The destructive nature of shame and religious extremism begins to take root in Thomas’s soul, as he navigates a world where every mistake is met with condemnation, and love is replaced by fear, shaping the man he will become in ways even he cannot yet understand.
Thomas sat in the small, musty room of his grandparents’ house, staring at the worn carpet beneath his bare feet. The air was thick with the smell of stale incense and old leather-bound Bibles. It was the only place he knew, the only world that had ever been his. The room, small and dark, was a prison of sorts — a place where love was scarce, and every mistake was met with harsh punishment.
His grandparents never told him they loved him. He could never remember a time they had embraced him, wiped away his tears, or praised him for anything. No, in their eyes, he was a stain, a reminder of their daughter’s sin, and Thomas was to be molded, not loved.
“You’re a mistake,” his grandmother would say, her eyes hard as flint. “Your mother was a whore, and you carry her shame. That’s your inheritance, Thomas. You must repent for her sins.”
His grandfather’s stern face never softened. “You will learn obedience, or you will suffer,” he would declare, his voice like thunder. “The Lord punishes those who stray from His path. Remember that.”
Thomas couldn’t remember his mother, not really. He had only the fleeting moments of warmth in his dreams: a gentle touch on his cheek, the soft sound of her voice calling his name. But that was all gone now. She had died when he was just three, leaving him to these people who saw him as nothing but a burden.
The cruelty of his grandparents’ love, if it could even be called love, was suffocating. They locked him in closets for hours when he misbehaved, as if to remind him of his unworthiness. They told him his blood was cursed, that he was a child of sin, and that nothing he did could erase that. His world, however, was beginning to change in ways that would further cement his place in his grandparents’ eyes.
Thomas had begun to show signs of something that terrified his grandparents even more than his mother's addiction: he was different. At first, it was subtle, small moments that made him feel “other” — the way he admired the boy who sat next to him in Sunday school, the way his heart would race when he saw him. But the realization came to his grandparents like a thunderclap. One afternoon, they found Thomas alone in the barn, his hands awkwardly resting on the shoulder of a young boy from the church.
The discovery shattered the fragile illusion they had about their control over Thomas’s soul. His grandparents, with their strict, evangelical beliefs, saw his budding attraction as nothing less than a sign of demonic influence, an even deeper stain on the bloodline that could never be forgiven.
“You’re not just cursed,” his grandmother hissed, her voice trembling with rage. “You’re perverted! A disgrace to the Lord!”
His grandfather’s face twisted with contempt. “You will pray and repent, Thomas. This is the Devil’s work, and we will rid you of this filth!”
And so, Thomas was punished. His grandparents subjected him to cruel, unyielding torment, convinced that his “sin” had to be purged. They locked him in dark closets for hours, filled his head with words of damnation and rejection, telling him he was wrong, that the desires he felt could only lead to Hell. His punishment became as much about erasing the person he was beginning to understand himself to be as it was about reminding him of the shame of his mother’s death.
By the time he turned twelve, something inside him had begun to change. The shame that had been forced upon him festered in his chest, turning to anger, then to hate. His mind twisted as he tried to make sense of the world around him. He began to resent his grandparents — their rigid faith, their unyielding discipline. It all felt like a suffocating weight, a burden too heavy for a child to carry.
But there was something darker growing in him, something that began to whisper in the back of his mind: What if they were wrong? What if the world didn’t need to punish? What if I could control it all?
His first act of rebellion came when he was fourteen. It wasn’t a grand act, no violent outburst or defiant speech. It was something simpler: he took a knife from the kitchen drawer, sharp and cold. He knew what he had to do. The man who ran the small store in town had looked at him once, his gaze lingering too long, his smile too knowing. Thomas could feel the anger rising inside him, like a wildfire.
The man didn’t deserve to live, not with the thoughts he had. Not with the way he looked at Thomas.
When the deed was done, Thomas felt nothing at first — no remorse, no guilt, just an overwhelming sense of freedom. He was in control now. The shame that had been sewn into his very soul, the shame that had shaped his every action, had been erased.
The killings came after that. Slowly at first. Authority figures, preachers, those who upheld the rules his grandparents had taught him — they became his targets. He sought out the ones who had made him feel like less, who had made him feel as if he didn’t belong. He took his anger, his shame, and turned it into something he could wield. With each kill, he believed he was cleansing himself. Thomas believed he was cleansing himself by taking control of his own destiny, erasing the shame and guilt his grandparents had instilled in him, and punishing those who, in his mind, represented the authority that had condemned him to a life of suffering. But the more he killed, the more the weight of what he had become settled in.
And yet, his grandparents never saw it. They never saw the darkness creeping into his soul, never acknowledged their role in creating the monster he was becoming. They continued to preach, to insist that God would punish him for his sins, not understanding that their cruelty had birthed those very sins.
Thomas watched them, their unwavering faith, their blind devotion to a God who seemed so far removed from the compassion they preached. He realized, too late, that their version of God had never been about love or understanding. It had always been about power, about control, about forcing the world to bend to their rigid will.
In the end, it wasn’t nature that had made him this way. It wasn’t some inherent evil within him that had caused him to kill. It was the nurture he had received, the suffocating shame, the cold judgment of his grandparents, and their twisted interpretation of a faith that should have brought peace, not pain. They had shaped him, not with love, but with fear and condemnation.
As Thomas stood over his grandparents' bodies, his hands stained with their blood, he couldn’t help but feel a bitter sense of irony. They had spent their lives telling him he was born of sin, but it was their blindness, their refusal to see the harm they had done, that had truly damned him.
He had become the monster they had feared. And all the while, they had never realized it was their own cruelty, their own warped version of faith, that had created him.
The destructive power of shame and condemnation, the perils of blind religious extremism, and the suffocating grip of a toxic upbringing had left their mark on Thomas, forever altering the course of his life.
And in that, perhaps, there was no redemption.
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