Sin Eater

"Jen, I knew about all your affairs. I knew about Jerry, Randall and Donnie. I mean, I never knew Randall and Donnie's names. But I've always known you were fucking them. I know you think you're smart and clever, but you were pretty sloppy.

"It didn't take much to follow you and learn about them. Jerry and Randall were scum, preying upon women. I did what I did, and there was no loss to society. In fact, what I did probably saved dozens of marriages and countless couples the heartbreak of dealing with those two assholes.

"Donnie sounds like he was a good kid but he came too close. It had been so long since Randall, and to see you relapse like that? It just killed me inside. I couldn't take it again. I couldn't take you disrespecting me again."

Jen was horrified. I knew she wouldn't understand.

"But... but I couldn't help it," she whispered. "She did it to me."

I shook my head, gently. "I did it for us. For Angie. Angie needed her mom. She didn't need the distractions, or god forbid, a broken home. There was no way I wouldn't protect what's mine. Whatever you may think of me, if you thought I was some schmuck you could walk all over, I didn't care; I would provide the stability and home we all needed. That we all deserved.

"Honey," I reached out to her and she jumped. "I know this may be a shock, but consider how shocked I was that you'd stray from me after all we'd been through. I've always allowed you to control this marriage and this house. I gave you that. I let you have your decisions, gladly, because I love you so much. I always have.

"But you couldn't control yourself. And I couldn't have that. So, when serpents appeared in our garden, well ... I did what I think any man would do and protected what was mine. I would never tolerate any threats to us or Angie."

I got up and walked to the sliding glass doors that opened on the back garden. I opened it and let the beautiful evening garden air in. It was my refuge.

"My patience for my family, for you, is endless. I'd never do anything to hurt you. But I will do everything I can to protect you.

"I wish you had kept your confession to yourself. As much as just knowing hurt me, I think I could've gotten over it and moved on with you by my side. Those sins were a part of your imperfection. I think it made you better, if that makes sense? For me, you were perfect in your imperfections.

"I wish you hadn't chosen to remove your sins. I think they were a means for you to control yourself; otherwise, you may have been so much worse. The big cock, the sex expert and the young lover. You'd had them all, plus my own love. I couldn't see you wanting to stray from our bed again, once you had tried all those types out there and they had lost their appeal once you sampled them.

"But now? They never happened. Will you go back and stray again? You could. And I can't have that loss of control again. It would finish us.

"So, yes, I removed all three after they had taken you from my arms. As people, they weren't of much value. But once I dissolved them and spread them out in the garden, I think they've brought both of us much more happiness. Really, I would've thought you'd picked up on it when I slipped and called the lemon tree 'Jerry' a few times." I chuckled.

Jen shuddered. I wondered if she puked up the risotto, would her sins be returned to her? Maybe that was too metaphysical a discussion for that moment.

"You're a monster," Jen croaked.

"I'm what you made me into, love. From watching you in university go from guy to guy, to spying on Donnie fumbling around trying to bang you doggie style in that fleabag motel. I'm a family man, and a father. And I'm completely dedicated to you."

Zolli had been silent almost the entire time. She seemed as transfixed as Jen.

"Carl Rhinehart, you have confessed. Will you accept my gift of relief of your sins?"

I sat and thought about it. I really wasn't all that sad about what I had done, since I had done it for the right reasons; for love, for family.

I thought about my garden, and how well it grew with the contributions the three had made. The garden that first started as a way to dispose of Jerry and his big cock, after I had kept him preserved in a barrel of quicklime. Would we even have it if Jen hadn't cheated? The avocados were really coming in this year; it would be a good harvest.

I thought about me. This was one of the few times I had exerted control in our marriage. I had my pride and Jen had wounded me deeply. That shaped me, too. As much as it hurt, I had moved past it and taken action. Did I want to just give up those shaping events? Would I be the same man? I didn't think so, and I doubted even more that I'd be a 'better' man.

But mostly, I thought about Jen. She was so quick to try to forget. I understood why she chose to accept Zolli's gift. Her ego was so rigid and dominating that she couldn't accept that she was imperfect. Which was silly, of course; even that was an imperfection. But if Jen's acceptance of the gift resulted in a tipping of the scales of dominance in our relationship, I was afraid that I would be lost and consumed by her.

All relationships balance the good and bad, the give and the take. All of us have the capacity for good and bad in us; when one is capable of great evil, then the other counters that with a contribution of great goodness.

I could imagine Jen arguing this point with me as a devil's advocate: 'what's wrong with having two good sides? Wouldn't that be a good thing?'

Sadly, no. One person has to be the disciplinarian. One person has to have the will to say 'no'. What could be more 'good' for a couple than wanting the best for their child? Wanting to protect their child? That would be a good thing, right? The best thing!

