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Layaway
Gregory Liffick
Sebastian had done something very bad, something he felt was almost unforgivable. He had been in an argument with his live-in girlfriend and had completely lost his cool for the first time in his life and hit her so hard in the face that he had knocked out one of her teeth. She had fallen to the floor bleeding and crying and holding her hand to her cheek. When she had called the local county sheriff, Sebastian had fled.
For the last couple of hours he had walked aimlessly down one dirt road after another, further and further away from the rural trailer they shared, feeling extremely guilty and fearful that a patrol car would pull up to him at any moment, siren blaring and lights flashing, and take him into custody for assault and battery. Growing exhausted from walking and from his churning emotions, he sat down on the cement steps of an old backwoods church.
Sebastian might have assumed that the church was abandoned from its isolated location and its appearance. There was no other structure with two miles of it and it looked on the verge of falling down, its timbers sagging and rotting and its paint peeling. Still, the doors of the church were open and Sebastian could hear that someone was inside going about their business. Something drew him inside.
He found the pastor of the church, an old-fashioned dressed, redneck looking man, near a makeshift altar and approached him. “Can I speak with you, sir?” Sebastian asked, a bit desperately, hoping for a chance to unburden his feelings. “Yes, of course, son,” replied the pastor, seeming surprised by and unready for company, but open to speaking with another soul. The pastor led him through a small door in the back of the church to a storeroom that doubled as his office of sorts.
The pastor had Sebastian sit in a chair in front of his desk and he sat down behind it. “So, what can I do for you, son?” asked the pastor, concerned and eager to help. “You seem very troubled by something.”
“I did something very bad today...something completely out of character for me,” Sebastian painfully explained.
“I see,” nodded the pastor. “Go on.”
“I got very mad at my girlfriend...the girl I really love...and I assaulted her...hitting her in the face so hard I knocked out a tooth,” Sebastian continued.
“That is very serious,” responded the pastor, rubbing his chin with troubled consideration.
“Something drew me in here...maybe a chance to unburden myself...get my guilty feelings off my chest...to someone,” said Sebastian.
“I’m glad you came in and talked to me,” the pastor smiled with genuine compassion.
“I feel like what I did is almost unforgivable,” said Sebastian, looking very ashamed.
“What you did is very bad...but I think God can forgive you,” the pastor assured Sebastian, “If you are willing to truly make a sacrifice to him.”
“I’m willing to make whatever sacrifice you ask. I came in here hoping that there was a way that you...God...could help me forgive myself and face up to what I did...to my girlfriend...to the police...whoever,” Sebastian almost plead.
“Good, son,” smiled the pastor again, pleased at Sebastian’s answer.
There was a silent pause, as the pastor seemed to think long and hard, pondering how to help Sebastian. “Give me your hand, son...the hand you hit your girlfriend with,” the pastor finally requested, Sebastian somewhat puzzled. “This hand?” Sebastian asked, wavering a little, but showing the pastor his right hand.
“Yes, son. Give me your right hand...the offending hand,” directed the pastor, his face intent and full of authority. Sebastian hesitated, and the pastor insisted, “Please, son...do what I ask. This is important. I want to help you.”
Sebastian was unsure and slightly shaking, but held out his hand to the pastor. The pastor grasped Sebastian’s right hand in his left hand, as if to pray with him or console him, Sebastian feeling slightly relieved. In an instant, though, the pastor forced Sebastian’s hand down onto the desk between them. Before Sebastian could react or try to pull his hand away from the man‘s grasp, the pastor pulled a large, machete like knife, the kind used to clear brush in the backwoods, from somewhere under the desk with his right hand and in one stroke chopped off Sebastian’s hand at the wrist.
Sebastian screamed in shock and pain, blood pouring from his wrist. “What in the hell did you do?!” Sebastian bellowed in agony and disbelief, trying to stop the bleeding by holding his shirt to the wound with his other hand.
“You have made a payment to the lord for your sin,” said the pastor, a look of religious ecstasy and invigorating purpose about him. “I have taken away the offending part of you and given it to God.”
“You’re crazy!” Sebastian shrieked, rising unsteadily from his seat at the desk.
“If another part of your body offends God, return and we will make further payment...further sacrifice,” said the pastor in a kind of chant, raising his arms to the ceiling as if in the glow of grace. “We will buy your eternal soul away from the devil...one part at a time.”
Sebastian ran from the office and the church, already growing weak from loss of blood, and now pleading for help of a different kind.
