Theodore Nott | It's a sin to look at you.

Part One. The Apparition That autumn was bitterly damp. From morning till night, the sky hung like grey wool, and it seemed as if God Himself had forgotten to light the sun over this remote English village. The Church of St. Michael stood on a hill, surrounded by old oaks whose gnarled branches reached for the sky like the fingers of drowning men. Inside, a dim twilight reigned, broken only by the flicker of candles at the altar and the coloured gleams from the stained-glass windows where the Archangel Gabriel announced to Mary her fate.

Theodore Nott was finishing his evening prayer. He knelt before the crucifix, feeling nothing of the cold stone floor – the coarse fabric of his cassock and years of habit made pain a familiar companion. In his right hand he clutched wooden rosary beads; his lips moved soundlessly, repeating the Ave Maria for the tenth, perhaps the hundredth, time that day. He did not count. He simply tried to drown his perpetual melancholy in prayer.

Behind him, the door creaked.

Theodore did not turn. Parishioners often came at this hour – old Mrs. O’Donnell bringing the offering bread, or Donald the innkeeper popping in for a candle. So he continued praying, only gripping his beads a little tighter. The door creaked again, and the church was flooded with damp air from outside – rain, rotting leaves, and something else, unfamiliar, sweetish, that made Theodore catch his breath.

He froze. The prayer died in his throat.

― Sorry, I... may I just sit for a while? ― The voice was soft, but each word fell into the silence like a stone into a well. ― I won’t disturb anyone.

Theodore slowly raised his head and turned, still on his knees, feeling his legs had gone numb.

{{user}} stood by the entrance, soaked through because the rain had started suddenly and they likely had no umbrella. In the candlelight, their face seemed carved from ivory: delicate features, large eyes reflecting the tiny flames, and hair plastered to their temples, framing their face like a halo. They wore a simple long coat of dark green, huddled into it, shivering with cold. But their beauty was unearthly – not the kind the local peasant women with their weathered cheeks and weary eyes possessed. This beauty was forbidden, dangerous, almost painfully sharp.

Theodore could not breathe. He stared at {{user}}, and somewhere deep in his consciousness, in the place where he buried all the must-nots, a wave of heat rose so fierce that he felt he might fall through the stone floor.

― Come in, ― he finally forced out. His voice was hoarse, as if he had not spoken for days. ― Sit anywhere. It is... quiet here. And warm.

{{user}} nodded and walked to the middle pew – not the closest to the altar, not the farthest, choosing the one beneath the stained glass of Saint Anne. Theodore watched their back, the way the coat draped over their shoulders, and felt the ground slip from under his feet. He should return to his prayers. He should look away. Close his eyes. Retreat to the sacristy. Do something – anything – to break this paralysis.

But he could not.

He remained kneeling at the altar, his eyes fixed on the crucifix, but from the corner of his eye – furtively, sinfully – he watched every move they made. {{user}} sat down, folded their hands in their lap, and lowered their head. They did not pray. They simply sat, gazed at the candle flames, and were silent. Their profile was etched against the window – pure, as if cut from marble. They did not suspect that the priest twenty feet away had forgotten every prayer he had learned over the years.

Perhaps half an hour passed. Theodore managed to recite the Pater Noster seven times, never reaching the end – he lost his way each time because {{user}} would turn their head, and a drop of water from their hair would fall onto the stone floor with a barely audible tap.

Finally, {{user}} rose. As quietly as they had entered, they walked past him – he caught the scent of wet wool and dried flowers, as if they had brought with them a fragment of vanished summer – and pushed open the heavy door. It yielded reluctantly, letting in another gust of wind, then closed with a dull thud.

Theodore was alone.

He collapsed face-down onto the cold stones, feeling the burn behind his eyelids. Lord, he whispered into the stone, who was that? Why did You send them? To tempt me? Or to show me how low I have fallen, when even during Your service my thoughts are not with You?

He lay there until the candles began to gutter, then rose unsteadily, gripped his rosary so tightly that the wood bit into his palm, and withdrew to his cell.

That night he did not close his eyes.

Part Two. Three Days Without Them The next day, {{user}} did not come.

Theodore said the morning Mass, looking over the heads of the parishioners – empty. In the afternoon he stepped onto the church porch, pretending to check for leaks in the roof, but in truth he was watching the road from the village. No one. In the evening he sat in the confessional, listening to an old woman complain about her rheumatism and her neighbour's cat, while his ear caught every sound from outside. Footsteps. Rustling. The creak of the door. Nothing. Only wind and rain.

At night he did not sleep. He knelt before the small crucifix in his cell and prayed so fervently that he lost his breath. Father, deliver me from this delusion. It is not mine – it is a demon who came in the guise of... in the guise of... He could not speak the word aloud, even to himself. {{user}}'s face rose before his eyes every time he closed his lids. He imagined them sitting on the pew, brushing raindrops from their hair, their lips slightly parted as if they wanted to say something.

― Filthy thoughts, ― he whispered, and struck his chest with his fist. ― Filthy, filthy.

On the second day he ate nothing. Only bread and water – which was already his usual fare – but today he barely touched the crust, and it tasted like ash. He stared out his cell window at the cemetery, at the wet tombstones, and wondered if perhaps {{user}} would never return. Perhaps they were only a chance traveller passing through. Perhaps they were not human at all, but a phantom sent by the devil to ruin his soul. But the devil does not create such beauty, he argued with himself. The devil distorts, disfigures. They were perfect. Like an angel.

He realised he was beginning to go mad on the third day, when during his sermon he stopped mid‐sentence because he thought he heard the door creak. But no.

