Dark Side of the Cloth by Brooklyn Cross

Dean had seen the strength of one’s soul repeatedly while overseas. It was only truly exposed when facing death. The experience would either bring out the best or the worst in a person. The way to discover this was to stare someone in the eyes as you took their life. For starters, most people were cowards. It didn’t matter how tall or short, how skinny or fat, what race or religion, or even what gender they were—most people were pathetic.

“What the fuck?” Tim yelled as Dean tossed him into the deep hole. The asshole had slept the entire trip, but it was just as well. He would’ve been tempted to pull over and kill him prematurely if he’d had to listen to an hour of begging.

“No, no, please don’t do this!”

Dean pretended to ignore Tim’s pleading. The weak ones always begged, and in the begging, he always found his opening to extract more information. He just had to listen and wait for the right moment.

“Father, you’re a man of God, a man of the cloth. You’re supposed to forgive me. You’re supposed to be my voice to the Lord. I came to you in good faith that you’d help me, and you promised he would forgive me!”

Dean tossed in another shovel full of dirt and leaned on the handle of the pointed spade as the pungent scent of ammonia invaded Dean’s nostrils. For just a moment, he fantasized about what it would feel like to slice through the man’s throat with the sharp end of the shovel. Would his eyes go wide? Would he clutch at his throat as his life left his body? A shiver of pleasure raced through his system at the thought.

Dean sighed.

“In your current predicament, this information is going to come as a shock, but I’m no priest, and there is no God.” Dean paused to let that sink in for a moment. “However, I have been appointed to be your judge, jury, and tonight, your executioner.”

“You’re not a priest?” Tim stuttered and then began to roll back and forth violently, trying to pull free of the bindings. The plastic of the shower curtain he was still wrapped in made an irritating, crinkling noise as Dean watched the insect wiggle in his web. The bindings were designed to tighten during a struggle, leaving them impossible to escape, but it was always amusing to watch someone try. Dean knelt at the edge of the grave.

“Tell me something.” Tim’s fearful eyes swung up to him. “How does it feel to be the prey and not the predator?” Dean took a deep breath of the cold night air, releasing it into the darkness. “You see, for me, I feel rejuvenated, I feel alive, I feel like I’m exactly where I was always meant to be.”

Dark eyes just stared back at Dean. For a moment, he thought the man had stopped breathing. He was so utterly still.

“Come now. You might as well tell me what it’s like for you. I’m genuinely interested.” He pointedly looked around at the deep dirt prison. “It’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

“Please, please, I promise to change. I promise to get help. I swear to—”

“God? I already told you there is no God. Besides, I saw what you did to the cats in the scrapyard. If you want me to believe that you can change, then you’ll have to do better than that.”

“What do you want me to say? I’ll say anything. I’ll do anything.” Tim wiggled a little closer.

“Alright, let’s make a deal. You tell me what drove you to do the things you’ve done, and I will consider your plea. Remember, I get the final say on whether you live tonight.” He had no intentions of letting this man roam free ever again, but he also had no intentions of telling him that.

Tim licked his cracked lips, and Dean couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would ever trust this man. He’d saw him for the low-life predator that he was the moment he’d laid eyes on him.

Hmm…maybe it said more about himself than the man in the pit.

But he couldn’t just kill Tim when he showed up on his doorstep. He had a code to follow. The Righteous had strict rules, and rule number one was not to hurt innocents, so he had to do his homework first. He had to be certain. Dean had compiled a substantial file on this worm over their weeks of talking, but when the man accepted his help and offered for him to come over. How could he refuse?

Dean smirked as he thought about how he took Tim for coffee, letting him think that he was fully forgiven for the unfathomable things he’d done. And then, Dean planned his next move.

As the silence ticked on, Dean grew impatient. “Okay fine, I guess my decision has been made.”

Dean stood, and Tim yelled for him to stop. He paused and then knelt once more. “You meant what you said?”

