'There is no Hell, Jacob.'

'And the Bible?'

'Was written by men like ourselves.'

He was frightening. At the idea of there being no Hell I had felt a breath of something like freedom, but it was illusion. I marvelled at his forwardness, feared it, and loved it.

'Ferris, why tell me this now?'

He mocked, 'Perhaps you may have remarked some changes between us since yesterday?'

A scuffle followed, and I again pushed him up against the wall.

I followed him up the stairs. I was a fornicator, of unnatural appetite, in thrall to an Atheist. I repeated the words in my head and tried to feel the shock of them, but they remained strange and cruel, far removed from Ferris and me. It was simpler to say I was in love.