ArchivedLogs:Vignette - Sin

Vignette - Sin
Dramatis Personae Steve
In Absentia	2015-11-07 "{It has been seventy years since my last confession...}"
Location <NYC> Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church - Brooklyn
There's an austere grace to the aging brick facade of this historic church. The wrought iron gates are open and the wide front door looks welcoming beneath a massive rose window. The block-letter sign in front advertises mass, confession, and counseling in Spanish and French. The interior is open and well-lit, the stations of the cross framed in goldleaf arches between green marble columns. The afternoon sun slanting in through the stained glass windows throws colorful light across the empty pews. Empty, that is, except for a very muscular man kneeling near the end of a pew. Steve is dressed in a white and blue plaid flannel shirt and dark khakis, his blond head bowed low. At length, a skinny southeast Asian man in a black cassock comes out of the parish offices and, approaching Steve, taps him on the shoulder. Steve looks up, nods and, rising to his full height, follows the priest to the confessional. Inside the booth, Steve kneels and makes the sign of the cross. "{Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,}" the words tumble from him easily in rough, provincial French. But then he pauses, seems to gather himself in one deep inward breath. "{It has been seventy years since my last confession...}" The silhouette of the priest's head on the other side of the screen tilts in perplexity. "{Well. I was only conscious for about three months of it, but it /feels/ like seventy years...}" After he trails off, the priest waits a long moment before prompting him, gently, "{You may take your time, of course, but you might start with those sins which weigh most heavily on your soul.}" Steve's broad shoulder hunch just a little. "{I have killed.}" His voice is thick, but does not falter. "{I have taken the lives of at least twenty-seven men, and wounded many others who probably died later.}" He seems to take the priest's silence as permission to continue. "{That was just by my own hand. I cannot even estimate the number of people who have perished indirectly because of the orders I gave to my men, or the intelligence I provided to other Allied troops.}" "{You were at war, then?}" the priest asks, soft and hesitant. "{I was,}" Steve says. "{And in moments of weakness I tried to use that to excuse the things I'd done. I knew better, though. Now?}" He shakes his head slowly. "{Now, I'm not at war. I'm not sure who I'm working for. I don't know who, or what, I'm fighting...or fighting /for./ I am very lost in this time. This world.}" A long pause. He looks up at the screen that separates him from his confessor. "{Is that a sin, Father?}"