FIC: Faith in You, T, Alfred-centric
Title: Faith in You
Author: Dementis
Fandom: APH
Rated: T
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia. Or the Bible, but I don't think there's going to be any dispute about that one.
Summary: Alfred struggles with regaining his faith in God.
He was a sinner.
Each time Alfred asked Pablo to attend church with him, a no doubt futile effort to save Pablo's soul, he was reminded that his own soul needed saving just as badly. Pablo reminded him of nocturnal fantasies of same-sex skin, or of intercourse out of wedlock; of atomic blasts that had once blown away hundreds (thousands) of people of a race not his own; of the concentration camps on his own soil to lock away that same race of people (citizens, American citizens, his citizens); or perhaps a teenage girl, nothing more than a college student exploring different ideas, blown through the skull simply because Alfred had felt threatened by her intelligence and rational arguments in favor of Communism. A gay bar raided and destroyed, the homosexuals beaten down as though he himself had never once had an impure thought about another man.
"Love thy neighbor," said the Bible that Alfred worshiped. Yet so many Christians like himself loved only those neighbors that lived by the stars the stripes - loved all, certainly, so long as they were straight, white, male, Republican; as long as they, too, were fellow Christians.
It was sickening. Alfred could remember the joy he'd once taken in attending church, as a collection of thirteen colonies dressed in buckle shows and a Puritan hat. The faces of the enameled fathers hadn't meant much to him then, though he still stared at them, talked to them, stood in the pews of that church for a very long time, so long his legs nearly gave out and the priest had to escort him home.
Desperately, he'd tried to assimilate himself in with the rest of the worshipers. Eagerly, he'd thirsted for the knowledge and belief of this faith. Tried to breathe in the raw incense and special dust of the place until it caked the walls of his lungs and from there entered into the flow of his blood, enough so that he felt touched, concerned by the hidden meaning etched into the colorful stained glass windows, the vibrant men with pale eyes and ruby lips.
Now, visiting church was an occurrence for Easter and Christmas, an obligation, seeing the faces of tired old women or of children who would much rather be scraping their knees outdoors than sit here in these pews, writhing restlessly in uncomfortable clothing and force-fed the words that Jesus is our Savior, ad infinitum, rinse and repeat. The collection plates were more and more naked with each passing Sunday, only a few sad nickels and quarters where before, they had overflowed.
They didn't know how it was back then, so hungry for faith, so willing and open to accept the Son of God as his only Savior. Church was now like any Target or Wal-Mart or Target across the nation - simply a pretty front for any other shop, a faith to slip on like so many costumes. The passion in their eyes that had once mirrored his own had grown cold, even upon touching the wood and plaster and clay of the old churches.
And perhaps... perhaps his own faith had dwindled as well, upon the realization of his sins, a pre-ordained fate no matter how he knelt on his bedroom carpet and prayed to a God he wasn't sure even existed anymore. That worm of doubt curled and made a nest in his heart (so many murdered, so many oppressed) until the question plagued him:
What if I'm on my own after all?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
It was the same church, narrow and tall, spires jutting up into the pale sky like a gospel. Despite the passing of hundreds of years, the smell of dust remained, ground by treading soles and tired souls into the carpet and walls. The windows still depicted the candy colors of Mary and Joseph and Jesus and the apostles, though admittedly much older, and their eyes held pupils and irises now, no longer the eerie blankness to which Alfred had become accustomed. The light through them streamed the same color onto the old stone floor: red, gold blue; holy colors of the Holy Spirit, dappling the floor like splotches of autumn leaves.
These things were the same. The colors, the structures, that smell of ancient smoke and burning candles. The clumps and clusters of snow falling past the windows, patches of white cloud against the pale grey skies, touching the front steps with the timid hand of winter. The whole church was recognizably beautiful in Alfred's eyes. But the mood was different; no longer did he feel awed or baffled by the building as snow decorated the heart of Boston. No whispering voice of God greeted his inner ear. It was just a building, the same as any other.
