Anna was being carried for an unknown reason. She was groggy, and her head hurt. She could taste the flavor of bloody iron in her mouth. She could feel the crust of a bloody nose. She could not see anything because her head was wrapped in a fabric blindfold. She could hear religious murmurs around her.
Her head throbbed. The last thing she could remember was daddy’s fist. He looked all nonchalant and then his fist came forward connecting with her face. She remembered the crunching noise her nose had made. She must have then sunk to the quicksand blackness of unconscious nothing. Honestly, she could not remember much or of how long she had been out. Her body was floating being passed roughly from one set of hands to the next. These hands were hands that had shaken hers, loved her; they were the hands of friendship, and of family. It was unclear to her now what the hands now desired as she wobbled up and down above the ground. She felt one hand roughly touch her warmth of virginity below. She was too numb and in too much pain to fend off the touch.
She was numb to the truth revealed of a father’s punch and the gathering of her community around her. Were they part of this…this pain?
She could hear the reverend Ezekiel Thompson delivering a fiery sermon ahead of her. From her left, Anna heard her mother and little brother Jacob murmur, “Amen!” The voices fell in unison.
“…And the LORD said, my broTH…ahs and siST…ahs that we should sac…RA…fice the first born because the LORD has come to me in a vision!” She heard the reverend wording out in one of his flaming sermons.
“He CAME to me and he says HIS name is I AM as he does so often in the bible.” She heard the crowd murmur fervently. He continued speaking, “He sayeth to ME that we MUST sac...RA...fice for our LORD to get beyond the economic reCESSion!”
“I ask of you today to make the same sacrifice as the LORD asked of Abraham with his boy, Isaac, years ago.” He then laughed in the hearty fire we had all heard through the years. Reverend Ezekiel was a jovial man.
“Gentleman, my shepherds, please brings the lamb to the altar of GOD!” he commanded. Anna thought that strange for the church to make nonmonetary sacrifice a request.
She was placed to the ground. Her body felt such pain. She could here Reverend Ezekiel breathing nearby. The blindfold was removed, and she now viewed an audience of her closest peers. She could see her friends and family; she could see her church community. For a moment, she smiled. Suddenly, the reverend’s hand flashed forward. In a moment of recognition she saw the shining blade of a knife move forward slicing her throat instantly. She found blackness as death overcame.
The body and entrails would be eaten by the family offering the sacrifice…
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