The Darker Side by Cody McFadyen

face. Perhaps even more precious, in its own way, even more important, was that she didn’t see the slightest hunger there. No hint of voyeuristic thrill.
    “Thank you, Rosemary. How do you feel, having said all that?”
    “Better,” she’d replied without hesitation. “The wanting goes away. Kind of like…” She searched for a metaphor. “Like squeezing a big old whitehead zit. Hurts to do it, thank God when it pops, you know?”
    He’d smiled and nodded. “Yes, I do.” His face got serious. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Rosemary, I think saying it is better than doing it, don’t you?”
    She’d blinked, surprised by this concept.
    Was it better? In this society, sometimes it didn’t seem so. Say the words suck a cock in public, and you might as well be sucking one on an escalator, you know?
    Still…there was a big difference between talking about drinking and fucking and waking up from a blackout with a stranger’s come in your ass.
    “I guess so, Father. Yeah.”
    “Then my advice, when you pray? Say what you need to say. Don’t worry. God can handle it.”
    It had seemed like strange advice, and to be honest, it had been hard to implement, but she got the hang of it. Some might find it blasphemous, but you know what? Fuck them and their high horses. Truth was, it worked. She talked to God without a censor, and she had almost five years on the straight and narrow as a result.
    She figured God knew what was up. God knew her love for Him grew every day she made it through without fucking a stranger or drinking a beer or snorting a gram.
    She figured God had watched when she turned tricks at seventeen and started making porno films at eighteen. Figured he’d seen her all-black gang bang under the bright lights ( Big black cocks in a tight white hole! The cover of the video had proclaimed) and her foray into dog-fucking for the bestiality black market. God had seen her toward the end too. Like when she was on her knees in a hotel room that could only be described as grotesque, as some fat fuck spit on her face and called her a “meat puppet” and she smiled and agreed because she needed some money for blow and because it kind of turned her on too.
    God had been there the Day It All Changed, she was sure of that. She’d been lying in bed in another shitty room. She was sick with the flu, was sweating and cold, but the guy fucking her didn’t care. He’d paid extra to do her without a condom, he had sores on his pecker, but she really didn’t give a shit, she’d pretty much accepted that she was on her way out.
    He was there above her, his tongue literally hanging out, panting like a dog, and then his face had changed. It had contorted into a look of pure hate. He’d raised a fist and started hitting her.
    He didn’t stop until he’d broken her nose in three places, broken her jaw, knocked out a tooth or two, blacked her eyes shut, broken her left arm, and cracked a few ribs. Then he fucked her again and she passed out.
    She woke up in the hospital, and Father Yates was there, sitting next to her bed. He hadn’t said anything. He’d just moved closer, had taken one of her hands into his, and had looked down on her with those gentle, gentle eyes.
    She’d started crying then. She cried, on and off, for days. Father Yates and others from the church stayed by her bedside until she was ready to be released. They didn’t preach or judge or even say much of anything at all. They were just there for her.
    She’d come to understand that God was present for the good and the bad, and it wasn’t that He was cruel, but that He knew—goodness was a choice. Rightness was a choice. Free will was the road to salvation, and God wasn’t going to make you do the right thing. God’s job was to be there if you chose Him, there if you didn’t.
    Father Yates and the church had helped her get onto her feet. Helped her clean up, find an apartment and a job. Were there for her in the beginning when she strayed,