Sinner’s Prayer
An October ‘17 Bravo Season Opener Reflection and Memory
Mercy woke up with a pounding in her head. Eyes squinting open slowly, even the dimmed light of day snaking into their bedroom seemed to pulse with the beat that echoed violently through her skull. Was it from lack of sleep? Too much sleep? Possibly the drugs and the pain finally wearing thin. Her mind slowly mending itself back together in its twisted disheveled patterns even. Thinking stung less than remembering.
She rolled over onto her side away from the curtained window to come face to face with her sleeping husband. The love of her life and the center island of her chaos. They had both been exhausted after returning home. So much so that after stripping down and hitting the covers they had just fallen to sleep hand in hand.
---
She screamed out as the back of her knees hit the bed behind her and the Warpath raider cut deep into her chest. Not from the pain but from the shock. Blood filled her mouth as she fell back. They’d almost made it. They had lasted this long. Fifteen more minutes she’d heard Alice whisper to the Mayor as they watched from the balcony above. Fifteen more minutes now down to five.
Her heart beat frantically in her chest as she braced herself up on her elbows to find her husband. She’d been staying by his side through the whole ordeal. Always staying an arm’s length away. As her head lolled to her right she caught sight of him fighting desperately. Blood and sweat mixing together. She called out his name desperately as she watched a second, then a third Warpath cut him down.
As he collapsed beside her Mercy watched around them as slowly everyone inside Kiva seemed to fall like dominoes one after the other. Tears begged to be free but her tear ducts would not give. She had no energy to spare. She could only sit there and watch on as everyone around her died. There was a strange calm that came with that thought. An acceptance. There would be no blame. No guilt. Only defeat.
Mercy lifted her arm with the last of her strength and reached towards Macon who did the same as if they had come to the same thought. If they were going to die, then they would at least be dancing into the grave together hand in hand. She looked her husband in the eye and smiled weakly. No. That wasn’t what would happen. Like a fool she realized that he would die before her as her blood held the taint of the Candyman’s poison. He would die and she would be left holding his dead corpse in her hands.
She stared desperately out in front of her, hoping to find a familiar face that could get the Todd’s out of her bag to shove down Macon’s throat. Immediately her eyes fell over Music Man who was fighting two of the bastard’s at once. For a moment there was hope. She feared calling out his name in case she distracted him from the beat of war. Yet the result was the same as he too soon collapsed beside her.
Together. That’s all that mattered. They would all dance together. As her other hand reached out towards Music Man she saw a flash from the corner of her eyes followed by a jolt of energy that crashed through her system. The sudden force flew her forward with a cry into her husband’s chest. She could breath again was the first thing she thought. She could work again was the second. Her fingers found the wires of her crash kit and without a second she shoved the prong into her husband’s shoulder.
“Don’t scream, baby. Don’t scream. Stay down.” She counted the seconds to herself. Counted the moment. He was going to live. She stayed pressed atop his chest. Knowing that if she let go of the pressure there was a good chance he would try to get up. Music man next. “Don’t scream, please try not to scream. Stay down.” The metal prong sunk into his arm and she let the machine rip. Counting the seconds again. It was a calm in the middle of a torrential downpour. It was a sweet note in a sour melody. It was her body over theirs. Desperately keeping their lives in her two hands.
---
She couldn’t help but just stare as he slept on. Just to take in all of him. To memorize this moment of peace that they had finally received. She smiled tenderly as his brow furrowed together and his head dug deeper into his pillow. The rot from his flesh left a story of a restless night into the fabric beneath him. Even in his dreams it seemed difficult for him to keep himself without worry.
Gently she pulled herself away from his side and pressed her feet to the floor. The wood cold on her heels. The cool air of the room stinging her rotting flesh as the warmth of the blankets left her. She slid her pink feathered house coat around her and pulled it tight. After all that time of being away from home the motion felt almost foreign to her.
As she lifted herself from the bed she caught a glimpse of her ghostly figure in the glass of her boudoir and froze. If there was ever a time that she had more looked like the dead that time was now. Eyes sunken in from the exhaustion without her makeup caked in to hide the fact. Flesh festering and bleeding into her robes. Skull matted with scabs and strands of hair left from where she’d removed her scalp before bed. Was this really her? Or was this the woman she had been? The dust and ashes that had settled over the face of the mirror in their absence clouded her judgement.
