barush | Sin

Title: Sin
Author: Barush
Fandom: Linkin Park
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Description: Brad, a boy from an old Jewish family, loses his religion just to find it again after two years of ignorance, unfaithfulness and committing the worst sin imaginable. (Braz)

‘Please be seated and open your prayer guides to the book of revelation, Psalm 69.’

‘Get down on your knees and pray my boy.’

“Ma tovu ohalekha Ya'akov, mishk'notekha Yisra'el.”

‘How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!’

The synagogue was fairly empty. No surprise in those ungodly early hours. Just a few lonely souls whose sins didn’t allow them a peaceful full night sleep without being disturbed by horrible images of their wrongdoings.

Brad knelt down facing an altar in the front of the synagogue and clasped his freezing hands. A slight shiver made its way down his spine and throughout his whole body. The goddamn building was so cold that he could see a white steam coming out of his mouth when he breathed out.

For a while, he just studied the remains of dried mud under his fingernails, destroying the image of his otherwise well-kept hands. He would have to use a brush to get it out, that was for sure.

“And I, with Your great loving-kindness, shall enter Your House; I shall prostrate myself toward Your Holy Temple in the fear of You.”

Unfortunately, he had to continue his prayer in English for he remembered only the first line in Hebrew. Such a shame for a boy from an old reputable Jewish family, his grandfather’s acidic voice remarked in his head as it had done so many times before.

Brad had been taught to be proud of himself, of his descent, his family. Hardly anyone is honored to be born to such a Jewish family as ours, they would say. It is God’s gift for you; you mustn’t take it for granted and please Him every day, boy. That was the main reason Brad had spent his whole childhood either praying in synagogue or with the elders, preparing for his bar mitzvah. He had been thanking God for the life He had given him.

‘The way I am now, with all my flaws, that is how God made me?’ Brad had once dared to ask.

‘Yes, my son. Nobody is perfect but that is how God made us, how He wants us to be. We all are his lambs and He gives us His love for that,’ the elderly Rabbi had replied with a warm smile and had put his shrunken hand on the shoulder of the ten-year-old boy.

‘Now come with me my son and we shall pray together,’ the Rabbi had whispered. In his childlike innocence, Brad had ceased to notice the twinkle in the old man’s eyes.

Despite what he had been told early on in his life, Brad wasn’t so sure if the biggest flaw of his personality was a ‘gift’ from God or a result of a treatment he had got during the lessons with the head of their church. He didn’t feel any need to investigate the subject further though.

“O Lord, I love the dwelling of Your house and the place of the residence of Your glory.”

For the better part of his life, Brad had managed to hide the unacceptable side of himself deep down within him, so no one from his Jewish community could have called him a sinner and damned him. Dating geeky Jewish girls chosen by his parents had been understood and performed by Brad exactly according to a script. He had been the image of a perfect, well-behaved boy with sufficient grades and ambitions to become a lawyer for the Jewish community one day. All the way through his Hebrew high school.

Unfortunately, there had been no strictly Hebrew university in the whole country, much to the dismay of Brad’s grandparents, so they had had to follow the wishes of their grandson and let him study the college of his own choice. University of California in Los Angeles.

Brad had vowed to attend a synagogue every day, to pray regularly, no alcohol no drugs, to find a steady girlfriend but wait with that until they had been married. Simply, to represent his family and the whole Jewish nation.

And Brad had done just how he had been told. For the time of one whole week precisely. After that, he had just decided to ‘go with the flow’.

Hang out every day, smoke weed regularly, lots of alcohol, unwise amount of other drugs, different girl every night but none of them his wife for he hadn’t had any. Thank God.

Thus far, he had managed to suppress his urges and unachievable fantasies by a few porn magazines and videos. Although dating girls, or rather sleeping with them, had been alright, Brad’s deepest desires had been somewhere else. It might have been his religious up bringing or simply cowardice, Brad hadn’t known, but he hadn’t had the guts to go and pick up some random guy just to discover what the dudes in the porn movies had really felt. So in the end, it had been entirely his fault that he had had to wait until his roommate had been away to sneak into their common room and quickly jerk off to some gay porn.

At that time, Brad hadn’t known that his stereotype, fuck some girl and then jerk off, would have changed soon.

The indie music shop had been, indeed, very indie. Small dark cave with various b-sides and rare records lined up all along the walls. Not that Brad would have been the right person to appreciate it, he had been hiding there from a sudden fit of rain after all, but for some people it might have been very impressive.

‘Can I help you?’ a dark, slightly croaked voice had startled him. It had belonged to the guy behind the counter, as Brad had found out seconds later. Instantly, he had been wondering why he hadn’t noticed him before. A tall, dark-haired man with broad shoulders and somewhat mysterious expression hadn’t been overlooked easily after all. There had been something that had drawn Brad to him but the Jew couldn’t have pointed his finger on what that had been. The mischievous spark in his deep orbs? Colorfully tattooed forearms? Or, perhaps, the cross on the necklace around his neck?