His voice was full of hope. Pathetic. “I promise on my father’s grave.”

Tim took a deep breath, his body now shivering constantly with the biting cold. “Alright, fine, I will tell you.”

Dean could almost see the wheels turning in Tim’s head.

“I like their soft skin,” he finally said.

“Go on.”

That rat-like tongue ran over those lips again. Dean’s hand flexed as he pictured ripping it out of Tim’s mouth. The sound of Tim’s imagined gargled screams were like a church choir to his ears.

“Their innocence draws me, their big eyes looking to me for guidance, so trusting, so…you don’t understand, I needed to touch them. They were too beautiful to resist.” The man stopped talking, his eyes staring through Dean as he sunk into his depraved fantasies. “I loved their frilly little dresses paired with those white stockings. It made them look like the perfect dolls that they are, and the rich, young scent of their hair—” The man closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Yes, the scent of their fresh, virgin pussies. They were perfect—unmarred, or unsullied by this world or another man.”

Tim opened his eyes, and they glittered with morbid darkness in the swinging lantern light. His arousal was so strong that Dean didn’t need him to say another word to know what he was daydreaming about—disgusting. For all Tim’s talk of wanting to get better, of wanting his help, Dean knew there was no help for someone like Tim.

Images of his own father came to mind. How many women and teenage girls had his father raped and then killed? Too many to count, too many for him to even remember them all. Dean gripped the shovel handle harder.

“I was always their first and their last,” Tim said. “It was beautiful, and they knew I loved them.” Tim stopped talking to take a deep breath as he looked up to the star-filled night sky. “Don’t you see, I did them a favor. I showed them what true love is, and they will never have to worry about what the cruelty of this world will do to them. They’ll never have their hearts broken or end up on the street, becoming nothing more than a cheap trick. I saved them from being disappointed, let down, or abused by some pervert.”

Um, hello, pot meet kettle.Dean raised an eyebrow. He wondered if this guy knew just how crazy he sounded. “So, you were their savior?”

“Yes! You understand it. I was their savior, their teacher, their lover. I did, no do, love them, and they will remain perfect forever. Their faces will never grow old and get wrinkled or suffer a fate like cancer.” Tim smiled wide. “Don’t you see, in my own way, I was doing God’s work?” Tim nodded his head vigorously up and down. “So, will you let me go now?”

“Didn’t I already tell you that there is no God?”

Tim leaned his body over, his face growing serious. “Yes, but I know you’re just testing me. This is a final test to see if I’m worthy of God’s forgiveness.”

Is this guy for real?

Dean had come across many forms of delusion in his travels and his journey as one of The Righteous, but the inner workings of this man’s mind…Dean rubbed his chin.

“You’ve found me out. You are a sharp one, Tim.” Tim’s smile beamed idiotically up at him. “But, I’m not sure yet. You’re gonna have to tell me where you put the bodies.”

“Oh, I can’t do that.” Tim looked away from him, his face contorting in what looked like pain.

“Tim, you’re right that you’re being tested, and this is the only way I’ll know you’re serious about walking away from your dark blasphemous past and get help.”

One corner of his mouth curled up.

“I know you feel you are doing God’s work, but God believes in all of his children having the right to make their own mistakes. You stole that from those little girls, and in essence, you stole that from God. He is angry with you, Tim, very angry.”

“I don’t want to end up in hell,” Tim whimpered.

Dean puffed out his chest and used the voice he would use in a sermon as he continued. “Then you will need to tell me the answers I seek.” Dean paused again and held out his hands like he was the next messiah, and God was speaking to him right then. “Why do you think I was chosen to come to this town, Tim? I was sent here to find you. God speaks to me, and he sees you can do better. I have the power to grant you the forgiveness you seek, but only if you are honest with me.”

Tim looked at the formidable dirt walls towering on either side and gently swayed back and forth like a metronome.

