Secret Sins Ch. 17

"When you say that you have no direction, I think you picture yourself in a little rowboat in the middle of the ocean, going nowhere. In fact, life is more like a river, where the current always takes you in its own unstoppable direction, subject to how one handles his paddles of course. Up until now, the Salvation Army has had control over the paddles of your boat, so you now feel directionless simply because it hasn't occurred to you to take hold of them yourself," she finished, somehow managing an actual grandmotherly grin.

"But none of that tells me what I'm supposed to be doing," I pointed out, though agreeable to her reasoning.

"Well, what were you expecting? Something in the mail from Brad Wall? It's not like that, especially not for us, and that's the beauty and the freedom of it. I mean, just think of it: The droll life the Army had laid out for you compared to the one you can now plan and build for yourself, and on your terms. It's not a lack of direction you feel; it's freedom."

I smiled. Well, I had to, didn't I? Once again, she'd made a lot of sense, and I felt better.

"And now I have a question for you," she teased.

"Uh oh," I joked.

"No, this is just something for you to ponder."

"Okay."

"How big do you think young Colin's cock is?"

"Oh boy."

"What?" she giggled.

"Seraphine, I don't want to mess with these-!"

"I'm not talking about messing with them, I'm just asking how big you think his cock is."

"I don't know," I told her, still horny from the Waterston Centre, and now picturing the nerdy looking, shy nineteen year old, his bookish glasses and the way he looked at us, especially Seraphine. I imagined myself giving him a big smile just before reaching down the front of his pants for a nice handful of his- "Stop getting me going, you know how I-!"

"Maybe you'd rather find out how big his dad's cock is? Oh my, it would be so much fun to watch those two tag-team you until-"

"Seraphine, I wanted to stop exploiting people like I've been doing."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't right!"

"Oh, get over yourself! If I had sweet little Elena in here spreading her legs for you, you'd be on that little muffin so fast you'd break your nose!"

"That's not fair! And I don't want to repeat the same mistakes we made with the Bennetts and Sumitra!"

"Tara, Sumitra was a psychologically abused woman. Now she's happy as Debesh's Dominant. She's in a good place now, and I don't consider that a mistake. As for the Bennetts, they're happy fucking one another all they want while aware that they have to be very careful not to get caught."

"You left them like that!?"

"I told you I was going to, and now their lives are a lot happier, too. How was that a mistake, and why would I undo what makes someone happy? You of all people should see the logic in that."

"What about his house?"

She only regarded me for a moment, blinking a few times as her mind worked furiously for an answer to that one. It was one of those times when I fully re-appreciate how truly beautiful Seraphine is.

"Ah ha!" I nevertheless said with a triumphant smile.

"In my defense," she solemnly began, the smallest smile at the corners of her mouth, "I never specifically told Joel to cannibalize his home. I simply told him to do whatever he had to do."

We stared at one another for a moment, then started laughing. It was hard arguing with someone who I loved like I love Seraphine, but I felt that my concerns were important. I wanted them addressed before we went any further.

"Is it just your religious beliefs?" she respectfully asked.

"Well... yeah. That and my sense of values and common morals."

"Values and common morals, aside from a few of the blatantly obvious ones, have come from religion."

"I know. Faith, is the cornerstone of civilization."

"Perhaps," Seraphine conceded, "but that's got nothing to do with us."

"Yes it does," I refuted. "We're part of civilization. We have a responsibility to-"

"No we don't. We have no responsibilities to anyone or anything, save for the ones we make up in our own heads or, worse, the ones we incorporate from other people's heads. You are an individual with the right to think and speak and act as you please. These rights do not come from your religion, or your government. These rights belong to you and have since the day you were born, and anybody who tells you different is either a fool, or is lying to you. Neither religion nor government can eradicate these basic, fundamental rights, even if they outlaw them, or imprison you for exercising them. Once you separate your idea of self from the herd, you'll see that I'm right."