He'd come to change that.
Something else was different as well. As a child, the priest that had shown Alfred the light of God had been Pastor Michael, a young Irishman with a thick accent and kind eyes and a youthful twenty-something face. Now the priest among the stained glass light was old, as though religion had aged him; Alfred could imagine this man, clean-shaven but weathered, growing up like the nation had grown up, aging slowly over hundreds of years, even if in reality this man had only been born perhaps seventy years ago. Where had Alfred been at the time of the preacher's birth? Preparing for war. Funny that Alfred was close to four hundred years old yet had retained the plump, youthful build of a college dropout, while the man born only a year or two before Pearl Harbor was attacked seemed ancient to him.
In the rows of pews, only a few devout worshipers had taken the time out of their Friday to lean forward in their silent prayer. Alfred watched them in fascination as he came down the aisle in the center where the soles of countless shoes had tread, and he himself sat alone in a seat close to the aisle, leaning forward just like the others, fingers steepled a moment before lacing together.
But nothing came.
His eyes squeezed shut, and he tried to remember what Jesus looked like. White? Black? Brunette, blonde? He couldn't recall. Panic was overtaking him, but he relaxed, breathed, caked his lungs in smoke and dust just as a child. The sound of footsteps met his ears, and he felt a touch to his shoulder. He glanced up and the weathered face of the pastor peered kindly into his own.
"You look like a man with a crisis," the preacher said. With the soft touch, a whisper of information drifted through his mind. (Pastor Daniel Ross. Seventy-two years old. Vietnam War veteran. Reverend.) And those eyes were a kind, murky grey like that of the sky outside, cloudy with age and yet clear with wisdom.
Maybe he could help. Alfred smiled, and in the dark pools of Ross's eyes, he saw his own reflection, small and clear, with snowflakes caught in the corn silk of his own hair. "Maybe because I feel like one," Alfred replied with a weary grin. "I haven't been to church since Easter. I guess I feel kind of out of my element."
With a gentle nudge, Ross scooted him over and sat beside him on the pew. Beside Alfred's plush thighs, Ross's leg was a skeletal twig. "Are you devout?"
Despite the practiced answer he usually gave, the question still caught him off guard and he wasn't sure how to reply. "I... used to be," was his answer. "I came every Sunday as a kid, even when I felt sick. God was my entire life back then." A sigh escaped his lips, tired and exhausted as his people must have been.
"But not anymore?"
The words shouldn't have stung the way they did, but Alfred felt the familiar twist in the cave of his chest anyway. "I guess not," he said, his voice sounding worn even to his own ears. "I... I don't know. I guess not."
Ross gave a nod of understanding. His eyes were so very dark, the color of burning wood in foreign nations, almost black if not for the subtle tint of deep, deep brown beneath them. They were the kind of eyes that Alfred had grown up to fear, and rightly so. God-fearing eyes. Not like his own.
Did he used to have eyes like that? Eyes that somehow knew that God was watching over him, judging his every move?
The look in those eyes made Alfred's throat almost close up with tears, but he held them in, bravely as when he held them in after killing his very first red-coat or skinning his first rabbit, a challenge only he himself could understand. He felt a fearful tremble in his fingertips and he swallowed, hard.
"This isn't me," he managed to utter. "This isn't... this isn't me."
He was positive that the pastor didn't understand what he meant. That was fine -- many didn't. America was a labyrinth of complex problems beyond that which England or France or Spain or anyone else could properly see. That smile he plastered on his face was faked more often than not, these days.
Everyone deserved freedom, but only if they were white, male, Christian, Republican, straight, married...
Everyone deserved freedom, but only the freedom to assimilate.
That wasn't him.
The pastor simply reached over and took his hand; the arthritic knuckles of the old man brushed against his own softer skin, and he felt like vomiting with rage at himself. How was it that he could go through so much and still look so young? Ross then released him and patted his broad back. "Do you believe in God?"
