You’re the preacher’s daughter so, naturally, spend most of your time at church. Nothing substantial. You help out in the back, help set up for church events, bible study, prepare and put out holy water for communion on Sunday’s. It’s a rewarding things being born into a life of submission before God.

And though you never say it, there is a gnawing feeling at the back of your mind that it is singularly boring.

Don’t drink, don’t smoke, no boys.

You’re bound by a covenant of repression. It’s shitty but you’re God-fearing, so you don’t question it. You know better than to do that. Blasphemy and questioning are two sides of the same coin and you’re richer without it.

Then he shows up.

Carl Engram.

He’s a tall, wiry man with narrow eyes and a haughty sort of expression. Like he’s always in on a joke he’s playing on the rest of the congregation. Like he knows something the rest of you don’t. When you look at him, you think he has an evil look to him. A cruelty that you only find in the stained glass of your father’s church. Jesus strung up on the cross and the crowds around him, jeering with their own narrowed eyes.

And you’re drawn to him for it.

You think about him, day and night. Cruel cruel, Carl.

You’re not a good Christian girl anymore.