The Confession.

…the blood from the back of her head leaked a crimson path into the still-unbroken yolks of the sunny-side up eggs they were having that morning. The table was immaculately-set as always…

“Bless me Father for I have sinned,” the tiny confession door shuts and a wiry little man kneels, visibly agitated.

“When was your last confession, my son?”

“I don’t know, Father”.

“Tell me your sins, my son.”

“Father, is there anything God cannot forgive?”

“God forgives all but blaspheming the Holy Spirit, per Scripture my son. Don’t worry yourself, so. I can assure you, you have done nothing of that magnitude.”

That seemed to assure the man some.

“I enjoy off-track betting far too much, Father”

…blood from the front of the little boy’s head ran down the exposed bacon on his plate, making it appear as some strange concoction of cooked and freshly-slaughtered meat at the same time.

“Like how much, my son?”

“Like half a million dollars too much, Father.”

With that, there was a visible reaction from the stoic priest. “My son, do you have any way of paying this back? To not pay our debts is a sin in itself.”

“I don’t know if I do,” the man became more agitated, “I don’t want to.”

“Don’t want to what my son?”

…the little girl’s eyes stared straight at her uneaten bowl of oatmeal, the bloodied straight razor still sitting by her severed carotid artery.

“Tell you what they told me, Father.”

“You mean those facilitating your sins at the track, my son?”

“Yes. I’ve lost it all, Father.” He heard the whispers again. They were steadily gaining in volume.

“Well, half a million dollars is a lot, my son. The fallout from that is penance enough for your sin.”

The priest had a feeling the man was holding back. “What else do you have to confess, my son? Remember your confession does not leave this box.”

The whispers grew to a screaming crescendo, DO IT!

“No!” the man screamed inside the confessional.

“My son”, the priest tried to keep the situation calm, “what happened?”

“They killed my family, Father!” The wiry little man wept uncontrollably as the whispers still screamed DO IT! in his ear.

The priest tried to be a source of comfort. “Now listen to me very carefully, my son, you need to go to the police right away and tell them all you know about these people who did such an atrocious thing.”

“NO!!!” he screamed. “They’ll kill me too, and probably you as well.”

DO IT!!!

“They must answer for their sins,” said the father calmly.

DO IT!!!

“Both in this life and the next.”

The father was clearly not in the pocket of this outfit. Only one man was. James Finley the auto executive who had entered the confessional that day. The man had enough cash to cover his losses, but not without a huge hit to his family’s standard of living.

He had always been a peculiar child. And despite being diagnosed with schizophrenia, he had managed to work his way up in the world to Vice President of Sales at Packard Automobiles. The voices never left him, but had never been homicidal up until his huge loss at the track.

The morning of the confession, he shot his wife and little boy execution-style, then slit his daughter’s throat with a straight razor.

DO IT!!!

“They’re going to kill you too, Father!”

With that, he pulled out a snub-nose .38 revolver and unloaded five rounds into the cleric’s chest through the confession window. The rounds echoed, a mechanical requiem in an empty House of God.

Finley drove home after, sitting at the kitchen table with his dead family, finishing his breakfast - by now cold as the grave - before loading one final slug in the empty .38… maybe now the voices would finally stop.

DO IT!!!