A practiced question, but the practiced response didn't spew from his lips, not this time. "Yes, of course I do," he said. "I know there's someone up there watching over me, keeping me alive, guiding me..." And then the truth, however much it pained him to say. "...I just... don't think God has faith in me, anymore."
His heart screamed like a firework, like promises shouted but never kept. Everything he'd ever seen in his life boiled down to this, from the blood of an anonymous red-coat staining his blue uniform purple, to the screaming, melting faces of Japanese soldiers, to the sweat stains across old bed sheets, to the blinding flash of neon lights in late-night clubs he kept telling himself he had no business being in... all of it boiled down to the fact that God no longer believed in him.
Alfred felt delicate, more delicate than he'd ever felt in his long life, and he felt that he should be able to turn this repressed scream into something else. A little bit of faith. A little bit of light for the darkness in his pastor's eyes.
But Ross didn't flinch away from the sheer power of guilt Alfred felt scouring his lungs with the attempt to hold himself back. The old wrinkled hand on his shoulder squeezed harder than he thought the old man was capable and he gave a small, sad smile.
"You've been lost," he said like a fortune-teller. "Everyone gets lost sometimes. We just have to remember that we're the ones holding the map the entire time. Only you can find your way back to the light."
Alfred was shaking underneath his skin, and he nodded, full of rage and fear and power and loneliness. "But-- but what if I--"
Ross shook his head and the hand dropped away like so many others. "Even if you lose faith in God," he whispered, "God will never lose faith in you. Remember that, son. It will do you good."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Alfred took a bus back to his neighborhood and walked home in the silence while the soles of his boots crunched in the heavy blanket of snow, and the heart of the city was, for once, in a quiet post-Christmas lull. Parties ended and drunken teenagers curled up against each other on the hard tile of the kitchen floor (puddles of drool forming on her stomach, how nice, his hair greasy still with sweat) and snowflakes clung to Alfred's pale eyelashes and melted there like tears.
His house was the same one he had bought on a whim after years of wandering the West, escaping the confines of DC, and then finally caught up in the raw beauty of what would only later be called the Harlem Renaissance. So many parties had been held here; so many feet had scraped his wooden floors in a drunken swing dance, so many bands played in his expansive living room; but now, he had no interest in music or parties where he couldn't see straight or hear himself think...
Alfred climbed his stairs, kicking off his boots to let them tumble down the steps, and by the time he made it to his bedroom - with his lamp in that same corner on the little nightstand, and his bookshelves stocked with old science fiction paperbacks, a television because he more often than not liked to sleep with the white noise of a Jimmy Stewart movie - and he tore off his socks so that he could feel the plush carpet between his toes, he felt that horribly familiar sense of guilt at the pit of his stomach.
He smelled the old incense of the church he'd left, saw the small old pastor walking calmly to his aid along the aisle, heard the creak of the old walls settling in against the New York frost... but there was only silence here in the bedroom, only a terrible, painful silence.
It was too late to regain God's faith in him, or to regain faith in God. Too late, he told himself, and another part said, thank God it's too late. A gross derisive voice that was both him and not him. And yet there was guilt there at the pit of his stomach, the guilt, the gnawing of his remorse... but through that remorse he felt like rejoicing. Maybe, finally, he could give it up - abandon God like he'd abandoned so many others. Live his life according to how he felt, go to parties like he used to, maybe leave again and live out on the California beaches, but--
Oh, but no. No.
How could he do it? There was no answer, no one who could possibly understand, no answer except in words of the most obscenely scientific objectivity. How could he do it? Because, for all practical purposes, because there were things he wanted in life, ways he behaved in certain moments, which any God would find unthinkable. Killing children. Murdering women.
There was a long silence as Alfred stared blankly at his bedside; and now, abruptly, he remembered what the pastor said.
