***The following is a story of fiction. The author does not condone
violence towards anybody***


Brother Felipe -

I'm just an old man now. Do you remember, Brother? We met only a year ago. I could not speak, but you stayed with me that evening, and what a delightful conversation we had with a stack of papers and a single ink pen. Let's keep that to ourselves. The Church would throw a fit if they knew we wasted precious ink and pulp to have but a fleeting conversation. I cherish it, though. And I am writing to you now, because I know I can trust you.

I feel I must tell you what terrible things I have witnessed and write them down, lest they had never happened. Nobody speaks of it, what they had witnessed that day. The regional Church of Santiago Marin had gone too far, of course. They were just whispers then. But we were all afraid. Who could say anything about the Church after what they had just seen? Back then, the Church of Santiago Marin was powerful and influential. We
had to protect ourselves. We had to keep our children safe. We were scared. Who could blame us? But then again, our silence is what damned us, and our silence is what will continue to damn us if nobody remembers what happened. And we won't remember, which is why I write this letter to you now, my dear friend. Many of these words will be painful to write, but I must.

It began nearly a decade ago in the town of Santiago Marin, my place of birth actually. I don't remember if I had told you that. I was a vocal opponent of the regional church there. Mind you, this was during the start of this new movement sweeping the country. The Inquisition, I believe some are calling it now. Things have started to slow a bit since then, but remember ten years ago when friends and family were whisked away left and right? That's when this story begins. I am not going to tell you about what happened to me. My story is unremarkable. Like so many others I was
unjustly imprisoned. I was tortured. I was locked up like an animal. But I was spared the worst of the cruelty. And I was eventually freed. They should have killed me. Now I am rotting in my old bones, with memories too painful to bear.

I was not a Pagan. Like you, I used to preach to those who hungered for the Word of Christ. I believe in Christ, our Lord, our Saviour, our Merciful Healer. But I saw it, like many others, that the Church of Santiago Marin was a corrupt representative of the Devil, falsely claiming they were representatives of a divine and Holy Presence. These men, these vile men, they were just hungry for power. They were old men. Who wanted more. They saw the local Pagan religion, old and rooted in the land, as a threat to their rising position.

So they rounded up as many Pagans as they could. Many they killed outright. Some they tortured and executed in public. But there was one family that held much influence in my province. A pagan priest and his priestess. Truth be told, though they denied the word of Christ and worshiped the land, their many gods and animals, they were in fact kind people. In my travels, I had chanced upon their village. They invited me in. They introduced me to their two young daughters, who were very polite and pleasant. We dined, and we talked. I told them of the sacrifice of
our Lord Jesus, and how his Divine Presence inspired thousands to gather to witness his many miracles. The priest and priestess listened keenly and nodded. They told me of their religion. They explained to me that it was, at its heart, a religion that emphasized a respect for the land, that all things were sacred, and that divine power flows from every living being on earth. Love, they explained, was an integral part of their belief. Love for each other, love and respect for the land. And I listened. And after I slept that night in their home, after they refilled my supplies for travel, they bid me farewell. I thought to myself, that there were many things in common between the teachings of Christ, and their beliefs, were
not entirely wrong.

Surely I thought, they were not a threat to those who followed Christ. Maybe, even, one day they could accept the Lord into their hearts. We must be patient, I told myself.

But one day they were taken. The entire family. Not just the priest and his wife the priestess, but their two daughters as well. High ranking members of the Church of Santiago Marin were upset with their pagan influence, and they decided to send a message to the pagan community.

My dear friend, I may have skipped ahead, though. I forgot to mention that by that time the family had been taken, that I was already imprisoned inside a dungeon used by the Church of Santiago Marin. I was too outspoken, apparently. From the start I had been suspicious of their wayward intentions, and I had worked to sway others against the influence of this church from the beginning. Their cruel leaders. Their traditions of public executions. Their insistence that it was holier to donate money
to the Church than to practice the teachings of Jesus. I was a strong opponent. And then one day, they whisked me away in the darkness. They tortured me. They forced me to sign false documents. And they kept me in a cage for years. How could they treat me as the enemy? I was a Christian! They simply wanted to silence anybody who disagreed with their practices. It was because I was against the Inquisition, of course. I was against the mass arrests and imprisonments. They made me denounce my faith
in Christ! I did it in a haze. I was delirious from pain. I just wanted it to stop.

