Sin Story - Pete

Hole Lotta Fun!

"A Zen Archer never misses his target," Cain quoted, "because he knows there are only three things in the Universe: himself, the arrow, and the target. No where else for the arrow to go but to the target, so he can't miss." His broad shoulders moved under the white polo as he adjusted his stance.

With this he swung the battered putter gingerly, the worn handle bound in electrical tape. He tapped the bright orange ball so that it sped with a quiet thwak down the green. The ball banked off three sideboard bumpers before rolling into the cup, as if drawn there by a magnet.

"So?" Magdalen intoned, trying to hide her disbelief at yet another hole in one. You'd think it would have gotten old by now, but it hadn't. She knelt in her pleated school uniform skirt, placing her own lime green ball on the tee spot. She never changed clothes after school when she came here to 'Hole Lotta Fun!' Mini Golf Emporium for her lessons, and she would be graduating in a month.

After that, what to wear, what to wear?

"So, make this putt." Cain smiled, scratching the back of his head as he watched her line up in silence.

"I can't keep this a secret anymore, Cain. I -hate- mini golf." She focused on the ball and tapped it with the same slightness Cain had demonstrated, but of course with different effect. The ball lodged under the broken, non-spinning windmill. She sighed in frustration, but Cain showed no disappointment at all.

" 'Hate' like, 'Wrath' hate?" He inquired.

"No. Well, I don't think so, anyway," Magdalen answered, grunting, her feet apart on opposite bumpers and her body pitched at an awkward angle. Hooking the putter more than swinging it, she tried to fish the ball out from under the windmill without needing to take a penalty shot.

"Too bad. Sinning one of the Deadlies might be good for you." A wink here. "Though, you're right probably. Wrath seems to be better expressed at people, not pastimes. Besides, this is great training, the best." He watched Magdalen make the strained shot, and smiled sympathetically when the ball passed within an inch of the hole but then onward.

"I dislike it, then. Intensely," she added as she walked past him, taking her putt and sinking the lime green ball with one of those shots where the ball spins around the sides before it comes to rest. She bent and retrieved the ball, which had a worn logo from another mini golf place on it.

"You don't have to like it to benefit from it, Maggie. It's a perfect training tool. It brings focus, precision, patience and discipline together in one neat package." Cain was now gesturing at the trees and sky, and the parking lots beyond with the handle of his putter. "All in the lovely outdoors, for the low price of a dollar a game. Seventy-five cents, with your Frequent Fun discount."

"Hmmmmm," Magdalen answered in a non-committal tone as they walked to the next hole. The Whale hole.

Magdalen hated this hole. Wrath-hated.

Cain stopped before teeing up, his attention on the smartly dressed young executive-or-lawyer just finishing the Whale hole. "Respect," he reminded her, his palm outstretched in a gesture that made her stop before stepping onto the green. Magdalen knew Cain would show respect to the “lawyer”, and not put his orange ball down to the tee spot before the man got his expensive shoes off the green.

Looking closer, though, she watched as Cain regarded the man. She looked to the lawyer, who wasn't paying attention to them, but was now starting on the next hole. Her heart caught a little in her chest. She'd seen Cain like this once before, his ever present smile there, but something different around the eyes.

Was Lawyer Guy next? Next on The List?

"Imagine this," Cain said as he rose from his kneel, drawing her attention back. He was leaning to the side a bit as he surveyed the hole. "I had one just before we met. A lady, soccer mom type who constantly cheated on her husband with garbage men. Once word got out, the neighbors on her cul-de-sac could have put their garbage out any day of the week, there was such a parade of brown trucks down there."

Magdalen believed Cain could do this course blindfolded. Even if Cain didn't work here, which he did most days, she'd never seen him miss a shot. Not once. Here or even at the crappy course across town they sometimes went to for a change of pace.

Cain lined up, then tapped the ball again as he spoke.

Magdalen didn't even watch this time, instead sneaking a glance at Lawyer Guy again. She just heard the plop as the ball went into the whale's mouth, out it's backside in what the designer of this place had to know looked a whale pooping brightly colored golf balls. Then the sound of it going into the hole, of course. Plop!

"Anyway," he continued as the ball had gone on its way, "it wasn't Lust. It turned out she didn't feel particularly lustful at all. Not Gluttony either, or Envy. Sometimes you see this... something else presenting as Lust. True Lust can be tricky to identify."

