The Sin Eater

Her sins were pretty to look at and I watched as she wrote them out on a square of creamy paper no bigger than the palm of her hand. Her words surfaced as if from deep underwater and, although she didn’t know it, as she wrote she engraved a spell into the paper’s fibers with her words. I followed her hand with my eyes. Like hieroglyphics through backwards binoculars, I squinted to make out the words but it was ok, as a sin-eater I didn’t need to read them. 

We sin-eaters are a dying breed—dying but necessary, now more than ever. In fact, for those of us still in the game, business has never been better. Here’s how it works—not interested in living with the guilt or those troublesome memories? Too busy or selfish or proud to find a tried and true religious institution, or maybe you just don’t trust them? Too scared to tell your mother? Too ashamed or paranoid to tell your AI crush? Too weak to simply live with your deeds?

Come to me. I really can wash your sins away. All you have to do is inscribe the wrongdoing on one of my little papers. Then I crumple that paper up and eat it. Yes, actually, and, as soon as I eat that paper, your sin becomes my sin, your soul unblemished and your mind as free and clear as an innocent newborn babe bouncing on mother’s knee.

Even your memory of the sin will be gone—it will be mine, in all respects.

Cash only, naturally, and required up front too because, chances are, you won’t be sticking around for very long after.

That part never changes.

My client’s name was Heather and I watched her write her dark deeds in her beautiful handwriting with the knowledge that whatever anguish had driven her to seek me out would soon be a part of me. My only consolation was the roll of bills in my pocket.

By this point, my ragged soul is corrupt beyond recognition and I have no idea what I will say to God on judgement day. I don’t even know if I will have a soul left to call my own by the time I meet my maker.

Then again, I never go hungry.

Heather looked up at last, her forehead scrunched. She was pretty—red hair and elegant hands—and she was troubled. She wore a wedding band and, from what she had told me, I felt sure that her sin was one of infidelity.

“Get lost,” I had told her when she first approached me. “It’s better to live with it. Ask forgiveness from whoever you wronged and move on with your life.”

“I can’t live with the shame,” she said.

I didn’t know about that. Me, I can live with a lot of things. How about you? What can you live with?

For me, living with things is my job.

“Please, it’s tearing me apart,” she said.

When I eat someone’s sin, their slate may be wiped clean, but for me, it’s as if I committed the act, whatever it may be. I would testify in court, if pressed, that it was me, I was guilty. For me there is no difference between my sins and those of my clients— and I remember a lot of sinning. 

“Will this really work?” she asked.

“Satisfaction guaranteed,” I said.

She made that look on her face. A slight grimace. Then she looked away. I get that a lot.

She folded up the paper and slid it across the table.

“Do you need to read it?” she said.

I answered by washing it down with a sip of water. Just like that, the sin slid home. 

“Now what?” she asked.

“Just wait,” I said.

I closed my eyes. One second. Two seconds.

Memories blossomed in my mind.

I was in a posh hotel bathroom. My wedding ring had caught my eye and it called to mind my vows from so long ago. I set the ring on the marble counter. The years had come and gone since then, had they not? 

I checked myself out in the steamy mirror. I was freshly showered in my leopard print babydoll and my makeup was perfect. Damn I was nervous. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders and put a smile on my face. Soft jazzy music crept under the door. I reached for the handle, my eye on my naked finger.

Cool air caressed my skin when I opened the door. The music was a little louder bit still gentle and the plush carpet was soft on my bare feet. The lights were dim of course and in the wide mirror beside the bed I could see the reflection of the man who sat there waiting for me. He looked up, caught my eye.

He was not a stranger. Hadn’t I coveted him in my secret heart for all these years? Now we here here, together on this precipice. He wore only a towel and his aftershave filled the space between us with sandalwood and eucalyptus. My heart pounded and desire easily overruled my nerves. I pushed him back on the bed and climbed on top. We kissed. His face was smooth. His breath like mint toothpaste. We looked deep, oh so deep, down into each other’s eyes and I felt something, like a switch I didn’t even know I possessed, come to life.

