I bow harder.
Fifteen.
A mouth too close to mine. Teeth catching light.
Witch.
I press my forehead to the ground and stay there a moment longer, nails digging into the packed earth.
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me."
Twenty.
My thighs burn now when I rise. My breath grows rough. I keep going.
Enchantress.
The word coils through me, low and intimate.
Twenty-five.
I try to summon the face of Christ instead, crowned in thorns, eyes lowered in mercy. But the image wavers. The thorns become branches. The bowed head lifts, the lowered gaze darkens—reddens. His mouth curves in the dark behind my eyes, wicked, and my body remembers the heat before I can stop it. His mouth at my throat. His thumb at my pulse.
"No," I gasp as I force myself down again, hard enough that my knees flare with pain.
Pain is clean. Pain is safe.
Thirty. The beads snap against my fingers as I move through them faster.
The pouch flickers in my mind—pale cloth drawn tight, red thread biting into it, blood blistering in flame. Smoke curling up into the trees.
My body bends and straightens, bends and straightens, breath falling in time with the words, as if I can pound the visions out of myself with motion alone.
"Have mercy. Have mercy. Have mercy."
Thirty-five.
My knees throb. Sweat runs down my spine again. My pulse roars in my ears.
Forty.
I remain bowed, fingers clenched around the beads so tightly they bite into my skin.
The house is silent.
My breath echoes against the floor.
I will not let him in.
I will not.
I rise slowly, legs trembling, and cross myself again and again until my hand steadies. Still, the forest lingers behind my eyes. Still, the voice remains. The room tilts. I steady myself against the wall and breathe through the dizziness. The rosary still hangs from my fingers. I wrap it once around my wrist and grab the bucket. I cannot stay here any longer. Outside, the morning meets me cold and clean.
I draw it in deeply, my skin prickling where the chill touches sweat. Again.
The sky is pale, just beginning to open. Light threads through the trees at the edge of the forest, touching rooftops and damp earth alike. For a moment, my lungs loosen. Birds begin their small, busy songs. Smoke rises thinly from a distant chimney. Somewhere a rooster calls, late and indignant. Nothing is wrong.
Nothing.
