CHAPTER 14

DESTINY

It was almost a week after Nora Medora left Brock at the altar when he called and asked if he could take me to dinner. I didn’t hesitate to say yes, even though I didn’t know whether it was actually a date or if it was a way to discuss what he had told me at his failed marriage ceremony. It turned out to be both. Well, sort of.

Brock knew I was mostly vegetarian, so he took me to a Thai restaurant that had several vegetarian options. I ordered a delicious curry tofu dish. Brock got an amazing, stir-fried vegetable entree and we split the two dishes between us. He also ordered a dozen tasty vegetable spring rolls. He insisted I take home what we didn’t devour, and it was exactly half.

Brock made a face as he tried tofu for the first time. It made me laugh. “You don’t like it?”

“The texture’s a little weird.”

“It’s just bean curd. I’ve seen you eat cheese curd.”

“You are comparing apples with oranges.”

“No, I’m not. I’m comparing beans and cheese.”

We both laughed. After another couple bites, he said it wasn’t bad. But I doubted tofu would be on his next grocery list.

“Nora gave me the go ahead to fill you in on everything,” Brock said as he regarded me with his gentle but intense eyes. Such a strange, intriguing combination were his windows to the soul.

 “Okay,” I said, dumbly.

“Can you promise me to keep it between us?” Brock asked.

“Yes,” I said emphatically.

“What happens here, stays here,” Brock said, gesturing back and forth from me to him with a pointed index finger.

“Absolutely,” I declared as disappointment settled in. I now figured this was strictly a business type meeting. However, I also was excited to be included in a situation of intrigue.

“Nora has been undercover in Jezebel Black’s cult for around nine months now,” Brock informed me.

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed, stunned. “So you’re saying she belongs to Jezebel Black’s satanic cult, or whatever it is?”

“She does,” Brock said with a hard edge coming into his voice. “Apparently, she went through a pretty insane initiation ritual. She wasn’t ready to give me details, but she convinced Jezebel to the point that she is now not only a part of the cult, but also Jezebel’s lover and a main confidant.”

My mind was reeling as it flashed back to when Nora seemed on the verge of sexually assaulting me, and how she seemed demon possessed. Then I thought of Jezebel Black. When I knew her a decade ago from the Minneapolis club scene, she used to mock and harass us girls who were into other girls. Now Jezebel was not only intimate with another woman, she was intimate with Nora Medora.

“So Nora is into other women?” I asked, trying to clarify a contradictory situation. Brock had told me that Nora had told him she thought same sex couplings were gross. Yet her aggressive kissing and groping with me felt pretty real. Now she’s supposedly pretending to be Jezebel Black’s lover. “How do you feel about this, Brock?”

“You mean this girl we will be looking after?”

“No,” I said, incredulous. “You almost married Nora just days ago. Now you find out she was sleeping with an occult high priestess.”

“It is a bit disheartening,” he said, matter-of-factly as he casually took a sip of water.

I leaned my arms on the table as my mouth hung open. His eyebrows arched as he looked at me.

“Look, Dee,” he said. “You have to understand the dynamic of our relationship. She’s as distant as another human being can be and hard to really know. She did tell me that Jezebel is the only person she was intimate with since she and I have been together. But she did it strictly for her job.”

“Some job,” I said sarcastically. “Did she tell you about her and me?”

“What about you and Nora?”

I told him all about what she did to me on the night of the attack, chronicling every detail.

“Dee, why didn’t you tell me?” Brock asked softly, putting a hand over mine.

“Because she apologized,” I told him. “Then we had a pretty decent conversation afterward. But still, Brock, I can’t fathom why you were gonna marry her.”

“I’ve tried to tell you before that I felt like she’s the only woman I deserve.”

“What about me?” I heard my mouth say before my brain could stop it. “I mean, I have a pretty dark past myself.”

Brock looked at me with wide, almost frightened eyes. His hand, which still covered mine, squeezed gently and then released before he leaned back in his chair with a smile.

“Would you believe the other day when Nora left me at the altar, she told me I should trust you with my secret and let you decide if it’s too dark or not?”

