February 16th, 2020
They say you can feel the second a tide shifts.
Something about the air feels similar to a storm. An electric pulse or the oxygen changing slightly.
Whatever it was, today, I felt it.
His eyes were just as warm as ever, but there was a weight to them I could feel on my skin this time too.
When the sermon was over, Thomas immediately headed for his father, which meant I did too.
“We have to excommunicate him,” Thomas said under his breath the second his father turned off the microphone.
“No.”
“Father, they’re going to come after us the second they connect him to—”
“They won’t,” Pastor Masters stated, pushing by him. “Now, I’m going to greet the congregation. If you want to throw a fit, go do it on your own time.”
“Charles is a problem,” he said under his breath.
Oh. His Claimed daughter and her new position in The Family. They hadn’t brought it up since that day a couple of months ago. I wondered what was happening regarding them, but I honestly couldn’t believe that they were really doing it. That they were taking on The Family. I wondered what the Elders said about it. I wondered what they were going to do.
I wondered what The Family was going to do.
I had so many questions. Questions I would never be able to ask.
Why did Mr. Edgars tell Mr. Alascer to release his daughter from Absolution? What kind of fun was he referring to? She found refuge in a family far more powerful than the church. How? How did she do it? How did she find the strength?
If they challenged The Family, how would this end? Would they kill us all or try to rescue some of us?
Would it be worthwhile to rescue me?
No. I was born of the church. Raised for them. I would surely die alongside the rest of them, and I would probably spend the rest of eternity with them in Hell.
9
Scarlett
November 27th, 2021
He had been gone longer this time. A month, but today, I finally felt his gaze, just as warm as it had always been.
I felt my heart flutter this time when I felt the weight of it. It was a strange sensation, that flutter. Maybe I was sick.
It’s been two and a half years since I first felt Azrael’s eyes on me, and for the last 13 months, all I could think about was that testing. He still hadn’t gone down the Back Hall, but every Sunday that he came to church, Pastor Masters would take him off to his office, along with one of the Leaders, and they would talk.
From what little bits Thomas had revealed in conversations with the Leaders, the testing was going well, but he seemed bitter about it. I think Thomas was more worried about what happened two years ago in California than anything else. Mr. Alascer should have been punished, he had claimed. Along with Mr. Young for suggesting that he have his fun with his daughter before killing her, but neither of them were so much as reprimanded for what they had done.
They still remained Leaders, they still had access to the Back Hall, to me.
The Elders, as far as I knew, hadn’t made any motion to punish anyone or even look into what had happened at thatchurch, of which the congregation had been relocated, the church forming in another location in L.A.
Azrael hadn’t shifted in the way he stood or talked, so that told me that if the Elders were making a move, it wasn’t important enough for him to care. His reaction only furthered my thought that he had never been a spy to begin with. Just a civilian who stumbled upon a flier hung in the darkest corners of this world.
But I was still considering either possibility.
Although, he didn’t seem like the kind of person who would care.
