I Think My Uncle's Church is Evil

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/iifinch on 2024-11-19 17:01:38+00:00.

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I am a good man.

I know I'm a good man, but I've got a gun and I'm going to kill a man who meant a lot to me, who at one time was my pastor, my mentor, my uncle.

What's the saying about when a good man goes to war?

When I arrived at the church I work at after my two-day absence, it looked like the whole church was leaving. From some distance away, the perhaps one hundred other workers pouring out of the grand church looked antlike compared to the great mass of the place.

Their smiles leaving met my frown entering, and they made sure to avoid me. No one spoke to me, and I didn't plan on speaking to them.

I made my way to the sanctuary, hoping to find my uncle, the head pastor here. He would spend hours praying there in the morning. Today he was nowhere to be seen. No one was. I alone was tortured by the images of the stained glass windows bearing my Savior.

I'm not an idiot. I know what religion has done, but it has also done a lot of good. I've seen marriages get saved, people get healed, folks change for the better, and I've seen our church make a positive impact on the world.

My faith gave me purpose, my faith gave me friends, and my faith was the reason I didn't kill myself at thirteen.

Jesus means something to me, and the people here have bastardized his name! I slammed my fist on a pew, cracking it. It is my right to kill him. If Jesus raised a whip to strike the greedy in the temple, I can raise a Glock to the face of my uncle for what he did. I know there's a verse about punishing those who harm children.

"Solomon," I recognized the voice before I turned to see her. Ms. Anne, the head secretary, spoke behind me. Before this, she was something like a mother to me. A surrogate mother because I never knew mine. Her words unnerved me now. My hand shook, and the pain of slamming my hand into the pew finally hit me. Then it all came back to me, the pain of betrayal. I hardened my heart. I let the anger out. I heard my own breath pump out of me. My hand crept for my pistol in my waistband, and with my hand on my pistol, I faced her.

"What?" I asked.

She reeled in shock at how I spoke to her, taking two steps back. Her eyebrows narrowed and lips tightened in a disbelieving frown. She was an archetype of a cheerful, caring church mother. A little plump, sweet as candy, and with an air of positivity that said, "I believe in you," but also an air of authority that said, "I'm old, I've earned my respect."

We stared at one another. She waited for an apology. It did not come, and she relented. She shuffled under the pressure of my gaze. Did she know she was caught?

"I, um, your Uncle—uh, Pastor Saul wants to see you. He's upstairs. Sorry, your Uncle is giving everyone the whole day off except you," she said. With no reply from me, Ms. Anne kept talking. "I was with him, and as soon as you told him you were coming in today, he announced on the intercom everyone could have the day off today. Except you, I guess. Family, huh?"

I didn't speak to her. Merely glared at her, trying to determine who she really was. Did she know what was really going on?

"Why's your arm in a cast?" Her eyebrows raised in awe. "What happened to you?"

She stepped closer, no doubt to comfort me with a hug as she had since I was a child.

These people were not what I thought they were. They frightened me now. I toyed with the revolver on my hip as she got closer.

Her eyes went big. She stumbled backward, falling. Then got herself up and evacuated as everyone else did.

She wouldn't call the cops. The church mother knew better than to involve anyone outside the church in church matters. Ms. Anne might call my uncle though, which was fine. I ran upstairs to his office to confront him before he got the call.

Well, Reader, I suppose I should clue you in on what exactly made me so mad. I discovered something about my church.

It was two days ago at my friend Mary's apartment...

It was 2 AM in the morning, and I contemplated destroying my career as a pastor before it even got started because my chance at real love blossomed right beside me.

I stayed at a friend's house, exhausted but anxious to avoid sleep. I pushed off my blanket to only cover my legs and sat up on the couch. I blinked to fight against sleep and refocus on the movie on the TV. A slasher had just killed the overly horny guy.

Less than two feet apart from me—and only moving closer as the night wore on—was the owner of the apartment I was in, a girl I was starting to have feelings for that I would never be allowed to date, much less marry, if I wanted to inherit my uncle's church.

