alexander blake

“She figured it out on her own. Or rather, she simply didn’t believe Cyrilo’s story. She’s keeping quiet because she doesn’t want me and Cyrilo to get in trouble. It’s not fair to her, to have to bear this sin with us. Honestly, I’m no different. I’m grateful to Cyrilo for everything she’s done for Alexis and me, and without her, our literature program has no future. Our dream is to change the world by granting everyone the gift of knowledge, but is noble sentiment enough to make up for what we did? Is it wrong for me to protect her? To protect myself? To escape punishment under the excuse that we’re trying to make a better world?”

“Can you really blame me?” Daddy asked with a chuckle, squeezing her in his arms and kissing her cheek. “Although to be perfectly fair, there was actually a bit more to it, before the event itself. I'd come across some of the internet porn she'd been reading, when I had to use her computer. Bestiality, daddy-daughter incest, and rape fantasy, mostly. I tried not to think too much of it, just normal teenage curiosity, or so I'd mostly convinced myself. But when I accidentally walked in on her and Bruce, and saw she'd chosen to make at least some of those fantasies a reality... well, I just couldn't resist! I just had to try her out for myself, after they were done!”

Maybe you and I do deserve to suffer for our wrongdoing. If that’s so, then it means that when things get painful, when things get difficult, we don’t have the luxury of quitting. We don’t get to end our lives to escape what we did. Whatever form the pain takes, we bear it, we endure it, we welcome it, all while we try to make this world a place where people like us, like how we used to be, have no place, and the people who would be hurt can instead live in peace. The next time you encounter an obstacle you cannot overcome, when you just want to curl up into a ball and quit on the world, remind yourself that you don’t deserve the peace of surrender. You have to keep working, to keep fighting, to keep suffering, until the day when you’ve fully repented.