"Even if you lose faith in God, God will never lose faith in you."
The guilt in his stomach was soon accompanied by an anguish in his heart and a constriction in his throat, and in a choked sob, he fell to his knees in the expensive carpeting, clasped his hands together and leaned forward to touch his forehead to his knuckles, eyes closing.
"Please please please," came his frantic whisper. "Please, God. I'm sorry. Please."
There was another long and, it seemed, profound silence. From beneath the bed, an enormous black spider emerged for a moment into view, then hurried away on its spindly spidery legs toward the window, vanishing into a crevice in the corner of the room. His hands tightened their hold on one another briefly and then he swallowed around a lump in his throat ("Even if you lose faith in God, God will never lose faith in you") and his heart ached more than anything had ever ached before.
Only after an hour and a half did he give up. The clock now read just past midnight, and he took off his clothes so he was in nothing but his boxers, and curled up underneath his blankets like a small child. It took another twenty minutes before he could fall asleep.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Alfred was climbing, somewhere in his dream landscape. Up and up and up a tall hill, but however high he climbed, he never seemed to get very far. His footing kept slipping, his hands unable to grasp the crumbling rocks protruding from the earth.
The sun glared in his eyes because he was young, he didn't have his glasses yet, round in features and lined only with baby fat, completely naked otherwise. And when he couldn't see, he reached to grab a branch only to find it wriggling and alive - and he fell, fell and fell and fell, landing harshly on the rock below.
The fall didn't wake him, and he remained on those rocks, crying for what seemed like hours even in his dream-time. And then suddenly he looked up and beside him, clad in his usual sweater vest and with a cup of tea in hand, was Arthur, silhouetted by the sun. Alfred squinted up at him through teary eyes.
"Whatever is the matter?" Arthur asked him, but not in the tone that he'd heard as a child. It was the tone Arthur used on him now, as an adult; condescending, harsh, judgmental. Aiming for the jugular. "Honestly, Alfred, this is embarrassing. Get up."
Alfred shook head to toe as he struggled to stand. His arm gave out beneath him and he fell to the ground, cheek hitting a rock. It was the end. It was the end. No turning back, no turning back.
"Listen to me, Alfred. We've got to get rid of this," Arthur said, crouching down and putting a hand over Alfred's forehead. "Come on." The hand retracted again. "What happened? Tell me what happened."
"I don't want to," Alfred said. "It will make me seem weak."
"You have to. Coddling you about it won't make it any better, lad. Tell me about the snake."
Alfred swallowed hard. "It... was green..." He closed his eyes, shuddered, almost started to cry again. "I don't want to. Please. I don't want to."
"Then they will be crawling around inside of you forever. They'll give you horrible nightmares and make you do horrible things. Is that what you want?"
"...No."
Alfred tried to control his trembling, but his body seemed under the control of someone bent on humiliating him, on making him suffer.
Arthur's mouth became a thin line. "Alfred, listen to me. There was a snake. A big, green snake, and it scared you so badly that you lost your balance and fell. Now you have to say it. Go on, Alfred. Tell me."
Obediently, Alfred choked out, "I... I fell." The horror of it came back, the nausea, the panic that had made him dizzy enough to fall. It was the end. No turning back.
"Say it again," came Arthur's voice, firm and strong.
"I... I fell," and Alfred felt himself whimpering, biting back a sob. At Arthur's demand to let it out, he did, shuddering violently and almost vomiting with his sobs. "I could see its eyes... I fell, I fell. I fell. I fell."
"Again."
"I fell," he whispered. "I fell. I fell."
"And now, Alfred?" Arthur's voice was calm suddenly, and he looked to him expectantly. "What now?"
Alfred swallowed, braced his palms on the hard edges of stone beneath him. "I get back up." And with a mighty push, he found himself standing back up, saw Arthur smiling at him in a pride he would never see in the waking world--
--and he woke, sweaty and panting and with a tremble in his arms.
