This is what you say: Bless me father, for I have sinned.
It’s not exactly what you mean, because yes, you’ve sinned, but worse than what you've done is what you are.
This is what you say: You’d see it sometimes. In the ring.
This is what you don’t say: At home.
And you say: His eyes would go dead. And… he’d start walking forward real slow. Hands at his sides like he wasn’t afraid of anything.
That’s exactly what you mean, exactly what you remember. Cowering in the corner, pressing your back against the wall and looking up at your father. Your own hands flung across your face and being so, so afraid.
This is what you say: The other guy. He, him.
This is what you'd never say: I. Me. I’d see that look and I’d try to get away from him. He’d catch me, and trap me in the corner. You don’t say that. You’d never say that.
Let the devil out.
Out to play. To fight. To breed. Out of your father and into you, spreading, growing, multiplying. Finding something to latch onto, some foulness inside you. And then there were two. Be careful of the Murdock boys. They got the devil in ‘em.
This is what you say: I didn’t understand it. Not back then.
This is what you mean, and the father knows it: I understand it now. Now I’m the same.
This is what the father says: Perhaps this would be easier if you tell me what you’ve done.
You’ve never been more honest than when you say: I’m asking forgiveness… for what I’m about to do. Because you’ve felt it now, the urge to let the devil out, the release that comes from letting it happen. You understand now, much better than you ever wanted to, why your dad had to let it out on you. There are certain people with whom the urge is nigh unstoppable, and the release when you let it out is so immense it’s almost obscene. You’ve figured out what they all have in common: That foulness inside, something rotten in their souls. Just like you. For a while there, you wanted to believe that it was your disgust with these people that made you target them, but that’s not quite right. You’ve come to realize that what you’re feeling is the devil’s recognition of fertile soil, triggering its drive to breed, multiply. Progenate. Like a virus. And you know now that that’s what your father, the devil in him, recognized in you.
What exactly are you going to do? the father asks.
You don’t know yet, so you don’t answer. The point, although you realize you’ve been less than clear about it, is that whatever you do will - by definition - be the devil’s work. So it doesn’t really matter what you do; because of what you are, you will need to seek penance for it all anyway, even though you know already that it won’t make a difference.