TWISTED FAITH • 𝐲𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐱 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

TWENTY TWO.

ANTON'S POV

Memories were fleeting, soft, and useless. They were a representation of a past that could not be fixed. There was a representation of his damned household.

Anton remembered the faces and voices of everyone he had ever cleansed. Their shrieks, their terrors, the beautiful color seeping out from their bodies, the way they tumbled into ashes, and nothing more. See, this was nature. They would return to the soil where they had grown from.

Memories were unpleasant.

Anton remembered so much, yet so little about his childhood. He remembered his religious fanaticism of his mother—the way she parroted off bible verses to him, always attempting to kill him by digging her nails into his throat, watching the beads of crimson ebb out...

Usually, the priest did not remember such trivial things. Yet today it all came rushing towards him.

.

.

His mother.

.

.

What kind of person was she?

What kind of person was he?

Anton felt like he knew. That the memories that had been buried into the web of his consciousness had started to drift away, floating through the tiny little cracks.

So many instances of madness.

PAST

The first instant was the killing. His first cleansing was when he sacrificed the lambs.

"Anton, what are you—"

His mother's name was Mary. A rather fitting name, considering she gave birth to a God. That was what Anton has thought since he was young. This was his destiny, his fate. It all lay in the stars, mapped out for him to see. He annotated every inch of it to his brain and committed it to his memory.

"—Anton!" Mary shrieked, her voice shrill and garbled as she dropped the pit she was holding, "what the—!"

They kept pets. Both of them. Could they even be considered pets?—both were lambs, given by a trader who had been taken care of when he had fallen ill. They were all without blemish, and both males of the first year.

Both were dead.

Both were split open, their insides bloodied and gone. Their flesh lay outside, roasting and causing a beautiful, damned smell to leak out of the place. It smelt of death, but to Anton, it smelt of sacrifice.

"Verse three."

"What?" Mary gasped out, seeing the calm look on her son's face—only aged eleven.

"Verse three states that on the tenth day, each person was to take a lamb for himself. In verse five they stated that the lamb must be completely clean, and a male of the first year. Verses six, seven, and eight show that the innocent lamb must be bled to death, and the bones were not to be broken—it had to be roasted whole. I am only abiding by the scripture, Mother." Anton said listlessly, his beautiful, porcelain face matted with blood, his hands dirty and crimson.

"You are...refuting the...the..." Mary screamed, tumbling back at the grotesque sight, "oh lord, oh lord, oh—!" She clutched onto the cross around her necklace, her heart racing.

What kind of person had she given birth to?

What kind of monster?

"It means the same to God. Their ghastly death and terrible scourging are the same. It redeems us, buys us back. They bled to death, their blood spilled onto the earth, and the lambs expired innocent and pure. This is not a sin. I have never sinned, just like the lamb without blemish and without spot." Anton continued on, a smile on his face.