Fallen
Sinners babble. Sinners like the thousand thousand men who built the tower to pierce the heavens; and she tries to pray, 'Hail, Mary, full of grace,' but all she sees is the snake Papa killed in the woodshed, green, wet, slithering through Eden, teeth sharpened to a tearing point. Mary, mother. Pain and blood beneath her. Her postulant's white dress thrown aside among the dead things.
Shifting, it leans over her, the devil come for her, and she sobs the only mercy she remembers, 'Let he who is without sin — '. It promises that she will wake again in hell.