With a short sigh, she continued with, "Tara, I've decided to avoid killing people if I can, just for you, but I'm not going to tell you I won't sexually exploit people we come across. I've been doing it for a long, long time, I enjoy it immensely, and I have no intention of stopping just yet. Now, I was planning on inviting young Colin and his nineteen year old cock back here a little later for a fun and exciting game of show and tell. He'll be doing the showing and I'll be doing the telling. Obviously, I'd love it if you could bring yourself to stay, but you have every right to choose the high road. Feel free to go keep Quentin company up front, if you'd like."

Quentin Falchurch was a good enough looking guy for his age. He looked a little bit like Kiefer Sutherland, but not so much in the way that he'd kill you in order to save his country. Actually, he sort of reminded me of Dad in the sense that he was an easy going personality, more apt to be smiling than not. Even apart from the influenced glazed look, he had a contented expression as he navigated Highway One, forearms laying on the edges of the big wheel, smiling good naturedly at me when I took the passenger seat. I still wore my uniform, less hat and with my blouse unbuttoned way too far for the average female Officer, but I still saw the respect it often elicits in his expression. I smiled back, still troubled by my discussion with Seraphine, but I found it hard to keep troubles in mind just then. We'd passed out of the land of the great field and, with the window open, the warm, fresh air along with the beautiful scenery seemed to have a positive effect on me.

"Love the open road," Quentin commented.

"Yeah."

"Sometimes I feel like I could do this forever," he said, "just keep on driving, just to see what's over the next hill."

"Hill?" I asked with perplexed features.

He looked at me as oddly as anyone might.

"Oh yeah," I said, "those upwards things that go downwards after. Only a month on the Prairies, and I forgot already."

He laughed uproariously at my joke, and I silently admired Seraphine's ability as I watched him. At that moment, she was probably encouraging Colin to explore his cock, or whatever. The obligatory mental visuals that came with that oddly particular thought were quite unfortunate for one who had heroically chosen the high road, and I couldn't help but realize that the one thing in Seraphine's brave new world that wouldn't change was my secret sin. Lieutenant Tara Watts, or just plain, Tara Watts, that albatross would probably be forever hung around my neck. Of course, in addition to my porn addiction and Lingerie fetish, I was also now a total slut and only wanted more and more, sometimes mere minutes after orgasm, my destructive guilt barely dry before I start thinking carnally once again. Worst of all, the teeth of my post orgasmic guilt were slowly losing their points, and that's what really worried me the most.

Nonetheless, I still felt somehow contented as I pondered this, watching the dotted white lines slip by the front of Quentin's Winnebago, one by one by one... Sitting there, I regretted leaving the Hurdles' marital status the way I had. You might think I'm nuts, that I'd let him off easy, or you might see that I'd decided what I had for them simply because I'd gotten turned on, the very thing I'd wanted to avoid. So, now my secret sin was inflicted on them as well, in one form or another. I somehow doubted Alessa would have any guilt issues over whatever she would put her husband through, and Hurdle deserved whatever that was, but the point is that my secret sin had decreed that part of their sentence, and not me. Despite how I'd felt when I left Hurdle's office, I'd failed them.

"Quentin, do you believe in God?"

He looked at me, my uniform, and showed a smile to the road before replying, "Well, yeah. I mean, you can't have all this without God."

He'd gestured expansively, mostly towards the other side of the windshield, but I knew he also meant his (and possibly my) current mood of contentment, and I smiled, understanding this on a deeper, spiritual level.

"But I don't believe in all the rest of this stuff," he said.

"What stuff?"

"Well..." he dithered, looking reservedly at my uniform again.

"Just say what's on your mind," I encouraged with a smile, the idea to strip out of my blouse in case it would make him feel better quickly smashed to a pulp in my mind.

"Well, it seems to me that having to go to Hell just because a guy does some stuff that he probably knew he shouldn't have been doing seems a little extreme. I mean, drowning in a lake of boiling blood just for screwing up? Hell, I don't treat my kids that way. Elena stole my fucking car last year, went out joyriding with her idiot friends, but things are what they are with her... It hasn't been easy, but I've forgiven her and we've all moved on. What the hell is God's problem?"

" ... That's a very good question," I quietly admitted.

"I mean, hell, back when I was a kid, when my mum used to make me go to church, I'd sit there and actually listen to the preacher delivering his sermon, and by the end of the service, I was more afraid of God than I was my parents, and my parents were strict. If he's such an almighty, merciful, loving God, how come we're all living in fear of him?"

