Page 10 of Beneath the Dirt

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I deadpan, adjusting my posture and shimmying my leg over to the side so she can get the hint and get the fuck off me…and hopefully this boner in the making can diffuse itself.

A soft giggle irritates my nerves as Tori flutters her eyelashes at me. Her lips part, but the boisterous and unified “amen” sounds silencing her. I’m grateful for the interruption, for once, even though it means Araceli is officially late and another service is upon us.

“Welcome, my faithful friends.” My father speaks into the microphone as he walks onto the stage that he had built like he's a rockstar not a pastor. He waves a thank you to the parishioner who led the opening prayer, that I was completely zoned out for, and raises his hands to wave at all of us sitting in the pews.

I don’t wave back or acknowledge his presence. It’s bad enough he forces us here to save face, me especially, since he hopes one day this will all be mine—it won’t. The property, maybe, but the church will end whenever the good lord decides to take him. Hopefully, sooner than later.

I look back one more time, but of course she’s not here. Thankfully, my father is too busy buttering up the people to notice that my neck is contorted, looking back and all around to see where the fuck Araceli is.

“Can you feel it?” Dad roars excitedly.

People clap and coo in response as if they’re at a rock concert. I face forward, surrounded by the abundance of parishioners. Allof them look ahead in eagerness awaiting my father’s annual Devil’s Night Service to commence. I don’t know how he does it, regurgitating the same tired spiel every year on the eve of the Holy Harvest. It’s an event he created shortly after my stepmother was found murdered in a cornfield just up the road, with a satanic branding on her skin. He’s used our family’s tragedy as a way to not only spread the ‘good word’ as he calls it, but as a ploy to get more people attending Sacred Promises. More people means more money. How God fits into the equation, I’m not entirely sure. It’s something that I’ve questioned, secretly, for as long as I’ve been able to string together a coherent thought, but unlike Araceli, I won’t say it out loud. Questioning the beliefs he’s chosen to shove down our throats isn’t worth the violence and threats that come with it.

“Can you feel his presence tonight?!” Another roar erupts, this time cueing the band behind him to start playing the dramatic instrumentals my dad requires to begin each service so he can get into character. As soon as the drummer takes the lead and the guitarist follows, everyone around me becomes entranced, feeding into my dad’s schemes. Everyone is so enamored by the music, I’m sure all of them don’t pay attention to the focus he has on the clock above the sanctuary doors, as he notes that Araceli is now five minutes late.

A sadistic scowl washes over his face as quickly as it vanishes. I doubt anyone staring at him would even notice—but I do. I know that look all too well. The one he gives when his pastor mask slips, and we’re blessed with who he really is. A monster. A cruel, relentless, manipulative monster.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but he’s here tonight. Watching us all.” Another dramatic pause. “So, I will ask you one more time, do you feel his presence?”

The convincing tone of my dad’s voice has me and others looking around but, as always, all we see is each other.

“That’s right, you may not see Him with your eyes, but you can’t tell me you don’t feel Him in your heart.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake Dad, get on with it.

“He is watching over all of us.” More clapping erupts. “Protecting us all. Especially today on this day that the unsaved call Devil’s Night.” He forces a dramatic shiver to visibly run throughout his body and somehow that gets everyone amped up.

It’s such bullshit. Theatrics. All of it. Yet jealousy, even if it’s fleeting, nips at my conscience. Sometimes, I wish I felt the way they all feel. Maybe life would be easier and less painful, but I don’t. No matter how hard I try, I don’t feel or see anything when I’m here. Nothing but my own thoughts and internal questions. Maybe I really am broken like Dad says Araceli is, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing, to be broken like her, because then that would mean we’re alike. It would mean there is something that bonds us, and if it’s a powerful enough connector, maybe she’ll pay attention to me how I wish she would. The only time Araceli looks at me is when she wants something. It would be nice for a change if when she looks at me, she sees what I can be, and not who I’m forced to be.

“But it is on this day, the day before what nonbelievers call All Hallows Eve…” he stops, and suddenly, all that excitement in his face drops as a bang echoes from the outside of the doors that lead into the church.

Adam’s apple bobbing, Dad clears his throat, trying to muscle through the disruption. “As I was saying, it’s today, the day before the wretchedholiday,” he air quotes for dramatic effect, “that it’s essential to stay grounded in our faith. It’s why…” Another pause. This time, the hinges on the sanctuary doors squeal, filling the vaulted ceiling with what one would assume to be an ear-piercing cry judging by the look on Dad’s face.

Necks snap to look back as footsteps squeak against the marble floor, taking their sweetand brattytime stomping their way over.

I don’t need to turn around to see who it is. I can tell from the tension spreading along my father’s jaw to his shoulders that Araceli is here. The already pale skin on his face vanishes, reducingitself to a ghastly white. It’s amazing how, just seconds ago, he was talking about being grounded in faith, and here he is, practically trembling at the sight of an eighteen-year-old girl who terrifies him, all because he doesn’t understand her. Neither of us do. Her differences, jarring as they may be, compared to the illusion of holiness my father tries to maintain for our family, don’t scare me like he warns me they should. It intrigues me.Temptsme even.

“I apologize. Call it old age, but sometimes I lose track of my thoughts,” Dad jokes. A rumble of forced laughter follows as he fumbles through his tabbed bible, looking for the passage he wants to read from.

I pay no attention to what he’s saying. I can’t. My attention—my entire fucking body—is distracted by notes of cinnamon and pumpkin as she nears where I’m sitting. Araceli’s signature scent no matter the time of year.

The aroma intensifies the closer she gets. Instead of filling the air with subtle notes of perpetual autumn, it's overshadowed by the earthy musk of Marijuana. Relief entangles itself in my core. I’ve grown to prefer the smell of weed hanging off her. At least then I know she settled for a high she didn’t have to achieve by swallowing or injecting something worse.

Her silhouette burns in my periphery as she takes a seat in the pew on the other side of the aisle. The urge I have to turn my head and fully take her in is immense. I can feel my father’s gaze searing its way onto me as he fumbles and fails to get his wits about him. It’s like he can sense my torment, and it gives him the push he needs to continue.

“As I was trying to say. I feel compelled to read from Corinthians.” His voice bleeds through the expensive speaker system he recently had installed. “1 Corinthians, 10:21 in particular.” He takes a purposeful pause to stare into the souls of each attendee, Araceli in particular. “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of…”

Araceli interjects, clearing her throat and it’s all the invitationI need to abandon my self-control—that’s hanging by a thread as it is—so I can finally look over to her.

“Yes?” Discomfort lines my father’s voice.

Araceli sighs. Her lips move to speak, but I can’t process a lick of what she’s saying. She consumes my attention. The look of disinterest in her brown eyes. The coy grin spread upon her plum-stained lips. The dress that blends in with her black hair is so fitted to her frame that it looks painted on. The pentagram she wears in defiance around her neck falls perfectly in the line of her cleavage. Sinful. Delicious. All of it is a fuck you to my father.

“… demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.” She completes the prayer.

Shocked, my father shoots her an apprehensive glance. He’s waiting for her to pull the rug out from underneath him and tack on a cunning remark like she usually does.

“That’s right,” he nods his head, thinking he’s in the clear, “very good.”

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