Author: Dementis
Fandom: APH
Rated: T
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia. Or the Bible, but I don't think there's going to be any dispute about that one.
Summary: Alfred struggles with regaining his faith in God.
He was a sinner.
Each time Alfred asked Pablo to attend church with him, a no doubt futile effort to save Pablo's soul, he was reminded that his own soul needed saving just as badly. Pablo reminded him of nocturnal fantasies of same-sex skin, or of intercourse out of wedlock; of atomic blasts that had once blown away hundreds (thousands) of people of a race not his own; of the concentration camps on his own soil to lock away that same race of people (citizens, American citizens, his citizens); or perhaps a teenage girl, nothing more than a college student exploring different ideas, blown through the skull simply because Alfred had felt threatened by her intelligence and rational arguments in favor of Communism. A gay bar raided and destroyed, the homosexuals beaten down as though he himself had never once had an impure thought about another man.
"Love thy neighbor," said the Bible that Alfred worshiped. Yet so many Christians like himself loved only those neighbors that lived by the stars the stripes - loved all, certainly, so long as they were straight, white, male, Republican; as long as they, too, were fellow Christians.
It was sickening. Alfred could remember the joy he'd once taken in attending church, as a collection of thirteen colonies dressed in buckle shows and a Puritan hat. The faces of the enameled fathers hadn't meant much to him then, though he still stared at them, talked to them, stood in the pews of that church for a very long time, so long his legs nearly gave out and the priest had to escort him home.
Desperately, he'd tried to assimilate himself in with the rest of the worshipers. Eagerly, he'd thirsted for the knowledge and belief of this faith. Tried to breathe in the raw incense and special dust of the place until it caked the walls of his lungs and from there entered into the flow of his blood, enough so that he felt touched, concerned by the hidden meaning etched into the colorful stained glass windows, the vibrant men with pale eyes and ruby lips.
Now, visiting church was an occurrence for Easter and Christmas, an obligation, seeing the faces of tired old women or of children who would much rather be scraping their knees outdoors than sit here in these pews, writhing restlessly in uncomfortable clothing and force-fed the words that Jesus is our Savior, ad infinitum, rinse and repeat. The collection plates were more and more naked with each passing Sunday, only a few sad nickels and quarters where before, they had overflowed.
They didn't know how it was back then, so hungry for faith, so willing and open to accept the Son of God as his only Savior. Church was now like any Target or Wal-Mart or Target across the nation - simply a pretty front for any other shop, a faith to slip on like so many costumes. The passion in their eyes that had once mirrored his own had grown cold, even upon touching the wood and plaster and clay of the old churches.
And perhaps... perhaps his own faith had dwindled as well, upon the realization of his sins, a pre-ordained fate no matter how he knelt on his bedroom carpet and prayed to a God he wasn't sure even existed anymore. That worm of doubt curled and made a nest in his heart (so many murdered, so many oppressed) until the question plagued him:
What if I'm on my own after all?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
It was the same church, narrow and tall, spires jutting up into the pale sky like a gospel. Despite the passing of hundreds of years, the smell of dust remained, ground by treading soles and tired souls into the carpet and walls. The windows still depicted the candy colors of Mary and Joseph and Jesus and the apostles, though admittedly much older, and their eyes held pupils and irises now, no longer the eerie blankness to which Alfred had become accustomed. The light through them streamed the same color onto the old stone floor: red, gold blue; holy colors of the Holy Spirit, dappling the floor like splotches of autumn leaves.
These things were the same. The colors, the structures, that smell of ancient smoke and burning candles. The clumps and clusters of snow falling past the windows, patches of white cloud against the pale grey skies, touching the front steps with the timid hand of winter. The whole church was recognizably beautiful in Alfred's eyes. But the mood was different; no longer did he feel awed or baffled by the building as snow decorated the heart of Boston. No whispering voice of God greeted his inner ear. It was just a building, the same as any other.
