Page 47 of The Associate
A figure filled the doorway, blocking some of the light, making it into a jagged halo. Heavy shoes sounded on the concrete.
Samuel’s words faltered. His throat sealed shut. He kept his head bowed, his eyes screwed tight, his body trembling. Thepresence loomed over him. He could smell him: starch, soap, and underneath, something sour, like old sweat.
A hand landed on his bare shoulder.
Samuel twitched as if branded. It was the first touch from another human being since… since Elias in the clearing. Since before the world ended.
The hand was large, heavy, warm. Its warmth was an obscenity against his frozen skin. His flesh crawled and yearned for it in the same instant, a confusing rush of revulsion and primal craving that stole what little breath he had.
“Have you repented, Samuel?”
The Director’s voice was calm. It held no anger, no expectation.
Samuel’s mind scrambled.
Repented?
He had recited the words a thousand times, a million. He had worn a groove in the air with them.
Was that the same?
His thoughts were slow, thick with disuse.
“Yes,” he croaked. It hurt.
The hand on his shoulder didn’t move.
“Have you now seen the error in your ways?”
The error.
The kiss. The softness. The warmth. The feeling of being anchored, of being wanted.
The memory was a shard of glass in the mud of his mind. He saw it. It was the only thing in the cube with any color, any heat.To call it an error felt like a lie so profound it might crack the concrete beneath him.
But the hand was warm. The light was in his eyes. The world outside this cube existed, and it demanded this of him.
“I have,” Samuel whispered. The sound was barely there. Dry as sawdust, gritty with despair.
The Director’s other hand came up to rest on Samuel’s other shoulder.
“Then hear this, and know it is truth,” the Director said, his voice dropping into a familiar, sermonizing rhythm. “‘Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.’”
Worldly sorrow brings death.
Was his sorrow for the kiss worldly?It felt like it was killing him.
Was his sorrow for being here, in this cube, godly?It just felt like death.
The Director gave his shoulders a slight, almost paternal squeeze. “Remember that, Samuel. Your sorrow must be pure. It must be for the sin, not for the consequence. Only then will you be clean.”
The hands lifted. The warmth vanished, leaving his skin screaming into the renewed chill. The light receded as the figure turned. The door slammed shut.
The blackness returned, deeper and more absolute than before, stained with the phantom bloom of the electric light. The silence rushed back in, a roaring in his ears.
Samuel remained kneeling. The new scripture echoed in the newly hollowed-out chamber of his mind, clashing with the old one.
Worldly sorrow brings death.
