Your Lips Once Sealed

Contains: Off-screen serial murder and psychological manipulation

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.  

You know how you can hear a phrase so often that the words become hollow? It’s a gradual degradation. Like when a parasite invades a garden, patiently leeching every nutrient until all that’s left is a vacant lot. You either adapt to the rot or wither with time. Hell, it took three years of his poisonous confessions to become the dried-out husk I am today.  

Seth first entered the confessional on a Thursday, right after morning Mass. Snow still lurked in the shadows outside, waiting to choke the foolish young blossoms. I remember how little space he took up as he knelt in the dimly lit booth, like a child swallowed by his father’s shirt, so unlike my other parishioners, whose loud, dramatic penitence usually filled the church. Through the pixelated partition, everything about him felt like a cheap, low-resolution rendering of a man until he opened his mouth.  

He stared straight through the barrier, unblinking eyes between the gaps.  

“I’ve killed nine girls,” he began. “I’m going to kill another one tonight.”  

 In one swift moment, he buried nine corpses at my feet with the promise of more. No tension in his confession, no remorse or anguish in his posture, just the warmth of his voice as it burrowed under my skin. In all my forty-eight years, I had never heard a soul so contentedly damned. 

“What do you say, Father Thomas, can I be forgiven?”  

What would you have said in my place? I imagine most men of God would have done as I did that first year. I labored with righteous vigor during our weekly meetings, pleading and interceding for the innocent, desperate to purge the rot from his soul, trusting in the unbreakable chains of the Sacramental Seal. Filled with conviction, I sought to pull him from the jaws of sin and protect my precious flock. 

But, foolish as the blossoms, my naivety blinded me to his true nature.  

“Why do you continue this? What do you gain?” I demanded one grim Thursday, when the shroud of winter had muffled the dying gasps of autumn.   

“What’s the matter, Father? Can't you see?” The wood creaked beneath him as he leaned, resting his head against the panel. “I’ve never cared for the bitter taste of forgiveness; I crave only the fruit of isolation and its sweet flesh.”  

He paused as his finger delicately traced the grain on the divider between us.   

“You’ll see. One day you’ll see. Grafting a connection...pruning away everything else…binding someone to you so completely that separation leads to death or disfigurement. Such a captivating flavor. One taste is all it takes.”   

I fought him then, the invader in the garden. Not with fists, of course, but judgment. The following year became an arena of self-righteous indignation as the chains wound tighter, and the bodies at my feet stacked higher. I stopped pleading. I hurled damnation at him with the weight of eternal torment. Most weeks I poured Scripture through the screen, desperate to rouse his sleeping conscience and absolve my gnawing guilt.   

He drank it all in with a smile.   

“You judge me for burying them in the dirt, Father. But what are you doing here in the dark, if not burying the refuse of humanity behind your sealed lips? At least mine fertilizes the flowers.”  

The frost took root then and began its necrotic bloom. He did not return for six months. New missing posters and news reports sprang up during his absence, as my congregation swelled past capacity. They sought the comfort and protection of a shepherd, who sheltered the very wolf they feared.  

Then, one chill spring morning, he sauntered in, practically bursting with mirth.  

“I’ve got a treat for you,” he whispered giddily as he pressed himself flush to the partition until his silhouette engulfed what little light remained. His cheap cologne and body odor bled through the divider, sickly sweet and rancid, like fermented apples rotting in the sun.    

“A name. And a date.” He knelt, shoulders shaking as a giggle escaped, echoing against the grain.  

The weight of the chains around my neck drew taut. A year before, I would have raged against him, calling upon the wrath of a righteous God to rain down on his head. But I could no longer see over the walls of bodies encasing me. If the sky opened wide, the rain would fall on me too. I sat in dutiful silence, clutching the stole around my neck until the fibers cracked from the strain.  

“Little Sarah Vance. Next Wednesday,” he said as he sprang up and dusted his knees, casting off formalities with the disdain of an ill-fitting coat and laying pretenses bare. He paused at the door, a smile in his voice as he lifted the latch.  

“Same time next week?” 

What was I to do? To breach the Seal was to face instant excommunication; to keep it was to dig her grave. That damned man, perverting this safe harbor into his personal cemetery. Taking his confession had cut off all hope for counsel, unless I chained another to my fate. No, the decision would be mine alone; my solitary torment. Could I bear to wear this blood-stained cleric collar if I remained silent? Was my parish worth her life? God, what was I to do? 

Over the next five days, I fasted and prayed. I did not sleep as I languished within my dark, suffocating room, suspended between heaven and hell. Could I absolve my guilt if I—like Adam—cast the blame on another? After all, it was not my hands that held the scythe. The stifling weight of my choice closed in, dissolving my spirit into something utterly unrecognizable as my decision solidified. 

Tuesday evening, I emerged, dragging the empty shell of my body to the old payphone booth on the corner, where the frostbitten flowers drooped. Sleet slammed against the glass as the echoes reverberated in my throbbing head. I held the cold metal of the receiver to my ear as my trembling fingers dialed the number. 

“Special Investigations tip line, state your tip.”  

A pause grew between us...the only remaining link in the chain.  

“I know who you’re looking for, and where he lives.” The words spilled out with relieving ease, like rain after a drought. “His name is Seth,” I whispered, condemning a man to save a soul. 

The breaking news broadcast that next morning revealed a plain man in cuffs flanked by officers while the police chief declared his arrest the result of an anonymous caller. In the background, you could see forensic teams excavating the garden, harvesting the remains. Seth stood calmly, with smiling eyes that bore deep into the camera lens. No partition between us, no false veil of anonymity, just a shared silence bridging the gap. He saw through me, to my wretched soul, as he made his only statement.   

“I knew you’d want to taste.”  

I denied it then, slinking back to my parish, wrapping the purple stole around my neck year after year as if the Seal and my soul were still intact. But I can see it now. Seth never sought salvation. He sought fertile ground; a host for his nest.  

I can tell by your breathing that you’re beginning to understand. You feel the chains tightening around your neck, don’t you, Father? 

Such an intoxicating flavor. 

So, what do you say? Can I be forgiven?