She tore her eyes away from her reflection and slid out from the room into the hall. The house creaked with life as she walked gingerly down the hall to Belladonna’s room. With a steady hand she cracked the door open just enough to gaze into her daughter’s room. A steady ray of light shone down across Bella’s crystallized cheeks sending tiny rainbows dancing across the room. She was curled up tight in a ball under her covers. Somehow making their presently dusty world appear all that more gentle and pure.
---
“Mercy she’s here! Bella’s over here!”
Mercy shot up from where she’d been sitting on the fallen log talking with Sal in the shadows of the altar. She jumbled past the sea of figures before her. Palms openly searching for her sweet daughter. The sea broke where Macon stood with his arms around Belladonna. For only a moment Mercy paused. For only a moment she forgot to breath.
Hearing her daughter’s sobs brought the wind back to her lungs. Sharp as she inhaled. Without another moment she joined in the family hug. Wrapping her arms around the both of them as tightly as she could with what little strength she possessed.
“Shh sh shh. It’s okay, Jelly Bean. Your mom and pop are here. You’re right here, baby girl.”
She looped her arm with Bella’s and slowly led her down the trail past the shadowed faces around them. Macon still had a duty. Mercy understood that all too well. So she didn’t question him when he didn’t fall in suit behind them. She would be fine consoling their daughter on her own. As a mother this was her duty.
Carefully she found a spot in the center of the road and helped Bella sit down. All the while keeping a hand on her. In any way possible she wanted her baby to understand that she was here. That she was alive. Too many people had she encountered that trade meet had been disillusioned to that fact.
As she slowly coaxed Bella into talking her heart broke. The Gravemind had not been kind to her in the slightest. She had been the last in a large group to come out. The last in a large group that had been forced to fight each other over and over and over again. It had called her weak as she refused to fight. Refused to get angry. It had called her weak and it had had no right to do so.
Mercy laid out on her back on the road and Bella followed suit. “Look at all of the stars, baby girl.” She squeezed her daughter’s hand tightly as they lay there. There were no real words that she could say. The Grave was not a thing that she knew. If anything it was a thing she feared and had been avoiding all trade meet. All she could do was smile and sing as she always did.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are gray.” Bella began to sing along with her as her grip on Mercy’s hand tightened. “You’ll never know dear, how much I love you. Oh, please don’t take my sunshine away.” Mercy bit her lips as she gazed into the sky, yet Bella continued on. “The other night dear, as I lay sleeping. I dreamed I held you, in my arms. But when I awoke dear, I was mistaken. So I hung my head and cried.”
“I love you, baby girl.”
“I love you more, mom.”
“Well I love you most.”
“I love you more than anything more you’ll ever say.”
They both laughed together and they were alive.
---
Mercy smiled tenderly as she watched Bella twitch in her sleep before closing the door softly. It was the first time they’d brought her home with them. The first time she was actually in her very own room. It felt very comfortable knowing that her small family was finally under the same roof together.
As she walked down the hallway into the kitchen she shivered. The frost had seeped into their home over night it seemed. With as steady as she could manage her hands she lit the stove and put a pot of water to boil. As she waited she hugged herself tight and looked around.
They had come home so late in the night that she had overlooked the state of their home. A thin layer of dust seemed to touch everything in sight. She stared on in a daze as she watched the debris that she had disturbed with her bare feet danced in the ray of light that came in through the window.
Macon had come home in such a rush that evening to leave after the wake of the nuke that Mercy had had no time to prepare for their departure. There had been no time to cover the furniture. No time to do the dishes. No time to fetch the laundry. She shook her head with a sigh as she spun in place back towards the pot. Time must have caught up with her as the water hissed and bubbled angrily.
Picking a mug from the cupboard she placed a few spoonfuls of hot brown mix at the bottom of the ceramic. The mix would be stale. It would be expectedly so after having set untouched for so long. Yet all she yearned for was the energy, not the taste. She needed to feel like she was awake. She needed to feel like herself.
As she went to pour the hot water into the cup her hand shook from the cold; sending the boiling liquid all over the counter and her own hand. Mercy hissed sharply from the pain as she clutched her hand to her chest. The pain. She had registered pain. Tears formed at the corner of her eyes as she stared down at her throbbing hand. The skin already turning bright pink across the palm.
---
“I hate who I am right now.”
Mercy glared at the floorboard before her. Elbows braced against the table behind her. Her eyes stung. Not from the tears she wish she could produce, but from the strain of having been awake for so long.
“What d’ya mean by that?” Mercy lolled her head to the side to stare at Finn after her question. Her own eyes felt like deep burrows in her skull. Deep and never ending.
