continued from here w. @8ullseye 🖤
Maren had listened to enough gospel radio, snuck into enough Sunday morning sermons to know that what they did wasn't right. And it definitely wasn't holy under the eyes of any known god. She'd seen the phrase God gave his hardest trials to his toughest soldiers on truck stop mugs and hats in the Bible belt--Hell, even on shot glasses--but it had never made sense to her. Why did He, this omnipotent figure think a mere toddler comparable to a trained militia? How cruel was this God that he made a child withstand so many trials? Or perhaps how weak?
"I dunno." She shrugs, sniffling a waves of tears away. She refused to cry in front of Jessie tonight. Maren was tired of crying, sick and tired of being sad and feeling hopeless all the time. For once, she wanted to feel something else. With Jessie, she often did. But sometimes love wasn't cathartic enough and the binding knots in her soul needed more. She wanted to be angry, to be hateful and cruel as God was to her. And yet her heart was too soft to be angry at anyone but herself.
"I wanna believe in a Heaven. I wanna think that's where all the people I've eaten go. Well, almost all the people." She swiped her nose with the back of her hand, biting back a sour laugh. "But if Heaven exists, then that means Hell does, too. And I've committed enough sins for multiple lifetimes. I wish I believed in reincarnation. At least I'd be a fly, or somethin' instead of burnin' for an eternity."












