End with: “The effort to change was, she found, equal or greater than the amount needed to suffer.”
“Will you waaaaaaalk… The lonesome vaaaaa-lleeeeeyy…” The protesters sang.
Val shouted, “Mu-tants OUT!” over and over while she waved her sign that read, “EVIL-UTION IS THE DEVIL!”
She, along with her fellow members of the church, were protesting a mutant treatment center. It didn’t matter to Val that they were helping kids survive manifestation sickness and become productive members of society.
What mattered was that Evil-ution was plain and outright wrong. It meant that God was trying to change his perfect creation. And if God was changing his perfect creation, that implied that the creation wasn’t perfect, and God was fallible and needed to improve things.
And that would mean that God was not as divine as Val and millions of others believed.
Which was why she and her church were so mad.
If she shouted loud enough, prayed hard enough, worked long enough… she could change their minds and make them stay holy and pure and save them from Hell.
A sudden bolt from her spine made her drop to the floor, convulsing at the pain wrenching through her. Val screamed in horror. God had struck her down!
Why?
She’d been good.
And now her entire body was wrenching itself into a new form. Her arms were growing fur. FUR!
She wept. Not because it hurt, but because God had marked her as a sinner. But she would pray it away. She would atone.
The effort to change was, she found, equal or greater than the amount needed to suffer.
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