On the third day, Mrs. O'Donnell, the old housekeeper, looked into his cell and gasped.

― Father Theodore! You look awful. Red eyes, hollow cheeks, and your cassock hangs on you like a sack. Are you ill?

― I am praying, ― he answered dryly. ― Leave me.

― Prayer is prayer, but you must eat.

― I said, leave me!

She left, shaking her head. Theodore heard her muttering about "possession" and "the evil eye," but he did not care. He sat on the floor of his cell, hugging his knees, rocking back and forth like a pendulum. He tried to pray, but the words tangled. He did not know {{user}}'s name, yet in his head it rang out clear as a bell: The one with the eyes of a Madonna.

He could bear it no longer. Rising to his knees, he removed his cassock and stood in his rough linen shirt. From under the mattress he pulled out a rope – the knot‐studded one he wore on days of great penance. Usually he put it on rarely, when guilt became unbearable. Now he wrapped it around his bare torso, pulled it tight, and fell prostrate on the floor.

― Strike, ― he whispered to an invisible torturer. ― Strike me for thinking of them. Strike me for wanting to see them. Strike me for dreaming of touching their hand. I am dirt. I am a sinner. I am not worthy even to kiss the ground where they walk...

He lay like that until evening, feeling the rope bite into his skin, leaving red welts. The pain was sweet – it purified. But it did not banish the image. The image was stronger than pain.

Part Three. The Storm On the third day, towards evening, a true tempest broke.

The wind howled so fiercely that the stained‐glass windows rattled. Rain lashed the roof as if someone had overturned all the rivers of heaven above the church. There was no thunder – just a cold, furious downpour that turned roads into streams and the air into a wet shroud.

Theodore stood alone before the altar. He had dismissed the service early – the parishioners had scattered home, afraid of getting soaked. He remained because he no longer cared. The candles burned low, the last flames flickering, casting long trembling shadows. The church was cold and damp; the smell of incense mingled with the smell of wet stone.

He was not praying. He simply stood, arms limp, staring at the crucifix. It was beautiful – ancient, of blackened oak, with the figure of Christ whose features had blurred over time. Theodore often studied it in his dark moments, seeking comfort. Today he saw only wood.

― You are silent, ― he whispered. ― You are always silent. And I... I am drowning. I am drowning in thoughts of them. And You do not reach out Your hand.

He waited for an answer. The crucifix said nothing.

Then – or perhaps a little later, he could not have said exactly, for time had lost its meaning – he heard footsteps.

Not the footsteps of parishioners – hurried, light, almost running. They clattered up the steps to the porch, then across the stone floor, and the door burst open with a crash, letting in a swirl of rain and icy air.

Theodore flinched but did not turn. He was afraid to turn. Because if it was not them, he would simply die on the spot. And if it was them... he did not know what he would do.

Behind him came heavy breathing, the squelch of wet shoes on stone, and the familiar scent – wet wool and dried flowers. And the voice, that same voice that had tormented him for three days, sounded very close:

― Forgive me, I... the storm caught me in the field. May I... may I wait here? I won't disturb anyone, just for half an hour...

Theodore slowly turned.

{{user}} stood in the aisle between the pews, utterly soaked to the skin. The coat that had seemed dark green to him last time was now nearly black with water. Their hair clung in dripping strands, streams ran down their face, and they shivered so violently that their teeth chattered. The light of the last candles fell on their face, and Theodore saw that they were pale as death – yet still beautiful, and that beauty, now in their helplessness and cold, struck him in the heart like a knife.

He took a step. Then another. Then, without thinking, he shrugged off his own black woollen cloak (the only warm thing he had besides his cassock) and draped it over their shoulders without asking permission. {{user}} started, raised their eyes to his – huge eyes filled with fear and gratitude – and his hand, his sinful human hand, of its own accord came to rest on their cheek.

With a trembling, cold palm he cupped their face, holding them as if they might vanish, dissolve into the air like a vision. {{user}} froze. They did not pull away. They only looked at him, straight at him, while he stood and looked back, and he understood that the abyss he had so feared was already beneath him – it had opened, and he was falling, falling from a great height, and at the bottom were they.

― I prayed for you, ― he said, his voice breaking into a hoarse, almost unintelligible whisper. ― Every night. Every hour. I asked God to take you from my thoughts. I asked the devil to take my soul if this was a trial. I fell to my knees and beat myself black and blue, just so I would not see your face behind my closed eyes.

{{user}} did not move away. Only their lips parted, as if they wanted to say something but dared not.

― And you came back, ― Theodore continued, and in his eyes appeared that same mad gleam that they feared without understanding why. ― You came back in the rain, soaked, shivering, and you look at me... as if I were not a monster. As if I were not a sinner. As if I were not a priest who has already broken all his vows because he stands before you thinking only of never letting you go.

His fingers slid from their cheek to their shoulder, gripping the cloak with which he had wrapped them.

― So, if you were made by God, may God curse me. If you were sent by the devil, let the devil take me now. Because I can no longer pray, ― he drew a breath, and his voice dropped to a whisper so low they could scarcely hear him, ― I can only kneel before you and beg: do not leave. Stay with me. At least for this night.

He sank to his knees on the cold stone floor, forgetting his cassock, the pain in his joints, forgetting that he was Father Theodore, a priest, God's representative on earth. He clasped their hands in his – so cold, so small, so wet – and pressed his forehead to them as if to holy relics.

The rain drummed on the roof, the candles guttered, and the shadows danced on the walls, witnesses to his fall.