Unholy Craving

I sat outside Elkins Bible Church, my hands still gripping my old truck’s steering wheel. The rust bucket had gotten me and all my meager belongings from the outskirts of Frederick, Maryland to the deep woods of northern Pennsylvania without breaking down, surprisingly.
Dad’s ’48 Chevy truck had outlived him by six months, and while it was a piece of junk, I couldn’t bear to part with the one thing we’d had together outside of church when I was younger. His garage, his baby, grease and laughter.
Inhaling deeply, I forced my hands to move—wiping my damp palms on my dress pants and turning off the key to cut the rumbling engine.
I had promised myself a new beginning, one in the small community of Elkins as the new youth pastor for a tiny group of fifteen teens. Quiet, where no angst or strife would riddle my hollowed-out heart.
Lord, help me.
That prayer lingering in my head, I opened the truck’s squeaky door to the spring’s cool breeze. Sunlight glinted off the side mirror, blinding me for a brief moment as the pebbled parking lot crunched beneath my dress shoes. When my vision cleared, a forty-something man stood on the church’s small porch, smiling my way.
We hadn’t met in person, but I recognized him from my virtual interview a few weeks earlier.
“Malachi?” he called, his light steps bringing him down the concrete stairs toward me.
“Yes.” Forcing a smile, I buttoned my suit coat and closed the distance between us to shake his hand. “Pastor Van Dusen?”
“Pastor Bram. Please.” He clasped his other hand atop mine and squeezed, his hazel eyes full of warmth. Unnatural peace and light shone in their depths like I begged God for on a daily basis. “And I am a blessed man, indeed. Welcome to your new home.”
My new home.
The words should have replaced the emptiness inside me with the joy I had hoped and prayed for, but nothing had been able to fill me with such feelings after the love I’d lost back in high school.
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Thank you, sir. It’s great to be here.”
Pastor Bram released my hand and gripped my shoulder like he might to steer a child even though we stood eye to eye at six feet, give or take a half-inch. “Come on in, and I’ll show you around.”
The church’s entryway smelled like every other one I had entered: lemon furniture polish and the sterility of holiness.
Purity.
Other things I strove for every day in my thoughts and heart and had done a damn good job focusing on since rededicating my life to God a few years earlier.
The soles of my shoes squeaked on the immaculate tiled floor as I followed along behind my new pastor. Double glass doors opened into the sanctuary on our right. A blue carpet aisle pointed the way to the simplistic stage with two stairs leading up to an oak pulpit—
“The offices aren’t much.” Pastor Bram pulled my focus to where we headed. “But they do afford some privacy.” He guided me back through a short hallway into a small reception area, a little gray-haired lady standing from behind a tidy desk as we entered. “Mrs. Howard, this is Malachi Foley, our new youth pastor.”
Still having to force my smile in return to hers, I stepped forward and shook her hand. “Ma’am.”
“Welcome, Pastor Foley.”
The title, although earned and paid for by my parents, hadn’t ever sounded right in my ears. Perhaps after a few years in the ministry I would accept having accomplished my parents’ dream—God’s will—for my life. “Malachi, please.”
Mrs. Howard nodded. “I’ve set up everything I could think of on your desk,” she said, motioning toward the door on my right, “but just let me know if you need anything else.”
“I will, thank you.” I dipped my head and followed Pastor Bram into his office on the left.
It was a larger space than I’d expected, but built-in shelves lined two walls, full of books I had studied in college, making it appear narrow. My own textbooks sat boxed in the apartment I’d rented not far outside the community I’d become a part of overnight.
My office, I found out moments later, was smaller than the pastor’s, and it didn’t feel like home either. I hoped to change that.
In time.
We made our way back to the auditorium, the carpet hushing our footfalls, the pastor’s voice muted by the wood paneling along both walls as he filled me in on the history and daily workings of the church. It appeared almost identical to the one I’d grown up in. Oak pews lay on either side of the main aisle, their backs lined with racks to hold hymnals, hardback copies of the King James Bible, and tiny shelf-like holders for plastic communion cups.
The pulpit stood intimidating at the front, the dais it sat atop making it seem as though it loomed over the congregation from a place of authority. The same as the one I had accepted as a child because my parents said to. One I submitted myself to upon admitting my sins and choosing His path.
