"Mr. Parson, I..."

The memories fill my head; the dirty, b.l.o.o.d.y flesh, the piercing cries for help, the wharf rats scurrying over my feet and fighting for sc.r.a.ps...

"It isn't easy, Father, to break the skin. Human teeth aren't made for tearing. You have to nip with the front incisors until you make a small hole, then clench down hard and tug back, putting your neck and shoulders into it. It took a long time. Sometimes hours for them to die."

I sigh through my teeth.

"I'd make them eat bits of themselves..."

The priest stands, but I grab his wrist with the little strength I had left. He can't leave, not yet.

"Please, Father. I need Penance."

He takes a breath, stares at me. Watching him regain composure is like watching a drunk wake up in a strange bed. He manages it, finally, but some of that youthful idealism is gone.

"Are you sorry for what you've done?"

"I'm sorry, Father." The tears come, a rusty faucet that has gone unused for years. "I'm sorry and I beg for G.o.d's forgiveness. I'm...so...alone. I've been so alone."

He touches my face as if petting a crocodile, but I'm grateful for the touch.

The tears don't last long. I swat them away with tissue.

Together we say the Act of Contrition.

The words are familiar on my tongue, but my conscience isn't eased.

There's more.

"Rest now, Mr. Parson." He makes the sign of the cross on my forehead with his thumb, but his eyes keep flitting to the door, the way out.

"Father..."

"Yes?"

I have to proceed carefully here. "How strong is your faith?"

"Unshakable."

"What if...what if you no longer needed faith?"

"I will always need faith, Mr. Parson."

For the first time since his arrival, I allow myself a small smile. "Not if you have proof."

"What do you mean?"

"If there is proof that G.o.d exists, you'd no longer need faith. You would have knowledge- tangible knowledge."

He narrows his eyes. "You have this proof? A lapsed priest?"

"Defrocked, Father. My t.i.tle was stripped."

"Of course it was. You killed..."

I sigh, wet and heavy. "You misunderstand, Father Bob. They didn't defrock me because of the murders. My vocation was taken away from me because I knew too much."

I lower my voice so he must lean closer to hear me.

"I KNOW G.o.d exists, Father."

The priest frowns, folds his arms.

"The great mystery of Faith is that we accept G.o.d without knowing. If G.o.d wanted us to truly know, he would appear on earth and touch us."

I raise my hand, point at him.

"You're wrong there, Father. He has come down and touched us. Touched me." This is the tricky part. "Would you like to see the proof?"

I almost shout with glee when he nods his head.

"Sit, Father Bob. This story takes a while."

He sits beside me, his face a mixture of interest and wariness.

My mouth is dry. I take a sip from a cup of tepid water, soak my tongue.

"Fresh from the Seminary, I was sent to Western Samoa, a group of islands in the South Pacific. It's tropical paradise, the population predominantly Christian. A garden of Eden, one of the most beautiful places on earth. Except for the hurricanes. I arrived after a particularly devastating storm wiped out most of Apia, the capitol."

It comes back in fragments, a series of faded snapshots. After a twenty hour plane ride, I landed in little more than a field. The island air and deep blue beaches were a stark contrast to the wholesale destruction throughout the land. I saw livestock rotting in trees. Overturned cars with little brown arms jutting out crookedly beneath them. Roofs in the middle of streets, and jagged pipes planted in piles of rubble where schools once stood.

Worst of all was the constant, keening sob that hung over the city like a cloud.

So many ruined lives.

"It looked like G.o.d had smashed His mighty fist down on that country. How could He have allowed this? I had to a.s.sist in the amputation of a man's legs, without anesthetic because there was none left. I had to help mothers bury their babies using gnarled traffic signs to dig graves. I gave so much blood I almost died myself."

"Natural disasters are a test of one's faith."

I shake my head.

"It didn't test mine. I was sure in my faith, like you are. But it made me question G.o.d's intent."

"We cannot question G.o.d, Mr. Parson."

"But we do anyway, don't we?"

I sip more water before I continue.

"In Western Samoa, I did G.o.d's work. I helped to heal. To rebuild. I restarted the parish. I preached to these poor, proud people about G.o.d's grace, and they believed me. Things slowly got back to normal. And then the murders began."

