The most difficult part of worshipping a god made of flesh and blood is how easy it is to forget his divinity.
You aren't allowed to cleanse Constantine's vessel. He said you could when you reached two digits. Then at eleven, when most kids enter the magisterium. Then twelve, when Joseph first met the boy that he would later mold into a god. But no matter how much time passes, your hands are too clumsy and uncertain, unworthy of touching the divine. So you are stuck with Jericho's corpse instead.
Every day you enter the sacred temple. Joseph's hands are painfully gentle as he first washes Constantine's body, then rubs the ointments and perfumes and creams into his skin. All the while words of gratitude and apology and reproach escape his lips like a prayer.
Jericho gets the leftovers. Joseph doesn't care if his corpse grows bruised, or if there isn't enough lotion left to cover his entire body. You are supposed to be silent while cleansing Jericho. He wasn't worthy of supplication the way his brother is. That is a privilege only reserved for those who are larger than life.
Father guards every piece of Constantine like a rabid dog. You can not touch, or speak, or get too close, or breathe the air that has touched the vessel. You have not earned the privilege, you haven't served your mission, you are too far from greatness.
But sometimes, in the rare occasion Joseph leaves the home, you sneak into the temple.
Constantine Madden's skin is soft and pliable: just like Joseph's, just like Jericho's. Just like yours. It is cool to the touch, the same way your fingertips never seem to get warm. Dad sometimes pretends that you are one of his corpses, rubbing your hands between his own icy one in that careful way he never is with the living. It makes you understand why he handles the corpses like that. The tenderness makes you warm up from the inside, makes you feel alive in a way nothing else can.
Sometimes you can not help but resent Constantine. There is nothing you wouldn't do to earn this incessant devotion only held by the Enemy of Death. And yet the vessel continues still and silent, swallowing up more and more of Joseph's affections like the void that puts him above us.
Sometimes Joseph cries during the cleansing. You never wish father to be sad - he is all you have, after all. Or at least this is what you tell yourself as ugly jealousy coils in your gut. You don't think he has ever cried for you.
Joseph becomes a different being when he is around the object of his devotion, nothing but a manic shell of a man. A guard dog wearing human skin. Or maybe it is the other way around. Maybe that is the real man, while the Joseph who reads you bedtimes stories and kisses your forehead when he thinks you are asleep is nothing but a mirage created for your benefit.
Secretly you wish the latter to be true. After all, if your skin is soft and cold, if you were made by the same man who created Constantine Madden, if you can transform a person into something that goes against his very nature - then aren't you a sort of god, too?
The answer, of course, is no. It is a blasphemous way of thinking, and the reason you aren't worthy of cleansing Constantine's body. No matter how similar you tell yourself the two of you are: he will always be a god, and you will always be a child.
And there is nothing your father adores more than his deity.
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