visceraloves - Tumblr blog

visceraloves · 5 days ago

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❝ to dirt we shall return ❞

🫀・・・contents: mentions of religion (specifically Christianity), blasphemey, mentions of sexual assault, domestic violence, abuse, gore and blood, graphic depictions of murder, predatory behavior towards minor, religious guilt

dedicated to my dear friend, happy birthday Lucio!

I am dirty.

I know it like you know it. Like He knows it. I was born dirty, born from sin, born from the soiled womb of a woman who knew no better. She held me as I was born, bloody and wailing to be returned to my purity from my fallen Heaven. Ma did not want me born as I did not want to be born. She looked up on me with sorrow. I was a dirty child born into a filthy world and I hadn't even known it. God looked down upon me because I was a devil-spawn. From forceful penetration to screaming birth, my coming was not foretold.

She was made to marry her rapist by her parents to avoid me being born out of wedlock and to save her from public ridicule. I was dirty because Pa had dirtied her. I was dirty because of his seed. I was dirty because who was I if not my father's daughter?

My parents took me to church because it was the right thing to do for a child like me. Ma would stroke my head as I sat curled in her lap, pressed against her bosom, my small fist curled into the floral pattern of her dress. Pa would sit beside us with his arm around the back of her chair.

It was a small place, off the side of a lonely road lined with tall, gold, dead grass. It was all but a tent, filled with chairs and people and a podium where Pastor Elijah would speak with conviction of the outside world, filled with smut and muck.

“You are dirty,” he’d say, looking at me, my small frame sitting in the lap of my mother who bounced me on her thigh. He’d stare into me, my soul, like he could see my sin. The sin of existing. “But you can be clean with the salvation of God.” I wanted to be clean. I wanted to be pure. I wanted to wash my soul and make it new. What had I done to be born so wrong?

So I made myself everything I thought I ought to be. I made myself chaste, pure, innocent. I masqueraded as everything I know I am not. I grew into my body, into my sin. At the cusp of my adolescence, I had already begun developing rapidly. By the age of 13, I had the body of a woman. “The body of a harlot,” Pa would say. My first blood came soon after.

Ma sat me down by the time I was 16. “I need you to know, Edith. Men will look at you a certain way because of the way you look now. But you remember now, you ain't nothing but a child. No matter what people say about you, you are good and you ain't no whore.” She looked at me with furrowed brows and glossy eyes. Her nether lip trembled.

But I had already known of her warning. I could see it in the eyes of those who longed to dirty themselves in me. I had known it in the “you should smile more, sweetheart” or the way men would look upon my young body as if I were a woman they’d like to court. I knew it well at my age. Such an uncomfortable age. My body longed for the adulthood that barely grazed my fingertips, though, my mind would forever miss the sweet innocence of my youth.

I walked along the side of the road to get back home from school. Ears of corn as far as the eye could see planted over flat farmlands was my only company along this lonely road. I would talk to the corn. So many ears, how could they not listen? I spoke of my dirtiness, playing with a long strand of grass I had plucked from the ground. It was dead like me. Dry and hollow, the life sucked out of it. It was walked all over and crushed beneath the feet of those who cared not to even acknowledge it.

I was pretty in my white dress. One of my sleeves falling down my shoulder, I hadn't bothered to fix it up. With my frilly, lace socks and my flats, I walked the 5 miles it took to get back home so I could prepare dinner with Ma. My sweet lips hummed the hymns Ma would sing to me before bed when I was a young child.

There was a squeal of old breaks behind me. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw an old, red truck inching closer before pulling up beside me.

“Edith, that you?”

It was an older man, around Pa’s age, maybe older, around mid-50s. I recognized him as a frequent face in our little church, a casual friend of Pa’s, but I didn't know him personally. I never spoke to him but he seemed to know me well enough to know my name. I nodded slowly, not knowing any better. I was sweet and trusting. Too much so.