Cain stepped past the whale, retrieved his ball, and motioned for her to tee up. Magdalen placed the ball, and lined up again. She closed her eyes for a moment, and breathed. She always, always missed this shot; just a little too left or too right, and her ball bounced off the whale's teeth and cost her at least one more shot, if she was lucky. It wasn't even that tough a shot; she made many much more difficult ones each time they played. Infuriating.

She tried to imagine nothing at all existed in the universe except herself, the ball, and the hole. She rocked her hips, adjusted her stance, and swung. With a quiet thwack the ball sped towards the whale's wide grin.

"She was sabotaging herself, it turned out," he finished, as the ball sailed into the center of the whale's mouth. "And hurting her husband. Not just him, either. This was the third time she had wrecked a marriage, because of her self loathing. Her pain was racking up a lot of casualties." Cain watched the ball exit the whale and plop into the hole. He beamed at her.

Magdalen hadn't meant to, but she smiled back. She couldn't help it. The Zen Golfer.

"Over and over she does this, hurting people. Herself, her husbands, the garbage men and their families. It's not one of the Seven Deadlies, but clearly it's sinful. Clearly she's hurting people, and clearly she's not part of The Solution. So," he spread his hands, "she made it onto The List."

Her lime green ball now retrieved and in hand, she brushed the chestnut hair over her shoulders, over the white cotton of her school uniform top and came up to Cain. Her eyes in his now, she asked "How many are on The List now?"

"Three," he answered, returning her look, unafraid of her in any way. He enjoyed her being this close, and thought once again he'd chosen his apprentice well. A bonus that she was nice to look at, too. He looked up at the Lawyer Guy for a moment, squinting into the afternoon sun and bringing that hand up to the back of his head again, as if contemplating as he regarded the man. "Maybe four."

...

"Faith is very important," Cain had told her, months ago, when they'd first connected, when he'd shared with her his sense of purpose. She had originally thought he was trying to pick her up, which would have been fine. Magdalen didn't mind that he was older, or that he worked at a mini-golf course. Or that she had met him while she was with Andy, the current jock she'd been dating.

Cain was clean and strong-looking, and his eyes were so penetrating, his gaze so intense. It didn't weird her out, though. It made her feel like Cain had really -seen- her, in a way hard to figure out. More than anyone else ever had.

"Without faith in what you're doing, in what we're doing, you'll crack up." They were sitting at one of the picnic tables off to the side of the course now, people and families playing around them as he sat on the table, lecturing, and she sat on the bench, listening. "You have to know with absolute certainty," his hands apart in a gesture, here, "just like the sun is going to rise tomorrow, that we're doing the right thing."

His words entranced her, his voice, as well as his sense of purpose. It felt so amazing to be a part of something now, so much bigger than herself. They got up and started another round. She remembered it starting to drizzle, and that she didn't care.

"The Seven Deadly Sins are like beacons, Maggie," he'd explained as they worked their way through the course. "They draw the forces of Karma out there, and they settle the accounts of the people who sin with them. Lust draws a certain type of punishment, as does Greed. And Sloth. The others... well, sometimes it's not easy to tell what will happen to people who sin with them, but something will -always- happen."

The conviction in Cain's voice was always absolutely clear; Magdalen had never heard someone like Cain speak. He wasn't talking about Heaven and Hell, or about clothes, or any of the silly, stupid things her friends or boys her age talked about. Cain always talked about important things, and Magdalen always paid attention.

"The thing is,' Cain confided near the 16th hole, the Pyramids, "If someone is out there causing pain and grief but not doing it through one of the Seven Deadly Sins, they're not punished by Karma." He laughed here. "I know it sounds crazy, Maggie, and I don't know if the Catholic bishop who first came up with the Seven Deadly Sins knew anything, or if he just dreamed them up and happened to be right on target. Who knows. But I know what I've seen, in my work over the years."

Their round finished now, they sat in the "Hole Lotta Fun!" concession area. It was raining then, that day she'd fist heard these words. No one else there but the two of them.

"So, they just get a free pass, then?" She asked, eyes wide. "That's not right," she said indignantly.

"Well, maybe not after they die; I have no idea what happens afterwards. But I know that the universe doesn't settle the scales with them like it does with those who commit one of the Seven Deadly Sins. So..." he said, watching her.

