We had just sat down for our meal of large bread in basket and apples when mother and father brought out the books.

They did not read from the books every time we ate, but enough to make every meal a source of tension. Growing hunger became a source of dread, of physical illness, as my body learned that the approach of the family meal could mean the reading of the book.

They said it was to praise and thank something greater than ourselves, but I always wondered why it was that our praise was never earned, but always demanded.

Our mother and father were true followers, I needed only to see their untarnished bodies to know their holiness, if it could be called that.

We sang the hymns and, as I had learned I must do, I forced myself to feel joy, to turn myself into something like a machine. I was sitting to my father's left, he did not know the tricks I leveraged and thought I was true and kept me close to him.

My brother had always struggled with the hymns, I had worried for him as time after time it seemed he slipped further. This time I heard a quaver in his voice, and broke my own note to glance at him. His hands were melting into themselves, a blending of flesh like wax that he struggled to ignore, even as the pain took his focus. I felt another finger grow from my own hand, and knew that offering him help would be my own undoing.

I closed my eyes and put my hand on my fathers thigh, and sang all the louder. By the end of our song I no longer had a brother, but the flesh that could still flinch was taken outside and buried.