He'd come to change that.
Something else was different as well. As a child, the priest that had shown Alfred the light of God had been Pastor Michael, a young Irishman with a thick accent and kind eyes and a youthful twenty-something face. Now the priest among the stained glass light was old, as though religion had aged him; Alfred could imagine this man, clean-shaven but weathered, growing up like the nation had grown up, aging slowly over hundreds of years, even if in reality this man had only been born perhaps seventy years ago. Where had Alfred been at the time of the preacher's birth? Preparing for war. Funny that Alfred was close to four hundred years old yet had retained the plump, youthful build of a college dropout, while the man born only a year or two before Pearl Harbor was attacked seemed ancient to him.
In the rows of pews, only a few devout worshipers had taken the time out of their Friday to lean forward in their silent prayer. Alfred watched them in fascination as he came down the aisle in the center where the soles of countless shoes had tread, and he himself sat alone in a seat close to the aisle, leaning forward just like the others, fingers steepled a moment before lacing together.
But nothing came.
His eyes squeezed shut, and he tried to remember what Jesus looked like. White? Black? Brunette, blonde? He couldn't recall. Panic was overtaking him, but he relaxed, breathed, caked his lungs in smoke and dust just as a child. The sound of footsteps met his ears, and he felt a touch to his shoulder. He glanced up and the weathered face of the pastor peered kindly into his own.
"You look like a man with a crisis," the preacher said. With the soft touch, a whisper of information drifted through his mind. (Pastor Daniel Ross. Seventy-two years old. Vietnam War veteran. Reverend.) And those eyes were a kind, murky grey like that of the sky outside, cloudy with age and yet clear with wisdom.
Maybe he could help. Alfred smiled, and in the dark pools of Ross's eyes, he saw his own reflection, small and clear, with snowflakes caught in the corn silk of his own hair. "Maybe because I feel like one," Alfred replied with a weary grin. "I haven't been to church since Easter. I guess I feel kind of out of my element."
With a gentle nudge, Ross scooted him over and sat beside him on the pew. Beside Alfred's plush thighs, Ross's leg was a skeletal twig. "Are you devout?"
Despite the practiced answer he usually gave, the question still caught him off guard and he wasn't sure how to reply. "I... used to be," was his answer. "I came every Sunday as a kid, even when I felt sick. God was my entire life back then." A sigh escaped his lips, tired and exhausted as his people must have been.
"But not anymore?"
The words shouldn't have stung the way they did, but Alfred felt the familiar twist in the cave of his chest anyway. "I guess not," he said, his voice sounding worn even to his own ears. "I... I don't know. I guess not."
Ross gave a nod of understanding. His eyes were so very dark, the color of burning wood in foreign nations, almost black if not for the subtle tint of deep, deep brown beneath them. They were the kind of eyes that Alfred had grown up to fear, and rightly so. God-fearing eyes. Not like his own.
Did he used to have eyes like that? Eyes that somehow knew that God was watching over him, judging his every move?
The look in those eyes made Alfred's throat almost close up with tears, but he held them in, bravely as when he held them in after killing his very first red-coat or skinning his first rabbit, a challenge only he himself could understand. He felt a fearful tremble in his fingertips and he swallowed, hard.
"This isn't me," he managed to utter. "This isn't... this isn't me."
He was positive that the pastor didn't understand what he meant. That was fine -- many didn't. America was a labyrinth of complex problems beyond that which England or France or Spain or anyone else could properly see. That smile he plastered on his face was faked more often than not, these days.
Everyone deserved freedom, but only if they were white, male, Christian, Republican, straight, married...
Everyone deserved freedom, but only the freedom to assimilate.
That wasn't him.
The pastor simply reached over and took his hand; the arthritic knuckles of the old man brushed against his own softer skin, and he felt like vomiting with rage at himself. How was it that he could go through so much and still look so young? Ross then released him and patted his broad back. "Do you believe in God?"
