Page 25 of Unholy Masks

I took a chair at the back, staring through the glass walls, waiting for Sister Serena’s body to arrive from the scene.

After another twenty minutes of waiting, the orderlies rolled the gurney into the building, and I stood up from the chair, and walked out, ready to finally meet Sister Serena again.

Yesterday, I was too distracted, too focused on scrubbing away every trace of her death from my garage, to give her the attention she deserved. Today the pain felt absolute, searing hot.

“You know him, don’t you, Sister Serena? This is personal, isn’t it?” I opened the body bag.

I hadn’t seen Sister Serena in years, and yet, here she was, and I couldn’t recognize her. Even without the mark of blood and violence on her, she had changed. She had grown older, kinder.

Even in death, she was smiling.

My heart… I rubbed my chest once, like it would somehow ease the pressure within.

I pulled open her fingers, I studied the wound on her neck for the knife pattern, I collected samples, secured them in plastic bags. It was mechanical, every move, every action.

When I was done cataloging the marks, the bruises and every small detail, I grabbed the scalpel.

I took a deep breath, steadying my hands, and gently slid the scalpel along her chest, making a Y incision. Her skin parted, and as I worked, a flood of memories surfaced.

I had examined hundreds of bodies before, but when I cut her open, guilt and shame choked me.

“I’m sorry.”

I could hear my own breath echoing in the room. I knew exactly what was happening, and yet I was hoping, absurdly, that somehow she would sit up, brush herself off, and tell me to ask forgiveness from God.

I would… if she asked me to.

I cut her stomach and froze. My heart thudded as I reached for a set of tweezers, slowly taking out the small, rolled slip of paper wrapped in plastic.

Setting it on a sterile pad, I grabbed a pair of micro-tweezers. Peeling the plastic, I rolled out the paper in a tray, careful not to tear it.

“All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls.”

It was cut out from the Bible.

I clenched my teeth, staring at the words.

“All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls.” Sister Serena’s voice broke at the end, but she looked at us, her eyes steady, trying to offer us strength even though she was falling apart.

I bit my tongue, hard, staring at the casket through blurry eyes. Tany was silenced forever only because she was a girl. Only because she was helpless, had he used her and broken her.

I barely heard Sister Serena’s words—I had only one thought in my head, like an echo on repeat as I stared at the closed casket carrying Tany’s broken body.

Killing Robert Miller.

Everything else was a distant echo that day, fading behind the voices in my head, screaming for blood.

I barely noticed when someone grabbed my hand. My gaze was locked on that polished wood.

“I’ll make him pay.”

Around me, people talked, whispered, a soft buzz of sorrow and condolences.

Beside me, someone said, “I hate God.”

I heard it through the haze of anger in my head, only because I felt the same.

One of the Sisters leaned in. “God loves you. He loves all of you,” she said gently.