“What’cha doing walking down here?” He called over his idle engine, looking at my skant shoulder glistening under the sun that barely peeked over the horizon. The sky, the Lord’s canvas, painted in delicately detailed strokes of lip-smacking tangerine and giggling rose.

My lips parted to speak. “I’m just trying to get home, sir.”

The man didn't hesitate. “Ya want a ride home? Looks like we're going in the same direction.” He looked out down the road when the sun was quickly retreating beyond the horizon. “An’ it’ll be dark soon. Wouldn't want a pretty girl like you walking alone at night, now would we?” He offered a smile that was meant to be charming. His teeth were slightly crooked, even more slightly yellowed. His hair was graying along the sides of his head and he was gripping the steering wheel tight.

I thought only of how my feet hurt from walking so much and how much more I'd have to go. Ma would love it if I managed to get home early because some kind stranger from church helped me. She'd invite him in for dinner, thank him profusely with the additional promise to pray for him tonight.

So I agreed and walked around the back of his truck to get inside the passenger seat. Plastered all over his truck’s bumper, stickers with Bible quotes, others urging people to find salvation, all talking of the greatness of the Lord. I felt safe as I always had in the sweet comfort of religion. It stroked my cheeks like Ma would when I cried and told me that even being born dirty, born a child of forced impregnation out of wedlock, I could still be clean one day. I could still earn my way into Heaven.

The man’s truck smelled of cigarettes and booze. Bottles of beer littled the passenger side floor and half-smoked cigarettes were snuffed out in the cupholder he had made into a makeshift ashtray. The doors clicked locked and I fell silent in my place. I kept my hands on my bag in my lap. My eyes on my feet sitting on top of brown beer bottles.

The man shifted the truck into drive and pulled off down the line road with a rusty squeal. There was an old automatic switchblade on the dash beneath a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. The rosary swung back, swaying with every jolt of the truck, old and rusty. The silver cross glinted gold beneath the dusky sunlight, just narrowly missing the knife as it danced.

“Ya know, I watched ya grow up, Edith? In the church and whatnot. You might not remember me, but I was there when you were baptized.”

I swallowed, tucking some of my curls behind my ear. My lips pursed softly. I was baptized as a baby. Of course, I hadn’t remembered it but if I had, I’m sure I would have still felt unclean even being washed in the blood of Christ. I would have felt like I had soiled the water just by being in it, made it impure, made it nothing more than a devilish pit of sin.

I was sin. My body was sin. My Pa made sure I knew as soon as I began developing breasts that I would grow up to be nothing more than some “hussy" like Ma. It was her fault he took her like that, made her unclean. “She should’ve covered up more,” he’d laugh with a beer in hand.

He chuckled. “I was almost ya godfather.” He drove with one hand on the wheel and the other hanging off the center console between us. It twitched a bit, inching closer and closer to my side. “Man, you done grown up to be one pretty girl, haven’t ya?” His voice was a bit lower than it had been before. I glanced to my side and found that he was already looking at me. Dark. His eyes were dark and full of an emotion I had learned far too young as lust. He lusted for me, for my body; that looked maybe too soft, too welcoming to those of impure mind.

I could see my house up ahead, standing atop a hill between tall, swaying grass and powerlines. But the man, Pa’s friend, would pull off to the side of the road before we could get there. I looked at him, almost fearful as he reached across the center console and placed his large, calloused hand upon the exposed flesh of my thigh.

“Sir–”

He stroked my thigh and looked at me with a smile. “Oh, ya don’t have to play coy with me, darlin’.” With his free hand, he rubbed the center of his jeans. Discomfort flooded through me. I turned to open the door but it was locked. I was scared. Had I soiled the mind of a good Christian man with my body?

‘No. This is not my fault.’ I thought as his fingers began to tug on my dress and pull it up my scant thigh. I looked into his eyes and saw the devil between the desire swimming in his dark eyes and the tender smile attempting to assure me that this was okay. I was nothing more than a doll to him, to anyone. A fragile thing that could be positioned however they'd like. I was pretty. I was stupid. I was desperate to be something I knew I never would be. My damnation was destined from the start.