A practiced question, but the practiced response didn't spew from his lips, not this time. "Yes, of course I do," he said. "I know there's someone up there watching over me, keeping me alive, guiding me..." And then the truth, however much it pained him to say. "...I just... don't think God has faith in me, anymore."
His heart screamed like a firework, like promises shouted but never kept. Everything he'd ever seen in his life boiled down to this, from the blood of an anonymous red-coat staining his blue uniform purple, to the screaming, melting faces of Japanese soldiers, to the sweat stains across old bed sheets, to the blinding flash of neon lights in late-night clubs he kept telling himself he had no business being in... all of it boiled down to the fact that God no longer believed in him.
Alfred felt delicate, more delicate than he'd ever felt in his long life, and he felt that he should be able to turn this repressed scream into something else. A little bit of faith. A little bit of light for the darkness in his pastor's eyes.
But Ross didn't flinch away from the sheer power of guilt Alfred felt scouring his lungs with the attempt to hold himself back. The old wrinkled hand on his shoulder squeezed harder than he thought the old man was capable and he gave a small, sad smile.
"You've been lost," he said like a fortune-teller. "Everyone gets lost sometimes. We just have to remember that we're the ones holding the map the entire time. Only you can find your way back to the light."
Alfred was shaking underneath his skin, and he nodded, full of rage and fear and power and loneliness. "But-- but what if I--"
Ross shook his head and the hand dropped away like so many others. "Even if you lose faith in God," he whispered, "God will never lose faith in you. Remember that, son. It will do you good."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Alfred took a bus back to his neighborhood and walked home in the silence while the soles of his boots crunched in the heavy blanket of snow, and the heart of the city was, for once, in a quiet post-Christmas lull. Parties ended and drunken teenagers curled up against each other on the hard tile of the kitchen floor (puddles of drool forming on her stomach, how nice, his hair greasy still with sweat) and snowflakes clung to Alfred's pale eyelashes and melted there like tears.
His house was the same one he had bought on a whim after years of wandering the West, escaping the confines of DC, and then finally caught up in the raw beauty of what would only later be called the Harlem Renaissance. So many parties had been held here; so many feet had scraped his wooden floors in a drunken swing dance, so many bands played in his expansive living room; but now, he had no interest in music or parties where he couldn't see straight or hear himself think...
Alfred climbed his stairs, kicking off his boots to let them tumble down the steps, and by the time he made it to his bedroom - with his lamp in that same corner on the little nightstand, and his bookshelves stocked with old science fiction paperbacks, a television because he more often than not liked to sleep with the white noise of a Jimmy Stewart movie - and he tore off his socks so that he could feel the plush carpet between his toes, he felt that horribly familiar sense of guilt at the pit of his stomach.
He smelled the old incense of the church he'd left, saw the small old pastor walking calmly to his aid along the aisle, heard the creak of the old walls settling in against the New York frost... but there was only silence here in the bedroom, only a terrible, painful silence.
It was too late to regain God's faith in him, or to regain faith in God. Too late, he told himself, and another part said, thank God it's too late. A gross derisive voice that was both him and not him. And yet there was guilt there at the pit of his stomach, the guilt, the gnawing of his remorse... but through that remorse he felt like rejoicing. Maybe, finally, he could give it up - abandon God like he'd abandoned so many others. Live his life according to how he felt, go to parties like he used to, maybe leave again and live out on the California beaches, but--
Oh, but no. No.
How could he do it? There was no answer, no one who could possibly understand, no answer except in words of the most obscenely scientific objectivity. How could he do it? Because, for all practical purposes, because there were things he wanted in life, ways he behaved in certain moments, which any God would find unthinkable. Killing children. Murdering women.
There was a long silence as Alfred stared blankly at his bedside; and now, abruptly, he remembered what the pastor said.
