Achates
By: Ryder Pittz
Tags: Fiction, Christianity, Culture

Brother John tottered into the cloister, drunk on the hymns of St. Peter. The rain poured into the courtyard, moisture with no other alternative collected itself on his brow. A bible lay at the brother’s feet, fallen open and soggy in the night. The brother peered out into the wet, rubbed his bald head for luck, and downed the remaining dregs from his cup.

“John is that you?” the voice echoed in the hall, echoed in the humid air. “John, you’ll catch a cold again if you — ”

“Aye?” John slurred, looking for the source of the voice. His eyes fell on the brimmed hat shadowing the face of Father Achates. The Father stood barely above eye level of the sitting brother, but he stiffened with the air of a disciplined man, aided with the fervent belief in the abolition of gluttony, that most grievous of the seven deadly sins.

“Is that a holy book at your feet, brother?” John reached down to pick the soaking book up, but the Father grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back into his seat. “Are you so superior to the word and decree of the lord,” the Father continued, “that you must desecrate it and tower over it?”

John blinked, then rubbed his eyes. With reality back in focus, he managed to stammer, “No, Father.”

“Then why, John? Why do you stain the word of God with dirt and drool?” Achates picked the book up by the corner and shook the collected puddle from its pages. He snapped the book shut and tucked beneath his arm.

“Was reading, Father.” John pushed himself up from his perch and swayed as his feet struggled to get underneath him. “Studying. Freshening myself up on Job when the rain caught my eye. Swept me up. Distracted me, Father.” John stumbled and reached for Achates, who caught the brother in his arms.

“Are you well, Brother?” The Father pulled the drunk man into his arms and made to turn him towards the dormitories.

“Always have loved the rain,” Brother John whispered staring out into the courtyard. He stood up straight and looked Father Achates in the eye. The Father started to turn and walk away but the Brother took a step forward and retched, soiling the Father’s robes. John fell to the ground, vomiting, as the Father reeled in disgust, clenching his nose at the stench.

John lurched again and again on the ground before regaining his senses. Through ragged breaths he tried to talk, “I’m sorry Father…Forgive me, I didn’t mean — ”

“Didn’t mean!” The Father stood three feet taller. “You wretched piece of filth! You say you love the rain, but you fail to understand this, brother. The Lord sends this rain as a punishment! It is fallacy to think it heals you, it merely misguides you.” The Father put a finger in John’s face. “Devout and pious men must suffer the fear and the wet because of you drunkards, you gluttons!” John began to weep and the Father screamed into the night, then knelt beside the Brother. He spoke gently, “Weep not from your eyes, John. Do you not realize your pain falls from the sky at this very moment? I pray for the likes of so called men like you.”

The Father put a hand on John’s shoulder and wiped vomit from the Brother’s cheek. He stood and strode to the edge of the courtyard, hands clasped behind his back. The two men reveled in the silence, one standing, the other still on the ground.

“Are you familiar with the book of Genesis, John?” Achates’ voice was soft, almost indecipherable as the wind ran through the cloister.

“Of course, Father.”

“Of course, you say.” The Father turned to the Brother. “Then you can tell me, after six days of creating, what did the Lord do?”

Brother John looked up without understanding, “He rested, but surely, Father, you must know that.”

Achates snapped, “What I know is neither here nor there, John. It is true, yes, our Lord rested on the seventh day, but it is not because of His labor on the previous six.”

“It isn’t?”

“No, you fool,” Achates hissed, “Do you truly believe the Lord, in His omnipotence, needed rest?” The Father took two quick steps forward and towered over the drunk man. “No. He merely witnessed something that shook Him to His core. On the seventh day, He wept. He gathered His might, for the greatest work was to come on the eighth day.”

“The eighth day, Father?”

“On the eighth day, God looked down on a bunch of drunks. This angered Him to no end; His sadness and pity left Him, only to be replaced with fury. He waved his hands and proclaimed, ‘Those who be pious and devout, strike down these sinners from my sight. Cast them aside as Satan’s whelps, for they are good for naught.’”

John screamed as Achates struck him over and over with the holy book in his hands. The blows came down harder as the brother grew limp. The cloister flooded and Achates stood up, breathing no harder than he had before. John’s broken body lay face down, blood pouring from his ears into the water flowing past.

Father Achates made the sign of the cross and licked the blood from his hands. He wrestled open the bible, its spine bent from where it had collided with John’s skull. The Father’s hat had fallen off in his rage, he bent down to pick it up. He shook the water from its brim and donned it once more, shadowing his face in the dawn light.

He peered at the words in front of him, the words John had been studying. He read aloud, “Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves, therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty. He binds up, but He wounds, His hands heal, but also shatter.”

Achates marched down the hall, hands clasped behind his back. The rain stopped and the sun rose again to beat down on this Holy land.