MDA: Chapter Ten – When the Bough Breaks

Camon Central church.  20:36.  

The nocturnal beams cascading from the keen eye of the pale corpulent moon invite themselves through the open church doors out of the bitter, cold air.  Inside, the maligned figure of a man kneels in dark silhouette, bathed in the peaceful blue hue as if the shafts of light had created a direct path towards the effigy to which he solemnly prays.  The man crosses his chest with his right hand, and tenderly kisses a tiny, silver cross attached to his necklace, tucking it back under his shirt.  The cross back home close to his heart, he places a pair of headphones over his ears, and presses play on the tape player attached to his belt.  Wearily rising to his feet, and reaching to a pew on his left, he picks up a leaning mop, and continues his work.  

The aging janitor’s tuneful whistle bombards every crevice of the empty church with a wave of intrusive sound, reverberating across the vast ceiling, bouncing excitedly off of the stained-glass windows and between each pew.  The echoes reflect the emptiness within the hallowed structure with an almost sinister blade-edge.  They deafen, and drown the silence.

Through the doors, in from the black night walks the slight figure of a lone woman.  She stops just inside the church to expel a long, heavy sigh, and proceeds slowly, further into the building.  After searching glances around, she sees and timidly approaches the janitor, who faces the effigy in constant observation.

“Pardon me.  Sir?” she asks with an almost inaudible, tense quiver in her voice.  The janitor, still humming along to the music emanating from his headphones blithely ignores the woman’s advance, unaware of any stimuli outside the realm of Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’.  Noticing the headphones, she asks a second time whilst lightly touching his shoulder.

“Sir?” The old man jumps with a start, sending his headphones crashing to the church floor.  

“Oh.  Sarah, it’s you,” he says with a sigh of relief amid the heavy thump of his heart under his fatigued, grey overalls.  “My heart almost leapt from my chest.”  

“I’m so sorry, George,” she says, retrieving and placing the headphones back around his neck, and offering a reassuring hand on his upper arm.  “I didn’t mean to startle you.  I didn’t recognise you in this light.  Is the Father here?”

“Oh, yes.  He’s working late in his office,” he replies whilst motioning towards the back of the church with a flick of his head.  

“Thank you, George.  I’m sorry to interrupt, I’ll let you get back to Barry,” she says with a friendly smile.  

“The music of a maestro, and the good Lord,” he returns whilst continuing his cleaning duties.  “What more could an old man like me ask for?”
  
Following the janitor’s direction, Sarah proceeds to the back of the church to a short corridor.   Beyond the slightly ajar door at the end of it, is Father Jack Morgan.  He sits atop an old wooden chair, slumped over a heavy, antique desk.  A single desk lamp adorns the room in an amber glow, revealing a filled, floor-to-ceiling bookcase and otherwise bare walls.  The only embellishment is a modest wooden cross overlooking the desk to which the Father silently sits.  He hurriedly leafs through a pocket-sized black Bible, scanning the holy text for a particular passage.  The pages are turned at an ever-quickening pace; such is the priest’s increased vehemence for the solace contained within the desired extract.

“Father?” Sarah asks whilst respectfully and gently tapping on the open door.  

Father Morgan, upon hearing the door tap quickly shuts the Bible closed, placing it into his inside breast pocket.  He rises from his chair and opens the door fully to greet the visitor.
“Hello, Sarah.  It’s late, is everything ok?” he asks with great concern.

“I’m sorry, Father.  I hate to bother you at this hour.  I just have no one to...” Sarah says apologetically, whilst breaking down into a well-worn sob.

“Oh.  Sarah.  Come, sit down.  What’s troubling you?”

Sarah Klein, a 35 year old recently-tenured Professor of Philosophy at the local university had lost her partner in a frenzied shoot-out outside her most-frequented book store in Baldwin, eight months ago.  No suspects were ever identified, and the case quickly ran cold.  Sat hunched over with her head in her hands, she wears a modestly drab-coloured long skirt and jacket, with brown boots and a book bag over her shoulder.  Her long, hazel hair lacks any discernible style or conditioning, her unassuming attractiveness belied by her dowdy demeanour.  She has an air of a once-penetrating elegance which has long since diminished under the sheer weight of her bereavement.  She began to frequent Father Morgan’s church in the last few months, an avowed agnostic seeking solace in the only place left available to her.  Her progress had been slow, her loss leaving a wound too deep to cauterise.  

“I can’t do it, Father.  I can’t carry on.  It just doesn’t work without him.”

Sarah opens and reaches into her bag for a half-used small bag of tissues.  Stale tears are wiped clear as fresh ones immediately absorb themselves into the cloth.  The present outpour of desperate grief is no more cathartic than on previous occasions.  Sarah’s pain is unrelenting, almost visceral in its intrusion.  Here, in a place of worship and faith, her soul feels left behind.

Father Morgan pulls a footstool close to Sarah, and sits down to deliver a tailored sermon.  

“The Lord saw fit to take him from us, Sarah.  It hurts so deeply now because we have not yet learned His plan, or seen the path He wishes us to take.”

Sarah sits up, and wipes her eyes a final time, as if to stem the tide long enough to speak without interruption.  

“My ‘path’ was supposed to be taken alongside Max, Father.  I don’t want to take it alone.”

“You’ll never be alone if you fully accept God into your heart.  Faith can heal any scar, and it’s times like these that we must turn to faith.  Your grief will be purged, Sarah.  It will, if you can let Him in.”

“Was this a punishment for not believing, Father?  Was I wrong to love someone other than ‘Him’?”  Sarah’s tone shifts to mild agitation.  She had been grateful of the comforting words and the routine of coming to church, but had never truly lost her inhibitions when it came to giving herself over completely to Father Morgan’s God.  