“God doesn’t like to wait for an answer. He is too busy to deal with those that don’t genuinely want to get better. You have three seconds to make a choice. One, Two—”

“Okay, wait! But I need to take you to where they are.”

“Forget it, you have failed the test, and it is obvious now that you don’t want to change.” Dean stood and threw another shovel full of dirt onto him.

“Stop! Don’t… Shit! Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise me that this will grant me access to Heaven.”

Dean leaned against the shovel, annoyed now with this game.

“Yes, of course. That amount of self-growth will surely grant you access to Heaven.” Dean barely managed not to roll his eyes in disgust. “Please Tim, do not let this opportunity pass you by—where are the girls buried?”

“I didn’t bury them. Instead, I made sure they would stay perfect just the way they are. Forever.”

“Uh-huh, and what exactly does that mean?”

Tim bit his lip and looked around like someone might hear him. Dean was ready to say fuck it and just beat the fucker to death with the shovel whether he got an answer or not.

“In the very back of my place, between stacks two and three of the compacted vehicles, there’s what looks like an old steel shed. You can’t see it unless you walk right up to it.”

Again with the licking of the lips.

“Inside, there is a work of art. I turned the entire space into a dollhouse. That’s where they’re perfectly preserved, frozen in time to play as children forever. I even painted the walls pink with butterflies and got them a tea set.”

While Tim smiled and looked genuinely pleased with what he’d done, Dean was more horrified than if Tim had simply buried the bodies.

“You froze the little girls and put them in a massive freezer? Like a space to play with each other?” he asked. Dean was seriously considering altering the punishment for this one.

“You’ll see, they look stunning!” A wide smile spread across Tim’s face, his eyes wild as he shifted slightly, trying to hide the erection he’d been sporting since they began talking about the girls.

Shaking his head, Dean threw another shovel full of dirt onto Tim, hitting him square in the face. Coughing, he shook his head to rid his eyes of the dirt. “What the hell, man? You said you’d let me go! You said God would forgive me!”

“Man, you are stupid. Did you really believe all that crap about God sending me to find you?” Tim’s mouth fell open.

“There is no mother fucking God! Get it?” Dean tossed another shovel of dirt. “You’re more fucked than I thought. Someone like you simply can’t be helped.”

“That’s not true! I want to change.”

“Oh really? Look at you? You’re sitting in a cold, dirt grave, buck ass naked in front of another man, and your cock is as hard as this shovel. It’s been swinging in the breeze since you started talking about the girls. No, the best thing for you, for everyone, is for you to die.”

More dirt landed on its mark.

“Fuck you, man! Fuck you! You’ll burn in hell for this!”

Dean stopped working and laughed hard, hot tears rolling down his cheeks, his stomach clenching with the sudden outburst. After a moment, his face grew serious. All humor erased as rage took its place.

“I’ve been to hell. I lived there, and I survived its fiery grasp. Do you know what I learned in hell? There are sinners everywhere, and they all need to be eradicated. If anyone here is doing God’s work, it’s me.”

“You’re sick.”

“I’m sick?” A low whistle left his lips. “You fucking raped and killed children for your own perverse pleasure!” Dean’s voice boomed. The leather gloves creaked as he squeezed the wooden handle, his muscles flexing with the restraint not to swing the spade.

The man in the hole flinched as much as he could in the thick restraints, his face flushed with droplets of perspiration despite the cool temperature. Dean’s voice lowered. “Let me be very clear, Tim. If there were a God, I’d be one of his angels sent to rid the world of evil like you, for we are The Righteous.”

Dean stopped and sighed, letting go of the building rage. “It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I get back to the church to get some sleep. Sunday service is tomorrow, and I need to prepare, so I have to get you buried.” Dean shrugged. “Do you think you’ll suffocate before you’re crushed to death? It’s a tough call, but I guess you’ll find out,” Dean taunted, his lip curling up as Tim screamed for help.

It was almost comical. Almost.