Pray For Him

by Tyler Battaglia

Knowing what was in the hearts of others meant little when it came to understanding what it meant to feel those things. To love. And Isaias was not one who knew love. It wasn’t his place.

Even an echo of someone else’s emotions was a start—better than feeling like his own heart was empty.

But there was something else, under the psychic remnants of love. A darker feeling. Something pulsating. Something hungry that wanted to overtake and consume all the love in the room. Isaias thought that if the others could feel it like he could, it would be let into their souls. That it would poison them, devour the love in their hearts, leave them empty.

Was Isaias’s own heart where this feeling that railed against love came from?

Love upon which to build a marriage, love to build a bridge through grief, love to baptize a life into Christ’s path. But Isaias had only ever known the kind of love that kept intimate company with fear.

Hector—never mind that they had lived in the same city for the entire duration of their friendship, never mind that it was easy to pick up the phone or see each other. It had begun as something of an in-joke, to exchange letters despite the proximity. Hector had started it as a way of teasing Isaias, telling him that he was such a timeless and romantic soul that writing letters to him seemed truer to form than just giving him a phone call or sending him a text.

Skimming through the letters, Isaias asked himself, how could a man who wrote, I saw this strange little figurine of a creature at the thrift store, and it made me think of you, maybe you’d like to give him a name when no one else would, be someone so in pain?

What secrets were hidden by a man who wrote, in the surest of pencil strokes, I still dream of all the people that I’ve lost?

The only other explanation for why Isaias sensed the faint taste of vanilla on his tongue, sweet and aromatic, when he touched the pages, was that Hector himself had poured his own heart into them.

He knew what it was like to wonder if you were missed before, finally, realizing that you simply weren’t. Isaias’s heart hurt all over again. The taste of acrid, spoiled vanilla lingered on his tongue—a phantom taste that he couldn’t shake despite its improbability. The shape of Hector’s pain, he thought.

If he touched it, even by accident, what was the chance that it would poison his heart? Could a mere object hold the power to corrupt?

Hector, Sometimes I can’t believe that a soul as radiant as yours houses so much pain. But don’t they say that the best among us are those who have been hurt but choose to be kind anyway?

Aww

As he reached out to trace the petals of a peace lily, a flower Isaias could recognize, he thought that maybe this was where Hector found worship. He may not believe in a Christian God, but Hector found divinity in other places, Isaias could tell. And how could Isaias begrudge a man his prayer, even if it was at an altar of flowers?

Gorgeous ♥️

Did ‘you shall have no other gods before Me’ apply when it was a religion of God’s own creations? Could God truly disapprove if man worshipped, instead, the beautiful world He made?

Hector’s hand on him, his hand on Hector, seemed to create a perfect circuit, through which Isaias’s emotions flowed into Hector and from which Isaias finally started to feel what Hector felt again, some shadow of his hopes, his dreams, his fears, his secrets.

👀🥹

Their emotions swelled together, magnifying each other and creating an echo chamber of fear and—and what? Isaias was distracted; he couldn’t quite make out the nuances of the feelings that flowed through the conduit that their contact had made.

he let Hector go, at once feeling his absence. He also felt an ache in his temple and in his ribs.

Isaias saw something shift in his eyes, from gentle to predatory. “I’m sorry to have worried you.”

😬

The smell of something charred was back. Then, in a dangerously low voice, like an animal watching its prey, Hector asked, “You think you can’t be corrupted, man of God?”

🫢

Something like worry, something like regret, crept into Hector’s emotions like a crawling vine.

Isaias gripped the rosary in both hands, bringing it to his lips, and waited for the scent of sandalwood and roses when all he wanted were the smell of vanilla and the warmth of a campfire that meant that Hector was there with him.

Dear Hector, I just left The Second Voyage. I spoke with Lena. I tried not to tell her anything too personal, but I hope you will forgive me my trespasses if I said anything you would not want her to know. It’s just that I’m scared—scared that I will never be enough to save you. Do you even want me to save you? Is it wrong of me to want to save you?

TEARS 😭

I wondered, Hector, should I pray to You instead?

“Oh, priest,” he crooned, “so frightened, so afraid. So much delicious doubt in your mind and your soul. Where is your God? Are you afraid that He abandoned you, just like so many others have left you like dirt in the street? He has a habit of it, you know—leaving His creations to rot.”

