The_Slut_of_St_Jude’s(2)
1059 Words
The screen lit up. Leona squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable gasp, the shout of rage. But seconds passed. Silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Cautiously, she opened one eye. The screen displayed a generic desktop wallpaper and a single open document an essay on the Book of Job for her theology class.
The relief was so intense it made her dizzy. She had closed the document. The autosave hadn’t caught the smut, or she had managed to kill the power before it could register on the recent files list. It was a miracle.
Her father leaned in, scrutinizing the screen. “Job,” he grunted, seemingly satisfied. “A lesson in endurance and suffering. Perhaps you should pay more attention to it.”
He reached out and closed the laptop firmly. The snap echoed like a gunshot. “Yes, Father.”
He turned his heavy gaze back to her. “You look flushed, as you said. We cannot have the devil’s fever taking hold of you. Go downstairs. Your mother has prepared the purification bath.”
Leona’s stomach dropped. “The… the ice bath, Father? It’s the middle of winter. I’m just tired, I can sleep it off.”
“Disobedience is the first step to damnation,” he said coldly. “Go. Now. Before I decide that a belt is needed to drive the foolishness out of you.”
Leona nodded, tears of humiliation stinging her eyes. She walked past him, her head lowered, and made her way down the stairs. The house was silent, a tomb of religious oppression. In the kitchen, her mother stood by the large metal tub in the center of the room. She was dumping bags of ice into the water with a mechanical indifference. She didn’t look at Leona; she never did when the Pastor gave an order.
“Hurry, child,” her mother murmured, her voice devoid of emotion. “He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Leona stepped into the room. The air was already freezing. Her father stood in the doorway, watching like a prison guard.
“Strip,” he commanded.
Leona’s hands shook as she unbuttoned her high-collared nightgown. She let it slide to the floor, leaving her completely naked before her parents. The shame was a physical weight, crushing her. She covered her breasts with her arms, but her father made a tsking sound.
“Hands at your sides. Do not hide the vessel God gave you. Humility is not about hiding, it is about acceptance of your station.”
She dropped her hands, shivering violently as the cold air bit at her skin. She stepped into the tub.
The shock was instantaneous. It felt like a thousand knives piercing her flesh. She gasped, the air driven from her lungs. The water was agonizingly cold, numbing her legs, her thighs, creeping up her torso.
“Sit,” her father said.
Leona lowered herself into the water, submerging her body up to her neck. Her teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. The cold was absolute, a suffocating blanket that dulled her senses but sharpened her terror.
“Desire is a trap,” her father began his lecture, his voice echoing off the tiled walls. “The flesh is weak. It wants warmth, it wants pleasure, it wants to be touched. But the spirit must be strong. You must kill the lust in your blood with the cold of discipline.”
Leona closed her eyes, tears leaking out and mixing with the icy water. She tried to think of anything else math, history, but the cold was all-consuming. And yet, paradoxically, her body reacted. The shock caused her muscles to clench, including the muscles deep inside her. The numbness couldn't quite erase the lingering memory of her arousal from moments ago.
“Damian,” she thought, her mind clinging to the fantasy as a shield against the reality. “Damian’s hands on me. Warm. Rough. Holding me up.”
“You will stay there for ten minutes,” her father said, checking his watch. “Meditate on purity.”
The minutes dragged on like hours. Leona’s skin turned pale, her lips blue. She shivered so hard she splashed water over the rim. Her father watched her like a hawk, ensuring she didn’t try to escape the freezing prison.
Finally, he nodded. “Enough. Get out. Dry yourself. And pray, Leona. Pray that the cold has frozen the devil out of you.”
Leona climbed out of the tub, her limbs clumsy and stiff. Her mother handed her a rough towel, and she dried herself mechanically, the friction burning her cold-numbed skin.
She stumbled back up to her room, her teeth still chattering. She pulled on fresh, thick pajamas and crawled into bed, pulling the heavy blankets up to her chin. She was exhausted, drained by the fear and the cold.
But as the adrenaline faded, a new kind of heat began to simmer in her belly. The near-death experience of being caught, the humiliation of the bath, the oppression it all twisted together into a dark knot of tension that needed release.
An hour later, she heard her parents’ door click shut. They were asleep.
Leona threw off the covers. Her body was still cold, but her core was molten. She sat back at her desk and turned on the computer. The light blinded her momentarily. She opened the document, half-expecting it to be gone, half-hoping it was.
It was there. “He thrust into her…”
She stared at the words. A sudden chill that had nothing to do with the ice bath ran down her spine. The cursor blinked at the end of the document.
But above it, there was a new line of text. Black. Bold. Unmistakable.
“I helped you.”
Leona stared. She hadn’t written that. She was alone in the room. Her blood froze. She typed, her fingers numb:
“Who are you?”
She hit Enter.
The text dissolved, melting into the background of the page as if it had never existed. Leona sat back in her chair, her heart hammering against her ribs. Someone had hacked her. Someone was watching. Someone knew.
She looked around the dark room, at the curtains drawn tight, at the closed door. She felt exposed, violated. And yet, a terrifying thrill shot through her.
- Writer
