u/Anastasiya_Mory

A little background to the art from my head. 🖤

The church smelled of old wax and dust. But the true, suffocating storm raged within Caleb. His obsession with her had long ceased to be a mere weakness. It had smoldered within him for years, ruthlessly reducing his faith to ashes.

He knew she didn't believe in God… yet she kept coming back, feeding his sinful thoughts. Her frequent visits to the sermons were at once a torture and his only reason to live. Every time she arrived, the familiar scent of church incense retreated before the teasing fragrance of her perfume—a scent that felt like a challenge to everything holy in this place.

This evening, a thunderstorm was just brewing, and the church was steeped in near-absolute darkness. Caleb sat motionless, his fingers mindlessly tracing the smooth beads of his rosary.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," a whisper drifted through the lattice, sending a jolt of ice down Caleb’s spine.

She had never come to confession before. Now, her voice was so close, separated only by a few inches of wood.

"The Lord is listening," he replied dryly. His voice sounded dead, monotonous, masking the frantic, traitorous beating of his heart.

"My thoughts are impure. I am consumed by lust for a man."

Caleb’s fingers froze, crushing a wooden bead in a death grip. A sticky, suffocating jealousy and curiosity echoed somewhere deep within.

"I think about him constantly," she continued. "I imagine his hands… They seem so strong and hot that I burn with the sole desire to feel them on my skin. I want him to renounce everything for me, to surrender control of his soul and body to me…"

Hell flared in his chest at her blasphemous words. He imagined his own hands—hands accustomed to holding the communion chalice—gripping her slender waist, sliding upward and gathering the thin fabric along the way. How his fingers would touch the silk of her hair, twisting it into a fist. He imagined the sound of her voice when he made her pay for all the time he had tormented his body and soul in vain attempts to forget her image… But the vision shattered, collapsing under harsh reality and blinding rage. The image shifted to the nameless man who dared to occupy her thoughts. Who was this bastard that made a priest, who had dedicated his life to service, now picture with crystal clarity the breaking of human bones? In his mind, he battered this imaginary rival's face to a pulp, reveling in his own cruelty.

"A man…" escaped his lips with a searing coldness.

He almost forced himself to stand up and walk away from the sin, but she went on.

"Yes… He wears a cross, and his clothes are thoroughly soaked in the scent of incense. And in his eyes, I see both God and the Devil."

The air in Caleb's lungs vanished. He stood up abruptly, stepped out of his side of the confessional, and forcefully pulled the curtain aside, eliminating the barrier between them. His entire posture was a knot of pain, rage, and a morbid, sinful attachment. A priest ready to anathematize, and a man ready to fall to his knees before her.

"Did you come with the desire to repent? Or to tempt him?" He leaned forward, resting his hand imperiously on the wooden panel, trapping her. The cold metal of his heavy crucifix swayed against his chest.

"Because what you are saying doesn't sound like a confession. It sounds like an invitation to the scaffold."

"And what will you do knowing this, Father? Send me to hell?"

These were the words of that very girl from his childhood, wild and rebellious, who had looked at him, a young novice, with defiant provocation, questioning everything he had ever chosen to believe in. A chilling smile touched his lips, and he leaned even closer, finally erasing the line between the sacred and the profane.

"They don't send you there for honesty, my child… But if you want it so badly… I will personally show you the way."

WIP Caleb

My art fantasy about Caleb the Priest...