u/Direct_Hedgehog2297

“Hey. There's a lot about this that grabbed me.
It's doing something different, and I love when writers take swings. But ultimately, I didn't feel confident I was the right person to champion it. Sometimes it's just gut, and I trust mine.
If you're working on something else in the future, I'd love to see it. In the meantime, you're always welcome in the ** community, whether that's through our socials. newsletter, or just quietly lurking. You don't have to do this alone.
Will be cheering for you from here,”

I queried an agent some months ago for a gothic literary speculative fiction novella and now I am rewriting it as a full-length novel, should I query this agent again as she highlighted or how should I approach this response?

THE PRIEST’S DIARY – ENTRY ONE

“Hold fire! He’s a priest!” Those were the last words I remember from a time I belonged to myself. “This way, father” one of the soldiers escorted me away from the line-up, the moment I turned my back to the firing squad, they drew their guns again, five men, he was among them, that one soldier, they all looked the same, five of them, nine of us, but he had a presence you can feel even when you are about to be executed, stumbling upon your prayers like a returning heathen. I left the scene and the gunshots followed. I did not look back. I could not. And today I am not the same priest, I stand before the church and the church stands before me “amen” their voices come like the bullets I was spared from. I was supposed to die that day, once and for all. Today I stand dying, as many times as they wish. 

Malachi 2:7-8
“For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts.”

I am not but a priest. I will eat my way out of the Church. I will carve my own organs from the inside and spill them in front of the altar, so they see the truth: that my insides are as mortal, as foul, as theirs.
The children must know I have inside me what they have inside them. I am a sick man, consumed with disease and disaster, my body rotting faster than my voice can pretend otherwise. The scriptures tell me to guide them to the light, but all I carry is decay, light has become a myth that I no longer recall its warmth..
I sleep in my collar. I sleep and sleep and sleep. It chokes me like a dog’s chain. I cannot face the children of God any Sunday. I am not their father, nor is He. I am a child. I want to be coddled and comforted with the same empty words I preach day after day.
I lead their faith like I am full of it, abundant and overflowing with piety so plenty that they come to me for it, yet I stand hollow before their expectant eyes, like a thief, a fraud. Do they know I am empty? Do they hear it in my voice? Still I take nothing from them, not even a borrowed heartbeat. To whom have I proved this—if not to myself?
The rain, the blood rain—

Revelation—16:6
“For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve.”

This is what I deserve.
If it weren’t for my rotting insides I would take matters into my own hands. My clean hands—I want them to choke me into silence and remain clean afterward. I am in pain, and this is God’s will. He needs me only to half-serve: guide but not quite, instruct but distort, direct but mislead. I will take my sickness over any other duty. My throat burns, my stomach corrodes. I rot while they kneel.
Heavenly Father, forgive me. I will die on the cross if need be. I could have been better, I could have been a better son.

All is well tonight, I tell myself. I will be saved. I am a servant of God—nothing more. Not prophet, not saint, not child. The children need me. Who else will take their filthy hands and scrub the blood from under their nails? They spend their days outside in the red downpour, and they come to me to wash clean for tomorrow’s sins. I cleanse them, or I tell them I do. My soul scrapes across their hands like soap, and still it returns to me filthy, worn thinner each day, frayed at the edges and pierced at the most vulnerable parts, wherever souls hide underneath clothes, mine is naked.
They line up for my blessing like they are lining up to shoot me. I see their faces as rifles, I hear their hands cocked back into prayer. Just like the soldiers used to do.

I still remember. I remember what they did. The soldiers lined us against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, the breath of the man beside me wet and sour with fear. His lips moved without sound, a prayer smothered in his throat. They raised their rifles in unison, one command, one voice, one sound. The air smelled of metal, of sweat. I waited for the heat, for the fire to split bone, for the thunder to break my skull. And still I am waiting. The memory never ends. The rifles stay raised.
Now the children line up in the same order. They file toward me with open hands. Their palms are little white flags, surrendering to me, to the wafer, to a God who does not answer. They close their eyes, they lift their chests as if to take the bullet. The Body of Christ, I say, and I place the thin white disc on their tongues. Their mouths open like wounds. They chew it like bread, like paper, like air. They swallow what I do not have.

They receive something I claim to carry, but I am empty. They are full, and I am hollow. Their Amen is the rifle shot, over and over, cracking through the nave, ricocheting in my skull. They shoot me through the soul with every bite.