"Another good question."

"But, you know... that's all just religion. I really don't think that anymore. I don't think God is like that. Well, if he is, he deserves a punch in the head, doesn't he?"

His blasphemous comment was without any particular wrath, but tragically understandable. I was dismayed that, as a Pastor, I had no answer. Then I remembered that I was no longer a pastor, only someone wearing the clothes of one. Maybe that was all I ever was, since I didn't have an answer before I'd resigned either. It made me wonder if any Pastor, any representative of God in any fashion, had any real answers to the questions Quentin was putting out.

"So, what do you think God is like?" I asked.

"I dunno." He candidly replied, shrugging his shoulders as he adjusted our vector to avoid some rather untidy roadkill. "I got a buddy at work... nice guy. His name is Ram-something or other. I just call him Ram. Anyway, he's Hindu, and we talk about stuff sometimes. I don't know how, but his religion seems to make a lot more sense than the Pope's stories."

"You're Roman Catholic?"

"My mother was," he smirked,

"Well, there are more Christian religions than the Catholic church," I put in. "And some of them don't even recognize Roman Catholicism as being Christian."

"Nope," he said, smiling as he shook his head. "They all follow the same Bible."

"The Bible is a lot older than Catholicism," I informed.

"Doesn't matter. The KJV may only be a translation, but it's the most widely accepted translation by all the denominations. Anyway, everyone's heard the stories about all the books that never made it into the Bible, not to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls, so who knows what other information has been withheld from us common people."

"You seem pretty well informed," I complimented.

"I educated myself a little. I'm no bible scholar, but I don't think I'm an idiot either, and nor do I think that the religious establishment is giving us the real story on God, or Jesus. Or ourselves and where we really come from. In fact, a lot of the stuff I ended up reading suggested there's lots of gods, and there's some stuff that suggests the one that most people worship... well, he's not a very nice fuckin' guy. S'cuse my language, Lieutenant Watts, and I don't mean to offend you with any of this. You know what they say about religion and politics, right?"

" ... Keep offending me."

A little while later, I was half watching the television, Elena asleep in her top bunk, her mother asleep in Colin's lower one. I was mostly thinking about the interesting conversation Quentin and I had. Along with the things Seraphine had been telling me, his words, the candid words of the common man, had created a sort of tipping point. In my mind, I was teetering on the very edge of a personal, spiritual revolution, something that I then realized as having begun on my way to the Funraiser that Saturday night. The best way I can describe it would be as a sort of disconnect from God. All I'd been taught and believed as a given was suddenly evenly balanced against the weight of what amounted to Man's sense.

I was so deeply entrenched in thought over this that I was startled when Elena hopped softly down from her bunk. She wore a pair of close fitting, pale purple shorts that looked very soft and a lot smaller than what I would ever have gotten away with wearing around the house. Her little white cammie was as close fitting and, without a bra, her boobs were very similar in size and shape to Seraphine's. She saw me in front of the TV, smiled and walked over to throw herself down on the little couch beside me.

Quentin's eighteen year old daughter was cute, and her large green eyes were a nice compliment to her long, light brown hair. When she'd served our drinks earlier, Seraphine had commented that her mother's long curves, though not yet matured, looked very good on the girl's otherwise fit looking body, and she was right.

"So, what were you and Daddy talking about?" she asked with a bright, careless smile and what she may have thought was a surreptitious look down my blouse.

Now that she was looking right at me, rather than engaged in the impersonal act of serving us, I was a little startled at first when she didn't quite seem to be under Seraphine's influence. Easily gaining her eyes, I took a quick tour of her mind, and what I found was an open personality that had some cognitive problems. Thinking of her father's comments about how she'd stolen his car, her memories of that incident popped up for me as though they were on file, showing me that her so-called friends had easily talked her into doing something she never would have done on her own. They knew her disadvantage, but they took advantage, and it was far from the only time. In addition, there were other behavioural problems that didn't involve her friends, chief among them was her tendency to dress a little scantily and an open curiosity about all things sexual. But her father had forgiven her about the car as he'd forgiven her every other thing. He'd understood what had happened and why, but never really punished her for it, or a lot of the things she'd done because he knew that, half the time, she honestly didn't know any better. He only doggedly tried his best to teach her better, and then move on like he'd said. If Quentin Falchurch was big enough to do that, what in hell was God's problem?

