Story code: ST-000179
Part 3: The Hypocrite’s Hunger
Elias let out a low, ragged whimper. The sound was swallowed instantly by the oppressive, dead air of the boarded-up gym. I watched a single bead of sweat slide down his nose and splash against the splintered floorboards, blooming right next to a fresh smear of blood from his torn knuckles. His arms were vibrating violently, the muscles seizing under the impossible strain. Beside him, David’s face was completely drained of color, his jaw clamped so tight I could hear his teeth grinding together.
They were breaking. And the man standing in front of me, draped in a custom-tailored suit and radiating the crisp scent of peppermint and expensive cologne, was using their pain as leverage.
Silas thrust his hand forward again. The heavy silver Zippo lighter gleamed under the harsh overhead bulb, resting next to the crumpled, blue-inked pages of the letter I had written to Julian.
“Take them,” Silas repeated. His voice was still low, still carrying that smooth, practiced baritone of a revival preacher, but there was a new edge to it. A subtle tremor.
I reached out, my own hands trembling from exhaustion. My fingers brushed the cool metal of the lighter and the worn edges of the paper. I tried to pull them away, to take the items, but Silas didn’t let go. His thumb clamped down over mine, pinning my hand to his.
The physical contact sent a jolt of shock up my arm. His skin was burning hot. The man who hadn’t shed a single drop of sweat during two hours in a sweltering, unventilated room felt like he was running a fever.
I looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time since he had pinned me to the floor. I expected to see the cold, detached fury of a righteous warden. Instead, his pupils were blown wide, eating up the irises. He wasn’t looking at my eyes. His gaze was fixated on my mouth, his chest rising and falling in shallow, rapid hitches that completely betrayed his immaculate posture.
“Before you burn it,” Silas whispered, leaning in so close that the silver crucifix dangling from his neck brushed against my collarbone. “I want you to tell them exactly what you did. I want you to describe the filth. The touching. The things you did in the dark when you thought no one was watching.”
My brow furrowed. I stared at him, my mind racing to process the demand. *The touching? The things in the dark?*
I thought back to the letter crumpled in his grip. There was nothing in there about the dark. I had written to Julian about how much I missed sitting on his porch, listening to his terrible mixtapes, and how scared I was of being sent away. It was a confession of fear and loneliness, of missing the only person who made me feel safe. There was no explicit physical detail because there hadn’t been any.
Silas wasn’t reading my letter. He was projecting his own fantasies onto it.
Growing up on the Eastside, you didn’t survive by being the strongest; you survived by being the most observant. You learned to read the quiet tells of dangerous men before they made their move. You learned that a twitching jaw meant a fist was coming, that an overly friendly smile from a cop meant you were already getting locked up. And you learned how to spot an addict. An addict didn’t just want their fix; they obsessed over it, their whole body vibrating with a pathetic, hungry desperation they couldn’t hide.
Silas was an addict. And his drug wasn’t salvation.
The realization hit me like a physical blow, wiping away the exhaustion in my muscles and replacing it with a sharp, dangerous clarity. He hadn’t brought me into the center of the room to cleanse me. He brought me up here to feed his own obsession. He wanted to hear the details because he was desperate to live them vicariously.
“You memorized it, didn’t you?” I asked. My voice wasn’t shaking anymore. It dropped to a flat, hard register-the tone I used when checking someone trying to run a hustle on my block.
Silas’s breath caught. “Excuse me?”
“The letter,” I said, stepping half an inch closer, refusing to break eye contact. “You didn’t just read it once to check for contraband. You read it over and over. You memorized my handwriting. You memorized his name.”
“I study the tactics of the enemy,” Silas hissed, his grip on my hand tightening painfully. “To purge the rot from my flock-”
“No,” I interrupted, cutting him off with a bluntness that made David gasp from the floor. You don’t disrespect the shot-caller, not unless you have the upper hand. And suddenly, looking at the frantic pulse hammering against Silas’s stiff white collar, I knew I had it. “You don’t care about my soul, Silas. You’re asking about the dark because that’s where your head is at.”
“Silence your blasphemy,” Silas ordered. He tried to pull his hand back, to restore the physical distance between us, but this time, I was the one who held on. I gripped his thumb, trapping his hand against mine.
“You didn’t find any filth in my letter, so you’re making it up,” I pushed, my voice rising just enough for the trembling boys on the floor to hear every word. “You want to know if our hands touched. You want to know what it felt like. You’ve been obsessing over it since the moment you opened my bag.”
“Let go of me!” Silas commanded, but he didn’t shout. He couldn’t. His voice was a thin, reedy gasp, strangled by panic.
“You’re not trying to beat the sin out of me,” I said, stepping fully into his space, forcing him to look down at me. “You’re trying to beat it out of yourself. You smell like expensive cologne and you walk around in a tailored suit, but underneath all that, you’re just starving. You want to know what it’s like to actually want another guy without hating yourself for it.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Even the ragged breathing of the boys on the floor seemed to stop.
Silas stared at me, the immaculate, terrifying mask of the righteous savior shattering into a million jagged pieces. The color drained from his face, only to be replaced by an ugly, mottled red that crept up his neck and swallowed his jawline. His eyes darted wildly toward the locked plywood doors, his chest heaving as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. He looked absolutely terrified that someone else might have heard the filthy, undeniable truth of his own craving.
I snatched the letter and the lighter from his loosened, shaking grip, holding the unlit Zippo inches from his face.
“I can tell you every detail,” I whispered, holding his panicked gaze. “Is that what you really want, Silas?”