“Come with me, child.” The haggard old woman’s words are direct and distant.

I obey. Daddy said I should come here. Come to learn. I don’t know why. I don’t know what he thinks I can learn in a place like this. In a place so sickeningly pious. This “sacred” place. Sacred. I spit the word in my mind.

Daddy knows best. The words ring in my ears, triggered by my questioning. I remember my place. The internalised response still strong despite the pain of Daddy’s rejection.

“I’m glad he came to us.” The woman speaks back to me without turning her head, her voice echoing eerily in the vaulted hallway. I try to ignore her, following reluctantly behind. “Poor troubled girl like you. You will do well here. You will heal. We can help you, child.”

Help me? Resentment rising deep inside. I don’t need help. I’m a good girl. Just as Daddy made me.

“I’m not a child.” Petulance dripping off my words. Daddy says I’m a big girl, we play big girl games. She chooses not to reply.

The cold stone walls and chilly deep corridors of the place are devoid of any feeling or humanity. This isn’t good like home. Home is full of life and love. My pretty paintings and Daddy’s work desk and our little kitchen full of yummy foods and play room and our bed… Our bed… I let my thoughts wander off into memories of our special play time.

I want my home. I want it as it was.

“You will stay here.” The woman’s commands continue. “At night time you will remain in your room. You will sleep or pray. In the day you will pray.” I lose interest as her list of demands continues on, eventually brought back to her attention as I realise she’s paused. “You will do as you’re told.” She adds with some force of will.

Will I? My mind questions defiantly.

The loud click of the door locking behind makes my heart drop. “Miserable witch!” I curse at no one at all and slump onto the hard single bed. The sheets are damp and itchy and make me want to scream out in frustration.

Good girls don’t complain. Daddy’s words. I am a good girl. I won’t complain.

The first few hours drift by painfully, lost in the dim lit silence of my solitude. I pass the time by practicing on myself. Digging my nails deep into the flesh of my special place, bringing me to bloody orgasm.

Daddy’s words echo about the place, still mysterious to me even now.

“Go…” he said to me, “go and see what they have to teach you.” I remember his face, cold and stern. A new kind of lesson for me. A lesson by myself.

My heartbreak was disappointingly inaudible to Daddy’s ears, and my words did little to accurately represent the misery. Daddy didn’t hear them anyway, my pleading was as ineffectual as the weak fists that I beat on his chest as he lifted me out of the tub and forced me out of the door.

That awful day, the memory of it still heavy in my chest. The torment of watching my Daddy disconnect. Vacant behind the eyes, with no means to get through to him and choice but to do as he said and leave my home. Why Daddy? Why have you forsaken me? All I’ve ever done is try to please you and learn my lessons. What will I do without you? What could I have done differently? Oh Daddy,how do I get our life back? What can I learn here? I don’t understand.

I feel the frustration build inside of me. A crawling energy that draws out anger. It stops me from climaxing again. Enraged I rip the crucifix from the wall and throw it across the room in a clatter.

Instantly I flinch in reflex to my outburst, expecting an immediate fist to teach me. Nothing comes. Touching my cold delicate cheek I feel the loss of his loving attention. Tears roll down my face as I sob quietly through the night.

This will be a hard lesson.

Dawn comes slowly. Too slowly.

She greets me with a frown as she opens the door. Her face is full of disappointment. She finds me sitting cross legged in the middle of the floor. The night was long and left me plenty of time to rearrange my new room. I didn’t like the bed so I broke it. The linen was too rough to lie on and made for a better rope, now draped from a rafter to form a neat noose. The nails in the bed made wonderful crayons to decorate the floor.

“What is that?” She asks, pointing at the carefully carved screaming face in the floor.

“You.” I reply with a dark smile.

“You think you’re the first I’ve ever had to cure?” She’s not shocked. Not even angered and she sees how it frustrates me. “You can clean your room instead of dinner.” Her punishment is pathetic.

Over the next few days we continue on in the same way. I trash the room and whittle a pleasant stake out of the wooden crucifix that once hung on the wall.

She tries to discipline me with little effect while I prod and poke her to find her weakness. The old woman holds no power over me, I don’t intend to give her any. She will break first. Maybe that’s my lesson. Strength in the face of adversity? I set my mind to this task, to winning this power struggle. Each day I set about my lesson, diligently ignoring her own attempts to gain the upper hand.

I play this game for weeks and she doesn’t seem to change. Searching for different ways to shake her. I can’t find a way in. Stubborn old bitch.

I’ve lost count of the days. Daddy has made this a very difficult lesson. Difficult to teach me. Difficult yet reminds me that I still have far to go. Difficult for Daddy to have to send me away, where he couldn’t teach me himself. I see it now. These walls, her unrelenting spirit, they serve as boundaries for breaching that Daddy can’t provide. They are a test truer than those that have come before. It’s just another test. Daddy still knows best.

