Broken.

Warning: This deals with some darker topics, as well as a religious struggle. If you are triggered by murder or spitting in the eye of God, please do not read this.

Journal Entry 1,

3, Feb 2009

My parents always said everything that happened was 'God'sway', that He has a plan for everything. He has a plan for us all. I believed, for a while, until a few weeks after my sixth birthday my mother was murdered in our home while I was at school and Dad was at work. After coming home to find her cold body lying in a red puddle on the floor, I looked to the heavens and screamed. I screamed and screamed, each shriek thrust from my lips was a message to Him, to how He had failed to protect His children.

That evening, while the blood was being washed away and the body was taken to be cremated, I snuck out. I got on my bike and rode as fast as my legs would carry me, though I knew not where. I just knew I needed to get out of that house, to get away. Far away.

Only when I arrived did I realize the irony of the situation.

The old cathedral on the edge of town was always rumored to be haunted, and supposedly Devil worshipers would perform summoning there, practicing their dark art under a holy roof.

When I would hear each story, I always wondered what kind of God would allow His stronghold to be destroyed? He may have many in the world, but one less would mean touching fewer people, speaking to fewer ears.

Yet there I was, looking for a reason for the horror of that day at a place once so holy, now broken and destroyed. Mangled.

I left my bike in a bush by the entrance of the cathedral and walked up to the boarded-up doors. I managed to wiggle my way through a space created by a few missing boards and entered the building. Late evening sunlight had streamed through the large stained glass windows at the end of the nave, brightening the faded red carpet of the isle. The old pews stood straight and at attention, with the exception of a few lying in broken heaps upon the floor.

The air was warm and cold, sending odd shivers up my spine. Slowly, I made my way to the stairs leading to the main podium, careful to not trip on the swollen and broken floorboards. I took the stairs one at a time and turned to stand behind the lectern, my stubby six-year-old height is just barely tall enough to look over and out to the room. My gaze swung over the broken remains of the old church, and I closed my eyes.

The hair prickled on my neck, and I suddenly felt like I was being watched, though I didn't feel it to be dangerous. My ears had begun to pick up gentle organ music and the soft sounds of a choir, their voices muffled and vague, as if underwater.

My closed eyes had begun to burn as my mother's face appeared behind my closed eyelids, but her image was quickly replaced by her lying, broken upon the floor. I opened my eyes as the heat translated to tears, and I let them fall down my cheeks. I stood there, acknowledging the empty room as the tears fell. I held myself steady on the old, worn lectern, trying to compose myself.

"We," I croaked as I slowly ran my fingers over the old wood, "I'm gathered here today to mourn my mom. She was my light in the dark, but today I discovered that-" my voice breaks as a sob breaks my body.

"S-she wasn't meant to last. She held me when I was scared, she kissed my boo-boos, she told me stories she would make up on the spot," I sniffed, rubbing my wet eyes. "She would play hopscotch with me on rainy days and make couch tents on sunny ones. She always said I was her little star, but she was my Sun."

I rubbed my eyes again and straightened my shoulders. "She was- is, the best mom I could have possibly ever had. People may talk about how 'it was her time to be called home,'" I took a shaky breath, felt the anger as it pooled inside me, "but she was home! She was where she was supposed to be, but yet you let someone take her from me!" I screamed up to the broken rooftop, up to the sky.

"Your will was as it shall be, but I say to Hell with you! You took her from me! What kind of selfish God does this?"

I had sunk to my knees and curled up in a ball of tears and rage. The faint music I had heard was replaced by my own song, one of the angered cries and pitiful pleas for the whole thing to be a nightmare.

This is real, I forced myself to understand, it's too real to be fake.

Kicking out, I knocked the lectern over. I laugh-sobbed as I watched its broken body roll down the stairs, coming to rest at a pair of fancy black dress shoes.

I looked up, finding the shoes to be attached to a pair of dark suit pants, then a suited torso with its hands clasped in front of it. I forced my eyes to look up at the face of the person that stood before me, unsure if I needed to run or if this was God himself answering my messages. Either way, he was getting clocked in the family jewels.

His face was veiled in shadow despite the evening sunshine streaming through the window behind me. I could make out his soft jawline and gentle, dark eyes. A letter-boy hat sat atop his dark curls, giving him a boyish look. He smiled softly and offered me his hand.

I scooted back, unsure of the stranger and why he was there, interrupting a very personal moment.

"I apologize for the intrusion," He said, removing his hat as he gave a gentle bow, "but I heard someone spitting in the face of a god, and well," His smile widened, a glint of mischief shined in his eye, "I just had to get a piece of that fun."