Chapter 5 Tithe me slowly
1462 Words
It didn’t start with whips or chains or some grand announcement that I was the new god of broken men.
It started the same way most sacred things do: with silence. And then tribute.
Ten dollars. Then twenty. Then two hundred for the privilege of hearing me sigh like I already knew their secrets and was bored of them.
I learned quickly—power isn’t loud. It’s not even cruel. It’s casual. The way I told one man he was worthless while ordering DoorDash. The way I rolled my eyes and made another one cry before brushing my teeth.
They didn’t want fantasy. They wanted permission to fall apart in front of someone who wouldn’t flinch. Someone who wouldn’t say, It’s okay, you’re doing your best.
I didn’t say that. I said, “Your best is pathetic.”
And he tipped me $350.
That was the moment I knew: this was church.
And I was the altar, the priest, and the offering plate.
I created rituals.
Wake up. Check tributes. Sort tasks.
• Monday: verbal destruction
• Tuesday: wallet ruin
• Wednesday: shame journaling
• Thursday: humiliation challenges
• Friday: voice notes so venomous they went viral in private Discords
• Saturday: financial domination confessionals
• Sunday: silence. My silence. That was the punishment.
One man wired me a thousand dollars just to be ignored for a week.
You know how much power is in that?
To become someone’s hunger and their punishment? To teach men to worship at your feet and call it salvation?
I wasn’t faking it anymore. I wasn’t surviving. I was thriving.
And they still called me Goddess.
They didn’t know I was sleeping on a floor two months ago. They didn’t know I had a panic attack over a WIC form before making a grown man pay me to tell him he was beneath notice.
They didn’t know that my daughter left me because I learned how to turn myself into a weapon.
But hey.
At least now I’m a well-paid one.
The money was rolling in.
Stacks. Drips. Silent little offerings that pinged like prayers from the pockets of men who wanted to be ruined and thanked for it. My voice was gospel. My inbox? A shrine.
By the end of the week, I’d made more in shame than I used to make in three months serving cocktails and pretending I didn’t want to bite through my own cheek.
And then, right when I was feeling invincible—untouchable, divine—my phone buzzed.
Phillip.
I hadn’t heard from him in four days. Not since the “twenty-dollar” call. Not since he told me the crows brought him a bone and the wind wouldn’t stop whispering.
I almost let it ring.
Almost.
But I didn’t.
I answered.
“Where the hell have you been?” I snapped, more venom than voice.
Silence. Then:
“The sky’s been strange,” he said. “Too many stars. Not enough stories.”
I exhaled. Sat down. Just like that, the ritual collapsed.
“Did you send your tithe?” I asked, voice sharp, back in control.
“No,” he said. “I sent something else.”
A chill slid down my spine like a wet string.
“What did you send?”
“You’ll see. I left it where the water breaks the sand.”
And then—because Phillip never lets me steer for long—he added:
“Are you still her?”
The question hung in the air like incense.
“What do you mean?”
“The one who told me the sand breathes. The one who saw the bone and didn’t laugh. The one who waited.”
I swallowed. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say of course. I wanted to say: Now kneel and say thank you.
But I didn’t.
Because suddenly I wasn’t sure who he was talking about anymore.
And worse—I wasn’t sure I still was her.
He continued, softer now:
“I heard your voice again last night. But it was different. It wasn’t calling. It was… counting.”
“Counting what?”
“The names of the men you’ve buried.”
He didn’t mean dead.
He meant ruined.
I closed my eyes.
“You still need me to witness you?” I asked, already hating how small my voice had gone.
“No,” he said. “I think now you need someone to witness you.”
And just like that, he hung up.
No payment. No request. Just the echo of something old and real and terrifyingly gentle.
I stared at my phone for a long time after that.
Didn’t check my balance. Didn’t answer the next call. Let the rituals rot.
Because suddenly the voice in my throat felt less like power—and more like a debt I hadn’t finished paying.
The calls don’t stop.
Not when I’m tired. Not when I’m sick. Not when I’m crying between voice notes and muting the line just long enough to breathe without being heard.
They don’t want me rested. They don’t want me whole.
They want me hungry. Cold. Poised above them like judgment wearing lipstick.
They want their Goddess.
And I give her to them. Every damn time.
Because I know the script. I wrote it.
“You’re a disappointment.”
“You were born to serve.”
“You’ll never be loved. Only owned.”
They love it. They pay me extra when I say it slow.
And some nights, the rush still comes. That dark bloom in my chest when a man begs to be broken and I break him so gently he doesn’t even know he’s bleeding.
But lately…
Lately it doesn’t feel like power.
It feels like performance. Like I’m playing the role of the woman who climbed out of grief with claws and a smirk, and forgot to stop acting when the curtains closed.
⸻
I buy myself things now.
Pretty things. Silk robes. Candles with names like Sinner’s Orchid and Ashwood Temple. Lipstick shades that sound like warnings: Burn, Bruise, After Midnight.
I wear them while I work. Dress the part.
My reflection is flawless. Cinematic. A still from the movie I keep pretending I’m starring in.
But when the camera’s off—when the phone is hung up and the tips are tallied—I peel everything off like a bad idea.
And underneath?
I’m just tired.
Bone-deep, soul-sick tired.
Like I’ve been screaming through my smile and didn’t notice until the echo stopped answering back.
⸻
I dream of Chris less now. Not because the grief has softened, but because it’s gone silent. That’s worse, in a way.
There’s a version of him that lives in my head with kind eyes and calloused hands. He used to whisper things like, I’m proud of you, and You’re not broken, just weathered.
But lately when I dream of him, he doesn’t speak.
He just looks at me like he doesn’t recognize who I became.
Sometimes, I don’t either.
⸻
The clients get weirder.
One man asked me to record myself laughing while reading his old poetry. I said, You sure you want that? He begged.
Another sent me a locked phone and asked me to text myself from his number. “Humiliate me as me,” he wrote. “Make it real.”
I did.
And when I was done, I sat on the floor of the bathroom, lights off, staring at that phone like it was going to ring back with the version of me I lost.
It didn’t.
⸻
I keep hearing Phillip’s voice.
Not in a sweet, nostalgic way. No. His voice scratches at the corners of my mind like a crow tapping at a stained-glass window.
“You need someone to witness you.”
God, what a terrible sentence. What a cruel idea.
Because he’s right.
And I hate him for it.
Because if there’s no witness—if no one sees me when I hang up, when I cry, when I claw at the spaces Chris used to fill—then maybe I don’t exist. Maybe the Goddess was the only part of me worth keeping, and now she’s just a costume with lipstick smudges and cigarette burns.
⸻
I missed a call tonight.
A paying one. A regular.
He sent a message: You okay, Goddess?
And I didn’t respond.
Because no—I wasn’t okay.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed in a $90 robe I bought to feel powerful, eating cold fries out of a paper bag, wondering if silence might be the most honest thing I’ve said all week.
Maybe Phillip was right.
Maybe I don’t want worship.
Maybe I want to be seen.
- Writer
