The Life And Times Of Regulus 2

After that, Regulus and the rest of the children were taken to a church on the other side of City A, the more populated side. They were in awe of it all. For the first time in a long time, they could sleep in an actual bed and they could eat food that wasn't scavenged or bought with stolen money!

Regulus and the other boys were made into altar boys and Sasha and the girls were sent to another monastery where some of them became nuns in training. They were happy for a long time, and just like that four years passed and Regulus was now a ten-year-old.

He had changed a lot in this time, he was still as smart as he always was, but he was also taller now and he also started filling out properly because he was eating well. Regulus was one of the most devoted to the church out of all the boys. They would often joke that Regulus was training to become the next priest after the old man kicks the bucket but that wasn't the case at all!! Regulus has always been in poverty and he remembered a lot more than most of the other boys so he never forgot those hard times. Regulus believed that anyone who could bring him out of such despair without asking for anything in return must be the greatest person!

He first thought it was the priest he should put all his devotion to, but the priest told him that it was the Lord that sent Regulus here. He should praise the Lord instead of the priest! And so, Regulus praised the Lord!

Regulus and the other boys stayed in the church for all this time with nothing special really happening. Then the Priest who saved them from the abandoned building died. It was the saddest period in the church because the boys all loved the priest! There was a burial and mass and everyone cried their hearts out!

A new Priest was then brought to take care of them and the church, and although the boys did not feel comfortable with him at first, they eventually began to get used to him.

Regulus also got used to the old man who came to take care of them, but after some time Regulus began to notice some strange behavior in the priest. The first time Regulus noticed the sudden behavior from the priest was when they were having a practice for mass that Sunday. One of the boys dropped a candle that he was supposed to carry to the table and the priest hit him on the head! Regulus was surprised. He had never seen the priest hit any of them before. What was going on!?

"The Lord will not be happy if you ruin anything in his house! You are old enough now so you cannot be doing things like this! In all things, make sure you are doing it for the Lord!"

Ah, Regulus understood now. So, it was for the Lord? Well, if it was something that belonged to the Lord then it is bad to break it. Maybe this is okay after all? The other priest taught me that I should always hold the Lord before everything else.

After that incident, the cases of boys being hit increased more and more. The priest would not even allow them to get away with little things like spilling water or mispronouncing things in the church! The beatings started to even get so bad that Regulus would hear someone crying at night whenever they were done collecting a beating!

Regulus hadn't been hit yet because he tried to make sure he was careful with the things of the Lord. Nobody should ruin anything of the Lord, after all. They must make sure they put the Lord first in everything!

This continued for more than a year. It got to the point where the children no longer even looked up whenever they walked in the hallways. They walked with this air of depression surrounding them. In this time, Regulus only got beaten once when he accidentally dropped a vase in the church. He accepted it as his punishment for desecrating the place of the Lord and left it like that.

The next big change was when Regulus started to notice some old men who were all hanging around the church premises long after mass was finished. He was a smart boy and he could see patterns that most other people would overlook. The same three old men would stay back and talk with the new priest after mass ended. They always had this intense look in their eyes and smiled widely like they were demons as they spoke about something.

Regulus didn't know what it was all about. So one day when they were having their meeting, his curiosity got the better of him and he went closer to hear what they were saying. He couldn't hear much, but things like these floated towards him.

"I can't believe we had to wait for four years for that old man to die!"

"Don't worry. The boys were being trained well. I will have one of them ready tonight. They will be too afraid of me to say no to anything we tell them to do!"

"You better keep your promise, Priest. That old fool didn't allow us to do anything so you better make it up to us!"

He couldn't understand what they meant by that. They have been waiting for four years? Wasn't that when Regulus came to this church? What could they have been waiting for all this time? Regulus' young mind tried to come up with an explanation for all this but he couldn't. He decided that he would think about it some more that night when he was in bed and left before he got caught.

But that night, Regulus heard someone crying again. A boy who was beaten maybe? What did he do against the Lord this time?

The crying stopped when the door to the room opened and Regulus heard someone walking inside. He cracked his eye open a little to see who it was and he quickly shut them again once he saw the priest's robes. What was the priest doing here? The former priest never comes into their room at night!

The priest seemed to be soothing the boy who was crying before he told the boy to follow him. The first thing that Regulus thought was that the priest was going to give the boy some sweets to calm him down, but then the conversation from before came to his mind and his heartbeat increased drastically!!

Tonight. The priest said something was going to happen tonight! Regulus waited till he was sure the priest was out of earshot before he came down from the bed and snuck after them. He followed them till they got to the priest's room and entered. Once they were inside, Regulus crept forward and cracked the door open a little to look inside and his eyes widened when he saw the three old men from before standing there without clothes on! Regulus was so shocked that he fell backward in fear and the sound alerted all the men inside to his presence!

"Who's there!? Come here right now!!"

The angry voice of the priest shouted out before the priest opened the door and saw Regulus getting off the floor! He tried to catch Regulus, but Regulus was an expert at weaving through hands since he was a pickpocket before. He dodged the hand and he grabbed the boy who was trying to escape in the chaos before they both bolted down the hall!

The boy's eyes were wide and he looked petrified by what he had just seen in that room, but he still ran like his life depended on it! Naked old men were scary!!