The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,31

drunk at that. She got to her knees and then slowly to her feet.

“Okay, we’re even,” she said, looking upward. Her dulled senses adjusted gradually. There was just enough light to see a few feet in front of her. Raising the lighter, Lucy managed to discern the first few of a long row of pews, and to her left a large, freestanding wooden structure that looked like the most ornate cabinet she’d ever seen. And then it dawned on her—it was a confessional.

Using the long bench for both support and navigation, she shimmied toward it and rushed inside it like a child pulling up her bedsheet, looking for cover and comfort.

She placed the lighter down on a carved ridge shelf and slammed the door shut, looked around at the dark wood etchings, meticulously done, and took a seat on the crushed red velvet cushion. It was a place out of time.

The only nod to modern life was a dusty sign that read: PLEASE TURN OFF ALL CELL PHONES, SMARTPHONES, AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES. She laughed nervously. It made a weird kind of ironic sense to have a sort of preflight instruction affixed to a booth where an otherworldly conversation was about to take place. Preparing yourself to be skyrocketed to forgiveness.

“I need to change.” She wrung out the blue fox fur sleeves on her dress and kicked off her soaking-wet blue suede stilettos, desperately trying to stay in the moment.

She opened her satchel and started pulling out dry clothes—a fitted beige trench coat, a pair of deep garnet crushed-velvet peep-toe platform pumps and a garnet fedora to match. She began to undress, peeling the damp outfit from her body until she stood only in her pure white silk slip. Free from her couture armor, she was quickly overtaken by the fact that she was entirely alone, the paps, wannabes, and haters that trailed her, all gone. Left only with her innermost feelings.

A girl in a box.

Her head and her life, both spinning. Weighing on her. Hurting her. Drowning her in a deluge of misery.

The flame from the lighter, which had been slowly fading, petered out completely to a puff of smoke.

“Great,” she fretted, banging her hand angrily against the side of the antique wooden booth, the chaplet on her wrist scratching at the paneled interior.

Alone.

In total darkness.

Finally silent, with just her conscience.

Lucy broke down sitting in that confessional. Drying blood mixing with mascara, charcoal-colored trails streaming down her porcelain face. Wiping bloody tears on her pristine slip. Liquor still on her breath. She wanted a shower, dry clothes, and a warm bed.

“Somebody,” she moaned out loud. “Save me from all this bullshit.”

“Save yourself,” came a muffled, disembodied reply through the shadowy confessional screen.

“Shit!” she screamed, the burst of adrenaline sobering her up instantly. She braced herself, felt her face flush and the muscles in her calves and thighs slacken as she prepared to run for it. She couldn’t move but knew she had to. Lucy stiffened her back and her knees in the narrow booth and kicked the door open. She catapulted out of the box, still clutching the shoes from her bag, her trench coat, fedora, and weekender left behind in the confessional, along with her shame. In her desperation, Lucy slammed her knee into the edge of a pew and fell to the floor. Another scream tore from her throat. Almost instantly she felt a presence above her.

A human one.

A male one.

She felt a hand grab her arm and another wrap around her mouth and press tight. “Shhhhhhhh.”

Lucy struggled, but a knee in her back kept her down and under control. She couldn’t bite or scratch or fight back in any way. No sooner was she contemplating the worst than she felt his grip tighten, not to subdue her but to hoist her up. She nearly flew to her feet as if on wires. Lucy still could not really see his face, though she was staring directly into it. All she could discern were his hazel eyes, which appeared to glow. He removed his hand from her mouth.

“Don’t you know who I am?” she babbled nervously. “People will be looking for me.”

He took her in between the lightning flashes as she stood there—scared, wet, defiant. Her beautiful blond hair lay dripping on her bare shoulders, lips pursed defiantly but quivering. It amazed him that she was still clinging to her shoes, which matched her blood, the same way a mother would hang on to a toddler to escape