The ancient monastery sat on a russet hill, teetering, seemingly on the brink of bludgeoning the town below with stone and wood. But it had stood in this precarious and threatening position for as long as anyone could remember.
The monks roamed into the town once a month, dispensing prayers and food. They took confessions on street corners, the edge of their flowing robes frayed and dirtied from scraping the soiled streets. The monks responded to the outpour-ing of sins with merciful smiles and hands that etched the sign of the cross into the air and handed out cards that simply said, “Bless You, Dear Sinner. God Has Forgiven You.” Cards re-placed voices as the vows of silence taken by the monks had withstood time and the pleas of the seemingly repentant.
Lila walked the streets of the town, eyes tracing her own stiletto-jingle footsteps. Her vermillion dress bunched in tight, crisp waves, teasing what moved beneath and what adventurous hands might discover for a few pieces of coin.
She ignored the monks when they scurried through the streets. To her, the monks were almost identical to the men she called clients. The monks also wanted to claim a piece of her, demanding she behave in a certain way before of-fering her a reward. At least with her clients, their iniquitous demands and furtive needs were understood. The rewards from her clients were tangible and real. She had never learned how she could redeem salvation for bread and a bed.
Lila’s dress masked poison-green tattoos and eggplant colored welts. The tattoos were old, calloused scabs concealing what she’d buried and lost. The bruises were fleshy, tender reminders of her mistake from the prior evening. The mo-notony and the mutable demands made her careless. She failed to check that the flimsy rubber band contained a stack of twenties. She later learned there was a single twenty-dollar bill cam-ouflaging a mound of one-dollar kindling. Her wounds burned like a freshly lit candle, but when a client paid to roam freely across her yielding body, she uttered no noise and her face re-mained stoic, the yells choked down behind her tongue.
Lila glimpsed up at the distant monastery, its granite outdueling distance to appear larger than reality. She felt drops of warm, revitalizing rain pelt her hair and bead on her dress. She envisioned torrents of rain covering the roads, windows, and roofs. She wanted the sea level to rise, obliterating the horde of casually indiffer-ent fingerprints coating her room, her clothes, her skin.
She’d dive below the water’s surface and peel away her counterfeit shell, revealing translucent fins that shimmered with the pink hue of new skin. As the storm ripped the town apart, she’d glide beneath the cresting, rubble-inducing waves. The noisy mattress where her body was shredded and tattered for crumpled bills would hover in the air, carried away like an arsonist’s match spindles. Her constant work companion, the ceiling, would be lashed and flayed until the popcorn shed like old skin and the cotton-candy insulation drifted down and melted in the currents.
She’d only surface from the water to watch the town be ravaged, each rivet and nail torn out until the town reassembled itself on the newly-formed sea floor. Her head, the grey stone of the monastery, and the saffron-robed monks would be all that survived above the waterline of the ravenous flood.
***
The red-headed man with oval slits for eyes was five minutes early for his weekly appointment. He grabbed her, slamming his body, his hips already thrusting, into hers. His hands slid down the soft of her back and roamed to those areas his currency gave him the privilege to access. His fingers slid under her dress and burrowed like a bear’s paws tearing dirt and roots.
He whispered his carnal, earthly desires into her ear. He confessed to her what only flickered in shadowy recesses where testosterone lived without filter or dilution. Lila collected these sins daily, whisper by whisper, request by request. They tunneled deep within her, sludge in her veins, rendering her a citadel of messy, yearning secrets. She hoarded these secrets, promising to never utter them again, their poison leaking under her skin. All in exchange for sheets of paper and silver coins.
Lila closed her eyes and elongated fins sprouted from her shoulders, catching rays of light like the wings of a jeweled butterfly. She flapped her mermaid wings, unencumbered by gravity or grappling paws. She landed on top of the slick monastery roof, perched like a predatory sea bird. The clouds poured silvery water, washing away all that once stood and building a new, pristine home of water and once-treasured refuse. She watched from the roof while the world was formed anew.
She bellowed into the storming sky, the secrets of the town spilling out from her tongue and seeping from her pores into the forming river below. The swirling waters carried the venom away. Lila was born again, a winged creature of fresh, undefiled beginnings. A creature with no past and harboring no secrets. Vengeance wiped away the longing for forgiveness, and whispered only one phrase—start again.
Lila and the monks would endure. They were God’s chosen creatures. They both had, after all, adhered to vows of silence protecting years of wicked confessions.
Opening her eyes, the blade still in her hand, she stared at the red-headed man’s limp body contorted on the floor. A river of crimson flowed to-wards the door, life washing away. She felt the pinprick of blossoming wings.