Dorothy idly followed two of her followers down the empty sidewalk. Though it was clear they were speaking to her on an important matter, the words buzzed in her head like the static off of an old analog television set. All she could truly register was the clicking of her clean, polished dress shoes on the concrete.
Snap, snap, snap.
Click, click, click.
"It's a child of the devil, I tell you! An abomination, a Goddamned abomination!"
Dorothy lifted up her head, the vague image of a memory burning the back of her eyes. Her gaze shifted at a creaking slow pace to the woman who stood to her left.
"Mother Redford, have you heard my plea?"
She blinked.
"I beg thee pardon."
The woman squealed and whined like a dying bird, clasping her frail hands to her chest as she repeated herself. "That monster bit me, I said! I was trying to restrain him, and he bit me! His evil is infecting me, Mother!"
While the woman continued to scream and cry, her words became fuzzy to Dorothy once more. She shifted her gray, dull gaze to the doors in front of her. The basement doors. The wood was cracked and worn from decades past, memories embedded into every crack and crevice, threatening to spill through from behind what it concealed.
"I understand."
Dorothy finally felt herself speak, regardless of whether or not it was her turn to. She extended her hand and pushed on the wood until it opened into a deep, black abyss.
"A Goddamned abomination!"
He screamed, the lash breaking the still, dead air of the basement as it flew down to connect with the girl's back. Her skin unzipped like an old coat, spilling blood and exposing yellow fat.
"God allowed you on His land and all you did was defile it, you Goddamned demon!"
Snap, snap, snap.
The girl screamed and wailed, begging towards the Heavens, it's light veiled by that of a cruel, broken ceiling. Despite her pain, she kept her palms fixed on the cold, unforgiving wall of the basement.
"You are to be forever damned! You monster! You demon!"
Dorothy stood silently in front of the boy in front of her, his form shrunken and cowardly. Through the cantankerous rambling of the wife and her husband just behind Dorothy, she could still make out the boy's quiet sobs and sniffles.
"Please... please... no.."
The girl whispered, her lips trembling around each syllable, tongue hesitant to push out the words. Her body felt warm and slick all over with her own sweat.
"Abomination!"
"No! Please! No!"
Snap, snap, snap.
Dorothy watched through foggy, clouded vision as the whip connected with the little boy's side, breaking his skin open like a rotted watermelon. The boy's shrill cry filled the stuffy room, his figure rolling onto its side in an attempt to protect itself.
The Father howled with an unmatched fury, his cry overpowering the quick clicks of the thick leather lash. The Mother remained eerily silent, allowing the little boy's own shrieks to crack through the cold, musty air.
"A Goddamned abomination!"
The girl wept for death, wept to be forgiven for the egregious sin of having ever been born. The boy cauterwauled in an endless storm of pain, body flailing with each torturous blow.
Snap, snap, snap.
"A Goddamned monster!"
Snap, snap, snap.
"A Goddamned abomination!"
And all Dorothy could do was simply spectate the abuse of the reincarnated Lamb, knowing she herself was the Butcher.
