Moth-Eaten Saints

I confessed today. Not to the love of my life, or to my church. Although maybe I should've. I confessed to the murder of Elijah Rainaud, a bright young man, big future ahead of him. Happy. Something I couldn't feel. As if I can feel anything anyway. I'm absolutely numb.

I don't feel the way humans do. Never have, and I suppose never will. They told me I'm getting the chair. I think I was supposed to cry, or react. I sat there in silence, not feeling a thing. If I had to pinpoint a vague feeling I'd say I had an itch. An itch for the death they were gifting me on a silver platter. In reality, I've been longing for death from before I can even remember. I've tried everything I can to experience emotion. Drugs, alcohol, murder. You name it.

I've never qualified as human, clearly. Faking my way through life as if it wasn't as meaningless as I led on. Be that charismatic, funny young woman my mother had always wanted in a daughter. I killed her too. I tried to go to church, maybe to find solace in the nothingness that consumes my world. It was worthless of course, I'm too dirty.

It's almost like I watch my "life" through the third person. If you could even consider what I experienced living. As they strapped me down I thought to myself, maybe this is my second chance. Maybe as I float around the stars after life I can feel something. Anything.

But who am I kidding...happy endings don't happen to people—no. Things like me. For my time on earth and off are destined to be the same. Full of absolute nothingness and sin.

When the switch was flipped, I should have died.

I felt it all. The crackling surge of electricity, the muscles locking in place, the burning stench of flesh that should've marked my end. I should have gone silent, disappeared into the black. Instead, I woke up.

I wasn't in the chair anymore. I wasn't even in a prison cell. I was somewhere darker, deeper. The air was damp, smelling of iron and earth. Cold stone pressed against my back, and in the dim light, I saw the walls—lined with symbols I didn't recognize, shifting as if they were alive.

I should've been dead. But instead, I was here.

A voice called out of the darkness. Smooth, commanding, tinged with something I couldn't quite put my finger on. "Finnian Vance. You belong to us now."

I lifted my head. In the flickering torchlight, I saw them—figures draped in deep blue, faces obscured. A gathering of shadows. A congregation.

And at the center, standing above them all, was her.

Skylar Fernsby. My lover. My executioner. My captor.

She smiled like she already knew my every thought. Like she had known I would end up here long before I had.