A Day In The Life: Eddie (1)

And the lone scribe within would have it no other way. Underneath the Lex Aedificium and the thousands of people who passed through its hallowed halls day and night, he could abstract the horrors that were undoubtedly happening. Every piece of paper described some order, who handed it down and who received it. He noted how the language changed as the Order entrenched itself. Words like 'liquidate' and 'relocate' had turned brutally honest: "slaughter", "enslave", "immolate", "poison."

With a swish of the pen, he confirmed the completion of another order. The Recalcitrant's Tour of the 'final' Black Panther was complete, their body strung up outside of Hamlet K-102's church. One tank of kerosene was to be requisitioned when the rot became hazardous. He slid the paper into its neat stack of follow-ups and stopped to vigorously rub circles in his temples with his index and middle fingertips. His heart quickened and he rose from his chair, swinging his head away from the flickering candles. From the darkest corner of the cellar, mother's blackened hand reached out. A bony fingertip pointed over his shoulder, when he swung around the candles had melted into one great conflagration that licked the walls. Shadows danced in the form of those black, shrouded men.

Knuckles rapped on his door, banishing the visions but not the tears rolling down his face. "Enter."

Father Jim stood in the doorway as it swung wide, he was a man with a captivating aura, perfectly-styled brown hair and sunglasses that once might have anonymized a man were instead put to great effect in elevating Jim's figure. He spoke in a tone that commanded attention, soft as a lamb but as stern as one who wielded the righteous weapons of God. His rigid, angled brow softened and he gently reached out to set a hand on the scribe's shoulder. "Eddie, Eddie... Those terrors-- they aren't real anymore, you hear? Nobody's coming for you. No son of a bitch cleanser, no priest other than yours truly."

"Why did you save me..?" Eddie croaked after a pregnant pause, his throat dry and voice cracked. Jim's kindly laugh was disarming enough for him to seize control of the conversation as he always did.

"I'm the son of God, meant to save God's people. Now-- I have something important for you to do." Jim closed the door behind him, untying his rope belt and producing from the small of his back a leather satchel. He extended it and the scribe's bony fingers tentatively received it, opening the mouth to curiously plumb its depths. They were all military orders- that was obvious from the red stamp in the upper left of each paper. Fishing one out, the scribe's beady blue eyes scanned a page. Jim never ceased staring at him as he read, Eddie's tingling spine was all-too-happy to remind him of the preacher's presence.

His eyes wandered to the bottom, where there was a lack of a name in the 'order accepted' field. Jim seemed to catch onto this immediately.

"I'm going to need you to ignore that. Put in the name 'Father West' and mark this as completed."

Visions of despair blossomed in his mind, blinked away as quickly as he sat down and scrawled the requested name. With a shaky hand, he placed it in its neat stack.

"Don't worry, Kid, there's no way they're checkin' all of these."