My eye twitched. I didn't think about it. For the first time in my few years of life, I didn't think about anything. My fingers lunged for the switchblade on the dash. I grasped the black handle and let the blade pop out. It shone under the last remaining days of sun. And without hesitation, I stabbed him in the tender flesh of his throat. I twisted the blade in the wound before pulling it out.

The pressure of his arteries came bursting out all at once. Blood sprayed across me in a perfect crescent, like the sweet arch of Lolita's back as she lay in the grass behind her house. As red as her heart-shaped glasses. I was doused in crimson gold. Hot and beautiful. It landed on my face and dyed the front of my sweetheart dress scarlet.

His hand retreated from me to grab at his throat as he choked on his own life source. He looked at me, eyes all wide with surprise and fear. I didn't recognize that look from men. No one ever looked at me, my small frame, my brown skin oiled with vanilla perfumes, and thought that I was someone to fear.

I liked it better than lust.

I watched him die in his own car. The spray of his blood settled into a quiet dribble. He fell back into his seat in a slump, limp. His eyes were still open but the distinct light of life was gone. The spark was snuffed out under my heel. I was no longer dead. I was alive. My fingers trembled with it. I was warm with blood that engulfed me. It felt good.

I felt renewed, cleaned. My sin washed away by the sins of another. Baptized in the blood of Christ meant nothing. I baptized myself in the blood of that which was worse than I and I was born again.

I had little outward reaction to killing a man. I unlocked the door and popped it open to hop out. I tossed the switchblade into his lap and slammed the door shut with slippery hands. Home was so close, I could walk there in a matter of minutes. I didn't care who saw me. I didn't care who saw my victim. I was pleased with myself and my work. The work of God.

Luckily, no one saw me. The road my family lived on was rather desolate and didn't get much traffic. I walked onto the porch and took off my shoes, which had been spared from the dappled blood, and opened the screen door to get inside.

I could hear Ma in the kitchen, washing dishes. Pa wouldn't be home from work for another hour or two. I could trust Ma. She wouldn't turn me away, wouldn't shun me for my transgression. So I walked into the kitchen and stood at the entrance.

“Edith, baby, is that you?” Ma called with her sweet voice. She could have been a soul singer in another life with that smooth, deep baritone. If only she hadn't had me. If only her life hadn't been ruined by Pa and me. She could have done great things.

I suddenly felt dirty again.

“I’m right here, Ma.”

She glanced over her shoulder at me. Then did a double take. “Edith!” She turned off the water and pulled off her rubber gloves with a speed I had never seen her move before. Ma came rushing over to me, grabbing me up and inspecting me. “What happened? Who hurt you?” She looked for any open wounds on my body but there were none.

With a soft voice, I said, “I’m not hurt, Ma… I hurt someone.” I didn't look ashamed or remorseful in any way. I had killed someone and I felt nothing but glee that another man of filth was scrubbed from this Earth. I had done something good. I was made holy by my work.

I recounted what happened to Ma, her face morphing more and more to horror with each word of what the man was attempting to do, that he was a friend of Pa’s, that I had stabbed in in his throat, that I didn't feel a thing about it. Her warm skin looked pale and blanched, her full lips trembled. She looked away from me for a moment, thinking about something.

Then she embraced me. She did so with a tight, fierce sigh almost in relief. When she pulled away, her hands came to cradle my face. Her eyes were gentle and kind. Without a single word, she had told me she understood and would not shun me for my deed. I could have cried if I wasn't so euphoric. My existence was not a disgrace as Pa would have me know. I was good, I was divine. I had done a holy act. Me. I was the hand of God.

“Come, let's get you cleaned up and hide these clothes before your Pa comes home.”

