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What??? Deleted??? Oh...this is probably all my fault! We made a temporary announcement stating that all contest threads would be moved to Chatterbox, so I moved the thread, but for some bizarre reason two threads then existed, one in the main forum, and one in Chatterbox. So I deleted the one in the main forum, then checked back in Chatterbox to make sure that one copy was safe and secure, which it was. Where did it go??? I'm so sorry!!! I don't know what I did wrong, I checked to see if the contest thread was in the Chatterbox forum and it was, but now, a few hours later, it's gone! cry I'm so, so, so sorry! (How embarrassing, causing such discord and inconvenience!) redface Please forgive me! (My, what an Oscar speech.)

Re-submiting. Plus, I'm working on another entry. 3nodding

The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever - Herb Caen.

This story is called Forgive Me Forever.


Sitting on the train tracks, I thought about my life.

It seemed remarkably short. What? A couple of centuries? Not much when you look at it as part of the big picture. I lived the life of roughly four humans. Only four...
I was ecstatic the first fifty years. The thrill of it all. Of sunrise after sunrise, or dusk and dusk and dusk. Eternally. Forever. No fear! Who wouldn't pay for a life without fear? Even if it was only half a life, say, thirty years, but with nothing to fear. It would be grace, pure heaven. I knew that life. I knew it again and again. So many sunrises...so many dusks. Endlessly. Eternally.
Silly, but I sometimes wonder what my mother would say. I think I know. Something like, "Fredrick, you go to church, eat the body of Christ, drink his blood, and then go tie a rope around your neck like a good son." No lies, that is what she would say. Immortality? Not real, unless your in heaven or hell while you live it. That is what I was taught.
In 1701, I was to attend a monastery. I was to become a priest. I would read the holy scripture, anoint my head with oil, and be celibate for the rest of my life. Fat chance. Even before that phrase was invented, I knew it somehow. In my heart, I knew I could never be a vessel of God, a holy man. I was under a hooker within my first month in that place. Violet. Pretty lady. Quite old. She wore a shining purple dress that unbuttoned remarkably quick. "Three sixpence an hour young sir, four if you're inexperienced." Four it was. Best purse of gold I have ever spent. I stick to that conviction, even three hundred years later when I bought a black Roles Royce. Violet was the best deal I have ever gotten.
The church never found out about my sexual interludes outside of the stained-glass walls. I ate the body, drank the blood, prayed to the cross, and then went out and bought women. Dozens of women. So pretty, so beautiful, so everything the church denied me.

Rumbling on the train tracks. Light, vibration through the endless steel bars.

Anyway, I stayed in the church until I was twenty-eight. That was the year I met God.
He walked into the church one day. A man in the middle of his life. His face wasn't lined, but his hair had specks of silvery gray. He wore a suit and jacket of dark gray, almost black, but not quite. He had his hair cut shorter than was average at the time. My own hair was short, but I was a priest. It was ungodly to have hair like a maniac whilst praying to the cross. His hair was even shorter than mine.
I had been watching him from the confession box. There is a little panel of wood that allows priests to look out, but people not to look in. Did you know that? Well, I watched him walk down between the pews. I saw him glance to the large, crucifix hanging at the head of the church. He stared at it for a very long time.
Then he did the most peculiar thing. He put his hands on his sides, as if resting them there, then he gave a very large sigh and smiled a great, toothy grin at the Lord hanging bloody from the cross.
I felt a spasm of fear. Strange for me to feel something that pure and true. I myself prayed to this alter every night and looked into the eyes of the Lord, knowing that in an hours time I was going to be having a grand time in the bed of an unknown Mary Magdalin. I lied to that alter. I gave lip-service to that very cross. So why did this man's one act of oddity frighten me so?
I had barely ten seconds to consider all this before I jumped at a noise to my right. The man had entered the confession box and was sitting next to me, only an inch thick piece of wood and a small, square window separating us.
I nearly swallowed my own tongue. I choked and coughed into my hand, then I spoke in the mightiest, godlike voice I could. "Do you have confessions, my son?"
Imagine, me, just a kid at twenty-eight, calling this man who must have been fifteen years my elder, 'son.'
The man leaned over near the small window, and spoke in a very quiet voice.
"Forgive me father, for I have sinned."
After a moment, he spoke again. "I was out last night, walking about the city, when I found myself eavesdropping on my fellow man."
"Being curious is not a sin, my son," I told him in a voice as quiet as his own.
"But I did not finish father," He said, then continued. "I found myself eavesdropping on my fellow man, as I have said. I listened to him as he spoke with a women. They spoke of private things. Of things one does in the bedroom, quite alone."
I blushed. For some reason, I felt sudden embracement. "You still have not broken a commandment of God, my son."
"Again, I have yet to finish," He spoke even quieter. "After this man left this women, I followed him. I watched as he got into a carriage and had it take him to church. I took a carriage behind him. I watched as he went inside the large, church doors. I walked to a window where I saw him dress in the holy garments of a priest. I saw him pick up a bible, turn it over, and kiss the cross on the front of it. Kiss it with the same lips that had been on a pretty, redheaded whore no less than an hour previous."
My heart fell to the floor. I began to sweat, cold and icy. I swallowed. I swallowed again. I could not speak. My throat was stuck together in fear. How was I breathing? I didn't know.
"Father?" The man said a little louder.
I panicked. I opened the confessions door and walked out from it. I nearly ran down the pews, trying not to trip out of fear.
A hand grabbed my throat and pulled me on to a pew. I was forced down and sat hard on the wooden seat. The man held me to the pew with such strength, I could not believe it. Too much strength. Too much power.
"Devil," I stammered. "Demon..."
He whipped me down on the pew and climbed on top of me. His face, so smooth, so lineless, was inches from my own.
"You call me a demon when it is you who lies to the face of the Lord?" He spoke so quietly. So softly. "You, a man so young, who is already damned to eternal hellfire."
"No one can decide this but God!"
He smiled. He laughed. He kissed my lips.

A train whistle. Two miles down.
I sighed and stood up from the tracks. I could just make out the flickering light on the front of the train. It would be here in a few minutes. I sat down on the wooden beams that connect the tracks. I sat with my knees up and held them to my chest.
As I sat there, feeling the increasingly heavy vibrations on the tracks, I said the Lord's prayer. After a few seconds, though, I stopped. Words were not needed anymore. Perhaps, just thinking about forgiveness, just wishing it fully, is good enough.
Three-hundred years. How long can a man hold a grudge?
The train had reached me. It all went black.

"Suicide...young...sucide...no family...tragedy..."
Is that you God?
"No family...bury him...no name...bury him..."
Hello?
Smell of earth. Muddy. Gritty. Grassy.
Is anybody here?
Silence. Numb. Darkness.
Please...someone...
The smell of flowers.
Forgive me father...
Violets.
...For I have sinned.

Dammit all.. that was only copyt I had of that.. - Sigh. -

Gee, thanks alot to whoever screwed it up and deleted it.. mad

*sniffle*