The bell tolls and I must wake. As I always have, as I always will. My cheeks are burning. I put my hand to my face and feel around my mouth. There are scratches. I look over at my shoulder, it has been clawed up. I have blood caked under my nails. Around the room, brothers rise and make their way to the crooked hallway. Gideon has left already; he is always the first to rise and last to bed.

“Gideon again?” Simeon gestures at my ax.

I didn’t get all the shit off my ax. I begin to vibrate. I look over my shoulder at the small of my back; there is a smear of shit.

“I’ll kill him… I swear it, I’ll kill him!” I breath.

“They’ll put ya out in the sun for that, y’know that. I don’t think even you can survive that, Proph.” He chuckles.

It doesn’t sting when Simeon pokes at me the way the other brothers do. He doesn’t do it out of malice or gall, but to fabricate some sense of levity to my horrid designation. Besides, he has not been told my name. I have not been called my name since I was a babe in a cradle. I have forgotten it.

“I wonder what the Priests have prepared for us today,” he ponders aloud.

I walk to the murky basin of water and wash myself off. We set off to the hall.

Within the common room are set out the usual bowls of slop. Still bugs. Always bugs. We take our seats. The priests take turns giving morning sermon while I mash my breakfast.

“Sleep well, stink ass?”

Gideon. Fucking Gideon. Wait - his hair is matted and thick on the right side. Could it be? It is. He has shit in his hair.

“Bout as well as you, Brother Brownpillow,” I quip back.

Simeon laughs. The other boy’s eyebrows lower in confusion and blame. He raises his right hand and runs it through his hair. Dozens of flakes of shit jump from his scalp. He wipes and pulls away at the matted hair and stool. Bright white windows of scalp shine through his grimy orange hair. He beats his hand on his leg and begins to eat. He is quiet. He looks embarrassed. I have won.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I suck down the mash and wash my utensils.

“They’ll blood you for that.” Sister Ethel gestures to the redheaded boy with a spoon.

“They’ll blood me anyway.” I shrug.

Priests are finishing their meals and taking up posts in the Hall of Confession, passing under another archway to the right of the ingress to Dormio. The hobbled skeletons of my brothers amble behind them. I must fall in line as well.

The corridor is long and narrow with openings in the curls of root and vine every five paces or so. I stop in front of one of the abominable apertures and climb inside. I take my seat and lay my arm upon the cradle of collection, as I always have, as I always will. The wall contorts and writhes shut. Roots take hold of my forearm and bind it to the cradle. It is completely dark save a green glow spilling through a curtain of weeping willow. Through the curtain is the outline of a man, one of the priests.

“Welcome O wretched one. Has the demon yet left that body of yours?” seethed the priest.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since my last confession. I am still tormented by the voices of the Tree. I thought to take the life of brother Gideon, then smeared his pillow with his own excrement. For all these sins and the sins of my past life, I am sorry.”

“Perhaps today will be the day those foul delusions are cleansed from your system,” he growls.

From the cradle sprouts a vine with a single thorn at the tip. It slithers between my fingers, up my arm, and into the crook of my elbow. It begins to drain my arm with the urgency of a feral mosquito. When I was younger, I would scream, but not anymore. With each sickening slurp, pulsating rubies of maroon are gulped into the vine, and I grow paler than I already am. Trapped, I must endure until I can scarcely believe that I have blood left to give. Maybe today is the day I feed the cradle my last drop – perhaps it ought to be. As if it were reading my thoughts and found them unfitting, there is a green radiance, then some warmth, and the siphon retracts. There is no hole.

“Give thanks to the Tree for It is God,” utters the priest.

“For the Roots endure forever,” detached, I say; I’m not even sure it’s my voice frothing from my cracked throat.

“The Tree has freed you from your sins. Go in peace.”

“Praise be the Tree.”

With penance paid, the cradle releases my arm, and the exit unfurls. I pull myself through the opening and slump to the common room. I feel frail and devoid; they took a lot today. I follow the other exsanguinated souls down the twists and turns back to Dormio. The empty men are sapping up sandals and sharpening axes and mending holes in wicker baskets with bits of vine from the walls in preparation of tonight’s Reaping. I check my cot, thankfully shit-free; I take my seat and mend my own equipment.