Pastor Elijah seemed to be an ever-present figure in my life since I was born. He was a “good, God-fearing man” to Pa but I knew why he said as much. He was the one who married Ma and Pa together. He was the one who convinced Ma’s parents that it would be best to marry Pa after he had forced himself upon her and impregnated her. He looked at her, even through her tears and screaming, her swollen belly of a child she had not wanted, and told her to marry her rapist.

Her life was ruined, all in one fell swoop.

Pa always insisted on staying after church for us to speak to Pastor Elijah, especially now that one of his friends had been found dead just up the street from our home. Whispers of it lingered all about the church tent. Apparently his name was Joshua and people believed that he had killed himself with the knife left in his lap and all. No one had suspected foul play, much less that I had done it. For who would suspect a young girl like me to do something so horrific?

I stood beside Pa, his arm over my shoulders, fingers gripping my the flesh of my bicep as he held me to his side. He held me like a possession, like someone was out to steal me from him. He did the same with Ma.

I hadn’t been listening much to his conversation with Pastor Elijah, too busy trying to catch any whispers of any murder. I had been pulled back into the conversation upon Pastor Elija turning to me with a smile that rang awfully similar to that of Joshua’s. It was perverted. His eyes flickered down my body, hitching slightly at my chest that was rather hard to hide. “Edith here is getting to the age of marriage, isn’t she? She’ll be eighteen soon enough.”

It was clear what he was implying. His own wife had died from childbirth before I was born. The child didn’t make it either. It seemed he was intent on making me his new child bride. He looked at Pa with a raised, white brow. “I think it could be discussed.” Pa agreed, humming softly while gripping me harder.

I had little say in my own decisions. It seemed I would have no say in who I would marry. Pa cared little for what Ma and I had to say. He made it very clear everytime he would choke Ma whenever she dared to talk back to him. He’d never lay a hand on me, but he’d threaten to.

The car ride back home was silent. The lingering idea that I might be given away to a man triple my age swam through my mind in dizzying circles. He would touch me if he wanted. There were no laws against marital rape. I knew as much when Pa would do so to Ma, even as she cried so loud that I could hear her through the thin walls of our little home. That would be me. A fate passed down from mother to daughter like a family heirloom.

We passed the spot where Joshua pulled over with me and where I had taken his life. I knew what I would do if he tried to touch me.

The idea settled for a few days. Pa had mentioned it to Ma, not to gauge her opinion but to let her know that it was an inevitably that her daughter would be married off and she would have to stand there and watch it happen. For a moment, I had believed that Pa had dropped the idea all together. Maybe I was still too young in his eyes to marry. Maybe he didn’t want it to be with Pastor Elijah. Whatever the reason,I had a small moment of respite where I believed I was safe.

I should have been smarter than to believe such a thing.

Pa had invited me to go into town with him. He never usually did. There was always a strange distance between Pa and I though he always kept me physically close. He never hit me like he hit Ma. He occasionally gave me small pieces of candy that he'd get from the store. While he was indeed belligerent, there were small kindnesses he offered me that made life slightly more bearable.

I’d come to find out that it was all a trap to get me to go with him to Pastor Elijah’s house. Pa’s small kindnesses were not without their pitfalls. I should have known better than to trust him. Though, he probably would have forced me into the car if I did not choose to go by my own free will.

I sat in the passenger seat as we pulled into the grass in front of Pastor Elijah’s home. It was larger than ours yet still modest. Pastel yellow paint chipped off the wooden frame of the house. It was not well kept. In the back, there was a pile of chopped wood and a stump with an axe lodged in it.

I reached up to grasp the cross necklace I wore around my throat. I tugged at the pace trim to the white slip dress that I hadn't had the chance to change out of. All I had on were my dress, my necklace, and working boots I had slipped on on the way out the door. I felt vulnerable, exposed as Pa stepped out the truck and I watched through the windshield as he greeted Pastor Elijah with a smile.

