“Can you grant forgiveness!” the man yelled, his voice echoing through the sanctuary as he slammed his fist against the confessional wall.

The commotion got the attention of the sexton, who started toward the confessional booth from the other side of the vast cathedral. The priest, hearing the faint sound of the approaching footsteps, was relieved, and at the same time, anxious.

“God can grant forgiveness, if you confess,” the priest said, his voice shaking as the sexton came closer.

“Then these are my other sins,” said the man in a tone that was eerily calm. “I cut off a man’s finger while he slept on a park bench. I sliced a child’s leg when he wandered away from his mother at a playground. I’m sick, Father, and I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re doing the right thing now,” the priest said nervously. “You’re confessing.”

“That’s not the problem, Father,” the man said as the sexton drew near.

“Then what is?”

The man stood up and pulled open his jacket, revealing a sawed-off shotgun. “The problem is…I’m the angel of death.”

The sexton opened the door and was about to speak, but the man never gave him a chance. He whirled on him and fired, the blast spattering the walls with the sexton’s blood-soaked innards.

Father O’Reilly tried to make his way around the wall that separated him from the killer. As he did so, the gunman confronted a man and a woman who had just arrived to give their confessions.

When they saw the gun, they both tried to turn and run. Both of them were too late.

The gunman shot the man in the back. The impact of the shell threw him into the woman, who fell, face first, to the ground. By the time she pushed the man’s dead weight from her back and stood up to run toward the door, the gunman was upon her.

“Please!” she said as she turned and looked at the killer’s eyes. “Have mercy!”

“Mercy is God’s job,” the gunman said coldly.

The final gunshot echoed through the sanctuary as Father O’Reilly watched in horror. When the woman fell to the ground, the killer dropped the gun and walked slowly toward the cathedral’s massive doors.

Father O’Reilly ran to the spot where the gunman dropped the weapon. Then he knelt down and picked it up. As he held it and looked at the bodies sprawled on the floor of his beloved cathedral, he was filled with a rage he had never known before.

Raising the weapon until he had the killer in his sights, the priest slowly squeezed the trigger. The angels looked down on him from the stained-glass windows. A statue of the Blessed Virgin watched closely through hollow eyes. The hammer clicked. The gun was empty. So was Father O’Reilly.