"We talked about God."

"Oh. Boring."

"Not if you have a guilty conscience," I said.

"But, aren't you in the Salvation Army?"

"Yes," I lied for whatever reason.

Then she looked me up and down, openly inspecting my uniform before deciding, "That's kinda cool. You're beautiful."

"Thank you, Elena. So are you."

Her grin was dialed up to a grateful smile at the return compliment before asking, "How old are you?"

"Twenty."

After some quick finger arithmetic, Elena said, "You're only two years older than I am."

"Yup"

"Wow. How did you become Salvation Army so young?"

I shrugged, saying with a smile, "It just happened during a lot of late night studying in the laundry room."

She seemed unsure of how to answer to this, finally deciding on, "Would you like to be my friend?"

"Sure I would," I told her as though she were ten years old because, in a sense, she was.

"That's awesome!" she grinned, obviously quite sincere in her happiness as she practically wrung her hands.

To the sound of her brother's erotic groan from the rear bed, I replied, "The pleasure's all mine, Elena."

"What was that?" she asked, curiously looking over my shoulder.

"Don't worry about that right now," I advised.

She simply nodded, a silence passing between us as we listened to more erotic groans, and I took better note of just how appetizing she was. But her smile seemed to wilt until it turned to a worried frown.

"Lieutenant?"

"Yes?"

"Um... sometimes, in bed, I touch my... my special area. Is that okay? I won't go to Hell for that, will I?"

" ... No, Elena. You won't go to hell for that."

And then she was smiling again, a smile of pure innocence that made me believe my answer, a beautiful smile that made me want to kiss her, to make out with her, to make her orgasm just so I could watch her lovely innocent face when she did.

"Um, do you touch yourself?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," I assured her.

"Mmm... You're so... pretty."

I suddenly realized that she'd had my eyes and was swooning. I looked away and she giggled a little mindlessly before cuddling up against me to watch TV, leaving me to wonder if her last comments might have come from somewhere underneath Seraphine's light influence.

We'd been stopped, lying dormant in a Walmart parking lot on Winnipeg's east side. I'd only just woken up less than a half hour earlier when Quentin had pulled off the main route for Gas, both me and Elena having passed out in front of the TV. Now that we were again fully fueled, he slept in Elena's bunk while his wife continued sleeping just below him. Making my way back to the rear of the RV, I had no idea where Colin was sleeping.

As I should have guessed, Colin was in bed with Seraphine, sleeping soundly under the covers. She was reading a novel.

"Hey, sweetie pie. Now's your chance."

"What?"

She gestured to Colin, to his general midsection with a grin and a raised brow.

Trying not to laugh at her slightly comical expression, I asked, "Can you just send him out now?"

"No, I wanted to have him perform for me again later, maybe after this chapter."

"Seraphine, c'mon," I tried not to whine. "I want to go back to sleep."

"So, climb in."

"No, there's no room, will you please send him out?"

" ... Oh, fine, since you actually said please and all. Colin... Colin wake up."

"Hmm-mmmm?"

"Yes, wake up and get out, honey."

"I- uh, okay," the nerdy teen managed.

He looked up at me with dreaded humiliation, though he'd been told and was already moving. Assuming from this that he was naked, I turned my back for him so he could at least put on some of what he'd come in wearing.

"How considerate," she teased.

"You might try it sometime," I shot back.

"Considerest the beam that is in thine own eye."

My back to her as well, I only shook my head a little, rolling my eyes.

"So, did you have fun with Elena?" she asked after Colin left.

"We watched TV."

"You fell asleep together," she said, turning the light out while I finished stripping to my panties. "It actually looked adorable."

She was being sincere, and I once again found myself trying not to smile as I took Colin's place in bed beside her. Her reading light was a poor help to what little the parking lot's overhead nighttime security lights provided, even with the blinds open.