“Do I know you?” a familiar voice asks.

I turn around slowly.

The sun dips below the steel and brick buildings and the street lights flicker to life, filling the air with mosquitoes.

I do know him. I killed him in that Holy Place as he preached love and forgiveness and the ways of Christ.

“No,” I say. “No, I don’t think so.”

We stare at each other, our words hanging between us like fog. I turn and walk away.

***

I can’t tell time anymore. I don’t remember coming to this place. Everything blends together. Childhood, grade school, junior high, some high school. Shocked and distant eyes looking at me. These eyes haunt me.

It’s the first day.

Gunpowder and metal and burnt flesh and misting blood.

It’s the millionth day.

I’m so tired.

I want to die.

Too late.

***

When I was only a few weeks old, my mother and father took me to a church and a priest dumped water over my head while they promised to raise me according to the rules. I didn’t make any promises, but I was a devout Catholic after that.

Growing up Catholic wasn’t too bad. You had to go to church once a week to listen to strange stories, but it was nice and cool and filled with dark and mysterious smells. The priest would walk somberly in thick, flowing robes and talked slowly. At the end of Mass, he would stand outside the doors of the church greeting everyone. His hand was large in mine when I shook it and I looked up at the mountain of a man, his head covered in wild white hair, and he smiled, handed me a piece of candy.

***

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” my mom asked me when I was little.

“A priest,” I said.

“A priest? Why?”

“Because they go to heaven.”

***

Father Brooke stood at the chapel doors watching as we all came in for morning prayers. His rat-like eyes shot from face to face as his body stood perfectly still.

Father Brooke was the pastor of Holy Cross Seminary, a boarding high school nestled in the mountains of Colorado for young boys interested in learning more about the priesthood. We didn’t see him much and that was fine with us.

He lead morning prayers. His jet-black hair was slicked back, face hard as a rock, dressed in his flowing priestly black robe. His voice boomed out like god itself and we bowed are heads against it.

***

We are all downstairs waiting for breakfast. Father Brooke walked amongst the tables. He stops by the table I’m sitting at.

“You’re Peter, right?” he asked me.

“Yes, Father.”

“Can you come by my office this after noon, after your classes are over?”

“Yes, Father,” I answered.

He walked away while the other boys stared at me wondering what I did. I wondered, too.

***

“Peter, come in, come in,” Father Brooke said after I knocked on his door.

He sat in a high-backed black leather chair behind a wide, shiny desk. I sat down in front of the desk on one of the two plush purple seats after he motioned me to it.

“I understand you want to be a priest?” he said.

“Yes, Father.”

“Well that’s good. Many of the boys here don’t.”

“I know, Father.”

“Yes. Their parents send them here for reformation, for discipline.”

“Yes, Father.”

“But you…” his voice trailed off and he smiled and stood up. “You want to be a priest. That’s great. That’s what we’re here for.”

“Yes, Father,” I said and relaxed. Smiled.

“I would like to help you,” Father Brooke said. He walked to the windows and started closing the blinds. “I’ve been a priest for a long time and it takes a lot of knowledge, a lot of studying.”

“Yes, Father. I know.”

“Good,” he breathed and I felt his hand sweep lightly across the back of my neck.

I could feel the air, every molecule of it. It was heavy. It surrounded, ripped, crushed me. It came into me like death. I tried to scream. But I couldn’t push it out.

***

It was a beautiful spring day, the promise of Easter manifested in the budding and flowering trees, singing birds, and neon-green grass. The chapel was filled with eager students, serious priests, playful siblings, and proud parents and grandparents. A full house.

I carried a large crucifix, lead the procession to the altar. I carried and opened the book for Father Brooke and lead him to the pulpit for the gospel. The good news.

My parents sit in the first row beaming. I move with deadly seriousness.

Father Brooke finished the reading and starts his homily. The other altar boy and I walked back to the altar and set the candles down. We march side by side to the chairs next to the marble wall. I tell him I have to go to the bathroom and discretely walk to the large wooden doors behind the pulpit.

The white room is bathed in light and the smell of incense is a whisper in the air. Outside the large windows—slowly melting snow, quietly burning sun, white, fluffy clouds floating gently through the warm air.

I listened to Father Brooke’s deep voice flow through the building and looked out the window. I rubbed the black .38 revolver I had taken out of my dad’s desk the last time I was home. On my bed, under my pillow, was my note. I don’t remember when I decided to do this.

Father Brooke is wrapping up. He’s making jokes. The congregation is laughing softly. I turned away from the window and pushed through the wooden door, made my way to Brooke.

When I finished with him, I saw my father running down the aisle. He was trying to stop me from what I was going to do next. But he knew he would never make it.

***

“Do I know you?” a familiar voice asks.

I turn around slowly.

The sun dips below the steel and brick buildings and the street lights flicker to life, filling the air with mosquitoes.

I do know him. I killed him in that Holy Place as he preached love and forgiveness and the ways of Christ.

“No,” I say. “No, I don’t think so.”

We stare at each other, our words hanging between us like fog. I turn and walk away.

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