"Even if you lose faith in God, God will never lose faith in you."
The guilt in his stomach was soon accompanied by an anguish in his heart and a constriction in his throat, and in a choked sob, he fell to his knees in the expensive carpeting, clasped his hands together and leaned forward to touch his forehead to his knuckles, eyes closing.
"Please please please," came his frantic whisper. "Please, God. I'm sorry. Please."
There was another long and, it seemed, profound silence. From beneath the bed, an enormous black spider emerged for a moment into view, then hurried away on its spindly spidery legs toward the window, vanishing into a crevice in the corner of the room. His hands tightened their hold on one another briefly and then he swallowed around a lump in his throat ("Even if you lose faith in God, God will never lose faith in you") and his heart ached more than anything had ever ached before.
Only after an hour and a half did he give up. The clock now read just past midnight, and he took off his clothes so he was in nothing but his boxers, and curled up underneath his blankets like a small child. It took another twenty minutes before he could fall asleep.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Alfred was climbing, somewhere in his dream landscape. Up and up and up a tall hill, but however high he climbed, he never seemed to get very far. His footing kept slipping, his hands unable to grasp the crumbling rocks protruding from the earth.
The sun glared in his eyes because he was young, he didn't have his glasses yet, round in features and lined only with baby fat, completely naked otherwise. And when he couldn't see, he reached to grab a branch only to find it wriggling and alive - and he fell, fell and fell and fell, landing harshly on the rock below.
The fall didn't wake him, and he remained on those rocks, crying for what seemed like hours even in his dream-time. And then suddenly he looked up and beside him, clad in his usual sweater vest and with a cup of tea in hand, was Arthur, silhouetted by the sun. Alfred squinted up at him through teary eyes.
"Whatever is the matter?" Arthur asked him, but not in the tone that he'd heard as a child. It was the tone Arthur used on him now, as an adult; condescending, harsh, judgmental. Aiming for the jugular. "Honestly, Alfred, this is embarrassing. Get up."
Alfred shook head to toe as he struggled to stand. His arm gave out beneath him and he fell to the ground, cheek hitting a rock. It was the end. It was the end. No turning back, no turning back.
"Listen to me, Alfred. We've got to get rid of this," Arthur said, crouching down and putting a hand over Alfred's forehead. "Come on." The hand retracted again. "What happened? Tell me what happened."
"I don't want to," Alfred said. "It will make me seem weak."
"You have to. Coddling you about it won't make it any better, lad. Tell me about the snake."
Alfred swallowed hard. "It... was green..." He closed his eyes, shuddered, almost started to cry again. "I don't want to. Please. I don't want to."
"Then they will be crawling around inside of you forever. They'll give you horrible nightmares and make you do horrible things. Is that what you want?"
"...No."
Alfred tried to control his trembling, but his body seemed under the control of someone bent on humiliating him, on making him suffer.
Arthur's mouth became a thin line. "Alfred, listen to me. There was a snake. A big, green snake, and it scared you so badly that you lost your balance and fell. Now you have to say it. Go on, Alfred. Tell me."
Obediently, Alfred choked out, "I... I fell." The horror of it came back, the nausea, the panic that had made him dizzy enough to fall. It was the end. No turning back.
"Say it again," came Arthur's voice, firm and strong.
"I... I fell," and Alfred felt himself whimpering, biting back a sob. At Arthur's demand to let it out, he did, shuddering violently and almost vomiting with his sobs. "I could see its eyes... I fell, I fell. I fell. I fell."
"Again."
"I fell," he whispered. "I fell. I fell."
"And now, Alfred?" Arthur's voice was calm suddenly, and he looked to him expectantly. "What now?"
Alfred swallowed, braced his palms on the hard edges of stone beneath him. "I get back up." And with a mighty push, he found himself standing back up, saw Arthur smiling at him in a pride he would never see in the waking world--
--and he woke, sweaty and panting and with a tremble in his arms.