“Yes, Father. I’m ready.”
“Lord o’God, please forgive Your sweet child, Obadiah Penuel Snod, for all of his disgusting and
heinous crimes against nature. Forgive him for how he has sinned against You and soiled his body,”
the archbishop began. “I know my sweet son did not mean to stray so far from Your light, and he will
repent immediately.”
Snod began to take off his vest and his shirt. He knew the motions well, his body reacting practically
on instinct. He didn’t have a flagrum with him, having lost it in the explosion, so he took off his belt.
He closed his eyes, completely ashamed of himself.
Yes, what he had done was disgusting.
He was disgusting.
Feeling that way and wanting that vampire had been wrong. His soul and body needed to be purified.
“How many, Father?” Snod asked obediently.
“How many times did you lay with the fiend?”
“Once,” Snod replied honestly.
“Have you had any other impure thoughts?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Ten lashes for the first sin, five more for every time after you had these vile ideas.”
Touching himself in the shower, when he was trapped in the car, and kissing the vampire on the couch.
“Twenty-five, Father.”
“Begin,” the archbishop commanded.
Snod curled the belt around his hand, whipping it over his shoulder and cracking it over his back.
Over and over, grunting from the pain, trying to suppress all of his memories of the sweet vampire.
The more he struck himself, the hotter the anguish burned inside of him. He knew it had been a sin, but
he had enjoyed being with the vampire so much.
It was beyond anything he had ever felt before in his entire life. It was sweeter than the blissful call of
the Order or the comfort of taking communion. There was nothing that could compare.
And the vampire was so kind, so gentle, his mercy and charity without question. He had been willing
to help Snod start a new life, to forgive him.
How could this perfect creature be the same as all the vile fiends he had sworn to hunt down and
cleanse from the earth?