I close my eyes and see the first body, as if it is in the room with me now. The eyes jut out of the b.l.o.o.d.y, ruined face like two golf b.a.l.l.s pushed into the meat of a watermelon. The flesh is peeled away, in some places exposing pink bone. A rat pokes its greasy head out of a lacerated abdomen and squeals in gluttonous delight.

"Every seven days, another mutilated body was discovered. The police didn't seem to care. Neither did my congregation. They accepted it like they accepted the hurricane; sad but unavoidable."

Father Bob folds his arms, eyebrows furrowing.

"Were you killing those people, Mr. Parson?"

"No...it turned out to be one of my parishioners. A fisherman with a wife and three kids. He came to me just after he butchered one - came into my Confessional drenched in blood, bits of tissue sticking to his nails and teeth. Begged me for forgiveness."

The man had been short, painfully thin for a Samoan. His eyes were the eyes of the d.a.m.ned, flickering like windblown candles, both insane and afraid.

"He claimed he was a victim of a curse. A curse that had been plaguing his island for millennia."

"Did you dismiss his superst.i.tions?"

"At first. While Christians, the islanders had a distant connection to paganism, sometimes fell back to it. I tried to convince him the curse wasn't real, to turn himself in. I begged him that G.o.d didn't want any more killing."

I was so earnest, so full of the Word. Convinced I was doing G.o.d's work.

"He laughed at me. He said that killing is exactly what G.o.d wanted."

The priest shakes his head. He speaks with the sing-song voice of a kindergarten teacher. "G.o.d is all-loving. Killing is a result of free-will. We had the paradise of Eden, and chose knowledge instead of bliss."

I scowl at him.

"G.o.d created mankind knowing that we'd fall from grace. It's like having a child, knowing a child will be hungry, and then punishing the child for that hunger."

Father Bob leans in, apparently fl.u.s.tered. "G.o.d's grace..."

"G.o.d has no grace," I spit. "He's a vengeful, vindictive G.o.d. A s.a.d.i.s.t, who plays with mankind like a child pulling the wings off of flies. Samoa was Eden, Father. The real Eden, straight out of the Bible. The murderer, he showed me a mark on his scalp."

I lift up my bangs, reveal the Mark at my hairline.

"Witness, Father Bob! Proof that G.o.d truly exists!"

The priest opens his mouth. It takes a moment before words came out.

"Is that...?"

I nod. I feel inner strength, the strength that had forsaken me so long ago.

"It's the Mark of Cain, given to the son of Adam when he slew Abel. But the Bible was inaccurate on that point - Cain didn't wander the earth forever, but his curse did, pa.s.sed on from man to man for thousands of years. Pa.s.sed on to me from the murderer in Samoa."

The Mark grows warm on my head, begins to burn.

"This is your proof of G.o.d, Father."

He stands abruptly, his chair tumbling backwards. I grin at him.

"How does it feel to no longer need faith?"

Father Bob falls to his knees, weeping.

"My G.o.d...my sweet G.o.d..."

Abruptly, blessedly, the burning sensation disappears. I laugh, laugh for the first time in decades, laugh with a sense of perfect relief.

Father Bob presses his hands to his forehead. He screams, just once, a soul shattering epiphany that I understand so well.

"The Lord be with you, Father Bob."

And then he falls upon me, mouth open.

I try to push him away, but am no match.

His first few bites are awkward, but he quickly learns my technique.

Nip.

Clench.

Pull.

The pain is exquisite. So much worse than cancer.

So much better...

Another story for a Twilight Tales anthology. This was the first story of mine they ever accepted, for the collection Spooks. I'm mixing genres again, this time PI noir and ghost stories.

"Let me get this straight - you want me to murder you tonight?"

She nodded. "At midnight. As violently as possible."

I leaned back, my office chair creaking in distress. The woman sitting across from me was mid-thirties, thin, well groomed. Her blonde hair, pulled back in a tight bun, held a platinum l.u.s.ter, and the slash of red lipstick she wore made her lips look like a wound. There was something familiar about her, or maybe it was my whiskey goggles.

I blinked at my watch. 11:00am. I'd been soused since breakfast.

"And this decision is because of your dead husband?"

"Yes."

"You want to be -" I paused. "-reunited with him?"

A tricky word to p.r.o.nounce, reunited, even when sober. But being a semi-professional drunk with some serious pro potential, it came out fine.

"I need to die, Mr. Arkin."