But if she embraces her sin, her lust, and seeks light in the darkness, then maybe she can have Michael without apology.
Emma hears her mother crying out.
“Jeremiah!” her mother says. “Her pulse is quickening.”
The decision time for Emma is seconds away, she suspects, or she will have no choice at all since option two will be thrust upon her as a selection by default.
“Let’s get her to a hospital!” Jeremiah. “Please.”
“A hospital!” her father shouts back. “Dear God, have mercy on her words.
“No,” he says. “No hospital. Emma is in the care of God’s hands. He will take care of her. He will spare her if that is His will. We can only pray that she is in His light.”
Emma sees flashing lights, and she feels cool air drifting across her cheeks. She thinks of Michael. She replays the Sunday before with him in the barn, remembering his smell, how he felt when she pulled him close, and how she sucked him so close to her lips she could taste his lifeblood.
“I must decide,” she thinks to herself. "One, two, or three."
Emma begins to pray, quietly in her mind. But she focuses her attention on a source she has never turned to before.
“Oh darkness,” she whispers in her mind. “Take me. Take me on the earth as thy own flesh and blood. Leave me with life, here, and now, and I shall leave the light to be with you. I will be yours – a serpent of the flesh.
“Take me,” Emma cries out. “I’m yours.”
The wind rustling outside picks up momentum, gusting through open sanctuary doors. Lightning flashes silently in the distance as a simmering summer storm reveals its identity.
Emma’s pulse is beating erratically. Her breathing becomes laborious.
“Emma, no!” her mother cries, reaching back for Jeremiah’s hand.
“Jeremiah,” says her mother, turning to her husband, and shouting in a curdling shrill. “Do something! Do something!”
The Reverend kneels at his daughter’s right side, gently nudging Emma’s mother over. He places his hand on her forehead. He begins to pray in a firm but measured voice as silence and stillness falls across the sanctuary except for the now-steady breeze blowing through an open doorway.
“Dear heavenly Father, he says, “do unto my daughter as thy will be done. We pray that thy will is that she be with us. But we pray above all that thy will be done.”
Emma’s father places his finger beneath her nostrils.
“She’s not breathing,” he says.
Emma’s mother drops her head into her hands.
She sobs.
“Dear God,” she cries.
Emma’s father looks around the sanctuary. The room is still, and quiet.
“We must fear the serpent,” he father says, looking at the congregation members in the eyes one to another. “We must fear God if we want to live life. God giveth. And God taketh away.”
Emma’s father takes his hands from his daughter. He brings them to his face. He utters a muffled cry.
“No!” he belts out.
Her father reaches for Emma in haste. He puts the palm of his right hand on the base of Emma’s chest, and his left hand on top it. He pumps his hands into her chest and begins counting with the rhythm – one Mississippi, two Mississippi.
He stops at seven, clutches Emma’s jaw, pulls it open, pinches her nostrils, and begins breathing with his mouth into her mouth.
He stops for a breath.
He shouts.
“Come back to me!”
Emma’s mother is pleading as well.
“Come back to us Emma. Oh Dear God. Give us back our Emma!”
Emma blinks.
Her mother gasps.
“Jeremiah!”
Emma coughs back into her father’s face. She sits up, and looks around the room.
“Jeremiah!” her mother cries. “Emma! Emma dear!”
Emma wriggles her fingers, and opens her eyes, one at a time. Her skin is white like a choir robe. Her mouth is foamy from her father’s wet breath. She reaches slowly with her right hand to the bite mark on her neck. She feels a lump, and two holes where the serpent’s fangs pierced her skin.
Her father leaps to his feet.
“Praise God!” he shouts, raising his hands to the ceiling. “Praise God! God’s will is done! Praise God. Praise God!”
The Reverend prances around his daughter, raising his hands toward the ceiling.
“Hallelujah,” he chants.
The Reverend stops after one round, and drops his hands.
He lets out a sigh, and drops to his knees.
Emma’s father recognizes he broached the commands, interfering with God’s will by reaching beyond prayer to spare his daughter's life.
“What have I done, O God?” he says, softly, looking up to the sanctuary ceiling.