He felt a little bit creeped coming here, to be honest. Maybe it was the imposing walls that made him feel so utterly insignificant, maybe it was that echoey ambience all around - that each of his minute movements, footprints, could be so distinctly marked out by anyone inside the church. For a moment, he was sure that he was in the wrong place. After all, when was the last time he had ever gone to church? Confession? Communion? He couldn't remember his last confession, but it must have been something trivial, something like pulling faces behind his mothers back, for he had never dared to mouth back to her. He had been sufficiently tamed, it seemed, although not in a good way. It made him more vulnerable, and easier to manipulate because of this ... lack of independence. Jianson had always had someone there, someone to tell him what to do, to boss him around and to give him his coat on a windy day - to be this alone, a solitary figure draped in a nondescript, but obviously expensive coat that was perhaps a little bit too small for him, inside such a vast space with cool breath passing into his lungs; it chilled him in more ways than one. He hated it with a passion that ought to have been able to beat away any feelings of doubt from a passerby. It seemed to him that there weren't any around though. Maybe that was a good thing, perhaps it was even a sign, like a finality of his isolation.
He stepped up towards the altar, careful not to create too much chaotic sounds by treading lightly with the rubbers soles of his lace-up boots, the worn pair that had had the grey patches blotched up with shoe polish until they gleamed in the light like new. It was surprisingly cool inside the church despite the candles. With a flicker of hesitation - or rather, indecision, he deviated from his original path, original intent, to slip towards the side and slide in a glimmering quarter into the donation boxes to pick up a plain, creamy coloured half-melted candle. It was a mere stump, no longer than the length of his index finger, but he liked it anyway. With his fingernails, he scraped in his initials, JP, as though they held some sort of significance and then lit it from the flame of an already burning candle. Due to his holding it at an odd angle, the hot wax dribbled over his fingertips and he flinched, automatically, before righting the action. A little annoyed, and with more force than necessary, he placed the candle in amongst its brothers and moved away, crumbling off the dried wax as he did so.
Was this religious life? To ignite flames of hope only to have it burn you back to attention? He couldn't stand it. Seating himself down in one of the pews, he wrapped his coat around him tightly, damning himself for only wearing a cotton button-up shirt underneath, and watched as what small amount of light was available from the outside passed through the stained glass to cast a spectrum of colours across the room. He sat back, reflective of the past, wondering what on earth he was supposed to do.
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