste, she forgot it was raining outside, and she didn't own a coat.

. . . 

The man trudged up the creaky stairs leading to the flat above the bookstore, wrinkling his nose at the smell of mildew that accumulated beneath the floorboards. 

The dim, wet hallway looked horrible...and smelled worse.

With a crooked smile, he noted that perhaps she wouldn't be spending her retirement in extravagance. 

The knife rested comfortably in his right pocket, sitting where he could grasp it without being seen, and shielded by the folds of his heavy coat. It was invisible to outsiders. 

But his eyes...

The man was unaware that his eyes bore the tint of savagery beneath their black depths. People passing him felt inexplicably fear and hurried to keep out of his way. The emotion was so daunting, few recognized behind those eyes, a murder was plotting. 

"Ilya, open up," he barked, rapping his knuckles against the door. "Open this effing door!" 

Holding his breath, he listened for a response.

From behind the peeling door, there was the sound of shuffling fabrics and light breathing. The grin spread across his features.

"Guess you aren't home," he announced theatrically, before backing up several steps. 

He slammed his foot against the doorknob and broke it with a loud BANG!

The wood splintered.

A woman cried out. Followed by a loud thud. His ears were ringing, and he could no longer hear. With no other options, he advanced into the darkened room.

She screamed when the shadow materialized in the doorway, immediately recognizing the dark face and gaunt, bulging eyeballs.

"How could you?" She wailed, pain throbbing from her spinal cord.

The knife gleamed like a reaper's scythe, begging for blood to spill. Euphoria overtook him. He was enjoying this. He loved it.

All those years at the bookstore had been worth it to see the fear in her eyes. To hear her lungs rattling within her frail chest. To watch his hand lift above her neck and slash her throat. 

Her body jolted, an electric shock running from head-to-toe. 

She could not cry out. Nothing but wheezing air and bubbling blood pushed past her lips. She touched her throat and found a hand squeezing the last bit of air from her windpipe. 

“I’ve dreamt of this for a long time.” He grinned. “Look me in the eye while you die, bitch. I wanna see it! I wanna see every second of this!” 

Her eyes were bloodshot and brimming with tears. 

He thought he saw something in them, but couldn’t think of what. 

“For the longest time, I had no purpose in life… I was a stranger to myself! Do you know what that’s like? Huh? DO YOU?” He shook her. Now, only the whites of her eyes were visible. “You took me in… you raised me! And I finally realized what my life meant, I finally knew what I was meant to do!” 

He tilted his chin backwards, a blissful light beaming behind his eyes. 

“I was supposed to kill you,” he finished. “It was always supposed to end this way.” 

She was dead before the story ended.

He looked back down, at the crimson blood sliding between his fingers, at the faint waterfall pooling from her neck, at the lifeless chest. This was what he was meant to do. To rid the world of a sinner. 

To find peace. 

To make amends.

. . . 

The woman could sense something was off when she ascended the rotting wooden steps leading to the flat. 

A deathly silence hung in the air, wrapping its bitterly cold arms around her as she drew closer to the door. Reaching it, she gasped upon seeing the broken handle and splintering wood.

Ilya needed help.

A daunting feeling settled in her stomach as she pushed open the door. Closing her eyes, she entered. 

She saw the blood first. Thick, black liquid pooling towards her toes and leeching from a damp mass. Clumps of coagulated bits littered the floor, mingled with footprints the size of dinner plates. 

Her hand went to her mouth. The basket dropped to the ground. Muffins burst from their sealed containers and rolled into the puddle, soaking up the blood as they were cast aside viciously. The woman made no sound. 

Suddenly, she was on her knees and supporting Ilya’s bloody head, though she could not remember bending down into the mess.

Her eyes were yellow and cloudy, staring off into a vacant void. The flesh of her throat had a distinct slash through the trachea, and folds of skin and tissue and veins spilled outside it. And the jumper--

The maroon jumper she’d sewn for her last Christmas was soaked in her blood. 

“Oh, Ilya,” she breathed, unable to form any other word. “Ilya… oh god.” 

And she sat for a while, holding the damaged treasure to her body, and praying she could close the book and forget about it. 

. . . 

The man was burning his clothes when he realized what had been in those sparkling brown eyes. 

Regret. 

He paused, fingers wrinkled and aching from scrubbing at blood, and released a long breath. The act was over. He'd done it. And now, he felt a weight deeper than the anger resting atop his shoulder. Remorse.

Could it be that Ilya felt an ounce of sympathy for him at her dying breath? No… it wasn’t possible for a witch.

But now, soaked in her blood and reeking of sin, he couldn’t think of anything but her. Leafing through his first book with her at his side, being taken from the streets and brought inside that apartment, receiving his first paycheck as a boy. 

There’d been tolerable aspects to her life, that was true. But for the most part, she’d been an insufferable dictator with narcissistic tendencies. She’d gotten tired of him. And had moved on. 

“Serves her right,” he scoffed. “She needed to learn people aren’t objects that can be tossed aside. Life has…meaning.” 

The ground shook with thunder upon him uttering the word. 

The man glanced around fearfully, searching the black murky skies above as if they held the answers he was searching for. 

“She was a sinner!” He shouted, arms spread wide. “I did what had to be done!” 

He'd finally taken the opportunity to rip the blood-sucking leech off his body. But now, he wondered if perhaps the husk of a creature the leech left behind was worth saving. But...what he'd done had been right.

Thunder clapped again, shrieking with the howling wind as it rolled across the valley, mingling with the screams of the ghosts that wandered the land. 

He shrank to his knees and put his forehead against the Earth, letting the tears wash away his crime. His nose burned. 

For the first time in his life, every single pore in his body begged for forgiveness. Guilt hung over his head like a guillotine, and he wished it would hurry up and fall so he could be rid of his suffering. The anger was nothing compared to this. This was his torture. If there was anything else he wanted more in this world, it was to stop this pain.

“Forgive me, please,” he begged, “I needed to do it! Please! Forgive me!” 

He didn’t know if he was begging his Creator, or Ilya herself. 

He sat up, snivelling like a child and shaking from the cold. He was drenched and frozen to the bone. Weeping uncontrollably with shame. 

His jacket was burning in the crackling embers. 

Ilya had… loved him. 

In her twisted way, she loved him. She’d fed him, clothed him, and kept him as a son… then, when he was ready, watched him grow into adulthood and provide for himself. She kept him employed. And even when she grew cranky and irritable of his moods, she refused to fire him. 

Yes, the man knew now that she’d loved him. And he hated her even more for it. 

And that regret in her eyes…

He wished he hadn’t seen it. 

He’d wished the look would go away. 

He wished to make amends for his sins, and to, at last, find some sense of peace. 

He knew what had to be done.

So, with shaking hands, he prepared himself for his repentance. 

. . . 

When the police arrived at the little flat following the anonymous phone call, they found a horrid sight. 

The murderer they arrested trembled violently the entire time, drenched from the rain and with blood. 

The officers were baffled as to how a woman was capable of such a heinous act. 

One of the senior officials at the scene noted she was in immense shock, as the woman made no act of refusal when they placed the handcuffs around her wrists. Rambling like a lunatic, she repeated, "Make amends...I have to make amends...need to...I have to make amends." 

The officer sighed as he tightened the handcuffs, knowing the trial would be short and quick for her. "Yeah, yeah, we know."