Something aphrodisiacal stirred in the air and now rested on the couch. I knew I was either getting love or sex tonight. Sex would be a natural consequence of lowered inhibitions, the chill of her apartment that these thin blankets couldn't dampen, and the fact we found ourselves closer and closer on her couch. The frills of our blankets touched like fingers.

Love would be a natural consequence of our common interests, our budding friendship—for the last three weeks, I had texted her nearly every hour of every day, smiling the whole time. I hoped it would be love. Like I said, I was a good man. A good Christian boy, which meant I was twenty-four and still a virgin. Up until that moment, up until I met Mary, being a virgin wasn't that hard. I had never wanted someone more, and the feeling seemed mutual.

The two of us played a game since I got here. Who's the bigger freak? Who can say the most crude and wild thing imaginable? Very unbecoming as a future pastor, but it was so freeing! I never got to be untamed, my wild self, with anyone connected to the church. And that was Mary, a free woman. Someone whom my uncle would never accept. My uncle was like a father to me; I never knew my mom or dad.

Our game started off as jokes. She told me A, I told her B. And we kept it going, seeing who could weird out the other.

Then we moved to truths and then to secrets, and is there really any greater love than that, to share secrets? To expose your greatest mistakes to someone else and ask for them to accept you anyway?

I didn't quite know how I felt about her yet in a romantic sense. She was a friend of a friend. I was told by my friend not to try to date her because she wasn't my type, and it would just end in heartbreak and might destroy the friend group. The funny thing is, I know she was told the same.

"That was probably my worst relationship," Mary said, revealing one more secret, pulling the covers close to her. "Honestly, I think he was a bit of a porn addict too." Her face glowed. "What's the nastiest thing you've watched?"

I bit my lip, gritted my teeth, and strained in the light of the TV. Our game was unspoken, but the rules were obvious—you can't just back down from a question like that.

I said my sin to her and then asked, "What's yours?"

She groaned at mine and then made two genuinely funny jokes at my expense.

"Nah, nah, nah," I said between laughs. "What's yours?"

"No judgments?" she asked.

"No judgments," I said.

"And you won't tell the others?"

"I promise."

"Pinky promise," she said and leaned in close. I liked her smile. It was a little big, a little malicious. I liked that. I leaned forward and our pinkies interlocked. My heart raced. Love or sex fast approaching.

She said what it was. Sorry to leave you in the dark, reader, but the story's best details are yet to come.

She was so amazed at her confession. She said, "Jesus Christ" after it.

"Yeah, you need him," I joked back. Her face went dark.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"What? Just a joke."

"No, it's not. I can see it in your eyes you're judging me." She pulled away from me. The chill of her room felt stronger than before, and my chances at sex or love moved away with her.

"Dude, no," I said. "You made jokes about me and I made one about you."

She eyed me softer then, but her eyes still held a skeptical squint.

"Sorry," she said, "I just know you're religious so I thought you were going to try to get me to go to church or something."

"Uh, no, not really." Good ol' guilt settled in because her 'salvation' was not my priority.

"Oh," she slid beside me again. Face soft, her constant grin back on. "I just had some friends really try to force church on me and I didn't like that. I won't step foot in a church."

"Oh, sorry to hear that."

"There's one in particular I hate. Calgary."

"Oh, uh, why?" I froze. I hoped I didn't show it in my face, but I was scared as hell she knew my secret. Calgary was my uncle's church.

"They just suck," she said, noncommittal.

Did she know?

"What makes them suck?"

She took a deep breath and told me her story—

At ten years old, I wanted to kill myself. I had made a makeshift noose in my closet. I poured out my crate of DVDs on the floor and brought the crate into the closet so I could stand on it. I flipped the crate upside down so it rested just below the noose. I stepped up and grabbed the rope. I was numb until that moment. My mom left, my family hated me, and I feared my dad was lost in his own insane world. The holes in the wall, welts in his own skin, and a plethora of reptiles he let roam around our house were proof.

And it was so hot. He kept it as hot as hell in that house. My face was drenched as I stepped up the crate to hang myself. I hoped heaven would be cold.

Heaven. That's what made me stop. I would be in heaven and my dad would be here. I didn't ...

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