Leaving the quiet place of worship behind, we descended the stairs opposite the office wing, and the basement space opened up into a large area with tables and chairs stacked against the far wall beside a small kitchen. A few doors stood along either side—classrooms for the younger children.
I imagined the noise of potluck dinners, the scent of burnt coffee and various pasta dishes bringing back memories from my childhood, and my lips curved upward for real. Mom, as an elder’s wife, would have been scurrying around in the kitchen, cheeks pink, her curly blonde hair frizzed around her ears like mine would be if I didn’t keep it short.
She and Dad had led me in the path of righteousness, attempting to raise me in the best way they knew how.
I’d been the one to fail.
Thankfully, both had gone to the grave without finding out the depths of my depravity.
My smile faded, and I reminded myself of God’s grace and mercy, His forgiveness of sin in order to silence the demons wanting to drag me back to a place of squalor that would damn my soul to hell.
Putting thoughts of my past behind me, I followed Pastor Bram outside and around back to the second building on the church’s five-acre plot.
Elkins Bible School occupied the single-story, more modern building where I would also be teaching the high schoolers their Bible classes for the rest of the spring quarter.
My predecessor had passed suddenly, and Pastor Bram had been filling in as their teacher until our paths crossed by word of mouth.
I had needed a job, an escape from my hometown after caring for my ailing father and finishing my internship the summer before. Although only a year out of Bible college, I landed the job courtesy of my best friend in college, Zeke. Pastor Bram’s nephew.
A perfect fit, I told myself. Four hours from a house I’d just sold, from a gravesite at the opposite end of my parents’ corner of the cemetery, one that drew me but I refused to visit.
Brian.
My childhood friend, my first secret lover, and the one who had paid the price for our sins.
Jaw clenching in attempts to put my past back beneath the blood of the Lamb, I traversed the small Christian school’s halls, wondering how the heck they managed to stay running with only fifteen kids in high school and barely double that in the younger grades.
Kindergarten through grade twelve were all in one building—which sat quiet around us since the students congregated for lunch in a cafeteria Pastor Bram didn’t bother showing me.
The job hadn’t come with great pay, but when did serving God in an honest and holy way ever line a man’s pockets with cash?
With my parents’ blessing and financial help, I’d sought a life of fortune in Nashville the day after I graduated high school, hoping my worship leading skills would get recognized and my voice would land me a record deal like Brian and I had planned to do together before God took him from me.
Rebellion, sin, had turned out to be a bigger temptation than wanting to honor God with my vocal gift, and I’d slept with every man I could in attempts to forget my first love.
It had taken the deepest reaches of depression to make me realize I wouldn’t ever find contentment and peace outside of God’s will for my life. I’d enrolled in Bible college at the encouragement of both my parents, but Mom didn’t live to see me graduate like I’d promised her I would.
Dad had stuck around a little longer, but just barely.
They’d had me later in life, and as an only child, I’d been lavished with unconditional love. Acceptance and grace. Mercy when God hadn’t shown it to Brian.
A flicker of gut-wrenching anger lit deep inside my soul, one I fought whenever thoughts of my past rose to the choking point.
I tried to swallow it down with coffee in Pastor Bram’s office, courtesy of Mrs. Howard, praying for the Holy Spirit to fill me, to take the hovering despair away.
“We would love to have you join us for dinner this evening, unless you have other plans,” Pastor Bram offered.
That was the last thing I felt like doing after a long day of driving and unpacking, but I didn’t believe turning my new pastor down would be the right choice. “I appreciate the invitation—thank you.”
“I hope you don’t mind that my nephew told me about your battle with depression.” No pity, no condemnation for my inability to trust God at times, showed on Pastor Bram’s face.
“Zeke helped see me through my darkness,” I had no issue admitting. My college roommate for all four years knew everything in my past—and he’d never once judged me.
“My son…” Pastor Bram’s voice faded off as he peered out his office window to the budding trees beyond. “He’s struggling, and I believe God led you here to steer him in the right path.”
I met Pastor Bram’s gaze as his head swung toward me, my stomach tightening again at the sudden expectation placed on my shoulders. “In the same way I did?”
“No. Rebelliousness.” The pastor shifted on his chair and glanced at a five-by-seven photo on his desk facing him. “Isaac is at that age where he doesn’t talk much with his mom or me. But he writes a lot of dark poetry, words that don’t make sense. It’s an outlet.” The pastor shrugged, but the frown on his face revealed his true thoughts. He hated that his son would rather take pencil to paper than explain his feelings to his father.
