Chapter Text
A small child knelt on the wooden floor, knees planted into the wood as if they had grown into it over the years. They were fixed on the crucifix hanging above the far wall, but it hung upside down, of course. The room was much too small for it, and it loomed in the space, glinting in the faint light that filtered in through a small window. The metal had an unnaturally bright edge, and the bottom of it seemed honed into a point, unlike a cross. The child sat fixed on it, staring without blinking, their eyes blank and far-away as if something had them in a grip. Long, dark hair hung in front of their face, but they did not attempt to push it out of the way.
The room stood silently for a moment with nothing but a faint cracking in the woodwork and a muffled clock ticking far down a hallway. Then steps began to sound, measured and commanding. A woman and a man walked into the room, their shadows leading them. The woman’s face was placid and serene, but the man’s face wore a quiet intensity, a conviction without a shadow of doubt.
He knelt beside the child and put a hand on their shoulders. His touch was gentle, a practiced touch, as if he had done this a million times before. He leaned in close and whispered, “It’s time.”
The words shattered whatever enchantment had ensnared the child. Their shoulders knotted beneath his grasp, and they arose, as if compelled, to their feet. They did not speak but departed from their parents with silent obeisance, leaving behind the reversed crucifix, which shone in the poor light.
The house itself had a tale of contradictions to tell. Although they did not go to church, they never used the terms of prayer that other people did. Christian symbols dotted the adorned shelves—not rosaries draped over door handles, but scripture quotes with pointers underlined and candles with sigils meant for intended rites. Their parents did not subscribe to faith in the way other people did, but subscribed to ‘The Truth.’ They simply saw in Christianity a mere brushing against it, borrowing snippets without comprehending them.
As they moved down the corridor, the child saw their brother. Their elder sister stood outside her room, her arms tightly crossed over her chest, her youthful face twisted with envy, which she did not attempt to conceal. Further down the corridor stood their brother, no more than five years old, with a toy clasped tightly in his white-knuckled hands. His glare was less schooled, seething with jealous fascination. They all observed, with jealous eyes, how their parents led this child on, bestowing upon them all the attention, all the reverence, and all the special treatment that had never before belonged to anyone else.
The parents called it a gift. They said this child was chosen, not to bring joy, but to rid the planet of all its impurities. They talked of necessity and fate, of a cross only the bravest of them all could bear. The other children did not see this reality; their predestined companion had grasped that this gift was, in reality, a curse cloaked in holy words.
The shed stood some way from the dwelling, with twisted wooden doors bound by rusty hinges. The air thickened with each step, heavy with the smell of damp earth and dried blood, which defied all washing. The parents pushed open the doors and led the child inside to the center of this small room.
A crude altar stood waiting, smeared with old blood. A chicken, bound to it with coarse rope, lived, thrashing about with a maddening intensity, wings fluttering wildly in futile attempts to evade unseen enemies in the air, feathers falling in a slow rain to the shed floor as its neck and legs were strapped in place.
The parents were speaking calmly and kindly, as if they were giving a lesson rather than making a sacrifice. They were pointing to the chicken’s size, saying how it was much fatter than the other chickens. Greed, they were saying, had consumed more than its share. Greed had gotten so dirty because of excess. Greed, they said, was filth. And filth had to be cleansed. The child stood in silence, hands barely trembling as they drew nearer to the altar. Such was always the way of it. An animal would be dragged into this space, charged with a moral failing it would never be able to grasp, and it would be put to death. And this, of course, was where our child came in. They were to be the tools of cleansing, to do what their parents thought was necessary. They had learned long before to refrain from protest, from crying. Such reactions had been driven from them in those earliest rituals. Now all they had left to draw on was submission and the small, crushing knowledge that this part of them would haunt them far beyond this shed, far beyond their childhood.
The parents thrust the dagger into the child's hands as if passing on a treasured family possession. It was an outrageously large knife for such a small child, with a handle smoothed to a high polish from innumerable hands before theirs. The metal of the knife had long since stopped being silver and had darkened to a dull varnish from the old blood dried thick upon it, a stain that defied all attempts at removal. The child’s hands grasped it with an instinctive familiarity, but their fingers trembled, knuckles knotting with the weight of it, pulling their arm downward.
The air in the shed was thick and heavy. It reeked of rusty metal and rotting wood, of fear that clung to the walls and seeped into the wood. Underneath the child’s feet, the earth was cold and dirty with a mixture of grit and feathers. The chicken was tied to the altar with a rope, struggling feebly, gasping in short, panicked breaths. Its warm flesh pressed against the child’s fears, its fast and fitful heartbeat racing with a preknowledge of an impending fate.
The sound of the father’s voice interrupted this brittle silence.
“Cleanse it,” he ordered, the sound of his voice ringing off the walls. “The filth must drown in its own blood.”