They spoke for a minute before they both looked back at the truck, at me. I felt like I was a used item being sold off. I felt the grime under my fingernails, the dirt accumulating on my skin. I felt like filth. I felt like sin.

Pa motioned me to get out of the truck and I hesitated a moment before complying. His eyes wouldn't leave me. His smile was filled with filth and perverse desires. I walked over, my boots digging in the dirt as I did. I felt like shit in the dirt.

“Edith, it’s nice to see you again. Why don't you come in for some coffee?”

Pa grabbed my shoulder and squeezed it so tight I thought I might bruise under his touch. I bruise easy, like Ma. With her swollen cheeks and busted lip. Her black eyes and the bruise in the shape of a handprint around her neck. I wonder if that's what awaits me in my near future. “Be good. Don't cause no trouble, now.” He murmured into my ear before letting me go.

He left me there. With the man who baptized me and now planned to make me his wife. I felt sick. My stomach squeezed with disgust. It twisted and turned as I walked up the porch steps and walked into his home that smelled like burned coffee and mothballs. I was not welcome. His furniture didn't speak to me. His mantle was empty. The wooden floorboards creaked under my weight. This house was not a home.

He came out with two mugs and handed me one. I took it with trembling fingers. “Why don’t you sit? You’re so stiff.” Pastor Elijah offered me a seat on a plush chair beside the couch. I sat. Stiffly. He sat with me on the side of the couch closest to me. He took a sip of his coffee made plain while I just held mine in my hands, scratching at the floral design of the side. Dirt under my fingernails.

There was a long stretch of silence for a while. The slight slurping of his lips against the rim of the mug, the steady ‘tick tock’ of the grandfather clock by the stairway, the settling sounds of the house. I needed out. I needed to shower, to wash myself clean, make myself pure again. I needed to baptize myself.

“You’re not dumb, Edith. I know you know that your father and I have been talking about you getting married soon. And as you know,” Pastor Elijah sipped on his coffee once more, “my previous wife passed away a long while ago.” He reached out to place his hand upon mine, with his sunspots and wrinkles. And he caressed my fingers.

I hated him. I hated Pa. My lips twitched, almost to curl with disgust. This man– he was foul, filthy, dirtier than I could ever begin to be. But I hid it well, the pastor didn't seem to notice the flash of revulsion across my face as he came to smile at me. I forced myself to smile back through the tightening of my stomach.

“I want you to be comfortable around me, in my home. Your father has already blessed our marriage.”

I could have screamed. I could have grabbed him and strangled him. But who would that make me other than my father's daughter? No, I chose to be methodical about how I would get rid of him. I smiled all pretty like I was open to the idea of marrying this man who had watched me grow up and now planned to have me bear his children. I would kill him. I would dispose of this filth and cleans my hands in his blood to clear my own sin.

“Thou shall not murder”, but it’s only murder if the man is innocent.

“Why don't you give me a tour of the house, Pastor Elijah?” I layered my voice with kindness to hide the venom dripping from my lips. I hated the way he smiled. I hated the way his hand held mine, his thumb stroking my knuckles. “Please, call me Eli. We’ll be getting very close soon. It’s only right you stop calling me that.”

He stood up to offer me that tour with a big, bright smile across his thin lips. Elijah showed me around the living room, the kitchen, and as he was about to take me upstairs to look around up there, I politely asked, “Can you show me the backyard?”

He paused and looked towards the back door in the kitchen. One foot already on the stairs, he stepped down with a gentle sigh. “Of course.” I followed him through the kitchen and through the back door into the backyard where the pile of wood had been stacked against the house under an awning. The stump with the axe was just a few feet away. My gaze lingered on it before flickering back to the pastor who was speaking with his back to me. He spoke of “our children running around and playing back here once we get married.”

I grabbed the handle of the axe and placed my foot up on the stump to brace myself as I pulled it out and tossed it over my shoulder. It was heavy and I was rather small but I was determined to get out of this marriage any way I knew how. I was desperate to free myself from this life of filth.