My eyes fluttered open.

I sat across from myself, the myself from the mirror all those months ago I mean. I looked confused. It is always the same after eating a sin. There is a period of confusion, a kind of dysphoria, that overtakes me when I onboard a new sin. I reached out and held her fingers. I longed for the connection, however short lived.

“What just happened?” she said.

“You were burdened by a sin,” I said, choking out the words.

She snatched her hand away. Her revulsion had already gripped her. This was always the way. She shoved herself away from the table, her chair toppled backwards as she stood.

She paused and looked around the diner, fumbling around in her coat pockets.

“I feel like a weight has been lifted,” she said at last. “I can’t put my finger on just what, but it’s gone. I feel lighter, somehow.”

“You told me you couldn’t live with the shame.”

“Shame? But I don’t feel any shame,” she chewed her lip, “and I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything to be ashamed of.”

“That’s only because you don’t remember,” I said.

It was safe to tell her that. It made no difference. Nothing would bring back the memories for her.

She looked at me and her eyes grew wide, as if she was seeing me for the first time.

“Oh no,” she said, “ it’s you, you’re full of sins, disgusting things. You—you collect them. Get away from me.”

And that was that.

She fled. Out of the booth. Out the door. Out of my life.

Don’t worry about me. I was paid up front. In cash.

She wasn’t the worst by a long shot. Usually they at least throw something, or maybe try to punch me, something like that. As soon as I have their sin, they can’t get away fast enough. When I was learning my trade I expected a little gratitude. Now I know better. Revulsion is what I get.

What was also a surprise for me, and a little harder to handle to be honest, is that pretty much everyone else avoids me too. Most folks seem to sense something’s off when they’re around me. Maybe they have the right of it. Going by my memories, I’m capable of almost anything. Intellectually, I know it’s only because of the sins I eat that I feel this way but that doesn’t help.

But Heather’s sin was beautiful. I could feel the connection between her and her lover and I savored my possession of their love, something I had never before felt. Oh yes, this sin was special and I revisited that memory over and over again. I could feel his skin on mine, the slight scratch of his chin as we kissed, our frantic animalistic lovemaking. I knew full well nothing good would come of it and I didn’t care.

The next day in the diner, I met a man and watched him scribble. What kind of sin was he transcribing and was it something I hadn’t seen before? Not likely, I’d seen almost everything. If you want to know how I felt, you need to imagine the filter in your dishwasher, the one you never clean. When it clogs up, you finally bring yourself to inspect it. It’s disgusting, dripping with rancid oil and jammed with rotten fragments from all the meals of yesterday. Whatever you do, it can never come clean.

Well, that’s me, putrified with the worst sins from dozens and dozens of people. Murder, thievery, adultery, you name it, I’ve ingested it. It’s no wonder people steer clear of me. My friends are long gone and even strangers scuttle around me, looking away with eyes cast somewhere, anywhere but my direction.

But worse by far is my treatment at the hands of my clients. In the first place, after a sin is transferred, they are immediately gripped with a terrible revulsion at my presence. Their skin crawls. Imagine you’re claustrophobic, you’re wrapped in chains and trapped in a narrow casket, submerged under water with no lights and no escape—like Houdini, except you’re not Houdini, you’re just you.  Imagine the terrible, savage burn to escape. That’s how my clients feel.

I know this mostly because they are usually not afraid to express their feelings. To give you an idea, I was hired a while back by a family with a wayward teenage son. He had committed all sorts of misdeeds, as teenagers will. His folks, being of a religious persuasion, were disturbed by the fornicating and by the drink, and had convinced themselves that the scion of their nuclear family was bound for a life of crime, and worse, an eternity in hell.

So I was hired to purify his soul and purge his memories—to press the reset button on his teenage fever and set him up right and proper on the straight and narrow. So I went to their house, and surrounded by the family—mother, father, older brother, little sister—I collected the boy’s sins. What happened after is hard to explain. Their madness spread like a contagion from person to person.