That gaze again, those eyes, like he was caressing her, seeing her soul, and bathing it in a kind of fire that didn't hurt. She answered, somehow, a bit timidly. "So... we help the universe out."

He nodded. "We definitely help the universe out."

"Hmmmmmm," she replied, instantly a bit embarrassed she couldn't add anything to his huge ideas. She blushed.

He just smiled, and touched her hand.

After that moment, he spent the next few months teaching her all he knew.

...

"So why aren't you a priest, Cain?" She brushed the hair out of her eyes, and snuck a glance at Lawyer Guy. "Or a cop, or something. You know, some job where you could really get into what you believe?"

Cain smiled at this, ran his hand through his dark hair in his sort of trademark gesture, and shrugged. "I think that maybe I'd enjoy that, but there're lots of rules you have to follow with those paths, and I think this way I can stay more focused on the work I do, and maybe less time being frustrated by other stuff." He reached out to her with an open hand, looking at her putter, and Magdalen handed it to him.

He drew it up, looking down the length of it carefully as if he was inspecting the finest bow for a Stradivarius cello. His brows knit, and he turned and left for a moment, going back to the rental shack. She turned and watched Lawyer Guy again for another moment, taking many more shots than par on the difficult Rodeo Hole. She wondered if he was also dishonest in other places, in his life. People say the little things in life don't matter at all, like cheating at mini golf doesn't matter. And yet somehow it -was- important, Magdalen thought. It might even be more important than the big stuff. If a guy would cheat at mini golf when he was playing by himself, what else was he capable of?

In a moment, Cain was back with a different putter. He handed it to her.

"Yea, I think maybe I wouldn't have the flexibility in those jobs to adapt to how things are sometimes." He nodded, and she knelt to tee up, the pleats of her uniform skirt falling over her knees. She looked up for a moment, seeing Cain watch Lawyer Guy. Something in her tummy, and just south, tingled. Cain was like a predator, strong and clear of purpose, now having caught a scent.

"For instance," Cain continued after a moment. "As I've said before, killing isn't absolutely necessary. I mean, if the situation can be solved by somehow intervening without killing, then by all means, do it that other way. Brings less attention, and it feels right. Always answer a part of the problem with an equal solution."

"Be flexible?" she asked, standing up, and bouncing her hips back and forth as she smiled. Cain smiled back, and nodded. She knew he watched her when she did that. He watched her hips and her body move. And she liked it.

A lot.

"It's too easy to let the little stuff get in the way of what needs to be done. Better to understand things, see them clearly, and be man enough to do them." Another smile. "Or woman enough."

"Or woman enough," she answered, rocking again unconsciously and taking the shot. Not a hole in one, but it had bounced off the castle's drawbridge, an extremely lucky bounce, into the moat and down to the lower level. Sometimes the universe spoke to you in the softest of voices, and Magdalen was getting very good at hearing it.

"Obviously..." he started, as he teed up his own shot. "...Clarity is important. It's primary to be able to read a situation, and a person. You have to be able to tell if they're sinning one of the Seven Deadlies. We don't work with people who are; the Universe will take care of them. Our job..." he looked up once, then down again at the orange ball and set it in motion with a perfect thwap. Through the castle, out the dragon's mouth, off the opposite bumper, and into the cup.

Cain looked up, smiling. "Our job is to handle the fringe cases. Take care of the Universe in the places where it doesn't seem to be able to take care of itself." There was that twinkle in his eye again. And Magdalen was starting to understand.

People everywhere, her mom, Lawyer Guy, Andy the Jock that she'd just broken up with... they'd spend their whole lives wrestling with the mundane. Getting though life, getting enough money for this or that. Worrying about the lawn, or email, or their coworker who always tried to steal credit. Not her. Not anymore, anyway. She somehow knew in the very center of who she was that if she stayed true to the singular, pure purpose that Cain had outlined for her, revealed to her like a beautiful vista that had always been there, that she'd be just fine.

Everything else in her life would fall into place.

"A man who kills people, one of those serial killers you read about. It turns out he doesn't do it out of Wrath, or Envy. He's not making money off of it, but yet in the end it turns out he was sinning one of the Deadlies. Which one was it, do you think?" Cain's eyes up, alight with the academic exercise. Magdalen was getting much better at this, and at reading these nuances in people. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, thinking, then it came to her.

"Gluttony. He was eating them, or parts of them, wasn't he?" her smiling beaming. She knew she was right.