“No, that’s not it at all,” he responds in a soothing tone.  “God wants us all to love each other as much as he loves us.”

“Loves us?  If He loves us so much, then why did He take him away from me?  Why did he deserve to die and leave me with nothing?  Why be so cruel?”  Sarah asks, just as her body convulses with the onset of tears, which do not come.  The well has seemingly been dried.  There are no tears left to spill.

“The Lord never conspires to be cruel to His children, even when it seems that way because we cannot immediately understand His actions.  You’ll be together again eventually, Sarah.  Together in God’s kingdom, there’s no cruelty in that plan, is there?”

Sarah’s agitation boils over into furious despair as she rises to her feet to respond.

”No cruelty?  Father, when the police found his body, there was an engagement ring in his jacket pocket.”

“He obviously loved you a great deal,” Father Morgan offers, rising from the stool to offer a comforting hand on Sarah’s arm.  Sarah gestures as if to enhance her coming point, removing the Father’s comforting hand in the process.  

“That’s just it, I’ll never know.  I spoke to his Mother soon after the funeral, and she told me that he had been carrying that ring around for three weeks.  Three weeks, Father.  Why that long?  What was going through his mind?  Second thoughts?  Regret?  Had I done something?  I’ll never know, Father.  I’ll never know because he was torn from my arms by your ‘saviour with a plan’  I’ll never know if he ached for me as I did for him when he wasn’t around, if he felt alive, content and happily consumed.  All I have left is the void Max left behind when he was taken.  I have nothing left.  Nothing.”  

Sarah’s sentence trails off as she falls back down into the chair, emotionally drained.  Father Morgan is momentarily unsure of what to offer by way of comfort, such is her emotional fragility and his sadness towards her.  He feels it deep within him, and longs to make her whole again.  All he knew to offer was what was in his heart.

“Faith is not a guarantee, Sarah.  It’s a bargain we make with ourselves to believe that there are guiding hands beyond our perception.  It may take some time, but you will be restored.  You will be free from this pain.  I trust in Him to guide you back, or grant me the strength to do so on His behalf.”

“I can’t, I just can’t.”  Sarah responds with almost complete resignation, but also a new calm found through the release of her anger.  

“I should go.  I’m sorry, Father,” she says suddenly, whilst standing up once again.

In her embarrassment and haste to leave, Sarah accidentally knocks over her forgotten bag with her feet, their contents spilling to the floor.  Father Morgan bends down to help her retrieve the items, and comes across a leaflet which sends a cold quiver of familiarity down his spine.

“THE SYSTEM IS A LIE.”

“Sarah, where did you get this?” He asks with a tremble, whilst rising to his feet.

The now relatively composed Sarah takes the leaflet, and places it back into her bag.

“Oh, I meant to ask you if you knew anything about these leaflets being found all over the city.  This one was found underneath Max’s body.  The police couldn’t tell me if he had it on his person or had fallen onto it when he….when he fell.  Have you seen this before?”

Father Morgan, immediately uncomfortable with being presented with the leaflet expressing the truth he is forced to harbour, fidgets where he stands, uncontrollably.  

“Um, no, I certainly haven’t, Sarah.  I can’t say that I have.”

His increasing anxiety unnoticed, Sarah continues.  “After Max passed, I buried myself in my work.  It was all I could do to distract myself from….what was happening.  I became curious by this leaflet, what it could possibly mean, and why Max would possibly be holding one.  So I began to look into it.”

“Sarah, I’m sorry.  It’s getting a little late...” Father Morgan says with a further nervous tremble in his voice, whilst inching backwards towards the door.

Sarah notices the Father’s uncomfortable stance, and continues abruptly, pressing on as if to finally express an unspoken secret.

“In my research, I stumbled across a network of websites which alluded to a local underground publication, which mentions this so called ‘system’.”

“Sarah, I’m pleased that you have found a focus, but really this is obviously just advertising for something or other.”  

Father Morgan edges closer to the door, which Sarah acknowledges with interest and follows his movement.

“Further into my research, Father, I found something else, something which is apparently known by few, and mentioned by even less.  It seems to travel through the ether, as whispers and gestures, but every time I get close to it, it pulls away.”

The Father’s discomfort with being confronted by the truth he so closely guards reaches intolerable levels.  He turns round and opens the door, motioning for Sarah to do the same with a wave of his hand.

“I really must be going, Sarah…”

“Father.”  Sarah continues whilst following him through the corridor into the main church area.  

“My apologies.  Do come and see me after mass tomorrow.  We can talk more then,” Father Morgan offers back over his shoulder, his pace quickening towards the front doors of the church.  

Sarah, summoning a long since lost conviction, reaches out to the Father’s shoulder, stopping his progress and moving to stand in front of him.  She pulls a piece of paper out of her jacket pocket, and lowers her voice as if wary of prying ears.

“Father, I found this leaflet right outside the doors of this building.  I must know what this is, and I think you can tell me.”

Father Morgan slowly switches his gaze from the floor to Sarah’s eyes, seeing a desperation and determination for the first time, and dreading what is to come.

“Father?”  

His resolve weakening and acute sense of dread heightened, Morgan responds with the resigned tone of a man who knows he is potentially facing his unravelling.

“Yes, Sarah?”

“What is the Matrix?”

The night sky swirls and crashes with an orchestra of hammering rain and furious crackles of thunder.  The rain invites itself through the open church doors out of the bitter, cold air, splashing onto the floor where the janitor stands motionless behind a pillar just inside the entrance.