I was surrounded, the circle tightened like feral dogs around an interloping stray. They clawed, tore at my clothes, punched me, threw dishes, the little sister even stabbed me with a fork. I covered my head to shield myself from the blows and fled. The mother’s shoe followed me through the door and connected with the back of my skull in a parting shot that I feel to this day.

And even that wasn’t the worst beating I have received. No, that honor is reserved for Kendall. Mild mannered Kendall. So pathetic and passive I ate his sin without a second thought. How bad could it be? Well, it was bad. The first thing to know about Kendall was, in spite of his bland experience, his heart raged with anger and hatred. The second, and only other thing worth knowing about Kendall, was that he had gotten away with murder.

It was the only murder I ever ate. As soon as the paper was in my mouth I knew something was off. I spat it out, too late. Kendall dropped his aw shucks act real quick as the terrible truth revealed itself to me in flashes:

Late night. The roads were slick from the train. Slippery. Dangerous. As usual, I was angry. So very angry. My supervisor made a joke about me during a meeting. A red fog descended, shrouding the joke itself from my recall, leaving only the hatred. I needed to take this out on someone. So I hunted. I spent the hours tailgating, honking my horn, cutting people off. You’d be surprised. Most people are sheep after all and would rather run away than stick up for themselves.

But at last I found my prey. I ran a red, stopped my car in the middle of the intersection, and blocked the passage of a Toyota Camry. I always thought Toyota drivers are boring, but this guy came out hot. He broke the mold. In the grip of his road rage, he approached my car, banged on the windows. I stepped out, hands behind my back.

What the hell was I doing? he screamed in my face. Get the fuck out of my way. No other cars were around and I knew the moment to strike had arrived. I revealed the tire iron behind my back. It made me laugh to see the anger drop from his face, replaced by fear when he saw my weapon. He lunged for his car door. Maybe he had a gun in the car? Who can say? The tire iron put and end to whatever threat he may have posed.

I felt the satisfaction spread like a warm glow in my belly as I stood over him, my chest heaving. This memory flooded my mind, absent of remorse or guilt in a peculiar way. I didn’t care that this guy was dead. Why would I? He’s the one who charged out of his car. It was his fault when you think about it. 

Across from me in the booth, I felt Kendall’s eyes, so hot on my skin they could burn holes right through me. The expression on his face was unholy, lips pulled back in a huge grimace. I started to worry. Every other time, it had been them who fled as their revulsion settled in, but with Kendall I could tell it would be different. I bolted for the door. I didn’t make it. When I woke up, I was in the hospital.

They said I was lucky to be alive after the beating I took. It was three weeks before they let me go, even though the nurses and doctors could hardly stand to touch me, dedicated professionals though they were.

But the man across from me right now was no murderer, I already knew that. I may have been wrong about Kendall but I wasn’t wrong about him, and yet the difference between him and Kendall was only one of intensity, not of kind. While he wrote I found myself reliving Heather’s tryst. Wracked by shame, yet so in love. When, through her memory, I looked deep into her lover’s eyes I knew they were the one-in-a-million one true love. Each fashioned from stardust to complete the other, they pulled on each other like twin stars in orbit, one around the other.

Maybe you don’t believe in such things, but you probably don’t believe in sin eaters either. You should reconsider your beliefs. We are numinous beings, sparks of the universe’s consciousness—anchored to physical bodies, yes, but so much more. Scientists might fool themselves into attempting to explain consciousness by figuring out tricks of brain chemistry. This is laughable. You may as well try to explain the lyrics of your favorite song by examining the circuits of the radio that plays it.

Yet, beautiful as it is, the universe is also cruel and there is a beauty to that too, is there not? They each had found their perfect match, but too late. Heather already had a family and the dissonance had begun to threaten her sanity.