Whatever the magnet had been, that night Brad’s life had changed drastically. Not only in the sense of fulfilling all his imaginable and unimaginable sexual desires but also his way of looking on certain things. Religion including.

‘God is a concept, by which we can measure our pain,’ Chester once had said.

‘What?’

‘You’re Jewish, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?’

‘I was just quoting John Lennon.’

‘Ah,’ it had been neither the first nor the last time that Brad had been left with nothing to say after Chester’s rather confusing comment.

‘I’m not religious, you know.’

‘What about that cross around your neck, then?’

‘Oh, this? Well, it’s just a gimcrack that reminds me of what I once used to be.’

‘You’ve given up your religion?’

‘Yeah. Feels like something heavy was lifted from my shoulders.’

‘Oh.’

Kneeling on an old carpet in an even older synagogue and praying to the Jewish God, it was obvious that Brad hadn’t abandoned his religion. Wait, scratch that, he had, but was wise enough to find it again. At least that was what he had told himself mere minutes ago upon entering the synagogue. After two long years, the lost son was back, begging his Shepard to take him under his wings once more. Begging for salvation and place in Heaven.

“Come, let us prostrate ourselves and bow; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.”

Giving up his faith hadn’t been as easy as Chester had made it sound but after a while Brad had succeeded completely. Since entering the college, he had stopped being orthodox anyway, so it hadn’t been that difficult to get rid of his remaining habits. However, picking up the new ones might have caused some occasional trouble for the former Jew.

Buying Christmas presents had been something Brad could have definitely do without, but spending the Christmas Eve in front the TV, with Chinese take-out and hot sex, rather than praying or doing something completely Christmas unrelated, was somewhat an exciting experience.

From then on, life had been good. Their secret, mind you, relationship had been going rather good, although from time to time they had hit some rough patches, Brad’s college results had been sufficient enough to keep his over-religious family off his back and Chester… Well, Chester had been doing his own thing, whatever it had been in due time. Everything had seemed to be perfect, almost as in a cheesy romantic movie. Until…

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve heard me.’

Well, that had been rather unexpected. But after overcoming the initial shock, nothing that couldn’t have been dealt with in one way or the other.

‘I wanna keep it’

Or maybe not then. Brad had made absolutely sure there had been no possible way to convince Chester otherwise (Hell, he had even heard words as “family” and “wedding” which made him sick to his stomach) before turning to the unpleasant but necessary next step.

It had been either him or Chester then. Had his family been to know he got his boyfriend pregnant, well, he could have only wished for a nice funeral. Something that Chester wouldn’t have got in case Brad’s plan had worked. And Brad would have made damn sure it had.

The only problem had been, Chester wouldn’t have died.

When Brad had put strychnine into his beer, Chester had decided to drink juice only, for the sake of the child. Little trick with Chester’s car brakes, he had realized going everywhere on foot had been more healthy. Polishing the stairs more than had been necessary; Chester had gotten himself new non-slip shoes.

By the time Brad had been running off ideas and had been playing with a thought of turning to mere violence, it had struck him.

“But, as for me, may my prayer to You, O Lord, be in an acceptable time.”

He was getting used to the cold. Or maybe Brad was already so frozen he couldn’t feel anything anymore. Either way, the love God was giving him again made his heart melt and that was enough. It seemed, indeed, his faith returned to him stronger than ever; ready to erase all the sins he had done in his past two years of ignorance and ungratefulness. Suffocating his pregnant boyfriend was considered a sin, right?

The past 24 hours, he had been running on pure adrenalin. Animal instinct. Suffocating, digging, burying, realizing, praying, begging, breaking down.

Hot tears were making their way down Brad’s pale face. Cold-blooded murderer that was what his fear had made him. Cold-blooded murderer with a master plan, he didn’t know where that had come from.

So much for the irony though. The thing he had been so desperately trying to escape from had bit him to his ass and had made him commit the worst thing imaginable.

‘You can’t hide from Him, my son. He sees you everywhere and judges your actions.’

Damn right, Brad thought. He cursed himself for ever trying to escape his family and his religion. It was all a huge part of him, it made him a person he was, did he want to or not. Just pity it had taken one of the seven deadly sins to make him realize that. Too late.

Lack of faith had made him kill; fear of being caught had made him cover up all possible traces and guilty conscience had made him crawl back and beg to be freed of all his sins. The circle was completed; Brad was where he had started from.

More than willingly, he vowed to return to his old habits. Dating geeky Jewish girls, jerking off to gay porn, praying every day. Enough had been adventure for one life, he thought.

All that Brad promised to Him in return of only one simple thing. Salvation.

“O God, with Your abundant kindness, answer me with the truth of Your salvation.”

The only thing that connected the back-to-back Jew to his past wrongdoings was the remains of mud under his fingernails. However, he would get rid of those soon.

End
A/N: The prayer Brad recited is a Jewish prayer recited upon entering a synagogue.