I find my mind filling with darkness without his words. Without his guidance. I want my Daddy to hold me tight and tell me I’m a good girl. I want my Daddy to show me he loves me. To ruin me as he desires. As it pleases me. I want my Daddy…

In desperation I attempt to decipher Daddy’s words again. Like a riddle. I use all the tricks I’ve learned, looking for clues in the words and phrases, or in what he’s not said. Over and over I sing his words to myself, rocking myself to sleep in the dark. I sing of my devotion, of how I am still Daddy’s girl. This is just a test, another Daddy lesson. Just a test.

I won’t let the doubts creep in. The ones that scream that he’s left me here to rot. “Your Daddy died Blade, died behind the eyes…” My monsters mock me, “Daddy’s gone. Daddy’s done. Daddy doesn’t love you.”

Waking again in the early morning I feel how weak I have become with such little food. I’ve woken far too early, stirred by my starving body and shouting voices in my head.

The cold bites at me. I’ll have to play her games today. I need the food. Maybe she will let up a bit with her pathetic punishments and let me eat a decent meal.

Play her games and let her relax on me a bit. The words click in my mind. Relax.

“Let her relax and show you her weakness.” Daddy’s words.

Words he used when we went hunting deer last summer as we stalked our animal prey. I sigh in relief, Daddy does know best and he’s still with me. Still teaching me. Even now, even as I begin to break. My Daddy does love me. I drift off at last into a deep sleep.

“Wake up.” The woman barks at me. She doesn’t relent at first, setting me about my tasks. Finally, before evening prayer, I ask her if I may eat as I had been a good girl all day. Offer her a sign that I am finally breaking. A little lie to help her relax and reel her in. My precious old dear, coaxing her out from the bushes into my sights.

The food is poor but tastes divine after so much fasting. I wolf it down and watch as her sense of nearing victory grows.

“Is it time for prayers now?” I ask, almost eagerly.

“Yes, my child.” She says with a pleased smile.

Convinced of my enthusiasm for prayer we make our way to the main hall, using her large set of keys to enter the towering wooden doors. No longer confining me to solitary quarters I set my eyes upon other humans for the first time in weeks. The other nuns line themselves in the pews, heads bowed, murmuring in devout prayer.

She waits until they finish before we make our way in front of them, the old woman parading me past, I feel like a prize pig on display. I will make her pay for that. Each one of the younger woman eyes me with interest, I stare back, baring my teeth at each of them until they drop their gaze. All of them except the end of the line, the youngest.

If the line of auburn hair burning out from under her habit didn’t give her away her fearful gasp would have done. Shocked white with horror I see her start to shake and in that second I realise why I’m here. To right the wrongs. To prove my ultimate devotion. Unwavering and true. Unlike the love she claimed to have for her Father, the harlot. A love so easily swayed, tempted by sins of the flesh.

Sins she denied with a lie, one I will make her repent.

Marched up to the mezzanine level the old woman starts her ritual as before, attempting to exorcise me of my demons again.

“…Righteous are your servants who seek the true way. Bring the holy Lord into the belly of this girl and force upon her the repentance of a mourning angel. Let your heavenly body instil within her a deep sense of humility…”

Her words seep into a haze of raging insanity. Much as they do every day. A beautiful silver heart pendant slips from behind her habit and swings freely from her neck as she sways in the rapture of her words.

As she comes to her climax, I speak clearly, kneeling at her feet as she has placed me. “Forgive me Mother for I shall sin.”

She looks down at me, her right hand still firmly placed on my head. Unaware her secret has shown itself and not catching the clever turn in my words. Satisfaction beaming from her face at her sense of victory.

“My child…” Her words trail off before she is able to gloat on me.

“It is a sin to cherish idols other than God.” I cut in and mock in song at her wrinkled face.

Her hand touches her open heart realising her mistake.

“My dear,” I sneer at her and thrust the sharpened point of my crucifix deep into her crotch. “Did you not learn *your* lessons?” I smirk at her, tapping her heart. Daddy was right, the satisfaction is glorious and the prize a beautiful heart for my own.

Back and forth I stab her, fucking her to death with my whittled down crucifix as her blood seeps down my arm and splatters on to the pristine floor. “You’re a liar too. A liar and a hypocrite. Just like them all!” I growl at her as the scent of blood brings about my long forgotten arousal. “You deserve nothing more. Death is even too good for you.”

The corpse of the old woman collapses to the floor next to me. Funny how she dies the same as the rest of them.

I clutch the silver heart and wrench it from her neck in glee. “I’m not your child.” I spit, “I’m Daddy’s girl. Daddy’s good girl…and I will seek revenge then I will return to him. Because he raised me better than your God raised you. I am more committed to him and all he has to teach than any of your filthy flock and all their little secrets. You’ll see….”

With the old woman dispatched I am free, Daddy’s little predator. I am the fox free to roam the coop. To sniff out what other lies and hypocrisy runs deep in this holy place and set them to rights. Just as Daddy taught me.