“I’m usually so positive. So loving. So wonderful. You yourself called me perfect yesterday.” She shook her head as her lips twisted this way and that while she spoke. “But I’m not. I’m not me. Not right now. And I hate it. I’ve never been this agitated, this spiteful. I’ve never…. I’ve never had these negative thoughts swimming around in my head before.” She ran a hand over her mouth as she looked away from Finn ashamedly. “I can’t even sing, Finn. I’m usually able to sing and ground myself whenever I start to lose myself. But I can’t catch the groove.” Her voice broke as she thought of her incapability to grasp the beat that trade meet.
The Scadian woman had sat in silence beside her as she’d rambled on. Her face showed more than Mercy believed even she knew. Slowly she’d picked it up over the weekend. The confliction that lived in Finn towards her.
“What is it, Mercy? What’s tha thoughts in yer head?”
“I can’t. I can’t say it out loud. I’ve never had these thoughts before.”
“It’ll be alright. Sometimes ya just need tah get these things off yer chest. Or else it’ll swim in your head and turn ya into a monster.”
Mercy fell quiet and furrowed her brow together. Monster. She knew the word was sensitive to Finn. Just the previous night when Mercy had been more like herself she had counseled the girl endlessly on how she wasn’t a monster. How she could only be what she thought herself to be.
“I want to die.” The words dropped out of her mouth like a hammer slowly pounding the pavement. “I want to die, but I know I don’t want to. I know I shouldn’t be thinking those words at all, but I am.”
“It’s okay love, all ya hav’ ta’ do is sleep. And you’ll wake up on the other side. A little tranquility and it’s all peaceful like.”
“But I’ve come so close. I’ve come so close to the end I can’t just give up now.”
“I can see you’re hurting, if you rest the hurt will end.”
Finn extended her hand towards Mercy’s arm and she could feel the pulse under the girl’s skin. The feeling made her visibly cringe away. Eyes wide open she stared at the other woman and shook her head.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t give up.”
The younger woman’s hand slowly found her lap again and she looked away from Mercy. She hadn’t meant to offend her if she had. The overwhelming flood of fear had just taken over her body and she had acted. A silence fell between the two of them as the room grew louder.
The noise filled her head to the brim. She had always sung in large crowds. In those quiet moments between the conversations and the screams. It was always a comfort to her. Right now she needed that comfort more than anything. She needed it to live. To make a point.
“Came down the mountain, dragging our love affair. Got on a pretty little number, I’m wearing you still.” She forced the lyrics past her lips, immediately catching Finn’s attention. “It was a hell of a scene, at daddy’s feast! Nobody saw it coming, but the... little red devil in me. He has a funny way, of saying forever too fast. Don’t get mad, can’t blame a tramp for somethin’ he don’t know. I get on my knees and beg you.” She closed her eyes tightly as the eyes of those around her turned to watch, and into her own darkness she continued. “Hear my sinner’s prayer, I am what I am, and I don’t wanna break the heart of any other man but you, but you, oh. Hear my sinner’s prayer, it’s the only one I know. It sure as hell don’t rhyme, but it’s as good as, good as, gold.”
Mercy opened her eyes slowly and smiled tenderly.
“This is my resolve.”
---
She dried her hand tenderly with a rag after dipping it into the cool pale of water settled in the sink. The pink skin was still tender but it wouldn’t scar thankfully. If feeling this pain finally meant that she was free of the Candyman’s drug then it was welcomed. Taking her time she finished up on making her hot brown and slowly crept out the front door to greet the day.
A heavy mist rolled through the trees. The sun dancing through the dew on the grass. That same dew seemed to have frosted over night. It was like a small crystallized world greeting her. Gentle and pure. She thought of waking Bella to let her take in the crystal world in her, but instead sat down alone in her rocking chair on the porch. The warmth from the cup in her lap kept the cold from seeping into her bones and the gentle world around her kept the darkness from seeping into her mind.
Everything always came back to her Sinner’s Prayer. It had saved her the trade meet before in Crystal Creek from being cut down by Voorhees, and it had saved her this trade meet from being taken away by a shadow of herself. Joanne seemed so far into her future, yet closer every day. For now, she would concentrate on becoming a better mother under the guidance of Mother Monster. Only then would she be able to fully embrace Joanne.
Mercy smiled pleasantly to herself at the thought and began to sing the day in.
“We can be strong, we can be strong. Out on this lonely road, it’s on the road to love.”