"Yes," Cain replied, as they walked up the steps to the Rocket Ship hole. "So, he was off The List."

She turned to him at the top of the steps, halting their progress. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," Cain said with a shrug. "He wasn't on The List. He was sinning Gluttony. Not my problem anymore. Not my job."

Magdalen's brows knit. "But there's no way you just let him go, keep killing people and eating them?" Her eyes a bit wider now, her face framed by straight chestnut hair spilling over the white cotton of her uniform blouse.

"Well, no," he smiled. "I didn't. He wasn't on my List, but I certainly helped the Universe along a bit. I called in an anonymous tip. That was the Frenchie's Mustard Killer, on the TV."

"No!" Magdalen gasped, grinning as she brought her hand up to her mouth. "The guy with three hundred bottles of Frenchie's in his fridge? They caught him because of you?"

"Well, partly, at least."

"I never heard anything about that guy eating his victims in the reports on the TV though...?"

"Well, I didn't pass that part along," Cain reflected. "They'll figure it out, maybe. It's not really important."

She considered that for a moment. "I guess not," she decided. Hmmmmmm. "My turn, new scenario."

Cain set his ball on the tee, and took another glimpse at Lawyer Guy. She followed his eyes. That guy's tie was perfect. His whole demeanor screamed rigid and tight and gotta-be-perfect. "Go ahead, new scenario," Cain said, now looking at his ball again, lining up.

She spoke. "A guy poisons the lawns of a neighborhood, but it's not Envy or Rage, even. What is it?" Her hands were on her hips now, daring him to guess. Cain was very good at this, but maybe she'd slip this one by him. It had been known to happen.

Cain took his shot, the ball slipping through the complicated mesh of rocket fins and fake fire like the obstacles weren't even there. He straightened and thought for a moment. "Greed. He's the lawn guy, and he was making major money."

"Grrrrrr" She said playfully. "How are you right all the time?"

He smiled, and gestured to the Rocket Ship hole. "Just like here. Practice makes perfect. I've had a -lot- of practice, Maggie."

"I see," she replied, stepping up to the hole as he stepped back, sensing him behind her, watching her. She shook her hips, and smiled to herself.

"How about this one," Cain began, his tone now a bit rakish. "Inspired by what you told me about Andy the Ex. A guy who causes pain and suffering by always demanding blowjobs from his girlfriends, but never ever reciprocating. Not Lust though, I'll give you that."

She felt that tingle a bit more, in her center. She was starting to work her way through her own Deadly Sin now. It was starting as an ache between her legs, and she flushed when she realized that Cain probably knew exactly what he was doing to her, with this kind of talk.

Innocent, but not.

"Sloth, of course." She hit the ball, and it rebounded off the spindly fins of the Rocket Ship. Not a surprise, certainly. There were definitely other things in her Universe at the moment, things that were distracting her, but not in a bad way.

"Would you kill him, a guy like that?" Cain asked as if he were wondering what color she'd pick for a new top she might be thinking about buying, at AF.

"Definitely," she said in an assured tone, not missing a beat. "Lazy bastard." They both laughed. "But not really. Sloth's one of the Deadlies, so he's not on The List."

Magdalen recovered with her next shot, putting the ball very near the hole. Her next shot plopped it in, and she moved next to Cain, who was regarding Lawyer Guy as he moved off the hole ahead of them, The Pyramids hole, and onto the one after that, the Wishing Well hole. She stood close to Cain, and he didn't move away. She knew he wouldn't.

"What's his story? Lawyer Guy, I mean," she asked finally.

"I've been watching him for a while," Cain admitted. "And today's the day I make a decision about him. It turns out he violates his client's trust. Sells the information." Magdalen nodded, thoughtfully. "He doesn't seem to do it for money, and so far I can't seem to find any of the other Deadlies."

"Do you follow him?" Maggie asked. She'd been right, about that gleam in Cain's eyes.

"Just here, really. I do some research; amazing what you can learn on the internet or from phone calls if you know how and where to look. But mostly I just watch him when he's here, playing. You can tell so much from a person by watching them play a round of mini golf, you know."

She knew. She watched Lawyer Guy start on the Wishing Well hole, and tried to see past his starched shirt and crisp pants and expensive shoes, feel him out and find the sin he had. Nothing seemed to come to her. Cain tapped her on the shoulder and made his circle gesture with his finger. She turned and headed to the Pyramids hole. They approached together, but she held back as Cain knelt to tee off. A thought occurred to her.

