The Sin Collector

For my Grandma, who knew the secret.

That true magic can always be found in a good book.

And always for Henry, My Little Prince.

********

I love and miss you both every day

.

“
Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins”

~Psalm 25:18

Prologue

His penetrating eyes were mocking as he stared at me, a smug grin stretching across his face.

“I think it’s time you left,” I said.

“
Don’t be ridiculous, where would I go?”

I tried to keep my voice steady, staring into his wicked eyes.

“
I believe you’ll be going someplace warm.”

And with that, I thrust the dagger into his chest.

Chapter 1

It all began with a library book, if violent ends can be traced back to their most innocuous beginnings. I’ve always found that to be the case. Often the most tragic and life altering experiences began somewhere small. They never arrived with a burst of malice but with the best of intentions. The evil managed to creep in slowly.

After all, every great oak was once just a small mess of roots.

Do you remember your first sin? The first time you had realized you did something wrong. The sweet rush of excitement that flooded your veins, the way your body burned with the intensity of your deeds? Every day we walk the streets, oblivious of the company we are keeping. Never really knowing that those you walk so closely with can have the darkest of sins buried beneath their pressed suit and friendly smile.

I was one of those people on the street, but I knew what I was surrounded by. I looked ordinary. Yet, I had seen into their eyes and felt what they were hiding from one another. Human beings are selfish, or perhaps selfish is not the right word. Human beings are busy. They do not see the good or the evil in others as clearly as they should because their minds are always elsewhere. Their thoughts, occupied with dinner plans, business meetings, or how the new girl’s dress hugs her body so flawlessly. They rarely even think of their own sins, let alone another’s. Most people are content with their transgressions pushed to the farthest corners of their minds until their time is near an end. Good health rarely brings about repentance and that is the reason I walked with them.

I do not remember my first sin. Yet I have felt every sin there could possibly be. They have been mine to take and carry for one-hundred years. I have experienced them all and after one hundred years, nothing surprises me anymore. In the beginning I didn’t know I had the power to choose the sins I absolved. I took the sins of killers, predators, and rapists. Eating their sins and allowing their souls to rest in peace. I learned though, after a few dozen years. I had the power to deny their requests for absolution. What was I denying them? I didn’t even know what worlds lay beyond this one. I am never aging, never sleeping, never hungry, and without the simplest of answers. Is there a God? Is there a Devil? Which of the two had created me?

The villagers of a small town many years ago called my kind “Collectors” in hushed voices. At the time, I was very young, only eight years old. I couldn’t understand why the term made the villagers terrified to be in our presence. My caretaker, a man who never looked older than twenty, Olexander, tried to explain to me then why the people stayed so far away from us.

“Liliana my dear, they are scared of you because you know their secrets. Nothing terrifies a human being more than the possibility of being found out.”

That is all he would say on the matter of the villagers. Yet there were many nights the same villagers that ostracized us would come knocking at the heavy wooden door. Olexander would simply nod and go with them, his thick leather bag slung over his shoulder.

There were occasions when others like us would come through our small town. Once I even had another child to play with. I was ten and deep in studies when suddenly, he appeared. A boy no older than twelve with dark brown hair and unusually bright blue eyes asked if I wanted to play jacks. Olexander stayed as far away from William and his Mentor Clara as possible, sharing supplies but having no contact with her. Therefore, I was surprised when Olexander allowed me to leave my books and play for hours with this sudden exuberant boy. William and his Mentor Clara stayed in our town for one wonderful month. I smiled now at the memory, for one month out of one-hundred and twenty years I had walked this earth, I’d had a best friend. For one month I had a soul mate who loved the color green, playing jacks, called me LiLi and would bring me fresh bunches of Lilacs. They left early one Sunday morning, not waking me to say goodbye. After they left, I asked many questions. Until one day, Olexander, angry and exasperated, forbade me from ever mentioning them again.

We have been called many things through time. We have been woven into Greek tragedies and religious literature. The most accurate definition is in our simplest name. Sin-Eaters. Most of us however prefer to be called Collectors. It is customary that their Mentor instructs each Collector in schooling, combat training, as well as the art of Collecting. However, when the students turn twenty years of age, the new Collector must begin their own journey. A Collector’s journey, traveled alone. So early one Fall morning, while I enjoyed the last dream I would ever have, Olexander left.

One hundred years Collecting seems like such a long time and yet it moves so quickly. So much had changed in a hundred years. I no longer caused whispers when I walked by, hardly anyone knew about the existence of Sin-Eaters anymore. We had been lost to myth with the vampires and the werewolves. I preferred it this way; I could pretend to be normal. As normal as a person would ever be when they could see every dirty deed.

