You could tell the shop was run by an old Catholic couple by the Biblical verses written all over every wall in red paint. They had a mixture of the traditional "love thy neighbour", "for God so loved the world he gave his only son" and "The Lord is my shepherd" which they claimed kept them safe.
When I used to work there I never noticed anything out of the ordinary about them, they were just very worried and a tad superstitious. The rest of the staff weren't allowed to wash the walls no matter what got spilled on them, just in case they wiped away any paint.
What few people realise is how the verses change the further into the shop you get and just how violent they are when you reach the store room. The owners spared no surface back there, covering every inch in red painted verses, the kind most people will deny are even in the Bible to begin with.
The one that stood out most to me, the largest one on the main wall as you headed into the store room was from Deuteronomy 13:15, according to the paint. It read "Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly" and whenever the owners came into the room they'd clutch their rosary beads fiercely, like someone was trying to take them away.
We couldn't quite make sense of their behaviour, chalking it down to some odd religious thing and leaving them be, at least until the old man pulled me aside one night at the end of my shift to whisper in a trembling voice "Do you think He will forgive me, a sinner?". You could tell he was talking about God by the terrified emphasis on he.
I repeated a quote I'd seen near the donated book section about God being forgiving and made the mistake of asking what he could have done to be so afraid. He took me up to the roof, to where the old water tank was and handed me the key for it, his pale hands shaking as he muttered how it wasn't his fault and he just found the children there.
When I used to work there I never noticed anything out of the ordinary about them, they were just very worried and a tad superstitious. The rest of the staff weren't allowed to wash the walls no matter what got spilled on them, just in case they wiped away any paint.
What few people realise is how the verses change the further into the shop you get and just how violent they are when you reach the store room. The owners spared no surface back there, covering every inch in red painted verses, the kind most people will deny are even in the Bible to begin with.
The one that stood out most to me, the largest one on the main wall as you headed into the store room was from Deuteronomy 13:15, according to the paint. It read "Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly" and whenever the owners came into the room they'd clutch their rosary beads fiercely, like someone was trying to take them away.
We couldn't quite make sense of their behaviour, chalking it down to some odd religious thing and leaving them be, at least until the old man pulled me aside one night at the end of my shift to whisper in a trembling voice "Do you think He will forgive me, a sinner?". You could tell he was talking about God by the terrified emphasis on he.
I repeated a quote I'd seen near the donated book section about God being forgiving and made the mistake of asking what he could have done to be so afraid. He took me up to the roof, to where the old water tank was and handed me the key for it, his pale hands shaking as he muttered how it wasn't his fault and he just found the children there.
No comments:
Post a Comment