That is the way with amputations.
They don't just heal up like a wish.

- Sexton

For over two decades the prodigal son had coveted rage within him, and now that he realized the truth of the past, he returned to his home certain that Father Kizuki earned this fate.

Evensong [ right click - target save as ] was just ended, and votaries filed out of the door as innocently as perfumed sheep.  Shiroi cut through them, accompanied by two of Akakage, but left his guards to mill about at the back pews. Kiriyama and Masaru preferred not stepping foot in this place of worship, being baby-killing atheists, being freaked to fuck about how devout Shiroi was, being afraid the virus of the holy ghost would enter them from the ass and fuck them just as crazy.

Doumyoji, on the other hand, wouldn't have cared less.  From time to time, Shiroi missed him.

As he treaded down the aisle in an onyx desecration of Armani, he recalled himself over twenty years ago, floating down the same polished canal, within the ceremonial trappings of an altar boy's robes. On the cathedral's threshold he had made a point as a child of assessing the milieu upfront to be certain no dangers lurked there. He had always been so wrapped in his own quietude, to such a degree that those within his path garnered no attention from his downcast gaze; he only hungered for sanctuary in the hymns he sang, and in the vision of St. Mary at the altar. By the age of nine, his expression was already too somber for his years.

It was easier now for Shiroi to reach his goal: the resplendent nave. The face he had come for was there: Father Kizuki, pruned only slightly by the years, giving his graces to lingering parishioners. Shiroi stood a ways from the pulpit, quietly observing five others vying for the priest's attention. He thought of Father Kizuki's touch -- not like that of the now deceased Father Koyabashi's meaty hands and shrunken bauble that he would brush against the boy's chin before he could even reach a pulpit with his hands -- but rather the sharp sting of Hell, the blissful deluge of Heaven that flowed from him.

"Let me help you empty the coffers, Shirosama," he had said. The priest placed a hand, cold with his particularly tragic vein of anemia, on the boy's shoulder. That the warming of the priest's skin lay in his command flooded the altar boy with inebriating adrenaline. It made him harden as the priest intended, when he had been taught only moments before that hardening was a sin.

This interstice of waiting was purgatory.

"Father, you must, must come to my great granddaughter's wedding," an old man -- the last -- was pleading. "I must insist you come, Father."

"I have my obligations here, Yamato-sama. But you know Brother Kenzaburo would be more than honored to see your granddaughter off."

Shiroi didn't approach then. He let the priest steal away after assuring the old man, and then followed him down the corridor, through the annex chapels, a labyrinthine trap to his private offices. His footsteps weren't light. When he finally spoke, the words were chanted toward Father Kizuki's back.

"God, my life have I announced to thee. Thou has set my tears in thy sight."

The elder turned about, his hand on the eve of turning the door handle. He watched the frightful looking young man patiently, with mild reservation in his eyes.  Shiroi continued to speak.  " .. my holy father, king of heaven and earth, do not withdraw from me since tribulation is my neighbor and there is none to help."

Father Kizuki's moist lips were pursed like petals in introspection as he considered the words of a man in worship before him, each of his eyes like polished bits of lapis lazuli holding the sky.  A wash of disbelief.

" .. is it .. is that you, Shirosama?"

"I must speak with you, Father."

In the form of acknowledgment he gave Shiroi a nod and warm smile, expecting perhaps that this would be enough compensation for the trip the man had made. He invited the young dragon into his office, and closed the door.

Shiroi could remember that he had wanted to become a priest sitting on the Father's knees. He knew he was special because he was often told so by this Father, who had become so protective of him and made him special. There were no more lines winding down the hall -- those invisible, conspiring lines that formed in the minds of all those lecherous clergymen, as if they had a single mind that arranged places in the line. Even if no one stood at the door, another knew when someone cut their place -- when he would have to wait a little longer for his nightly fuck.

How many little ones got the same treatment? The special treatment from his favorite Father?

At the start, the priest pressed Shiroi about his current life, and he answered polite and true. He wondered as the questions flooded around him: how did a demon fashion gold of words, as Father Kizuki did? He nearly forgot himself completely, until the priest asked why he had returned, what the occasion of this visit was. Shiroi remembered instantly, and breaching their separation, went down to genuflect at the feet of the seated clergyman.

"Long ago, all my enemies against me were thinking evil things for me," the yakuza whispered, sliding his heavily ringed hand up the black of Father Kizuki's cassock. " ... and they took counsel together. And they set against me evil and hatred in place of my love ... in as much as they loved me, they were disparaging me."

Had that been a tremble ... ? Shiroi lifted his gaze to the priest's. A predator, now prey, with trembling limbs. His fingers pulled up the robes around the lap of Father Kizuki and tapped an enticing cadence along his fly, encountering a lump to shift about. He continued with an exalted grin, " ... however I was praying: let my enemies be turned in retreat on whatever day I will have invoked Thee, behold I know that Thou art my God."

A troubled furrow creased the priest's moistened and flushed brow. He noticed the vaguely faded marks on Shiroi's visage then, and his eyes grew wide.

"Your face, Shirosama .. " Gone from Father Kizuki's voice was the soothing panacea of God's hand servants, replaced by an infernal, labored gasping.  A scent of lust.  The scar on Shiroi's face showed with clarity in this lighting -- a running crucifix smelted with skin.

The cuts meant nothing, unless ..

