I flagellate on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The schedule is important.

The schedule is the load-bearing structure that keeps the rest of the building standing. The schedule does not hide things, unlike the walls and roof, which are built to conceal a man doing things inside.

It’s about discipline.

The flagellation is about discipline.

The prayers, matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline, the canonical hours, are about discipline.

The fasting on Wednesdays, the cold water, the hair shirt I wore for the first three years before the skin beneath it became a permanent landscape of welts that no longer served the purpose of reminding me of my flesh, all of it is discipline.

I am a disciplined man.

A priest who has served this parish for fourteen years, who hears confessions, administers the sacraments, visits the sick, buries the dead, and delivers sermons that the village has described as righteous.

Sermons that the blacksmith’s wife describes as terrifying in a way that made me feel clean.

Terrifying.

Clean.

I flagellate on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the blood runs down my back in channels created from the welts and scars that form a topography mapping fourteen years of discipline.

Eleven before, three since.

Three since the thing in the cellar.

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