Predator

My body reacted, reeling in response to what my mind was reading. Uncontrollably trembling in my office chair, icy cold gripping my fingertips as my hands quavered over the computer keys. Such was the shock of assimilating the words of a man we once unquestioningly trusted, now horrifically revealed as the quintessential wolf in sheep's clothing.

Had any doubt remained from the moment I held his shuddering victim in my arms, her frail frame heaving with sobs, it was his own words - cloaked in Christian piety, devious and manipulative, typed arrogantly on a tiny screen over hours upon hours of days upon days and years upon years - that made abundantly clear the obscene spiritual and emotional abuse that she herself could not yet quantify.

Words that built up, that sparked hope, that instructed as though having the biblical authority to do so ... then words that tore down, that stabbed insecurities, that condemned her and others to hellfire and damnation while always, always he played the dueling roles of lawgiver and comforter, friend and foe, leader and liar.

And she wasn't his only victim, though certainly one of the two most heinously sinned against whose life and that of her child would never again be the same.

It turns out the placid, smiling, pleasant face of a predator hides poison that splatters on anyone who crosses his self-appointed statutes which are too often tangled with Scripture, yet twisted to his own ends.