Even with the vertical anomaly completing the cross and baptizing his face with blood, the cuts meant nothing if they meant nothing to Kuroi. Who cared when some obscure island sank the fuck off the earth? No one heard when a tree fell in a forest.

No thoughts; no feelings; no heart to lay beating in his hands. He placed the cross in the only place Kuroi could see it -- see that he was holy, and that crucifixes had a place on a filthy thing, because the filthy thing was holy.

The Fathers always told me we were fucking towards glory in Heaven, Amen.

Shiroi looked confused, and then sad; was that horror there on Kuroi's face?

"..Jesus..." Kuroi whispered, and his voice was so dry. Reaching out with trembling hands, he gently cupped the sides of Shiroi's neck with his cold hands -- and oh, Shiroi was so warm. Taking a step closer to the younger to Shiroi, the blond's tear-glossed gaze burned into the younger man. "..Why? Why did you do this to yourself?"

"So you would see .. " he started to explain, and paused at the tears in his eyes. Jesus .. the chill those palms lent to his skin only sent heat through Shiroi's body. He placed his hands on Kuroi's wrists and squeezing gentle comfort into them. " .. I wanted to show you I wasn't filthy, Kuroi. That even with what the Fathers did to me, I can still wear God's grace. .. please .. " Please understand. Please don't cry.

They were burning down Kuroi's cheeks as he stared at his scarred angel; the only perfect being in a world so damaged by imperfect souls -- a world so dirtied by filth. And this angel, so deluded by the lies that were fed by the deafening silence -- his angel, his only light, had burned into his flesh angry lines -- as angry as the tears that now burned down his cheeks.

"Shiroi," Kuroi whispered, his hands sinking into that hair as his gaze frantically searched those fragmented dark pools. How could you have been so blinded, my beautiful one? "Shiroi..."

Pulling the younger one close to his body, Kuroi wrapped his arms around that painfully thin frame -- as if to claim it as his own -- and he was; Shiroi was his own. His own to love. His own to care for. And pulling away ever so gently, to allow his gaze to meet those confused dark pools once more, Kuroi sighed. "..You could never be dirty, never -- you never were, never think that... Never, ever think that. You are the most beautiful.. the most...the... "

Eloquence had been lost.

Not until a vague burning of moist salt along the markings did Shiroi realize his own slow, mute tears. He wound his arms around those that held him close, his chin coming to rest on Kuroi's strong shoulder -- muscled with weight lifting; with gunfiring; with taking care of his very, very lost brother.

"I cut myself."

"Why did you disfigure yourself this way, my son .. ?"

"Father, I have a lover and -- "

"Without marriage, Shiroi?"

"He doesn't believe in marriage, father."

"He, my son? This is another man?"

"As you are another man, Father. As you let me wrap my fingers around your dick at this moment, I do so with him."

"Shirosama ..  All .. all .. are granted recourse at some point in time, child. When was it you lost your faith in God?"

"No .. please. No more .. " the boy quietly cried.

"You must expiate your sins," was the harshly whispered response in the dark. "You must see. And you will see."

"But it hurts."

"Cleansing is painful, my son."

And things that didn't fit easily crashed into him, and he flew like the pistons in the old cars he often played upon with Kuroi. He cried less afterwards, when it became harder to even breathe.

"My angel -- you're my angel, right?" the Father asked.

"H .. ha .. hai .. " Torn with tears.

"I won't ever let anyone touch you, Shirosama."

"You tried to kill me." The overdose was a fleeting memory when the true murderer reposed before him. At a precise moment in fellatio, metal had flashed as quickly as a tongue, and Shiroi produced a razorblade at Father Kizuki's cock, having sliced up his scrotum. The priest's scream creased the air.

"Never, Shirosama!" On his salted, damned tongue the words sizzled. "It is only that I did not have the proper strength to field the anger of what happened here. Being assailed by your suffering, it nearly cost me my own life!"  He hyperventilated; Shiroi's curved lips were bloody and held before them was a yellow oval. "I ... I was ultimately outnumbered and .. I could not protect that precious silver cord that was my only attachment to God's world. I lost ahold of you .. !"

"I was never precious to you," Shiroi protested, spitting a wad of blood onto the priest's chest. "Greed and good conflicted. I was a passing greed you fancied, Father."

"You have become a twisted and malignant entity .. " the priest whispered, quivering agonized and horrific.

"You did a superb job, Father."

Tears spilled on to his rheumatized hands, as Shiroi, having halved the lemon, squeezed the fizz of scalding, fresh pulp to the raw surface and brought it between his legs.  " .. here is the fruit of your great efforts."

"Blessed are the pure of heart for they will see God," the priest wheezed, citing his last resorts.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God," Shiroi replied. He ground the stinging pulp against the torn testes, and Father Kizuki began to scream his sermon; his own last rites. Each versicle received a steadfast response.

"Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God!"

"Blessed are the lowly, for they will inherit the land."

"But .. b .. bless .. blessed are the merciful for ... for .. they will be shown mercy ... "

"Blessed are those, Father, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied."

A gun's cold, black eye was Father Kizuki's last condemning gaze in life. Ten silenced shots, from head to crotch, left leaking cysts. Even though the church and its adjoining school were one institution, both shuddered as Shiroi vacated the premises.

"What took you so long .. ?" Kiriyama asked, as he slammed the car door. He leaned down to the window, watching Shiroi.

"You can't rush expiation before God," he answered, clutching the bit of rosary in his pocket.