Losing My Religion

[Caine]

For his sixteenth birthday, Caine received a Bible. The pages were crisp and thin, bound in soft leather with gold leaf lettering. He supposed that his parents, his father the pastor, his mother the good Christian wife, wanted to hammer the point home that he was a sinner and going to Hell for what he had done to his brother. He was a murderer, after all. More than they knew, even. Mark and his teacher’s faces had long since left the news, had long since left his mind, even, until the moment that he slid the book from the plain wrapping.

His hands trembled as they cradled it, the only gift he’d received, thumb brushing over the spine as ‘brows furrowed and he gave a whispered gratitude to severe and drawn parents under the weight of fire and brimstone and the Righteous Anger of the Almighty God striking down sinners into their ashen prison cells to burn for eternity’s worth of damnation. It was absurd and ridiculous and it couldn’t have been more so if they had given him a knife.

He’d brought the book to his room and set it on his bed, sitting cross-legged on the mattress to stare at it with trepidation, as if the hand of God Himself would reach out and drag him to Hell. The blonde sat there, trembling, unconscious of the time that swept past until his mother called him for supper. Reluctantly, he stood, backing towards his door until he could dash out of it and down the stairs, hellhounds biting at his heels.

Supper was always a quiet affair. The fact that this was his sixteenth birthday didn’t change it. It was even more somber than usual, in fact. A day of mourning instead of celebration. The life snuffed out before it had been given a fighting chance. Caine grimaced as he ate his greens, mechanically placing the food into his mouth to chew and swallow, listening to his father practice the sermon he would be giving to the congregation of rabid Southern Baptists. The teenager listened with half an ear; he’d lost his Faith the day he was born.

Reduced to pushing the last remnants around on the plate until his father finished, got a satisfactory response from his mother, he ducked his head down, curls creating a shade effect over his eyes and he softly cleared his throat, knowing he would get reprimanded for interrupting, but unable to sit still for any longer.

“May I please be excused?”

With an aggravated wave of his hand, Pastor Rackham released his son from the shackles of the dinner table and a grateful boy rose, placing the dishes in the sink and escaping back up to his room where he could stare at the Good Book. He bit his lip, convinced there was something sinister about the tree product, convinced that it would be his demise. The feeling gnawed at him until he snatched it up and crawled out the window and down the latticework of vines.

Caine created a pyre out of leaves and bits of twine, liberally dousing it with the fluid he’d nicked from the garden shed before lighting a match, his control wavering only for a moment before he dropped the burning stick.

The fire shot upwards in a roar of hot air and the teen squinted against the heat, convinced the flesh would melt right off his bones for daring to burn the Scripture.

Called out by the rush of light, his parents stumbled into the yard, Pastor Rackham swearing up a storm about hellfire and the sins of a disturbed youth. Something soured in his stomach, the feeling much like what he had experienced before he had murdered Mark and the teacher and before he knew it, his fingers had curled around the stolen knife, still spotted with old blood, and pulled the blade, plunging it into his father’s belly.

Mrs. Rackham screamed as blood gushed from the admittedly shallow wound, Pastor Rackham stared with slightly glazed eyes at the features hollowed with shadow from the steady blaze at Caine’s back until they saw nothing with the blade cut into his throat, severing the artery and vein in one heinous cut.

The blonde wrestled the fleeing woman to the ground and viciously cut into her face and neck, ruining her features forever, ensuring a closed casket funeral for the Good Christian Wife to the abomination of a child.

With blood on his hands, Caine crawled back up the vines shoving what belongings had meaning to him into his backpack before leaving the same way, running across the yard into the fading sunset and leaving the town behind him, losing his religion in all senses of the term for the rest of his unnatural life.