His voice did not waver; it was free from any show of mercy. The mother stood by him, her arms crossed, her eyes forlornly fixed on the child, but with a look of both hope and aggravation. For them, this was not torture. This was a responsibility.
The child did not move.
They stood motionless, with hunched shoulders, eyes fixed upon a spot beneath the tangled, overgrown brown hair that concealed most of their face. Their knife shook in their hands, with a stained blade glinting in momentary catches of light with each tremor. Their chest labored in an erratic rhythm, with short breaths suddenly interrupted by a series of short hiccups. A crimson flush spread over their cheeks, and tears dripped unnoticed from their eyes, tracing paths straight down to the floor below.
The chicken voiced a sudden, desperate sound, struggling futilely against its restraints. The child winced, fingers closing painfully tight around the hilt. They'd been here before. A dozen times, a hundred. And each time, this moment had dragged on in exactly this way, an eternal hold of hope flickering, shining brightly and insanely, before being snuffed out.
The parents moved behind them. A quick sigh. A clicking tongue.
Their impatience was a familiarity they imposed on the child with tangible pressure. They were always hesitating. The parents were aware of this. They permitted it for only a moment, a moment that seemed part of a ritual in which the child had to prove they were alive, they were suffering, and they comprehended the significance of what they got to do.
“Don't embarrass us,” whispered the mother softly but with conviction.
The child swallowed hard, their throat hurting from another sob trying to push its way through. Their hands were shaking more now, their arms burning from holding up the knife for this long. They were longing to look away, to shut their eyes tight and make themselves vanish. But they didn't. They never did.
With a harsh, commanding bark of "NOW," the mother's voice cut through the thick silence like a lash cracking through the air. The twelve-year-old's hands were trembling in uncontrollable spasms as they grasped the cold, unyielding blade. Their breath heaved with a turmoil of fear and determination, with the sounds of their pounding hearts overwhelming all else. There was no turning back now. With a combination of fear, duty, and utter despair, they thrust the knife deep into the thrashing chicken's breast.
The screams of the bird burst forth, a rending, agonized shriek that cut through the air with the shock of broken glass. The child’s knuckles turned white with tensing muscles as he forced the blade downward with slow, pounding force. The knife bit through flesh and tendon, crunching on bone beneath the feathers. A warm, sky-splatter of blood erupted in a rainbow arc, striking the wall and floor in a warm, red deluge, bathing the child’s trembling hands in sticky, shining liquid.
The frantic thrashing eased, the screams transfixing into desperate gurgles and choking spasms as life seeped from the creature. The maelstrom of pain and death continued, each passing moment an eternal torture for the child. Their gasping breath snagged in their throat, a burning swallow of bile rising in protest in their throat with the fierce intensity of their mother's eyes fixed upon them.
As the last, ragged gasp escaped, the mother's hands grasped the child's face with a violence bordering on brutality. They pushed the child's head into the warm, trembling guts, warm, slimy entrails against their skin and lips. The overwhelming, metallic smell of blood and intestines assaulted their nascent awareness.
A brutal gag ripped from deep within their gut, a child’s cries muffled by the parents' incessant shouting, and a relentlessly morbid refrain echoed in this small space. Their cries were harsh and ragged, scraping at the edges of quiet with all the savagery of their own flesh being ripped to pieces. Their body was a canvas spattered with gore, warm, sticky blood oozing through their clothes in a maddening mix with chunks of flesh and chunks of vital organs and nightmarish epidermis clinging to them. Every inhalation was a struggle, each passing moment an agony for them, soaked as they were in the savage repercussions of the carnage. The parents stood cold and hard, moving relentlessly, their chant a nightmare rhythm that marked the initiation of a child into a hard and brutal universe of cruel rituals and harsh requirements.
The parents dug into the slaughtered chicken with a savage appetite, their hands rending off thick chunks of flesh, the thighs, the breasts, and other raw, shiny flesh. They offered these chunks of torn flesh to the child with a macabre ritualistic intensity, their voices deep and insistent. "Eat," they urged. "Devour the greed of the chicken. Let its fat remove the rot that festers in you."
The child’s gut knotted with anguish, fear closing in a tight grip around them. Though this terrific ritual had been performed an infinite number of times, the simple action of eating this raw flesh never ceased to repel them. They hesitated, raising a trembling hand to grasp a pale, light pink piece of flesh, this flesh cold and slick against their skin, repulsive and strange.
Handing it reluctantly to their lips, their tongues touched the slippery surface, and they savored the flavor of blood mixed with the resilient flesh. Their throat constricted at the very thought of gagging, with a storm of revulsion raging within them. Their whole being seemed to revolt for an instant, but when they finally mustered the courage to raise their eyes, they were met with the unswerving, brutally loving look of their parents.
