Capítulo 10: Atonement and Deception
The man's shrieks still hung in the musty air like wisps of smoke.
Genesis remained in his chamber, the ruffles of his masquerade costume smeared with something foul-smelling and sticky.
He plucked at a dark crusty bit on his lapel, sniffed it, grimaced.
"Time to play dress-up again."
He stripped off the masquerade outfit and searched through his briefcase, fingers closing around familiar starched cotton.
He shrugged into the priest's collar and of course the all-time classic, the catholic black cassock.
"There..." He smoothed the lengths of fabric over his frame. "The wolf dons his shepherd's robe."
Outside, Ezequiel stumbled down the hall in blind panic, white hair snarled over his face. The old man's masquerade costume was shredded - rips and tears gaping to show old papery skin discolored by veins.
He hurtled off walls, hands outstretched as if warding off an unseen menace.
"Christ have mercy!" The words clawed from his throat in a thin wail.
Ezequiel slammed into Genesis, rebounding off the stiff fabric, eyes bugging at the sight of the priestly garb. Genesis seized his flailing hands in an iron grip, black-brown stains blooming over the bleached cuffs.
"What plagues you, my son?" His words dripped with synthetic sweetness.
Ezequiel's tongue lashed between cracked lips as if tasting the air for lies. "It's all...wrong, Father." He gulped, Adam's apple juddering. "The walls, they...ooze of decay. tiny things, like worms but..."
His papery face twisted in revulsion. "That's no maid tending the scones, just infested meat and bone with a rat's nest where her hair should be. they are all walking corpses!"
Genesis stroked the old man's trembling hands, skin like damp tracing paper over bird bones. "There, there. You're fevered is all. An ill mind plays tricks on the senses."
He drew Ezequiel close, the stink of alcohol wafting from the man's shredded clothes.
Ezequiel stiffened at the unnatural heat of Genesis's breath on his cheek.
"Come with me," Genesis murmured. "Back to the light. Let me guide you home."
Ezequiel clung to Genesis's hand like a scared child, eyes squeezed shut as if to block out horrors.
He shuffled behind the priest, footsteps faltering and uneven on the creaking floorboards.
They reached the chamber, Genesis guiding the old man through the door with a firm shove between his bony shoulder blades. Ezequiel stumbled into the light, nostrils flaring at the stale reek of the room - burnt dust and sourness.
Genesis watched him through narrowed eyes, the cogs turning. Ezequiel whimpered like a beaten animal, pawing at his face, leaving streaks of grime on his papery cheeks.
An illusion tormenting the old fool?
Genesis's tongue probed the corners of his mouth. Or did the old man possess an Abyssal Gift for peeling back reality's facade?
Unveiling the reeking truth lurking behind this granite mausoleum's drapery?
He circled Ezequiel, feet whispering over the rug.
The old man flinched at each scuff and creak. Genesis leaned in until his words puffed hot against Ezequiel's ear.
"You may unburden yourself to me, my son." A tendril of spittle coursed down his chin. "The secrets of the confessional are sacrosanct, held within these moldering walls 'til the ending of days."
Genesis's lips parted in a lopsided smirk, then said. "Consider me... "
He laid a heavy hand on Ezequiel's thin shoulder. "...your conduit to God's mercy."
Ezequiel's chest heaved like a broken howl, each breath a strained rasp. Tears carved clean trails through his cheeks.
"I...I made a deal, Father." The words spilled out in a hoarse whisper. "With...with the Devil himself."
He clasped his gnarled hands, knuckles bulging like galls on a tree trunk. Genesis watched, impassive, as Ezequiel began rocking back and forth on his haunches.
"Riches beyond measure, he promised. All I desired - wealth, comfort, the world as my footstool." Ezequiel's cracked lips twisted in a growl. "But when I shuffle off this mortal coil, an eternity of torment awaits. The bottomless pit of hellfire as my new estate."
His blue eyes, the color of sour milk, bored into Genesis. "You can't fathom the sins on my soul, Father. The depravity..." He sucked in a breath, holding Genesis's gaze. "I sacrificed my own flesh and blood to that foul she-demon. My beautiful wife Helena, my boys - Peter and Timothy..."
Ezequiel retched, doubling over as a string of bitterness spilled from his lips, splattering the floorboards. He wiped his mouth with a trembling hand.
"An 'Abyssal Gift' she called it. The truth, laid bare - no more blinders, no more pretty lies..." His tongue rasped over cracked lips. "I see it all now, the soulless skins we walk among. This..." He swung a skeletal arm towards the window. "This is no earthly mysterious paradise. Hell comes dressed as Eden."
Genesis watched impassively as Ezequiel collapsed against the wall, rocking back and forth. Gently, he laid a hand on the old man's shoulder, fingers digging into flesh like blunt hooks.
"The first step is accepting your sin. Your soul yet lives - Christ died that you may find redemption." Genesis's words dripped with a corrosive sweetness. "Have faith and you may one day walk the verdant fields of Paradise."
His smile didn't reach his eyes. "All it requires is...commitment."
Ezequiel peered up through clotted lashes, chin quivering. "What...what do I do now, Father? Where's the path to redemption?"
Genesis's smile was a blade. "You were right to confess, my son." His palm pressed Ezequiel's bowed head in a parody of benediction. "The eyes unclouded at last - a rare gift from our Lord."
"Stay here. Pray." Genesis straightened his black cassock with a sharp tug. "I'll minister to the others, but you..." His gaze carved into Ezequiel. "You need spiritual guidance undisturbed."
The old man bobbed his head in a frantic nod, hands fluttering. "Yes, Father. Prayer and contrition - the way is clear."
Genesis turned on his heel, the swish of starched fabric loud in the cramped room.
At the door, he paused, dark eyes glittering over his shoulder. "Keep those newly acquired eyes of yours closed tight, dear child. Some truths are too searing to behold."
Genesis guessed it right, the old man has in fact an Abyssal Gift , one that can see beyond illusions, the eyes of dear Lucifer himself.
The door snicked shut behind him, swallowing Ezequiel's wheezy prayers.
Genesis's footsteps rang down the shadowed corridor, each step carrying him further from the wounded lamb awaiting deliverance.
How to counsel such a wretched, self-scourged creature?
Absolution seemed a sacrilege - the old fool had cravenly prostituted his very soul.
Sacrificed his own bloodline on the obsidian altar of greed.
Unforgivable.
The reeking stench of him, disgusting pitiful creature.
Yet Genesis had urged the sinner to cling to faith's tattered edge.
Whimpering prayers would barely countervail such grotesque pacts, but God's mercy was boundless, or so the scriptures claimed.
But even the Almighty's forgiveness stretched to its utmost limit by the old man's... excessiveness.
Genesis's expression remained an immutable mask, no hint of the warring impulses lurking beneath that chiseled exterior.
This game required a consummate performance, no matter how profound the dissonance between the role and reality.
To prevail meant burrowing deeper into deception's cloying embrace until the wolf's pelt molted away, indistinguishable from the lamb's wooly fleece.
His mouth shaped hushed reassurances while his thoughts carved distorted blasphemies into the slate of his soul, Yin on the outside and Yang on the inside...
REFLEXIONES DE LOS CREADORES 
Freakshow
Freakshow Ezequiel The Seer, holder of the
Oculus Hori, The Eyes of Horus.
What will be his faith?
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