It was raining. She walked without an umbrella hugging something I could not see close to her breast. There was purpose to her staggering steps and tears streaming down her face. She kept looking forward, ignoring the people on either side of her that glared at her with hatred. Finally she found herself at the steps of the hospital. She put her precious cargo into her jacket to hide it from everyone's view. She walked purposefully down the familiar hallways until she stopped in front of one of the doors. She pushed it open and walked in. There was a woman lying on the bed in the middle of the room. The girl circled over to her, sticking her hand in her jacket pocket and pulling out her package.
"Josephine, what are you doing here?" the woman asked weakly, looking up into the tear stained eyes.
"I had a package to deliver you," Josephine said flatly. She pulled the clothe from the knife she had been carrying with her.
"What am I supposed to do with that?" The woman looked up, slightly frightened.
"You are supposed to forgive your sins." Josephine raised the knife and brought it down forcefully into the woman.
"Wha-" the woman sputtered.
"Don't you even remember, my dearest mother?" Josephine asked, eyes dancing and hazed. "I'm the monster and monsters kill."
"Wai-"
"No!" Josephine screamed, interrupting the woman as she plunged the knife into her again. "I always wait. I always loved you even though you could never love me. Now I'm just giving you what you deserve." She raised the knife yet again and brought it down with a sickening sound. Blood was flung onto the walls and floor as Josephine viciously stabbed the woman.
"Jo-" The woman's eyes glossed over and she grew limp. It didn't matter. Her sin had yet to be repaid and so Josephine kept stabbing every inch of skin she could find with the blood covered knife. Soon the woman before her looked nothing like a human anymore, but it didn't please her. Soon meat littered the ground along with the blood as Josephine stabbed, making the woman pay for every sin she had committed.
"For a town so religious, you sure sinned a lot." Josephine laughed, stripping the meat away until she dropped the knife, hands shaking. She was covered in just as much blood and bits of the woman as the room around her. She hugged the knife close to her and left the room, leaving foot prints as she walked. Nurses and other patients screamed as they caught sight of the girl walking ever so calmly down the hallway. She didn't even hear them as she walked. None of them knew how to act now that the rumors of her being a monster had come true.
"What have you done?" one of the doctors asked, grabbing her and then pulling his hand away in fright as it, too, became covered in blood.
She held the knife casually as she turned to him. "I only made her pay for every sin she has committed against me." She glared at him and he grabbed at his throat as he began spitting up blood. "It seems you have some sins as well." Josephine turned and continued walking through the hospital, people retching in agony and even dying in her wake. "Sinners, every one of you," she said calmly. No need to mourn the damned.
She exited the hospital and was met by her father. "Josephine, what did you do?" He sounded furious and terrified out of his mind.
"I made her see the pain she's caused. If she wants to say I'm a monster incapable of love, then is it not good manners to prove to her that she's right?" Josephine held up the knife and casually stabbed her father once. "That's for sticking by her."
"Jo, you were always so forgiving and caring. How can you do this?" He coughed and writhed in pain.
"How could a mother stop loving her child? How could a mother not want to hold her child at birth? How could a mother tell her child that she's the one who made her sick and caused her to end up in the hospital? How can you just stand by and let her do this?" Josephine walked away from him, leaving him to whine in pain like a dog.
Shrieks of terror followed Josephine where ever she walked, holding the knife close to her, against her heart. People screamed at the blood covered girl and the knife she held tightly as she approached and whimpered in pain as she passed. No one was free from sin in this town. All the people who had ever dared to look at her in disgust over the lies her dearest mother had spread died in her wake. Women and children alike were passed through her judgment. Most of the children passed the test, sinless. All the adults had something to hide.
There was the crying of a child. Josephine followed the cry and found her new baby brother lying in the ashes on the street. Josephine picked him up and cuddled him close. He too was stained in the sinner's blood. "I love you," Josephine finally said. "I know our mother dearest tried to tell you I didn't and spread those nasty lies of how I hated you, but she will no longer be here to hurt either of us again." Holding him close in one hand and the knife in the other, she walked back through town, looking at the world she'd created, doused in the blood of the sinners. Bodies littered the bloody street. Luckily, the rain was heavy and washed the blood into the sewers. Josephine lifted her hands and noticed she had been washed clean herself, save her clothes which were stained.
"And now we are free as well." Josephine dropped the knife and ran until she reached her house. She entered and locked the door behind her. She then fell to her knees and cried over her cooing baby brother. Sobs that shook her frame until she had no more tears. "I did what had to be done," she sighed, entering her parent's bedroom. She lied down on their clean, white sheets and set her brother beside her. With the soothing sound of rain on the roof, Josephine soon fell asleep, waking from the nightmare.