Some things just need to be put to paper, even if they aren’t full ideas.

She had done this many times. Dipped her pen into viscous vermillion to write out the tragedies whispered to her over dining room tables and worn sofa cushions. But, this time felt different.

Bathed in the light of too many candles, the room smelled like incense. Not sweet but acrid and unholy. Dove’s blood, sulphur, and ash. She had done this many times just as her mother had before her.

The nib was uncommonly loud as she scrawled confession onto parchment.

I didn’t care about the consequences. I followed my heart and am paying the price.

A typical story. One etched in poems and plays that flittered across humanity’s collective consciousness. Tragic but true. Beautiful but selfish. Sometimes, the admissions were in a language she didn’t understand but the intention ran true. That’s all that mattered.

The paper felt rough under her hands though that was likely due to the sweat from her palm as she crumpled the edges and held back her tears. Tears that were rarely her own. That was the life she led. Feeling remorse where none was originally offered. Taking on guilt that had gone from niggling doubt to the paranoia of the sinful.

The preparations were almost complete. She could hear the clicks of the kitchen timer in the back of her mind. The meal would be finished and she would serve a plate for herself before potentially serving herself to a guest.

Cut the page into tiny pieces and mix it with spittle.

Those were the instructions she was given by a dry mouth surrounded by smile lines. Her mother’s concerned gaze flashed in her mind but she pushed it back. This wasn’t the time to get personal. She could never take any of this to heart, even as she devoured the misdeeds of those around her.

She wondered how the woman ever smiled considering her fate.

Drop the pieces into something wet and heaving.

Her predecessor preferred potatoes but repetition only made the task more haunting so the tiny shreds were dumped into a small sauce pan of gravy to soften. She turned to look at the ticking clock on the wall. Not that time mattered. Her clients trusted her as surely as they distrusted themselves.

As much as they forgot the one sent for their salvation and chose living blood to usher their supplications.

She rubbed two fingers together to feel something, anything, other than the gnawing sadness that tugged at her bones and left knotted bruises in her heart.

Her toes curled next and she soaked up the cold linoleum of her kitchen floor.

Grounding is what some called it. But, that was for people who still wished to feel connected to the earth and worms. She wanted to feel neither.

A soft hiss came from the pot and she licked her teeth before turning back to the hob to switch it off.

Her plate was small. There wasn’t much needed for the meal but she always tried to make it something a little special. She’d laughed at the irony of choosing lamb. Her own silent sacrilege. A rare roast, thinly sliced. A life for a life.

She poured the gravy on top of it and let out a deep exhale before picking up the offering with reverence and carrying it back to her dining table.

The room was quiet. The kind of quiet that haunted graveyards and train stations long after they closed.

“I pray for the sins of Alice Motley,” she said softly. “I pray for the grace she’s lost and that which unfurls in front of her.”

Her fork was too loud against the tiny plate. The meat had already begun to cool but the sauce was thick, hot, and rich when it touched her tongue. A burst of flavour, grief, and inevitability.

She chewed slowly, repeating the chant in her mind with each swallow.

I pray for the sins of Alice Motley. I pray for the grace she’s lost and that which unfurls in front of her.

“723.”

She froze, momentarily stunned by a voice she knew too well, before taking another bite.

“Don’t you want to know what that means?”

She closed her eyes to block the sting before responding.

“It would give you too much satisfaction if I asked.”

The chair across from her scraped against the floor and she opened her eyes again to find a face both old and new. He never did take the same form but the smile was just as haunting. It never quite reached his eyes. Eyes as golden and tumultuous as the sun.

“Stubborn pride.”

“If you wanted me to know what you’re talking about, you would simply tell me.”

Another bite, this one smaller than the last. She used to draw out her meals when he would come. It was her way of getting more from him. Conversation, laughter, time. Things he only offered in brief slips before vanishing to wherever he decided to go next.

It pained her to think she was still doing that now.

“Millennia,” he began softly. She hated when he watched her eat. “That’s how many millennia you will suffer on their behalf.”

“Ah.”

Another swallow. The meal was almost done as quickly as it had begun.

“I guess it’s a good thing I’m still young then.”

He shrugged.

“Most tend to think of their demise in terms of years.”

“But we can join the dead at any time.”

His eyes flashed, swirling into a deeper shade of amber. She knew why he was here though he would never admit to it. They both performed lonely work.

She gently laid the fork across her plate when she was finished. The last vestiges of the good manners her mother tried to teach her.

Her guest stood and she dared to finally look beyond his face, to the stretch of skin below his neck. She could have sworn he was fully clothed when he first appeared.

He chuckled.

“Do you wish for me to you woo you, Moira?”

“Don’t say my name.”

He scratched his chin and she admired his delicate fingers.

“That is one of your rules.”

It made them too familiar. Made her mistakes all too real.

The Devil will come for you at least once and you shouldn’t entertain him.

The advice she ignored the most. The life of a sin eater was lonely. To be loathed and loved. Pitied and pacified by secret gifts left on her stoop. It wasn’t uncommon for her to return from an outing to find a bottle of wine, a fruit basket, a bouquet of flowers. Offerings for the damned.

The city was large enough to find a lover but who could understand the late night ritual, the smell of death and decay that sometimes hung in the air, or eyes that constantly held unshed tears?

“I understand.”

Which is why she took his hand and allowed him to lead her to a bedroom that wasn’t her own though all of the furnishings in it were familiar.

It’s why she welcomed his touch and pressed forgiveness against his skin in silent kisses. She gasped and groaned along with him and, for the hundredth time, forbade herself from feeling any kind of remorse for what transpired between them.

There was no heaven for her to strive for.

That pleasure was for those who hired her.

“You think very loudly Moira Sin Eater.”

“Hn. I bet you say that to all of the girls.”

“I say very little to most of my lovers.”

There were thousands of them. She knew. Likely more. She’d seem some of them in his garden; lovely statues carved of lips thin and full, thighs with the girth of oak trees and thin as pencils. Men and women both. There was one thing you could say about the Devil; he didn’t seem to have a type.

He laughed next to her and, for a moment, it felt like electricity traced up her thigh to circle around her waist.

“On the contrary, I’m quite particular.”

“Is that why you keep them?”

“That is the ultimate punishment is it not? To be so close to who you love and not be able to touch them?”

That the statues were living was the worst part of the vision she’d snatched from him. In their bouts of lust, he sometimes lost himself and pulled her into memory. Or dream. She wasn’t sure which.

Perhaps that’s why the living stone cried with their faces turned toward his ever-shifting palace made of bone and transgressions against God.

“I don’t love you.”

“Hate. Love. It’s all the same.”

Smoke curled around her nose and she plucked the lit cigarette from his fingers.

“A filthy habit.”

“One I only share with you.”

Moira huffed and took a deep drag, savouring the burn within her lungs.

“The Devil is a liar.”

He lifted himself onto one arm and peered down at her with those pool-deep eyes of his.

“Eventually, you will join the garden.”

“And until then?”

He leaned down and Moira almost whimpered when he pressed a cold kiss to her brow.

“Until then, you will be the sacrifice.”

The Devil was a liar and she found herself alone.

The room grew cold far too quickly as though their rendezvous had never occurred. But sweat still clung to the small of her back. The smell of brimstone tickled the back of her nose. And Moira Sin Eater had added one more notch to her sentence.

She kissed her teeth and stubbed the cigarette out on the nightstand she had purchased just for him.

She charged her clients a pretty penny but everything he took from her, he got for free.