Azrael leaned on his cane this time, as if he had pained himself in the last few weeks of his absence. “I travel for business,” he revealed evenly. “I come when I can.”
And despite everything, I felt my stomach fall. I liked his shoes. His voice. His smell. I disliked that he wouldn’t be here as often. The aura around him was different than anyone else I had met. I felt as if the god in this church was afraid of him.
Maybe he wasn’t just any Elder, maybe he was the Head of the Elders, the Founder. The person who started this all.
“What do you do for business?” he asked.
I knew that tone. It was the tone of opportunity. Pastor Masters smelled something in the air, and he was trying to grab hold of it before it disappeared. All the Leaders of this church were important in the community, the Pillars were, as stated, pillars in the community as well as in the church. They were doctors, lawyers, attorneys, and so on. The corruptible rich, I had once heard someone whisper in passing. The people with so much money, they sought their adrenaline highs in other places because drugs and fast cars weren’t doing it anymore. Theyneeded something else. Something like what only this church could provide.
“I transport things all around the world,” he answered easily.
I stilled, staring at those shoes. Our driver had just died and now Azrael was claiming he transported things? That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Although what was it Pastor Masters always said? God works in mysterious ways. Maybe this was one of those times when God answered a prayer.
He never answered mine, but at least He was listening to someone.
“Oh?” Pastor Masters was quiet a moment. “Then perhaps you and I should talk.”
Was that why he was actually here then? To put himself in a place of power so that Pastor Masters would have no other choice but to put him through the tests? Maybe he was testing out the rankings, how they worked, how well Pastor Masters weeded out the people he could trust from the people he couldn’t.
Azrael was testing the foundations of which the church was built, and maybe he didn’t actually have a job that makes him travel for work, maybe he was actually traveling back to where the Elders were to report back everything he found.
I wondered if Pastor Masters would ever catch on.
But if hewasan Elder, or worked closely with them—a spy sent from the top of this untouchable mountain to see if we needed to be chipped away—then why did he feel so different from the others? Why did he smell of the sea when everyone else smelled of ash?
~ ~ ~
October 20th, 2019
It’s been five months since I first felt his eyes on me. Since I first saw those shoes.
Was it wrong of me to wonder if he had asked about me? He watched me so often. Through services, and sometimes blatantly in front of Pastor Masters and Thomas. Had he asked about me at all?
I was only allowed to wear certain clothes in church, but I did my best to look good, we all did. It was one of our jobs. The better we looked, the better our owners looked, but we still had to look respectful.
Today I chose my long pencil skirt and my deep green sweater with the dark blue collar. My hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and today I decided to add a single braid.
I wanted to catch his eye. I wanted him to want me enough to push to see me just so I could see if his actions were as different as the weight of his eyes.
He had to be different. Nobody with an aura as deep and dark as that, nobody who smelled of the sea and pomegranates, could be like the people in this church.
It’s because he hasn’t seen me in the Back Hall yet, I was sure. Once he did, he would be sure to pick me as his Favorite, and maybe then he would petition the Elders to release me from Thomas and take me to wherever the Elders lived.
I wanted to be treated like royalty, even if the rules were a little stricter and the punishments a little worse, I knew that being the Favorite of an Elder, even of a spy of the Elders, would be so much better than being a Favorite here. Maybe, if I was convincing enough, he would choose to fight to marry me. Then I would never have to see this church, or their Back Hall, ever again. I wouldn’t be forced to be shared after the marriage like Thomas had promised over and over again.
Maybe I wasn’t his type though. Maybe he wasn’t an Elder or a spy for the Elders at all, and just someone who came in andsaw an opportunity. Maybe he was one of those who only liked to look.
That wouldn’t be allowed for long. I had been shown to people who only looked and never touched themselves. Once Pastor Masters found out they only liked to look and didn’t masturbate, they didn’t come back to church.
He had to touch himself, he had to orgasm, or he would never come back.
My mother taught me that word when I was really young. She told me all about what we did for the men, what our jobs were, and what was expected of me when I got bigger. She told me that our jobs weren’t done until they orgasmed, and the only way to know if a man orgasmed was when their semen came out of them.
When I asked her if women orgasmed too, she said no. We didn’t have the right things to experience that. It wasn’t how we were created. We were only created to aid in worshiping the men.
When I was a little older, I realized, though, that there were women Pillars too. My mother then confessed that there were certain women God had chosen to give the gift of orgasming too. It was one of the other reasons why I wouldn’t make a good Pillar, because I didn’t have what they did. She said the hair and the fact that I couldn’t orgasm was sign enough that God made me to be a Favorite.