Slowly, deliberately, the child compelled themselves to chew, the raw flesh shredding and pushing at their teeth in a disturbing, wet rhythm. Every morsel was an effort, each swallow a triumph over the revulsion that howled in them. The cold, slippery bits went down their throat, leading a heavy, unyielding path with a bitter aftermath that seemed to seep into their very essence. And yet, beneath this brutal horror of consumption, this hidden shadow of power pushed forward, the ritual’s hold deepening in a way that bound this child all the more to a realm of sacrifice, suffering, and blind conformity.
When it was done, after the blood had seeped into their clothes and the coppery tang of raw meat was still sharp on their tongue, the parents stepped back. They looked at the child with slitted eyes, seeming to gauge whether the lesson had sunk in after all. It was the mother who spoke first; her voice was as calm and well-rehearsed as it was each time.
“Go wash the filth off,” she said finally. “You’re done for tonight.”
That word again, filth. It followed the child everywhere, sinking into their skin deeper than any stain ever could. Filth of the blood, filth of the hand, filth of the mind. The parents spoke it like a prayer, as if a truth so absolute needed no explanation whatsoever.
The child nodded weakly and stumbled out of the shed into the cold night air that felt like ice against their sticky skin, raising gooseflesh along their arms. They didn't look back. They never did. Inside the house, they slipped into the bathroom, turning the shower on as hot as it would go until steam quickly filled the small space. Fingernails dug into skin, a washcloth dragging back and forth until it burned the moment water hit them. Red swirled down the drain, mixing with soap and water, but no matter how much they scrubbed, it just never felt like enough.
They washed and washed, their fingers aching, the skin looking raw and pale. Yet the smell remained in their nostrils: iron and fat and fear, refusing to be washed away. When they turned the water off at last, their body was shaking, not with cold but with fatigue.
That night, sleep refused to visit them.
The child lay stiffly in bed, staring at the ceiling, their blankets pulled tight over their small frame. Mother always spoke about how sleep was essential, how rest kept one's mind pure and body firm, yet sleep had never been kind to them. Every time they closed their eyes, there was a bursting of flashes behind their lids: red splatters across wood, feathers sticking to skin, and the eardrum-shredding sound of tearing flesh. Meat slop. Heat. Screaming that never seemed to end.
When they did drift off, it never lasted. They woke up choking on their own breath, heart pounding, hands clawing at the sheets as a scream ripped out of their throat before they could stop it. Sometimes they bite their lip hard enough to taste blood, anything to keep quiet. Anything to keep from waking the others.
Their siblings already hated them enough.
The child inched in on themself, smashing their face into the pillow as the sobs seeped silently into the fabric. They stared into the dark, too afraid to sleep, too tired to stay awake, caught between memories and nightmares that felt the same. Somewhere down the hall, the house creaked and settled, indifferent.
While the word immediately echoed in their head, repeating long after the night should have been quiet. Filth.
The shed doors were closed, but they weren't finished. The moonlight was thinning across the yard, and their parents had stopped by the troughs, their boots caked with mud and something else. The buckets were positioned between them, their lids mostly closed, a pungent smell of rot hanging around them.
“It should be any day now,” the father answered, wiping his hands on a cloth that smeared the stains instead of removing them. There was a sense of excitement about his words, the sort he dared not express in the presence of his young ones.
The mother looked towards the house and made sure that all the lights were switched off. “She’s ready,” she said. “You can feel it in the rituals. They’ve been cleaner. Stronger.”
“She hesitates less,” he agreed. “Still cries, but that’s normal. The Beast always resists at first.”
The mother knelt beside the feeding trough, her head bent as she lifted the lid to peer inside. The grains seemed ordinary, but she knew better. “The bacteria’s taken,” she said, satisfied. “Same as last time. Ever since we mixed it in.”
“The day it died,” whispered his father. “Starved itself hollow. Couldn’t survive in a filthy world.”
She nodded. “We were lucky to find it when we did. Fresh enough. Spreading its insides throughout the feed was… inspired.” After a moment, “It remembers what it was. That hunger. That purity.”
“And now the animals remember too,” he said. “They eat it. It changes them. Fills them with what the Beast left behind.”
“That is why the rituals are important,” the mother concluded. “It feeds on the rituals, and in doing so, she feeds her.”
The father stood up straight, aglow. “They think that purification comes from praying. From grace. But they are wrong. Dirt only knows hunger.”
"And blood," she added matter-of-factly.
There was a moment of silence between them, broken only by the distant noise of an animal moving in its enclosure.
“She doesn’t know yet,” said the father. “Not really.”
“She doesn’t need to,” answered the mother. “Kids don’t need the whole truth. Just enough to obey.”
"And when it wakes?" he asked.
The mother smiled faintly, her eyes gazing out at the silhouette of the house. “Then she’ll never be a child again. The Beast within her will finish what the old one didn’t.”
He let out a slow breath, almost reverent. "The world won't be able to ignore her then."
“No,” she said. “It'll finally be clean.” They sealed the feed and turned back toward the house, the silence of their footsteps evident, already talking about the next ritual as if it were just planning dinner.