I walked up behind Elijah and with a great huff, I lifted the axe over my head. It seemed that my slight noise alerted him because he turned around just as I began to bring the axe down with a great swing. There was a sweet look in his crystalline eyes, a look quite familiar to me. I liked the flash of fear across his face, the millisecond he had to react was that of terror for his fate.

The axe split his head open with a sickening, wet crack. Blood splattered across my body and I didn't mind it one bit. This was good. I was good. I watched a man go from living to dead once and I enjoyed it even more the second time. I could see his brain matter pulsating beneath the shattered fragments of his skull. He fell to the ground dead. Blood pooled around his head quickly and I was sure to avoid leaving any prints in it. Dead. I had killed him. It's a wonderful feeling to have power over all the men who told me I was nothing, that I was dirty, that God would never forgive me for what I was. Now they were nothing. Just dirt under my feet.

I smiled.

Pa is not a good man.

I knew that from a very young age. Between his drinking and his violence, I saw a man not meant to be a husband, a father. I would whisper to Ma promises of us running away, escaping him as I tended to her cuts and bruises. She’d cry in my arms, the arms of a child no older than 9. And through her tears, she'd apologize to me. She'd apologize like any of this is her fault. That's how I knew Pa was nothing more than scum, even at my age.

“You have your mother's body,” he’d say to me at my tender age of 14 when I was developing into a woman. He was drunk — like he often was — and Ma was sleeping upstairs. I had been in the living room sitting with him, reading a book. I was just in shorts and a camisole when he had first commented on my body. I hadn't known how to respond at the time, so I didn't. It seemed that that was enough of a response for him, a silent submission to his sexualization of my young body.

If anyone in this world made me feel the dirtiest, it was him. He had made me this way, this muddled abomination — an amorphous shape of nothing but flies and shit. I was no one to him. Just a doll. And because I was a doll to him, it inspired everyone around him to treat me just the same way. Like I would take it. I was done taking it.

No one found poor Pastor Elijah’s body for a few days. Everyone was suspicious when he hadn't shown up to give his Sunday sermon. So a few people went to his home and found him dead in his backyard. And accident, probably while cutting wood for his fireplace. He fell and that was the end of it. Everyone was distraught. The funeral held at the church tent brought people even from out of town. Everyone said the same things, “he was a good man”, “he didn't deserve this”, “why did God take him”.

I hadn't realized that taking a life meant I was playing God until right then. I decided who lived and died. I decided when, where, and how. And that made me powerful. It wasn't God who took him, it was me. The thought made me smile, but swiftly, I hid it behind faux tears. A farce. Ma knew what I had done and she knew that I had to do it. He had to die so that I could flourish. I had to kill him and bathe in his blood and let him know that I was above him so that I could live. She never wanted me to suffer the same fate as her.

Pa was yelling at Ma in the car. He was upset that Pastor Elijah had died and somehow found a way to blame it on her. “You didn't want her married to ‘em. Fucking bitch, you worthless piece of shit.” He grabbed her by her hair. “You’re gonna get it tonight.” And when he let her go, she was already crying. I hated how he treated Ma. Like a punching bag. When we got home, she had run away upstairs to come herself while I cleaned up.

“Edith! Grab me another beer!” I could hear Pa calling from the living room. I was in the kitchen washing the dishes, scrubbing the knives that couldn't be tossed into the dishwasher. I ran the sponge down the length of the blade before rinsing it off and placing it in the rack. I pulled the rubber gloves off with a sigh and tossed them into the sink before grabbing a Pa’s 4th beer out of the fridge.

He sat lounging in his recliner, his beer bottles sitting beside him. He looked at me as I came with his new bottle, already opened for him just how he liked. Pa took it from me and immediately took a swig. And as I turned away from him, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. He was drunk, he stunk like sick and alcohol. He disgusted me. I trembled under the bruising grip of his hand around my wrist, not in fear, but in anger. I wanted him dead. I wanted him screaming.