“I agree,” I said enthusiastically as my heart soared with the possibility of pursuing a romantic relationship with Brock.

“I can’t tell you here,” Brock said. “I don’t want to go for a ride and tell you either. Just out of the slim possibility that my car is bugged.”

“When and where then?”

“Tomorrow before fellowship,” Brock said. “The beautiful spot down by the creek.”

“How early should I be?”

“How about a half hour?” he suggested. “That should be plenty of time. Then you’ll have plenty of time to ask God how to get away from me.”

“Oh, come on,” I replied. “I know you said it had to do with violence. But unless you tell me it was against women or children, I can’t imagine not being accepting as well as forgiving of it.”

“No, of course, it wasn’t,” Brock said, looking around nervously. “No more about it till tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” I replied.

I went home on cloud nine at the prospect of a future with Brock. Apparently, Nora approved of us becoming a couple. That was strange, considering how jealous she had seemed. Yet my mind was still snagging on the possibility of Brock’s dark past actually being too twisted to accept. Tomorrow couldn’t get here soon enough.

BROCK

My heart raced as Destiny and I walked to the beautiful spot by the creek shrouded with majestic cottonwood and pine trees. What if she freaked and went to the authorities? I guess that was a chance I needed to take. Maybe I deserved to go to prison. Destiny could very well end up being the love of my life, but she needed to know this part of my past before I would feel comfortable courting her.

“Here we are,” I said with a big sigh.

“Here we are,” she replied with a coy smile.

I put my hands in my pockets and stared at the rippling water of the creek.

“Spill it, Storm,” Destiny said as she playfully bumped into me with her hip. Her abruptness was unsettling, as it reminded me of Nora. But then looking into her bright blue, twinkling eyes, I couldn’t help smiling before I began. “I had a long lousy night of sleep between thinking about Nora in a satanic cult, the human sacrifice girl, and our meeting today.”

“Shall we sit?” I suggested, waving a hand at a rustic looking wooden bench. We sat side by side with Destiny’s light yellow sundress sliding up above her knees as she crossed one shapely leg over the other. She had kicked off her shoes, and her foot ever so slightly touched my Docker covered calf. I was having trouble focusing.

“Brock,” Destiny said quietly. “You can trust me.”

I looked at her wide, earnest eyes and nodded.

“Do you remember me telling you about my brother dying of AIDS?” I asked.

“Of course,” she replied. “He was your oldest brother, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the youngest of seven total?”

“Right,” I said. “When my brother was dying, my family rejected him because he was gay. I suspect they saw AIDS as some type of judgement against him. That’s why I’ve rejected my family. I haven’t seen or talked to any of them in over ten years. Ron was scared and alone as he died from that horrible disease. Nobody from my immediate family visited him.”

“You visited him, though, right?”

“Yes, I was the only one,” I replied with a nod. “Ironically, because of our age difference, I got to know him better when he was dying than when he was healthy. How sad is that?”

“Pretty sad, definitely.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So we talked about everything. He told me how he intended to become a priest when he was young. He knew early on that he was gay, and he was going to choose to serve God and take a vow of celibacy rather than follow his sexual instincts. Instead, he was seduced into having sex with our parish priest when he was barely a teenager. To make a long, complicated story short, he ultimately gave up the idea of the priesthood. He managed restaurants instead and embraced his homosexual desires, often promiscuously.

“So, after my brother died, I investigated our former parish priest. I discovered what looked like a lot of cover-ups of deviant behavior. I found out he was actually still an active priest at a church in Michigan. So, I grew my beard out, colored my hair blond, and paid him a visit. I had a gun with a silencer. God as my witness, I didn’t intend to kill him, just scare him.”

I looked at Destiny, and her face looked frightened as she sat stone-still. Her mouth gaped open. I froze as I pondered what she must be thinking.

“Go on, Brock,” she said soothingly as she gently touched my knee.

“I broke into his house in the middle of the night. As he snored his bedroom, I snooped. I found hundreds of erotic images of teenage boys, about a dozen of which were of my brother. Suddenly, I heard a low voice from behind me telling me to put my hands up.

