Congregation

The first girl knew how to take a punch at this point, but it felt damn good to finally have an excuse to give one.

The chin Peggy didn’t care for herself got smudged against the floor with almost enough force to push it back into her ugly skull. Now she was missing teeth that weren’t baby teeth. Blood filled the cracks in the polished wood, almost overpowering the scent of shoe as it became yogurt paste with all her snot and tears. She took way longer than they thought she would to cry- she acted like she was one of them at first, giggling as they pushed her around, like it was some kind of joke. God that riled them up.

“Alright, you have anything to say for yourself?”

That authority in the third girl’s voice convinced the victim she was the perpetrator pretty easily. Peggy had always known she must’ve been a bad person, really. But there went the last bit of innocence she had about it. She deserved it. Felt a little good, like she was making up for something.

“You sick fucking lech.”

They kicked in her forehead like a deflated football.

The gentle hum of the pain was all that kept her company. Skeeter Davis stood over her bed like a noncommittal god as Peggy took the first of her many self-pitying sob sessions of that month. Collecting trauma was like baseball cards for her now, she couldn’t pretend she didn’t enjoy it. It was the one bit of personality she had. She hugged the poster, crying into it like a dying hog. She knew why everyone hated her but she still felt the need to ask. Whine, whine, whine. Nobody heard, much less the singer. 

So she thought, at least.

The door came busting down. He walked inside her room unannounced. Red, pink, brown, white- juice meat smiley-faced angry evil man-thing. A massive and creeping birthday gore monster from hell. No, from a movie, more like. The effects are convincing but they couldn’t be real. He was everything she hated, tall, ugly and manish. But he moved. He even spoke, like the dolls she never had but always wanted. 

“IT’S ME. EVERY ONE OF THEM.”

Sounded like grinding wet metal. Authoritative yet modest, she couldn’t tell its intentions. Not until it made her recognize.

“EVERY DROP OF BLOOD. EVERY LOST FLUID. EVERY TEAR, EVERY BIT OF SHIT AND SNOT. EVERY GALLON OF SUFFERING.”

Its voice was so loud it made her forehead sting, and so deep it made her insides rumble. The noise intimidated her, but not to the point of retreat. Submission. It was overpowering, even more convincing than those girls at school as he was dripping onto the carpet floor. He was the scarier of the two, after all.

“YOU CAN GET THEM BACK.”

She hadn’t known she was missing something, but it made her angry that she was, so she believed him. It had taken her so long to feel this anger, so long to power through the loathing pointed at herself. By ripping it away he exposed such bitterness that he hadn’t even needed to say anything more. But if there was any doubt, his parting words submerged her even further in her sudden desire for retribution- the first and ugliest way she ever acknowledged herself.

“SPILL THEIR EVERYTHING. LET ME BLEED THEM UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING LEFT. ONLY THEN WILL I RETURN TO YOUR BODY.”

Peggy nodded and went back to school the next day with something sharp and a smile on her ruined face.

Sandra thought the hands on her neck that morning were her boyfriend’s. Lisa wasn’t so imaginative, she just pictured some Russian man. Mary was sure it was her father before the smell of iron and waste hit her nose. They usually weren’t dead when Peggy was done with them, so he had to finish the job. But together, they got their ingredients. 

After the cooking was done, the reincarnate held his gift to the martyr with a smile. Her bullies were compounded into a smooth, pink ball, squishing slightly as he walked it up to her.

“GORGE ON THEIR FEARS, MASTER.”

Seeing the meat thing kneel, Peggy felt power over someone for the first time she had since not getting in trouble for hitting another boy right in the eye for stealing that damn cap gun she always had to carry around. It was occuring to her why she had carried it around. The dripping raw thing tasted so much better than she’d thought it would have. It would’ve fed her for days if she hadn't been so hungry to begin with.

“Gee, thanks mister!”