I see the wafers dissolve on their tongues, I see the crumbs cling to their lips. Innocent, filthy mouths. Their hands brush mine as they reach, and I feel the blood under their fingernails, pressed into me. They line up to be made clean, but they dirty me deeper. I stay behind with their sins packed under my skin like bullets I cannot dig out, fattening me with filth.
At the end of Mass, I lift my hand, I cross the air. My fingers tremble. The gesture is an executioner’s signal, and they bow their heads as if the volley is about to begin. May Almighty God bless you. The words leave me like smoke, like a last breath. My arm shakes as I say it. 

I am not a saint. Burn me at the stake. I am a false priest, a pest. I am the one left standing when the rifles fire in my head again and again and again.
Every night my soul aches with what they do with it after leaving the Church. They waste it. They laugh with it. They soil it. I lie awake, a vessel drained, a collar choking.
Hell is a place, and I am not—

Isaiah— 1:15-16
“When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil.”

Their sins are under my fingernails. I wash their hands and remain unclean. They leave polished, ready for tomorrow; I stay filthy. The weight of their sins festers under my skin like a succubus rotting on my chest.
I will die dirty.
Forgive me.

“My hands are full of blood. I have washed them a thousand times, but they are still full of blood.”

I walk outside and try to turn my mind from the hellfire inside it. My skull hangs heavy, heavier than it should, like it knows it was meant to be shattered. I was saved. I wish I had not been saved. It does not matter how—mistake, mercy, misunderstanding.

Psalm 38:4 – “My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.”

I know they spared me only to leave me in this endless torment. “He’s a priest,” they said, and in that moment I became the perfect victim. They knew one day they would need me—to stand over their graves without ever checking who was inside. They knew, they just knew, I had nothing but God in me then.

Now I have everything but Him in my insides. I have everything it takes to be a sinner, yet I have never sinned. Instead I carry their sins, their thin hopes of martyrdom lodged under my skin. And what do they have? Nothing but the dream of dying at the right time, in the right way—drowned in the flood, crushed beneath the trucks, shot by the soldier who spares no disorder. Yet they will never be disorderly. They love their order too much, their peace too much.

Isaiah 1:15 – “When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.”

“It’s alright, the priest will bless us. The priest will save us. Father, what should I do? Father, I want to confess. See you Sunday, Father.”

I am sick of this claim of fatherhood when I am only an orphan of the sky, abandoned by heavens that do not answer back. Perhaps they answer everyone but me. Perhaps I am only the ladder they climb, nothing but a rung between earth and heaven.
I walk, and I walk, and I walk to the end of the city, to its borders, but still I am so far from the sky. No matter how far I wander from their sins and their filth, I carry them everywhere I go. I walk and I walk, waiting for my legs to give out. My collar grips me, soaks with sweat, and blood runs into the linen at my throat. Blood from my responsibility, staining what should be white.

Matthew 23:27 – “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

I wear it like a trophy of my priesthood. For what is a priest, if not a prop? What is a good priest, if not a mop? I clean and I clean, and no one cleans me.
Forgive me, 
I will die dirty.
This morning I coughed up some blood.
I am coughing up blood.
I shall see the Doctor.
But what can he give me? Pills, poultices, prayers? He cannot scrape the filth from my collar, cannot dig the guilt from my marrow. He will look at my body and call it disease. But I know what it is: communion turned rancid inside me, bread reverted back to flesh, wine back to blood. Their sins rot within me, and I choke on them.

Still, I will walk to him—coughing red, a lamb carrying its own slaughter to the altar. I will say Doctor , please clean my insides, I have gutted myself already, just clean me from all the blood, dry out my flesh and feed me to the Earth and don’t you pray on my soul for there is no one left to pray after I am gone. 

 

And what do I say

Did any girls go to the ladies day hours on saturdays? Did u remove ur hijab or how does it work? To what extent is it “ladies day” like all female staff or just female admission. Thanks

I am looking for a job (entry level) in communications, copywriting, event operations, international relations, culture. I post here from time to time and sometimes get DMs but nothing real. Been looking for 2 yrs, anyone hiring please let me know. Thanks.

I think there should be like a thing where if you pass a certain amount of time without a job you should just be given one. Deadahhs Im so done