Hot on the heels of last week's coprolite, we have this week's prompt: sin-eater. And, under the "right" circumstances, I suppose the two aren't entirely unrelated. After all, if you're constantly expected to swallow everyone else's crap, eventually something's bound to fossilize.

The Sins We Carry

There is a particular kind of person who becomes the designated sin-eater in every family, workplace, friendship group, or organization.

They don't volunteer for the position. There's no application, no formal interview, and certainly no benefits package worth mentioning. One day, they simply discover that they're the person everyone turns to when something goes wrong.

Someone needs to vent? They're available.

Someone made a mistake and needs help fixing it? They're on it.

Someone made a mess and has absolutely no intention of cleaning up after themselves? Well, you know who to call.

And somehow, without anyone officially assigning the responsibility, the sin-eater becomes the keeper of everyone else's problems.

Historically, a sin-eater was someone believed to take on the sins of the deceased through a ritual involving food, usually bread. The idea was that the dead could move on unburdened, while the person who consumed the meal inherited the weight of whatever wrongs had been committed.

It was a rather unfortunate arrangement when you think about it.

One person gets peace. The other gets indigestion and a lifetime subscription to everyone else's moral baggage.

Of course, modern sin-eating doesn't usually involve bread placed on a corpse. These days, it looks more like answering emails that shouldn't be your responsibility, smoothing over conflicts you didn't create, and listening patiently while someone explains why their behavior was perfectly reasonable despite all available evidence suggesting otherwise.

And perhaps the most frustrating part is that the people who benefit from having a sin-eater rarely recognize the arrangement.

They simply know that when things go wrong, someone will make them right.