“I see you brought your friend to the Church. He the one?” Pavel asked.

Sonya seethed, “You’re watching me now?”

Pavel steepled his hands, “Are you so naive to think no one would report to me about someone so uneducated was walking our halls?”

She gripped the table edge since she was practically falling on top of him.

“I’m glad you’re taking the initiative to introduce him to our place of worship. When can I expect to see him ask to be indoctrinated into our ranks?”

Sonya dropped herself into the seat and crossed her arms, “I… don’t know yet.”

Pavel raised an eyebrow, “No?” He reached to the right and opened a drawer with stacks of folders within and pulled out the one on top, “Maybe this will inspire you.”

Sonya snatched the papers and looked them over, “You’re putting me in charge of the infants?”

Pavel smiled, “You like kids, no?”

Sonya smoldered. She did like kids. Cute and innocent. What the church did to those kids… She rubbed her arms, the leather sleeves felt cool on her skin. She flipped to the last page and her eyes widened, “You put me on the fucking expedition?”

Pavel said nothing.

“You’re doubling my required time at the church and in two months I’m crossing the pacific to some bullshit country-” She inhaled slowly, lowering her voice. She didn’t know how much Walker could hear through the doors. “Switch Zach with me. He’s been begging to get on the squad.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. You’re on the trip,” Pavel said.

“Fine, let's see what the Chief has to say about this,” she said with a huff.

Sonya wish she could say she couldn’t believe what they were doing but this wasn’t anything new. She whipped herself out of the chair and pushed through the doors to see Walker. Except he wasn’t there. The doors slammed behind her as she looked left and right. Walker had disappeared.

ɸ

Walker slipped through the oddly vacant hallways. His worn-down shoes squeaked as they hit the spotless floor. Etched into each of the tiles was a symbol. At first, Walker thought each was unique, however, every so often he would spot a repeat. The symbols wove together in a dizzying array in an incomprehensible pattern. The left wall was mostly stained glass that let in natural light in rays. Each window portrayed a different scene. The first window he passed was a drab display of grey tones. The second exhibited a maelstrom of pale white and chrome tinged with a crimson red surrounded by the same greys.

Walker moved on, and figures arose and fell. Some were angelic, others grim, all hauntingly beautiful. Another window halfway through made Walker pause. Set in a mesa, a horde of soldiers in white and tan mobbed a single figure facing them standing upon a hill. However, the figure wasn’t a regular person but an amalgamation of eyes with jet-black pupils staring directly forward as if staring at him. And the hill wasn’t a hill, but naked mangled bodies stacked one on top of each other and squished together like a cheap cheeseburger. The figure was bathed in light and two rays erupted out of its side, cleaving the glass scene transversely. Walker glanced down the hallway again, the hair on the back of his arms stood straight up. He rubbed them and moved on. The final window of the hallway wasn’t stained at all. Just a normal window. He peered through it, but only the trees waved back.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Odd. Perhaps the commissioned didn’t have enough paint. Walker frowned, was paint the right word? He didn’t know how the staining process worked. The hallway split into two, to the left was the entrance to the building, and to the right held a hallway that penetrated the center of the building in twine. This hallway was windowless and instead held woodcarvings, portraits, and religious icons.

The most striking thing however was the tiny boy who crouched over the floor at the end of the hallway. The boy himself was not striking, the opposite really. His hair was uneven with tufts of hair poking out and patches that were inches shorter than the rest. His eyes were too close, almost touching. His nose was too big and he had a slanted mouth. His skin was mostly pale, but his skin was peeling and raw.

Walker sauntered down the hallway. Even though he wore rubber soles, the squeak of each step caused the child to look up. On the floor, and clutched his grasp, were pieces of paper.

“Watcha doin?” Walker asked.

The boy didn’t respond and instead furiously returned to the scraps. Walker crouched next to the child. He smelled like a combination of sweat and bile. He tried to breathe out of his mouth as he examined the scraps. Someone had ripped up a page out of a map of the United Regions out of a magazine, state by state, and heaped them into a pile. A roll of tape and a cooking timer sat next to him. It read eight minutes.

“Are you solving a puzzle?”

“Yes.” The boy’s voice was high and nasal, though Walker was glad to get a response. “Need to finish. Need to…”

Only two of the scraps had been taped together, and not correctly.

“PADD 5 doesn’t border PADD 2. That doesn’t make sense logically,” Walker ripped the two scraps taped together and pulled a smaller state from the pile, and taped it together. “See the natural border lines? Follow those.”

Walker the teacher. He glanced at the kid's face: snotty and confused. Maybe not.

The timer dinged, five minutes. The child frantically clawed at the paper randomly and grabbed the tape.

Walker grabbed his arm causing the child to recoil, “Sorry,” he let go. “Those are the wrong ones.”

The kid’s chest heaved, and he hiccupped, “I just need to finish, maybe it won’t be that bad this time.”

“That bad?” He peeked around the corner, and he realized a door was open twenty feet down the hall and soft voices emanated from it. Sunday school? Odd project for summer school. Walker flipped a scrap and realized it was a nose. He flipped another the bottom lip of a mouth.

He flipped more.

He tapped the child, “Do you know how to make a face?”

The child shrugged him off and continued, “A Face?”

He thrust the scraps under the child and the child grabbed them and paused. Something must have slid into place in that lumpy skull of his because the child flipped all the papers and began piecing together the face. With only a minute left the child had reconstructed the page. It was a woman’s face painted with a splash of makeup.

“Now flip,” Walker murmured.

With child-like clumsiness he flipped the page and behold, the map was perfectly completed.

Tears in his eyes, the kid scrambled to his feet and frantically whispered “thank you.”

“Wait, what’s your name?” Walker asked.

“Matty.”

He ran into the room and slammed the door shut.

“There you are. What’re you doing?” Sonya had found him.

“Explorin’.”

She approached him. The timer and the roll of tape were still on the floor. She squinted at him.

“I bet.”

Sonya flipped her hair over her shoulder, “Let’s go, I have some stuff I have to do here.”

Walker nodded and stretched his back once more. He was very excited to examine his knife more closely and start practicing. Walker checked his phone. He also had to hurry, lest he be late for the session with Egor. Something bubbled within him. It reminded him of Christmas eve when he was a child or the first day of middle school. Anxious energy mixed with curiosity and blended with the jitters. That feeling seemed to fade over time. They started toward the entrance. He stole a glance at the room Matty had scurried into. Scratched into the front, spanning the entire width, was an X.