"Do you ever use special clubs when you play? I mean, working here you'd know which ones were the good ones, and maybe you'd keep one behind the counter for yourself."

"Nah, nothing like that," Cain answered in a calm voice.

Thwack as the ball was hit. The soft rustle of a bright orange ball racing across a faded green, some bounces, and the plop of it going into the hole.

"I just take whatever's there, or whatever I get handed, if I'm here in my off time," he reflected. "There was that line in one of the Star Wars movies, when young Kenobi was worried about not getting off a planet they were stranded on. Some plan had just fallen through, but the Master Jedi was calm and confident. " 'A solution will present itself,' he said. And that was that." Again, the eyes sparkled. "I try to be like that; knowing that because I'm helping the Universe out, if I need something, it will be handed to me when I need it most."

Magdalen nodded, thinking about he words. "It's more subtle, that way," she pronounced, and looked to find him smiling at her, again.

"Definitely," he said, imitating her tone when she used the word.

They worked their way through the hole. As they left it and walked to the next, Magdalen spoke.

"How are there only three people on the list?"

"If something falls into my lap, I handle it. But the only place I really look for work to do is when I'm here," he waved his hand, indicating all of Hole Lotta Fun!, including the arcade. "A pretty diverse cross section of humanity comes through here; I figure just like the putters I get handed, these are the people I'm being handed to look at, and possibly to work with. I'm sure I could go out into the wide world and find people, but this just feels right, here. It's all laid out... just like each individual hole on the course here." Cain pointed back a few holes, and Magdalen looked. "With the windmill, you watch for the blades. With the whale, you aim right for the center of his smile. With the castle, it's juuuust to the right of center, across the drawbridge. This is my territory, and I know it well. It helps me spot the little things when people come in. I try to be subtle, doing just enough."

Lawyer Guy was done, and had led them through 18 holes of what seemed to be normal mini golf. But there was something just not right about him, something that tickled the edge of Magdalen's senses. "Let's follow him to the parking lot," she said.

Cain agreed, and together they bypassed the shack where you dropped of your clubs when you were done, instead circling around to an out of the way stairway so they could watch Lawyer Guy as he went to his car. There were surprisingly few people here today, and things were quiet. Well, up until now, they had been.

They heard Lawyer Guy before they saw him; his angry voice loud and shocking, along with some crying. Cain and Magdalen peeked around the corner, very close to where Lawyer guy was venting at the top of his lungs to a white-haired woman in a walker. The transgression was a mystery, but he was yelling and leaning into the woman's space, and she was cowering back from him, clearly terrified. His face was radish red, eyes bulging.

Wrath.

Almost as soon as it started, it was over. The senior almost stumbled away, and Lawyer Guy did not follow, his face now purple with the effort of his rage. He stood looking to control himself. No one else was in the parking lot, and from where he stood, Lawyer guy was shielded from view from the course, the street, pretty much everyone.

No one just blew up like this, out of the blue, on a whim. This was him, who he was, Magdalen figured.

She sprang cat-like out into the lot, putter swinging at her side like a twirling baton. The heavy end circled around and around, whipping faster as she approached silent behind Lawyer Guy.

The sound was exactly like that of Cain sinking another hole in one; plop, and he dropped like a stone, crumpled starched white shirt and perfect tie now askew. With a broad grin and a last twirl of the putter, she was back to Cain. They went up the stairs at a leisurely pace and in moments were back on the course as if they'd never left.

Cain was smiling.

"Why did you do that?" he asked conversationally, a look of mild amusement and curiosity on his face. His eyes were in hers now, searching, and his hand was once again up at the back of his head, rubbing in the ‘awww, shucks’ gesture.

"Well, he might not have been Number Four on the list,” she explained, that lower lip caught in her teeth again. “But someone still needed to whack him upside the head, eh? I ‘helped the Universe along a bit.’ "

"I'm proud of you, Maggie. Truly." With this, he traced a finger along her forearm, and she flushed immediately, turning one foot in and bringing her shoulders close.

A good thing, eh?" she managed, her cheeks hot. “I'd hate to have to whack you with a putter."

"Hate? Wrath-hate?" Cain asked, with a smile.

"Well, you know what I mean. But don't worry. I can sin one or two of the Deadlies, too. I'm not on your List."

- edited by Tammy thank you soooo much. : )