👀 👀

“Oh, Father Isaias,” the demon said, his voice thick with mocking and insult. “You think you can save anyone when you can’t even save yourself? So many lies, so much doubt,

“You—you don’t know what you’re doing. Silly, stupid man. No sense of his own heart.”

“Come with me,” he said softly to Hector as he helped him to his feet. Hector, normally so strong, too weak to stand on his own. “And I will fight to save you.”

Hector, I don’t think I ever told you that I have dreamt of you. Like a beatific vision, you appeared to me, haloed by radiant light. I don’t know what it meant, or if it had to mean anything at all. Maybe it was just my subconscious recognizing the divine in you.

It doesn’t feel ironic, though, so much as prophetic: you are so good that of course the demonic had to come for you. Taking your goodness is a loss for the world, and a win for the forces of Hell, because what better way to crush hope than to take the best among us?

If we make it out of this alive, I promise you I won’t hold back. I will tell you that you are divine. I will tell you that I worship your goodness. I will tell you that you are a bright light in this world. My world.

OMG ♥️♥️♥️♥️

Hector, who now tried to squeeze Isaias’s hand again, weak as it was, and said, “We match. Our hands—both injured, you know? We fit together.”

🥲🥲🥲

What little relief he could give Hector, he should. Anything to show his utter devotion to him. Anything.

When pulled away, he could not meet Hector’s eyes and had to take his leave, before their bonded souls would reveal to Hector the deepest fear in Isaias’s heart:

These were the things that he prayed with: his heart was his prayer, and it felt sublime. And when he felt something stirring his heartstrings in reply, he sobbed.

“Sorry. But I’m not wasting any effort on you. I’m giving you exactly what you deserve—someone to fight to their dying breath for you.”

🥹🥹♥️

The arrhythmic pulse of Hector’s soul mimicked a weakening heart, faint and unsteady. Fading. Meanwhile something coated it like grease, difficult to wash off. The demon didn’t have his own soul, surely, so it instead clung to Hector’s like a film of oil.

“Not just physically, but emotionally. Know him. What’s he smell like to you, feel like to you? Taste him, his soul. Feel the last ounce of him before I drain it all away. Last chance, Father Fuck Up, before I have him all to myself.”

I’m scared 🥲

Isaias’s voice cracked and he fought to control his volume. Fought to let this moment be theirs. Fought for him and for Hector. For the garden he still dreamed they could grow together. “Come back to me.

I need them to grow a garden together don’t break my heart 😭😭

Hold on for the future we could almost have. I don’t want to face a version of the world where you are a regret. Where I have to wonder what another life might have looked like, with you still in it. Where I can only dream of planting flowers in our garden together.

Hoping to be yours, Isaias

brb crying

Isaias stared out at the road, searching, driving aimlessly, and not knowing what to do. Except to reach out to Hector, and hope Hector would shine like a lighthouse through the dark that clouded his soul.

Hector held onto him as if he were afraid that Isaias would let go of him, as if he would break in the short fall to the plush mattress below. Never before had Hector, his strong, steadfast Hector, seemed so delicate.

Hector said, “I love you, little flower.”

He watched the steady rise and fall of Hector’s chest, a buoy in the ocean that was all this suffering.

“Yes, Hector?” “I love you.” Everything stopped. In that instant, he realized: this was the prayer he had been waiting for. I love you was the key to the gates of paradise that Isaias hadn’t known he needed. To be known, to be loved, just as God commanded. Love—love was God, after all. Love was God, and love was Hector. Isaias had just needed that delectable fruit of knowledge to tell him what love could be. To let him see through the veil into the world of possibility of what they could grow in their garden together. Not just flowers, but the fruits of knowledge, and love, and new beginnings.

Isaias wondered if he would ever heal, or if he, too, would be forever marked, if flowers growing out of him would make him a grave.

🥲

This was always what he had to offer: a heart too heavy to bear alone.

♥️

Hector had been his first kiss, his tenth kiss, and he hoped he would be his last kiss, too, together now until the end of time.

The light, at last, reached those kind eyes. “Let’s go home.”

♥️♥️♥️♥️

I can’t wait to see the garden we’ll grow together. Love, Hector