Considering my own emotions had been brushed off when I was younger by my parents and our pastor in order to “trust God,” I wasn’t surprised the young man didn’t share anything of substance with his father.
“He had a strong dislike of our last youth pastor,” Pastor Bram continued when I couldn’t think of a comment that would sound God-like, “and I’m praying your younger age will help forge a connection between the two of you. I’m hoping you’ll take him under your wing. Be a positive influence. Show him what it means to trust God as the Bible commands.”
“Of course.” I didn’t hesitate to agree. Touching teens’ lives had become my mission. I prayed that one day seeking God’s will for my life would fill the hollowness in my chest that Brian’s death had left behind.
Zeke, my college buddy, had been the only one to know about my past. Oftentimes, Mom had studied the way Brian and I interacted, and I wondered if she knew about the lies I told to cover our sins. She never confronted us, never judged. It was my understanding that my parents had gone to the grave believing I’d gone on to live a holy life while in Nashville, that I’d been saving myself for a godly young woman, a wife to complete me.
But no such woman existed unless she had a dick between her thighs.
Why would God allow such desires—
I cut off the thought as always. Homosexuality was a sin, a result of the fall of mankind. God wasn’t to blame for my daily temptation. While I would never consider my sexuality a blessing as a chance to reveal God’s strength in me for abstaining, I placed my hope in His ability to guide me toward purity.
Daily prayer and submerging myself in the Word had kept me on His path throughout my college years.
It was time to trust Him for my first ministry too.
* * *
Pastor Bram’s wife Annabelle barely reached my chest in height. I’d learned over our coffee that the tiny Korean woman had been rescued from poverty by the pastor when he’d been on a missions trip overseas twenty-some years earlier.
Dark eyes and dimples. Pretty for a woman and sweet as anything, she welcomed me into their home that night, her demure dress typical of a middle-aged pastor’s wife, exactly like I’d expected.
I wore jeans and a light blue hoodie rather than the suit I’d sweated through earlier in the day while settling into my office. Not exactly pastor threads, but outside of the office and church, I didn’t feel the need to play the part clothing-wise. A piece of me clung to my college ways, the comfort of jeans, worn sneakers, and T-shirts.
Ties sucked ass—
“Isaac!” Pastor Bram hollered up the stairs, his booming voice bringing my thoughts back from a path leading to darkness.
Footsteps sounded from the second floor, heavier as they approached the landing above us.
“Gird your loins,” Pastor Bram quietly stated, his own face frowning with trouble. “I warned him to behave, but he’s been his usual moody self since getting home from school. Perhaps it’s best if I leave you to it.”
I nodded, trusting his judgement.
Pastor Bram clasped my shoulder and moved toward the kitchen behind me, and I put on a casual, unintimidating smile.
Seventeen-year-old Isaac, the troubled senior in high school.
The pastor’s son who wore old black Vans and jeans with enough holes to act as an air conditioner.
He’d inherited his mother’s dark hair, I noted as he descended the stairs farther. His smooth jawline and pouty lips in profile made my groin tighten.
Lord, help me…
My lungs stalled out, smile fading as Isaac reached the first floor and turned to greet me.
Our gazes met and held—and I froze, unable to tear my focus off the depths of his hazel eyes similar to his dad’s. Except these were pained and filled with wisdom for one so young.
He had the same pale, smooth skin of his Korean mother.
Stunningly beautiful.
A temptation to my baser instincts, the lure of sin I fought on a daily basis.
“So you’re my dad’s answer to prayer.” He stuck out his hand, continuing to hold my stare. The huskiness in his voice, his sarcastic tone attempted to bring life to my neglected dick.
“I’m just a man like any other,” I managed to choke out while clasping his hand. Fire raced across my palm and up my arm—ten times more attraction than any I’d felt for anyone in my twenty-six years.
Isaac took a quick glance down over my body before returning my steady gaze. “Just a man, my ass.” His quiet murmur barely reached my ears, but his eyes stated a hell of a lot more—and heated me clear through to the marrow.
I yanked my hand away from his as though he’d scorched my flesh, bone-deep.
God, what trouble have you brought me into?
His unlit path hadn’t guided me to a new beginning, a home of hope like I’d asked Him for.
He had led me straight into temptation.
I prayed He would deliver me from evil.

Content Warning: Homophobia (not by MMC) and religious trauma.

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