I was six when Olexander found me and took me from the Romanian orphanage. It was nice to have a place to call home. It was also nice to meet someone else who spoke English. I never knew how to speak Romanian. Most Collectors did not dwell on names. An alias was a necessity. However, I never changed my first name. I needed to keep some piece of myself always. Or else I felt I might blow away. They called me Liliana Genov at the orphanage. Currently I was living life as Liliana Hayes. It wasn’t my favorite of my aliases, but I hadn’t used it in a good sixty years, so it was safe and convenient.

I was sitting outside of
Café et Scones,
the coffee shop down the street from my apartment. Absentmindedly flipping through a book I’d read a thousand times, a cup of coffee sitting untouched. I was early for work again. Something my petulant boss Jimmy did not appreciate. I could see the anger in his eyes when I would arrive before him. More I could feel the shudder of his pride. I wanted to keep this job so instead of angering him I would sit impatiently at the café. Sometimes I even arrived to work late. It wasn’t that I was eager to work all day among the painfully dull library stacks, and it was certainly not because of the salary. Work was simply more stimulating than staring at the ceiling tiles of my apartment as I had done all night.

Sometimes I would dress up and go out, but the nightclubs bordering the streets of downtown LA were not the place to be when you could hear every person’s sins. To be among them was a little like dancing in a room where everyone was screaming at you. So mostly, I stayed in, and after watching every boxed set of every television show since television began. I would lie there counting the ceiling tiles. I looked at my watch again and was relieved to see it was ten minutes to nine. If I left the café now I would get to work ten minutes late. Jimmy would be pleased.

I grabbed my helmet off the seat and leisurely walked to my bike. The 2009 Ninja 650-R sport motorcycle stood bright and shining in the morning sun. Its purple coloring had caught my eye from the store window. It was flashy, flashier than I usually allowed myself to be. No one had sought out a Collector in over fifty years. Yet I always had the nagging feeling I was being watched. Nevertheless, I’d needed a vehicle to get to work and the bike was cheaper than a car; reliable, fast, and the color of Lilacs. I shoved my arms through the thick leather jacket, all black except for a stripe going down each arm the same color as my bike. Next, I pushed the bulky helmet that also matched the beautiful purple onto my head. I grumbled at this pointless display of safety. “It’s just so no one asks questions,” I said to myself.

A week after buying the bike I was still getting used to driving it when I skidded on a wet road and thrown about thirty feet into a tree. Of course, I was unhurt. Collectors do not get injured or sick or, so it would appear, die. I had jumped up, anxious to check on my less than immortal bike when a young couple stopped to help me. They had witnessed the accident. Both were worried and wide eyed at the fact I was even alive. I had been riding in a tank top and jeans and wearing no helmet. I didn’t have road rash. In fact, I wasn’t bleeding at all. It had taken me nearly forty-five minutes to convince them I was fine and the accident was not as devastating as they remembered. In the end it was my supernatural powers of persuasion that had gotten me out of the confrontation. The man’s greed pulsed through him with each heartbeat and I could feel his anxious need to get home. What month was it? October, football season, he must have money on tonight’s game. I apologized for scaring the couple, explaining I was on my way home from the local sports pub. I wanted to get home to see the end of the game, because the score was so close. This sent the man’s heartbeat into overdrive and he yanked his still hesitant wife back to his car. Rushing home to see if he was about to become a winner, or someone on the bookie’s to-do list.

The bike was always faster than I gave it credit for so I arrived at work on time. Jimmy was in his office clacking away on his keyboard. I found the sound comforting because usually if he was typing that meant he wasn’t watching porn. The lust, even though several rooms divided us, was still nauseating to think about in context. I took off the bulky jacket and threw it in the empty filing cabinet drawer with the shiny helmet. I settled in behind the desk and booted up the computer. Pulling a bottle of Cherry Coke out of the satchel I used as a purse, I let the bag slump next to my chair. I didn’t need to drink anything, nor would the caffeine affect my body. I just really liked the taste of it. It reminded me of the cherry candies I used to eat when I was a little girl, before my body stopped craving things like penny candy and cold ice water. The library, although quite large and well stocked, never got many visitors. Everyone used the internet for research these days. Even if you needed to cite a book there was no reason to go seek it out. The information was on our website. Mostly our clientele consisted of little old ladies and the ‘Mommy and Me’ storybook group that met in the children’s library three times a week.

And there was George.

George was 87 and came into the library every day for a new book. I hadn’t been paying attention at first. Sometimes I would need to try so hard to tune out Jimmy from the other room that I accidentally tuned out everyone. So it was a few days before I realized George wasn’t coming to the library for the books so much as he was coming to see me. I liked George. He was one of the few people I had ever encountered whose virtues overrode his vices. Every day I would start off with “Geez George you finished that book all in one day?” And he would smile and say, “Yes silly girl, that’s why I came back.” I knew it was a lie but it made me smile. He liked to talk about old cars and old music. All the things he remembered from his youth. How funny it would be for him to know I remembered it all too, probably more clearly than he did. He liked to talk about his wife, Anne, who had passed away a year before.