“Racine!” A thin voice flew through the static, “Curdling room 5 is yours, a pilgrim is waiting to pray.”

A new God, Osanna, was discovered fifty years ago, but deaf to whispered prayers. Unworldly screams of penance, initiated by her nuns, was all that reached her Hearing Heart.

Racine, a class B Nun-Monger, took her vow of service to Osanna six years earlier. Today was the last day of The Haj, a month full of screams and wails for forgiveness.

Racine floated down the hall to Curdling room 5. Her long pale hand dripped over the door’s knob, twisting it like a chicken’s head, the neck of the knob snapping open the door’s seal.

On the edge of a stainless steel table sat a withered old man. Racine told him to spread out on his back and pray his loudest. He would be heard once she was done with him.

Racine removed the ceramic covers over her titanium nails, sharpened by her sadistic God’s iron will, and proceeded to ritually carve out pieces of blessings around the pilgrim’s blue and praying lips.