The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza by Rebecca Taylor Page A

watching me,   waiting for me to come out.  
    Without thinking, I ran to him.      

Chapter Nine
Gluttony

    “Well that was awful,” Ray said.
    Hanging in his arms, I nodded my head against his chest as my body continued to tremble with shock and relief. “I had no idea it would be that bad,” I choked and I struggled to breathe around my sobs.  
    Suddenly he pulled me off of him and lifted me off my feet. Ray held me up before him, as if I were a small child, and looked me in the face. “I meant your performance, not the offense. This is one of the easiest ones.” Disappointed, he shook his head. “I thought for sure you could do better than that .”  
    I felt helpless hanging there, like a broken doll, chastised by his words. Anger rose up to protect me. “You never told me it would be like that!” I struggled against his grasp, kicking at his chest and smacking his arms. “You never said they would do that to me!” All of my flailing had no effect on him. The strikes were nothing more than tiny insects buzzing around his head and my increasing rage was making him smirk at me like I was a ridiculous show, performing for his entertainment.  
    My head felt like it would explode, “Put me down!” I screamed in frustration.
    Ray tipped his head back and laughed at me, “I think you ought to say please first,” he said and then released me quickly so that I fell in heap onto the rock strewn ground. “That’s a nasty temper you have there, one should think it wise to learn to control such a thing. Something like that could run away with you. Make you do something you’re likely to regret.”
    “Shut up!” my scream echoed throughout the woods all around us.
    “That’s a lot of energy,” Ray looked around. “I wonder how long till the first faints arrive to feast on that.”  
    His words didn’t calm me, but they made me force myself to stop screaming. The memory of the faints feeding on me was fresh enough for me to realize I didn’t want that to ever happen again.  
    “Now,” he said glancing up at the orange moon hanging over our heads. “Speaking of feasts, we should move along to the next offense. No time to waste.”
    I looked at him in disbelief. “You are insane if you think I’m ever going back into one of those.”
    “And you are insane if you think there is any possible way to avoid it. The time for choosing has long past. There is no backwards, only forwards now.”
    I stood up and brushed off my shirt and jeans. “Fine, I’ll find my own way back to the gates.” I stormed off for several feet then stopped. Before me was a vast expanse of dark forest. I scanned the sky above me, inspected the moon, tried to figure which way it was moving, what direction it had come from. Turning around, Ray was lounging against the trunk of a tree, his arms folded across his chest while his eyes stared at the ground, like he was doing nothing more than waiting for a bus. I marched past him, further into the forest in a different direction this time. I got twenty feet before, in the corner of my vision, a slinking wisp of a shadow made me freeze in my tracks.  
    “The faints,” Ray said.  
    I spun around, “Why won’t you take me back?”
    He stepped away from the tree and stood facing me, all the smirk and condescension had left him. “I won’t take you back because I can’t take you back.” He rose his arms in the air. “All around us is only the confusion of the forest,” he lowered his arms and held his hands before him, like an offering he gestured to the ground before us. “Or the path leading through the offenses.”  
    My eyes followed his hands, there was a path beneath our feet. A beaten dirt trail leading into the woods. How had I not noticed this before?  
    “You’re playing tricks on me,” I accused.
    “No tricks,” he shook his head.
    “That path was not there before.”
    “That path has always been, it will always be. Just because your eyes do not see a