Pa looked at me, licking his lips. “You look so much like your ma did at your age.” His eyes glaze over me, predatory, hungry. Dirty. He was dirty. He made me feel dirty too. “You have the body of a fucking whore. You should stop walking around like that. If you weren't my daughter, I would have already had my way with you.” He let me go. I snatched my hand away and rubbed away the ache in my wrist. “Get some clothes on.”

I was tired. I was tired of the way he made me feel. Worthless. I was worthless. I was a doll. I was disgusting. How dare he make me feel like this? I was a God. I was a saint. I was doing holy work and he dared to undermine it?

That night, lying in bed, I thought of how I would kill him. He had to die so that Ma and I could live. It was the only way for us to flourish, to strip ourselves of our suffocating cocoon and finally be free.

Through our paper thin walls, peeling pink paint and floral wallpaper, I could hear Ma crying down in the living room. Pa was yelling. She screamed before being abruptly cut of by a loud smack, skin meeting skin. There was a thump, her body hit the floor.

I shot up in bed and tossed my comforter off my body. I ran into Ma and Pa’s room to grab Pa’s revolver and went downstairs to go help Ma, praying that today wasn't the day that he actually killed her. I fumbled with the bullets. Shaking. My hands shook violently and I placed the bullets in the chamber.

He had her on the floor, his body mounting hers, with his hands wrapped around her throat. There was fire in his eyes. That look. He was going to kill her. The devil had possessed him. The fires of Hell was within him. Ma always scolded me for getting in the middle of their fights. She never wanted me to get caught in the crossfire. But if I didn't now, she would surely die.

I had never shot a gun before. But seeing my Ma there on the ground made me angry. I pulled back the hammer and it clicked just loud enough for Pa to hear through Ma’s struggling gasps for air. Her fingers clawed at his arms.

Pa saw me with his gun pointed at him and immediately let Ma go. He raised his hands as if to surrender to me, his eyes wide with terror. Now I was the one with power. He would no longer terrorize us. “Edith–” My hands trembled, my bottom lip quivered, and I could feel tears welling in my eyes. “Get offa her!”

He scrambled to get up, his hands still in the air. “Edith, you don't know what you’re doin’. Just put the gun down.” Pa tried to seem calm, or maybe he was just trying to get me to lower my defenses. The same way he’d sneak me candy or let me have a sip of his beer when I was young. His small affections didn't make up for anything. They always had their pitfalls. And I wasn't falling in them anymore.

“You will not hurt us no more!” I shrieked. The tears burned my eyes as they left them, rolling down my cheeks in soft rivers over the contours of my face. “I am not dirty! I am not a whore. And you won't ever lay a hand on her again!”

I didn't think about it as I pulled the trigger. It was quick. A bang that made my ears ring and then he hit the floor clutching his chest. I had hit him in the heart. The open wound where his chest should have been spilled with blood. If I were any closer, I would have been able to see his heart coming to a quivering stop as he died.

Ma let out a startled gasp. Her hand placed over her mouth, she had always supported my actions but she had never seen me kill in person before. Would she still love me, seeing what I’ve done to her husband? I looked at her through glossy eyes, desperate and hopeful that she wouldn't be afraid of me. “Ma?” My voice trembled and fractured. How could one love a killer like me? Someone so disgusting and undeserving of love. She looked at me with soft eyes, sweet and gentle. She came and she took the gun from my hands before grabbing me up and embracing me into her.

She smelled like vanilla and honey, like warm, sunny days, like home. And I sobbed into her shoulder, she sobbed into mine. We held each other like the world was falling apart and we cleansed ourselves with nothing more than our tears.

I am the patron saint of filth. I might be of dirt but so are you. And from dirt we are and to dirt we shall return.

#everyone read this NEOWWW #edith my beloved #my poor little meow meow.. she deserved to get to do all those things ❤️

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