No. When you have that, then you get parents like poor Donnie's; ones that hover over their child, filling him with their own anxieties about the world and then ultimately driving the poor kid away; leaving them to misplace blame and wonder why they raised a broken child when 'all they wanted was what's best for him'. So, no. Having a couple unbalanced with both on the great goodness side can quickly become perverted and the opposite of what is intended.

There must be a balance.

So, there we were, in such a stable relationship and a newly-purified Jen was now a force for goodness, threatening to overwhelm our marriage and we were out of balance. She needed to know and understand what I was as capable of as a counter-balance. She needed to remember that. And that's what I had to be in order to avoid being consumed. There was no question about it; I would play this part for her; for us.

Was I afraid of Jen going to the police? Hardly. First of all, there were no bodies. There weren't even any genetic materials left to identify the bodies. I am a chemist after all, and a very, very good one if I may say so. The three had been reduced to ash and chemical components. There was no evidence I had ever been near any of them, except Jerry, and that was twenty years ago.

There was no evidence other than a confession, heard only by Jen and during her own confession of infidelity. Sure, there was the idea that if she did confess to that then I killed her lovers, but then Jen would have to confess her infidelity. And that was my most secure bargaining chip.

Jen was cleansed, absolved. There was no longer any infidelity. She was already starting to lose her memory of it. By the time she went to the police, what would be left? So, if there's no affairs, what would my motive be? How could the cops build a case when there's no evidence or motive?

Plus, even if she did have her memories, I knew Jen couldn't confess to having multiple affairs. She was just too proud to admit such imperfections.

It was a shame, really. I didn't want the risotto to go to waste.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

After thanking Zolli for her blessings, she left. I hoped it was the last we'd see of her.

We were all a little put off after that, so I ordered pizza. We talked quietly about acceptance and sacrifice. I could see Jen being affected by the forgetting. Already she had fewer worry lines around her eyes and mouth. God, she was beautiful.

That night, we made slow, sweet love. It was the best we'd shared in a while.

It worked, much as Zolli had promised. For Jen, her affairs never happened. They were gone. My situation was a bit more complex. To me, I remembered what she did; it was the core of my crime, after all. But we were moving forwards, not looking back. Jen did remember my confession; my sins still were on the books. But for her, it was cloudy. I asked Zolli for that, and she granted it. It was just another minor sin on my part. Jen had a void in her memory of why I had done what I did; so, I made some history; something that was more in line with Jen's malleable mind and expectations. I 'reminded' her that she had been assaulted by those different men at different times. She was told it was traumatic enough that she had blocked it from her mind, but I had avenged her. I told her I had done it for her. For Angie. For us. I could tell she liked that. And since she liked it, that made me happy and I could live with it. If I was going to play the role, I would do my best despite the potential cost.

In the following days and weeks, I'd catch Jen looking at me sometimes. And they weren't loving looks. It was fear. It was her knowing that I'd stop at nothing to protect what was mine. But those looks would soften and temper in time. Still, I worried at times that the knowledge gained of our sins wasn't worth the loss of our innocence.

I finally knew we would be OK when one day I came home from work and found Jen in the garden. She didn't know I was there, but she was thanking Donnie for the beautiful avocados.

The salad that night was delicious.

Afterword

The idea of forgiveness and relief of sin is one as old as man. The relief of sins accumulated over a lifetime was important enough to be incorporated into all cultures, evolving into an important rite. The rite of the sin eater, or a symbolic gesture of relief through hearing confession and then a ritualized eating of the sin, is shared around the world.

Tlazolteotl, the catalyst of this story, is the Aztec's embodiment of the sin eater. She would visit mortals once in their life to hear their confession and relieve the sinner of their burden so that the purified soul can move on. This didn't need to be a deathbed confession, but it could be. It depended upon the size and nature of the sin involved.

Important as she was in that role, she was actually far more complex. She was actually a quadripartite goddess, with four aspects and a dual nature. On one hand she would cause man to sin, and then with the other, she would remove the burden of that sin. She was also understood to be the manifestation of physical and spiritual filth, corruption and decay. Even her name is based on the idea of sin. 'Tlazolli' is the root Nahuatl word for vice, corruption and disease. Tlazolteotl is literally the 'goddess of filth'.

In her aspect of youth and beauty, Xōcotzin lures men to cheating and infidelity. As the older Tlahco, she spread chaos and disease, including venereal diseases to those who have engaged in illicit and forbidden sexual relations. This sister sowed uncertainty and threatened to disrupt social order. But as the still-older and more motherly aspect of Tēicuih, she absolved those sins she had caused and this was her role as a sin eater, granting forgiveness and absolution. Finally, in her oldest form, that of Tiyacapan, the fearsome crone, she corrupted and destroyed youth.

So, in her roles, she would gather man's sins and corruption and then redistribute them to the next generation in a never-ending cycle, in tune with the seasonal cycles.

Thank you as always for bearing with me in my stories. Your time, votes and comments are always appreciated.