Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men 2)

Z.

May 2017

No matter how devout you are, Sunday service is never fun.

Trust me, I’d been the pastor’s grandchild and the mayor’s daughter for long enough to know what I was talking about. I’d tried counting backward from one million, naming every important figure in the Bible in order of the gravity of their sins, conjugating French and Latin verbs until my eyes crossed. Anything, however tedious, was better than listening to my grandpa read yet another passage from the Bible.

I had tried for years to be pious, good and strong in the face of all the evils Christians believed to walk the earth and tempt the weak. I had tried and I had succeeded so well, I was a kind of paragon of virtue in Entrance, BC, an example that mothers used to teach their little girls how to grow up right, the ideal wife for young men who stayed true to the path of righteousness. Louise Lafayette was a pillar of the community just as her mother and father were, just as her grandparents had been.

All that goodness, all that trying so hard and how did God repay me?

With cancer. Again.

I’d lived through an entire two-year period in my childhood with it running hot and corrosive through my blood and yet, now that it was back, I still wasn’t used to the taint of it, how it blackened my vision both literally sometimes and metaphorically. It was hard to believe in the things I was supposed to believe in when I felt so miserable, so beyond the help of prayer.

They’d just diagnosed me as stage two and the possibility of chemotherapy loomed on the horizon.

I’d lose my hair again.

It was such a vain thing to be concerned about but even though my parents were Sunday churchgoers, they were human enough to practice pride and superficiality. Heck, they were the King and Queen of Entrance; they lived for those things. Mum had been more devastated than I when they said I’d lose the thick mass of pale blond hair I’d had since birth, hair that I’d inherited from her. She’d cried and clutched big handfuls of it in her fists, wiping her tears in the strands. I would have been grossed out if I weren’t devastated myself and trying so hard to hide it.

It was the end of my grade eleven year of high school, less than twelve months from graduation and all that entailed, including prom. And I was going to be bald for all of it.

Mum said they’d get me a really good wig but everyone would know it wasn’t my hair and that was somehow worse than rocking a naked scalp.

My friends were nice people so they wouldn’t make fun. They would just ignore it, as we all ignored the ugly things in life, and move on.

I was so tired of hiding the ugliness. It lived inside of me now. It was impossible to ignore its presence in everyday life.

Worst of all, I couldn’t tell Zeus about it.

I’d gotten through my first bout of cancer because of him and now that I was sick again, I couldn’t imagine doing it without him. Each letter I’d received written in his surprisingly cool graphic script had been a balm to my ragged soul. A little girl needed a champion, someone to believe in and someone to believe in her. He’d been right in saying that I’d grown up but he’d been wrong to assume that I no longer needed him. I’d learned that women needed a champion maybe even more than little girls did. Men forget to treat women with tender affection and platonic encouragement. Lust was no worthy substitute for pure care.

I wanted to send him a letter anyway because a part of me knew that he would come back if only he knew I was sick again. It was that exact reason that I left well enough alone. Did I really want a pity pen pal?

My mother reached over to quell my fidgeting hands. We were in the first right pew, front and center for everyone to look at. She didn’t want me to look bored or inelegant. So, I stopped twisting my fingers even though my body ached all over and it felt good to distract myself by tracing each digit. I smoothed my sweaty palms over the demure length of my pastel pink skirt and tucked my modestly heeled feet under the bench.

Mum patted my thigh.

Good girl, it meant.

I gritted my teeth.

Thankfully, the service wrapped up soon enough. Unhappily, the next half an hour would be dedicated to mingling, my least favourite part of the entire ordeal.

“Benjamin,” Tim Buckley boomed out in his loud, sport’s announcer voice as he ambled up to my father and did that shake all men did, the one with a hard clap on the back. “How is our mayor doing this fine Sunday morning? It was an excellent service, as per usual.”