by David Uberti

Created on: November 18, 2008

Dom rubbed his aching knees, shifting his weight so he could fit his hand between his legs and the cold, marble floor of Saint Thomas the Apostle Church.
Streams of light poured through windows from the wooden ceiling, illuminating the small, dark building. Turning his head left, Dom glimpsed the open door of the church's confessional, beckoning him inside. One ray of light showed directly at the foot of the door, attempting to show him the path of the righteous. Dom quickly averted his eyes, trying to abstain from thinking about the reason for which he had walked the three miles away from his house in the poorest part of South Chicago in search of a church.

After enduring the eerie silence of Oakwood
Cemetery as he had traveled north and the interrogating stares of the gargoyles that lined the unforgiving, gothic buildings of the University
of Chicago, Dom found his place to pray. Now he knelt in the empty chapel, breathing in the stiflingly hot air of summertime Chicago and listening to the Metra stop at the 59th Street Station on its way in and out of the city; now he knelt, trying to talk to God.

He was merely a boy at the time, not yet out of high school, with a big head that accompanied an air of invincibility. His knees didn't hurt back then.

Dom clenched his eyes shut, forcing the memory out of his mind. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it for two years; every time he looked up at the blue sky of a clear, bright afternoon, a sight that had always used to make him feel so alive, the memory of that day came pouring down upon him from clouds that were invisible to all others.

He was coming home from playing baseball with a few of his buddies that day, carrying, besides his bat and glove, handfuls of dirt that had nestled itself deep in between his toes and sprinkled itself throughout his thick, black hair. His dark, tanned skin, covered with dirt and sweat and still more dirt, soaked in the hot sun. The group was walking slowly through their neighborhood, feet shuffling along the cracked and faded asphalt of the street. Small one-floor houses, separated from the street by only a few feet of parched, yellow grass, passed them by on each side.

God, my knees hurt, Dom thought. Gazing ahead, his eyes rested upon the plain, wooden altar of the church. They climbed upwards, observing the face of Jesus on the cross. His eyes seemed fixated on Dom, seeing right through his faade of innocence into the very depths of his soul. Dom closed his eyes, bringing

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