“The priest was pointing a gun at me with one hand and he picked up the phone with the other. Before he called 911, he instructed me to lay on the floor. He couldn’t see my gun in my waist band as I sat at his desk. As I began to comply, I pulled and fired. I hit him in the stomach. I only intended to snoop, scare, and yes, rough him up. Getting gut shot isn’t pleasant.”

“Getting any kind of shot wouldn’t be pleasant,” Destiny said.

I was encouraged that, although intently engaged, she didn’t seem rattled by what I was telling her.

“True, but gut shot is exceptionally painful and usually doesn’t kill right away. I simply pointed and fired. I wasn’t trying to torture him. But I let him squirm in agony as I explained who I was and what he did. Then I pointed the gun at his head to put him out of his misery.

“Then a demonic look came into his eyes and he began to describe vulgar things about him and my brother, interspersed with him telling me to shoot him. Then his pain intensified and he begged. I let him writhe for a long minute before I ended his misery. I’m ashamed to admit that I got off on the power of life and death that I held at that moment… It was wrong.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, holding back tears, as the weight of my sins was before me. Psalm 38:4 is a verse I had memorized when I first turned to God a year ago. I did this without trying because I felt it so keenly. But then verses 21 and 22 of the same chapter I remembered on purpose. They reminded me of my need of God, and His willingness to forgive and save.

I felt Destiny’s hand go to my back and gently rub. I was relieved that she seemed to be accepting, but she’d only heard a fraction of what I had done. I sat up and sighed.

“So I fled without a trace,” I went on. “But the incident ignited something within me. I say to my shame that I loved the feeling of vengeance and justice. After I got that job in Miami, I began looking into various pedophiles and rapists who got away with their crimes.”

I looked into Destiny’s eyes. They were welling with tears and her face looked stern. It was over with her and me, I thought. Talk about a ‘she loves me, she loves me not’ situation.

“So,” I croaked. “Over the next eight years, I executed twenty-three more men. Not once did I torture them, though. The first was the worst and the only time I let someone linger in pain. My intention was to exact justice and rid the world of scum. It’s been more than a year and a half since my last killing, and I never intend to do it again.”

We stared at each other for a long moment, and I honestly felt like whatever spark might have been starting romantically between us had been snuffed out.

“Brock,” Destiny began.  “I can’t even begin to count how many women, girls really, I’ve met throughout the years who have been sexually abused among other things. I’m not gonna say what you did was right, but I do understand wanting to rid the world of predators. So, is that the extent of your dark past?”

“In a nutshell, yes,” I replied. “So do you feel any differently about me?”

“Not a bit,” she said emphatically. “I thought you were gonna tell me you did something like killing for hire when you worked out of Miami. You know, a hitman not caring who or why you were killing them. That would have been a lot harder to get my mind around. Yet even if that was the case, God forgives you if you confess and repent. Plus, there’s something you should know. I, too, am guilty of murder.”

“What!” I exclaimed.

“I had an abortion when I was seventeen,” she told me.

He smiled sadly and nodded, as if to say he understood.

“So you see,” I said. “Who am I not to forgive? At least you killed the guilty. I killed not only the innocent, but what would have been my future child.”

“Did you believe life begins at conception back then?”

“Well, no,” she shrugged.

“You probably believed one of the pro-abortion mantras, like it’s just a bunch of cells.”

“Aren’t we all a bunch of cells? Just a lot more of them.”

“You know, what we’re talking about. It’s not only about forgiveness,” I told her.

Destiny frowned and looked at me inquisitively.

“If you’re able to look past my past,” I told her. “I was hoping you and I could start looking at a future together. That is, if you also want to.”

She looked at me dreamily before she spoke. “I do, Brock, definitely!”

“You know what?” I said. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you said I do, and how happy I am that Nora didn’t.”

Destiny giggled and looked away from me shyly. Might as well get this started, I thought. I gently lifted Destiny’s chin and guided her face to look at me. Then I kissed her. This time it wasn’t inspired by the pressure of a kiss cam on a jumbotron, or by unknowingly drinking alcohol tainted tea. Best of all, when I pulled away from the quick peck, she looped an arm around my neck to pull me back for another.