My musings were cut short when the sinner across from me finally produced his paper, which I folded and duly ate. He left almost immediately, looking down his nose at me as he basically ran for the door. A petty embezzler. He conned his elderly neighbor out of a large chunk of money and now he felt bad. Not bad enough make it right, just bad enough to pay my fee. A pathetic sin from a pathetic person.

In the days and weeks that followed, Heather’s sin became my jewel. I took it out, fondled it, polished it, whispered to it. It was my only authentic experience of a real connection with another person, lover or not. Yes, I felt the shame, the anguish that had torn at her heart, yet maybe because I was wracked by the guilt of a multitude of sinners, that seemed a small price to pay for the wonderful beauty of the moment. I became dependent on her sin for my very survival.

That’s why, when she called me, I was curious. I never hear from the same sinner twice. Maybe she wanted relief from another sin? Whatever the reason, the phone rang and I answered.

“I need to see you,” she said.

I asked her why.

“Whatever you took from me —” she said.

Then nothing but dead air that endured for so long I thought she had hung up. I was relieved when she took a  breath.

“I want it back,” she said at last.

That knocked me for a loop. No sinner ever asked me for their sin back and, if you asked all the sin eaters that are or ever were, I’m sure we would all agree—once the sin has been transferred, no one ever wants it back. Never ever.

Until now.

I told her to meet me in the diner.

I like the diner because Gina the waitress there has been reincarnated more than a few times and she has an unusual tolerance for my negative vibes. She’s seen more than a thing or two in her many trips around the Sun, so she can bring me food and coffee with hardly more than a shudder. We never talk much though. Even she draws the line somewhere. That’s the life of a sin eater, distasteful necessities that we are.

So there I was in my booth. Gina poured my coffee.

Then there was Heather at the door. She was distraught. Anyone could see.

Gina hurried away, leaving us alone.

“Why do you want the sin back?” I said.

“A sin?” she said again. “You took a sin from me?”

They never remember what was taken. That’s pretty much the point of the whole thing.

“You were ashamed of your actions,” I said. “You wanted me to make it go away. So you could be happy for yourself, for your family and for God.”

“But I’m not happy,” she said.

 She unfolded a letter, carefully smoothed the paper like an ancient treasure map. She put it down in front of me.

“I found this,” she said.

“That’s nothing to me,” I lied.

Except it was.

What really happened was that I nearly fainted. I had a flashback as the letter triggered another inherited memory from her sin.

The letter is from my beloved and always in my purse. I have read it dozens of times.

How can life be so cruel that I met my one true love and am tortured to be with him? I met him too late, oh God. It would be better to forget than to live knowing what I lost.

But this was not true it turns out. After all, here she was.

“You know what this is?” she said. She tapped the love letter.

“He begged you not to go,” I said, not even knowing who I was at that moment

I wept.

She wept.

“This man,” she said. “This man—he was only an acquaintance, I didn’t even know him very well, but, the thing is, he died.”

My heart stopped.

I can’t even explain to you how it ever restarted.

“Now I have this sadness,” she said. “It fills me up like a well.”

I was suffocated by all that love she had and lost. I couldn’t breathe.

“Then I found this note in my purse,” she said. “We were never together. What do you know about this? I’m so confused.”

I told her about her memories. I had to tell her. I told her about her and her lover and the time in the hotel and how I acquired her memories along with her sin when she came to me.

I lied and told her she should leave things alone and be happy, sealed off from her sin for all eternity, even in the eyes of God.

“It’s all I have,” I said. “Your sin. Your lover. That time in the hotel. It’s everything to me.” I was begging.

“When I found the note,” she said, “I felt so empty and I didn’t know why, but I knew that I came to you for help and you made me feel lighter. You took away some feelings I couldn’t handle, that’s all I remembered. I just didn’t know how empty it would make me. It’s just…”

Unable to continue, she trailed off and looked out the window.

She took my hand. No one ever did that. How could she bring herself to touch me?

She knew what I was thinking.

She held my hand and I sobbed for both of us.