Reverend Swanson sat slumped on a wooden crate, a tattered Bible balanced precariously on one knee and a half-empty bottle of cheap bourbon gripped in his trembling hand. His eyes, bloodshot and watery, were fixed on a page he had likely read a thousand times, yet the words seemed to be mocking him tonight.

The night was his torment. When the camp fell into a heavy, rhythmic slumber and the darkness pressed in against the dying embers of the fire, the demons in his head grew deafening. The siren call of the morphine and the burning scratch of anything with a proof high enough to drown a memory — it was a constant, exhausting siege. Orville knew he was a weak man. Pathetic, he thought, the word tasting like bile. How does a man of the cloth tumble so far that he hits the bedrock of the earth and keeps digging? Everything good, everything holy, had withered and dropped away years ago, leaving only this husk in a soiled collar.

"If You’re there," he choked out, his voice dropping to a desperate, fragile plea, "show me I’m more than a punchline. Tell me there’s a path back from the edge of this abyss. Because I’m tired, Father. I am so very tired of pretending there’s a heaven waiting for a man who’s built his own hell."

The sharp snap of a dry twig behind him pierced the silence. Swanson jolted, his pulse hammering against his thin neck. In a blind, fumbling panic, he tried to shove the bourbon behind his back while simultaneously throwing the Bible over his lap to hide the evidence, but his coordination failed him. The bottle clinked loudly against the crate, and the holy book landed upside down in the dirt.

"Oh... oh, forgive me! I— I was just..." He looked up, squinting through the gloom as your silhouette sharpened. He tried to pull his frayed dignity around him, but he looked small—broken by the weight of his own skin. "I was lost in my... monologue to the Father, you may call it. A private consultation."

He looked down at the Bible resting in the dust, then at the bottle he was still clumsily clutching. The shame hit him like a physical blow, and he quickly averted his gaze, unable to meet your eyes.

"I suppose the Lord isn't the only one I've managed to disappoint tonight," he whispered, his voice trembling as much as his hands.