FICTION / Penance / Olivia Loccisano
Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash
As Juanita wrapped the tourniquet around the elderly man’s hairy arm exposing a vivid blue vein, she wondered why she had become a phlebotomist. Perhaps it was her curiosity of the exploration of medical science, or perhaps it was her unquenching thirst for human blood.
She watched as the glorious liquid flowed through the puncture point into five vials, two of which she would take home to drink. She took that weekend off from work, purposely for getting her forgiveness. She had always believed in forgiveness, ever since she was a child at Catholic School. She remembered her First Holy Communion vividly: walking down the hard granite floor hesitantly as she wondered what Christ’s Body would taste like. She imagined a fleshy or meaty texture and taste, like the carne asada her abuela used to make. She was disappointed when it tasted like a stale ice cream cone, and the wine, Christ’s blood, like vinegar.
Juanita grew up at St. Rosa’s Home for Girls, a place where her and Antonella would play on the monkey bars until their stomachs were sore from laughing. Her thirst for blood began after her Communion when that same night, she was in the sacristy with Father Henry. He kissed her neck in privacy and did things she prohibits to name or describe to this day. Twenty years later, she knelt with the red crucifix he gave her thinking back to her first taste of blood.
It was when Antonella fell off the monkey bars onto the rocky pavement, exposing a wound on her knee. The scar broke open and blood dribbled down her shin. Juanita remembered fondly licking it like an animal from the bottom of the sandpaper shin to the top of the wound, to which Antonella screamed in horror:
“That stings!” she wailed and was spooked by Juanita’s behaviour. Embarrassment followed Juanita but this was overtaken by the satisfaction of something that had been released inside of her, unleashed like a caged and hungry dog. Forgiveness, she thought. Antonella would forgive her for this uncanny action, but she never did. The two would never speak again.
Juanita had confessed many times in the confessional for her sins. Every time she had an unholy thought, she went to confession. Every time she told a lie, she went to confession. Every time she had premarital sex; she went to confession. And penance was the same; the priest would tell her to pray some number of decades of the rosary which she did on the red crucifix Father Henry had gifted her as a child.
She clasped the rosary in her hands. She wanted to forgive Father Henry for what he had done to her, but she did not know how. She wondered if he had confessed for his sins, but that was not enough for Juanita. She needed him to confess to her, so that she, herself, could give him penance. When her memory of this was becoming deeper and darker, she drove to his church planning what she would say like a well-rehearsed script.
Entering the church was a dichotomy of recollection when she imagined her plan in her head. She remembered the alabaster saints much larger and overpowering when she was a child. They were now statuettes along the sides of the pews greeting her.
In the confession booth, Juanita murmured against the mesh wooden barrier, “Forgive me Father… for it has been seven months since my last confession,” and the priest encouraged her to continue.
“I have come for the absolution of your sins,” she said as she had practiced.
Father Henry was quiet. Juanita took this as his confusion, and she, well rehearsed, had answered promptly to his silence.
“It is Juanita,” she continued. And Father Henry told her he was sorry but did not know the woman.
She continued, “You committed a sin against a child long ago. I have come to forgive you for this sin.”
“I have committed no sin of the sort,” the priest continued, to which Juanita held up the red crucifix rosary he had given her the day of her First Communion, hoping to entice his memory.
Immediately, the priest came out of the confessional and swiped open the purple curtain to reveal himself to her. Father Henry looked much older than she had imagined. Of course she knew he would age, but something about his sagging face made it seem like time had pressed upon him like a pestle, catapulting him into senescence
Juanita followed him as he walked towards the altar with his back turned to her, asking her to leave. She had not planned for this.
“Please,” she begged, “I need to forgive you.”
He turned to her, “I do not know what your childhood imagination has led you to believe, but I never harmed you.”
Juanita walked close to Father Henry so that the two were facing each other. She admired how old he had gotten, the wrinkles in his drooping face like lines on a road map. She traced her gaze where they winded and led.
Feeling tenderness for the old man, Juanita pushed her lips to his neck and kissed him gently. The priest was smitten and remained still as he closed his eyes in forbidden fantasy. She kissed him once more, feeling the glaze of sweat that coated her lips.
“I need to forgive you,” she murmured again, this time more quietly.
Father Henry backed his face away softly, “I have never committed a sin against a child.”
It was then that Juanita opened her mouth. She clamped her teeth down into Father Henry’s neck. Her deep tusks penetrated richly into him as he screamed in agony and as she sucked the heavenly blood that flowed out of him.
Father Henry fell onto the cold marble steps, his body making a loud thud that echoed against the church walls. Juanita sat down beside him and held the man across her lap, the visual emulating Michelangelo’s Pietà. Delicately, she looked at the wound and bit down again and further sucked on his blood, chewing the priest’s flesh. The thrill was much more powerful than the first time she tasted blood on Antonella’s knee, a rush she thought she would never feel again.
Once she had been satisfied, she let go of Father Henry’s hefty body and held the rosary above him, feeling pity for the man: he had done this to himself. She watched the red crucifix dangle over him for a moment before she dropped it onto his chest. Juanita then, walked down the aisle, much less hesitantly than she did as a child and left through the door.
That night, Juanita stood at her closet as she flipped through clothes. As she swiped through the garments, she reached the last piece of clothing on the rack: the white satin Communion dress she wore when she was eight years old. Through all these years it had somehow maintained its sheer white tint. As Juanita pulled the dress toward her, she held it close to her face and took in a deep breath of redemption.
Olivia Loccisano is a writer and filmmaker from Toronto, Canada. Her work centers around transformations of the body, specifically through dark fantasy, horror and magical realism. Through storytelling, she explores how young women and children navigate strange realms of life through their own imagination and rituals.
