The smell of burning paper fills the room as I lie on the musty rug, a conglomeration of dead skins: both human in the form of dust and deer in the form of the rug itself. The burning paper doesn’t smell like sin as I thought it would, but rather a release. A release of what, exactly, I don’t know; but a release all the same. Beads of sweat begin to form on my face as my body is pressed harder against the rug and the flames squirm through the fireplace like a reborn baby on Easter morning.

I am forced to grab onto the outer rim of the rug for support as I shout out. With each push, I am forced deeper into the fabric and I find myself wondering how far down He will push me. These thoughts last only a moment before I find myself gasping for breath. My deep red hair is as tangled as my body is wet with sweat. I spit a strand out of my face, preventing it from playing connect the dots with the freckles on my face while trying to adjust my body under this new weight. I let out a sigh.

The fire continues to burn, my bare skin pressing up and down against the rug as the flames hop and recede, a baby kicking trying to kick itself away from the manger. I find myself looking out and around the room, drifting away from the fire and the repeated up and down motions of my body and the gasps I am making in response to the motions and his own gasps, but still aware of them all the same. I stare at the ceiling, wondering if I am making a mistake but then gulp the thought down like a nun holstering her ruler. Thoughts like this can leave a horrid taste in one’s mouth and bruises on one’s knuckles.

I look at the fireplace and the stone mantle stretching upwards grasping towards the ceiling, so desperate to reach it. It is held down with knickknacks and empty picture frames with the glass smashed and taken out. The shards of glass are in the kitchen garbage, somehow making the frames both light and heavy, free and bogged down. They are haphazardly strewn across the top of the mantle, ironically making it easier for it to achieve its goal of reaching the skies while holding it here stationary. I, on the other hand, remain down here being pushed further and further down by this heat and this body.

I look over to the couch in the corner, dark brown throughout except one plaid fabric patch in the top corner from before our dog realized what it could and should eat. Like a Scotsman lost part of his identity and we sewed it anew into our sofa. I call it Nessie.

Next to it lies a small end table trapped in its namesake. It is wooden, sturdy; it is painted white and chipped on three of the four corners from where a curious fingernail made its mark. With four brown corners and one white remaining, it is only a matter of time before it will revert to only wood. Its name signifies a climax.

I let out another soft gasp and scratch at him above me as the weight of the fire and the heat presses up and down on my body. I look at the wall across from the sofa now, sky blue walls trailing up to a white cloudy ceiling. The wall is speckled with drops of paint from a combination of our lack of knowledge of painting and the drips from the ceiling. The speckles of white look like snowflakes against the sky colored wall. I wonder how they don’t melt with the heat from the fire and from the breathing. The air feels heavy, like heaven is pushing down on me. Like He is pushing me down.

Interrupting the speckled sky of a wall is a small brown T.V. stand with a ring from where His face, His likeness, His death used to be next to the monitor. On top of the stand is an old television with the box in the back, a flat screen pregnant with the past. The screen itself is dark now, but the DVD logo bounces around the screen, an impatient teen waiting to see whether it’ll hit just the right spot on her first time. This wasn’t me though. I waited much longer.

The stand’s shelves are cluttered with movies that perpetually find their way into the wrong cases. There is a layer of dust over the top of the DVD player as well as the wood underneath it. The blocky text on the player illuminates the small screen with the word Pause as if daring me to stop what I am doing and hit play. I don’t know what would happen if I did.

The smell of the fire burning hits me once more and I am drawn back to it. The burning pages and photographs of us still smell of release but also of pain. I do not feel regret in putting them there. Nor do I feel regret in where I am. I don’t even feel for my statue of Him sitting in the garbage in the kitchen rather than on the T.V. stand watching over me.

It is at this moment that I truly feel where I am. The deer-skin rug that I am laying on feels warm under my bare body. The fur nestling up on my body makes me shiver against the warm. The burning of the fire warms the chilled house from the snowflakes falling outside and onto the walls. The soft sounds I make are becoming louder, more pronounced as the pushing speeds up. I attempt to push back, to contribute. To have a say. As his motions speed up I am thinking of Him once again. Three men enter my mind at this point, some swimming, some walking. It is these three men that I think of when I make the end table’s namesake my own. I am breathing heavily now, sweat coursing through my pores and onto my face like a tap water baptism.

I quickly stand up and grab my clothes from the floor, slide my underwear up my legs, then put on pants and slip a large shirt over my head, poking out of the opening like a child being born. My feet feel cold on the wooden floorboards as I walk over to the fireplace. I walk back to the rug and the man lying on it, himself secondhand baptized with my own sweat. I throw him his clothes and ask him to leave as I look back at the fire. As I look at the pictures. As I think of my statue of Him in the trash. As I look at my husband’s bible burning in the flames.