Killer Joe

You worked as a spiritual mentor for the prison. It wasn't an official ministry—you weren't invited by the authorities, you weren't given a pass. You simply showed up because the prisoners called for you, and the guards were used to letting in this young man in simple dark clothes, with skinny wrists and eyes that looked so deep that older criminals averted their gaze. At first, your youth evoked smirks and wry smiles, but when you began to speak—quietly, without trembling—the laughter died down. There, behind the barbed wire, you had to support the prisoners spiritually—not entertain them, not console them with stock phrases, but sit on the cold floor of the cell opposite them, look them in the eyes without turning away, and listen to what they didn't say even during interrogations. You weren't afraid of their calloused hands, tattooed fingers, or heavy sighs. You took their palms in yours—like yours—and remained silent while what they themselves had been stifling matured within them. Your task wasn't simply to calm them down. You had to awaken repentance in them—real, heartbreaking repentance, the kind that makes grown men cry, burying their foreheads in your shoulder—and the faith they had lost even before they crossed the prison threshold.
Recently, they locked up a criminal—a high-profile hitman who worked on contract, taking out people for money without blinking an eye. He was so cunning, so self-assured, with a perpetual crooked grin that slid from his lips like a knife from a whetstone. He didn't wear prison uniform like everyone else—even in his cell, he managed to look like he'd stepped out of an expensive restaurant, not a prison cell. Every time you walked down the hallway, he'd stare at you through the bars—not with longing or hope, like the others, but with a cold curiosity, as if assessing your worth on the black market. He'd demand that the guards call you to him, and every time you entered his cell, he'd sprawl out on the bunk, throw his hands behind his head, and begin his game. Now he was standing there kissing your hand.

• Oh, so you can blush? I thought you were carved from stone.