So I was just rotting away in my cell. It was a small cell. Five feet by five feet. Just enough to lay down flat, diagonally. Of course I was one of the lucky ones. My cell was actually one of the largest in their stinking dungeon.

And then one day, I saw the priest and his family dragged in. They were led in with ropes tied around their necks. The priest followed by his wife, followed by their two daughters. The girls were older now. The oldest daughter was actually now quite the young woman. I remembered her name, actually. Elena. She still had the face of a girl but the body of a developing maid. She looked like she could be thirteen. Almost ready to be married, really. Her younger sister followed behind her. I think her name was Alisa. She still looked like a little girl. Her body thin like a
child's body. She was maybe eleven, and her brown hair, tied with a simple knot, flowing down to her legs.

My heart ached with sorrow. Such a beautiful family. What were they doing in this pit of Hell? The oldest daughter was so pretty she could pass as an angel. She had long wavy brown hair and beautiful eyes. The youngest one could have been a cupid. She had a round face with a small button nose.

They brought the family down to the center of the dungeon, which was filled with terrible instruments of torture. We were all there to watch, the prisoners. Our cells lined the perimeter of this sick arena. That was their cruel joke. Even if we were not actively being tormented, we were always there to witness the pain and suffering of others.

They threw the mother and father into a small cage and lifted the pair up close to the ceiling in the center of the dungeon. And then they began to work on the two girls. Oh it was terrible!

They stripped them of their dresses and left them naked and trembling. They bound their hands and lifted them from the ground, whipping their bodies from head to toe, and front to back. I can still hear their cries that night. I don't know what was worse. The hiss and loud crack of the whip against their soft flesh or their anguished cries of pain and squeals for mercy. I had heard many times since my imprisonment the sounds of the whip against flesh, but never had I ever heard the sound of a young girl in agonizing pain before. And for hours on end! It was like a nightmare. But I could not leave. I was trapped. As hard as it was for me, my dear friend, as a parent yourself, can you imagine how hard it was for their mother and father, watching from above?

But what happened next I did not expect. Up until that point, I had always argued that the Church of Santiago Marin had gone too far. But what happened next converted my beliefs. Instead of simply going too far, I was from that moment convinced that they were actually devious agents of the Devil, disguised as holy men.

A line of priests and guards walked in. These poor sobbing girls, naked and covered in red welts, some of them oozing blood from the lashing, were then ravaged in the most terrible way. They were tied down to a post, and man by man, were raped and sodomized by each of the guards and priests. They were not dressed as priests, of course. But I knew these men. They
were once my colleagues. They did not even have the sense to wear masks. Were we all going to die then, I pondered? Why didn't they hide their identities? None of us were leaving alive, I thought. I was sure then that these macabre scenes were the last scenes I would ever witness in my life.

When one man was finished, he would walk around and get in the back of the line, anticipating that he would be ready to repeat his evil deed by the time it was his turn. That's how long these lines were! The rapes lasted for hours. It was inhumane. You would think, my dear friend, that these girls would pass out. That God in his Infinite Mercy would allow there to be only a limited amount of suffering that these poor angels could experience. Some moment of respite. But they never did faint. They grew weak with exhaustion, yes, but you could hear their grunts of pain on every
thrust that these beasts inflicted, and their quiet sobbing when one man was finished and the next one lined up from behind.

When they were done, even from my vantage point, I could see a trail of blood lining the inner thighs of the two girls. The little one's thighs were colored with a darker red and the stain of it ran longer than her older sister's. Poor thing. She was just a girl, not yet a woman. Not yet ready for the material bond between man and woman, much less a multitude of violent animals descending upon her.

And then the strangest thing happened. I felt as if maybe I had truly lost my mind. But after those girls were ravaged, they were dragged to my cell, and thrown in with me! What was the purpose of this? The priests I had recognized I could see walking away, snickering and sneering their way out of the dungeon.

I didn't know what to do. But I knew I could not do nothing. I grabbed the rags I had on, and I tore it in three. It wasn't much. I used one of them to wipe off as much blood and vile semen off from the girls. It didn't help much. I actually felt like I just smeared that filthy material around. I used the other two rags to cover as much of the two girls as possible, but they were only large enough to be used as loin cloths. And so they slept. Given their exhaustion, I do not blame them. I sat in the corner of my cell, now naked myself, and watched as they rested.