“If a man rapes a woman & she gets pregnant, God did that! What is the baby guilty of?”

He cried a little before he began to preen in front of the crowd again. “Does that innocent child deserve to die?! For the …mistake his …father made? Besides- women have… ways to Not- “

He stopped himself before wandering off into forbidden in mixed company territory.

“It’s a baby,” he cooed, “a gift…direct from Heaven! Straight from Our father God, who art In that heaven that sweet little baby cometh from! And you think…that baby deserves to DIE?!” he huffed victoriously before he settled back down into the puffy ankled smugness that was his lot in life, glanced dismissively at their audience that was always on the side of whoever claimed God first and stood down.

“Yes.”

It was said so simply, plainly that the entire room fell silent.

He whirled around with the bewildered look sitting askew on his face that he’d prepared regardless of what her surely longwinded, argumentative response would have been. He was spooked to his core by the silence he was met with. He narrowed his eyes at the beleaguered audience accusingly, as if they’d somehow been snatched away by her. Then he turned back towards her and snarled.

“You think that an innocent child deserves to die?!”

“YES. I Didn’t stutter.” she growled. “You think that child wants to live…with everyone knowing how he got here?! The way you all are bound to treat him as he grows up?”she hissed.

“…In fact, with all my mind, soul and spirit I believe that NO rapist deserves to have offspring at all!” she faced the crowd. “Rape is a crime against Humanity! To rape means you have chosen to relinquish your fucking humanity! Fuck you getting the blessing of your seed marching on amongst the rest of us! We have three generations chock full of the offspring of the worst of the worst because WE stopped weeding these fuckers the fuck out!

She turned back to him. “We have seen where your logic leads! Enough already-“

The elders in the room rocked themselves to and fro in silent consternation as all the things that they now rued the day they listened to keeping quiet about swirled around the necks of everyone in town.

“You’re a monster!” he blustered. “I mean, what is it? What -did something happen to You to make you so-cold?!” he sneered.

“No but I know something happened to the woman who was forced to Mother you after your “dad”-“

“That’s right!” he boomed as he shot up onto his tippy toes, proudly. “I am a product of an unfortunate circumstance that-did Not curtail the Good I do with my life in this-“

“You’re a fucking piece of shit that supports and covers for rapists, vilifies young Girls who rebuke your sexual advances and-“

“Order!!”one of the moderators called out, slightly bemused at it finally being said aloud.

“I have done wonderful things for this here place-” he brayed like the repugnant ass in a summer suit he was.

“You think we’re going for a mix? That you sprinkle a few big, good deeds onto the shit soup you’ve forced down everybody’s throats and That Good gets to be your fucking legacy?!” she snorted and turned back towards the crowd.

“Minny! Do his please & thank you do anything to alleviate the slap on the wrist he gave your-“

“How dare you question my-” he roared.

“Not one bit!” Minny yelped.

“Jim- has him tipping his hat like a gentleman when you see him done Anything to comfort your wife who-“

“You can’t just – What are you trying to do here!?” he hissed as he began to flop sweat. “This is supposed to be a – a discussion of the timely-not a a rehashing of my slips and- Besides! Who are you, Lady, to judge me!?! Who are you to try to call me to account, woman!?”

She walked dangerously close to the edge of the stage. “THIS ISN’T ABOUT the patriarchy the way they frame this up to us!” she hissed, waving him off dismissively. “Nooo, no, no…This isn’t ‘men’ over ‘women,’ over and over again, getting to play this schoolyard boys beat girls bullshit-“

He melodramatically blustered on his side of the stage like a bull, feigning as if he was going to run over and put her in her place John Wayne style, enacting a muddled two step towards her and back, threateningly.

She looked up at the rafters, rolled her eyes and took one menacing step towards him. He froze, the color drained from his face. She smirked.

“This,” she snapped at the crowd as she danced her hand towards the compromised de facto leader of their little hamlet who’d been the feckless root of every bad fiscal and moral decision the townsfolk had passively allowed him to take the lead in making for a generation and a half.

“… isn’t about the morality of man versus “woman” he’s kept you all suckered into-” she growled, “THIS … is MAN…versus the MOB- This is…MAN! Men like this fuck….against the insane sanctity of all of us who Know and Do better amongst ourselves when fucks like him are run out of here! We’re the MOB, people! Realize we’re the MOB and they don’t rule Over us, they don’t get to just decimate our fucking kids! Anyone’s fucking kids! Period! Enough already!”

The crowd exploded with applause as the moderators tried to rein it all in as he stomped around his side of the stage like an amped up Billy Goat “How dare you!?! You can’t speak to me like that!! Do you know who I am! Do you know what I can DO to you, you stupid bitch!” he caterwauled as he team rushed onto the stage to restrain him.

“I Know what YOU did to Bethany! That was more than just cosigning, wasn’t it?! Are you threatening me with that?! Because if so, let’s fucking-“

“Order!!”

“It was YOU??!?!” A man screamed from the back of the hall as if he’d just stepped on a landmine. The crowd fell silent, spun around and saw Jerry, overalls on , fishing hat in hand, veins in neck throbbing as he face went red with rage.

“Now Jerry, I-” he stammered from the stage and took a step back from the lip of it as Jerry cut through the crowd like a hot blade through butter, coming straight at him.

“You- you held my hand after the-” Jerry grunted as he leapt up on the stage.

Kit’s handlers ran for cover as friends of Jerry’s finally putting two and two together charged up and blocked any exit path old man Kit the younger would’ve tried to take and presently beat the fuck out of him.

---

The moderators looked on in bemused shock, oblivious to all else as she kicked right back into gear.

“And when these fuckers touch a Hair on any our our Women, our men, our Children They do Not deserve ANYTHING but what they meted out! He’s a rapist! He doesn’t deserve a son! He’s the son of a fucking sexual assaultor in the first fucking place! He raped! & he made a career of letting off other rapists that he was supposed to have held accountable! No one made him make those calls! At every step of the way he Could’ve have been truly better than what he was born from and of-and he showed who he was truly akin to!!”

“Kill it!” Minny screamed in the melee. “Kit would rule that the rapist should be left to raise him, to continue this insanity, knowing full well forcing this girl to carry this abomination to term would Kill her!! Just like it killed the spirit of Kit’s own mom! I loved her and she Never recovered! May God give her rest!”she cried. Her neighbors hugged on her as she finally broke down.

You think God will judge you for not letting that child burst through that girl like a monster? You think that will weigh more than not protecting the kids in your community?! More than he’d judge you for Not protecting your neighbor as if your neighbor were you even though his word says as much?!” A godly woman called out from the crowd. “We are God on earth! We are his hands! HE says an eye for an eye! & Bethany went through hell on earth! & we let him sweep that under the rug!”

Kit mewed through the beatdown like the vicious, performative beta male he was at heart, like he hoped they’d take pity on him that he’d not taken on Bethany all those years ago. Ron ran offstage and came back with rope and a broom. They hogtied him to cheers from the crowd and then utterly brutalized him, violating him measure for measure until his broken body matched how little sweet Bethany had been found, clinging to life.

“& Kill any man or woman who Tries to make us absolve them of shit they willfully chose to do!!” A teenaged girl who’d been blacklisted for breaking the arm of a teenaged boy who’d tried to assault her roared. The teenagers with her screamed in defiance and slammed out of the double doors, knowing exactly where the one this meeting had been called about in the first place was being kept.

“Be The MOB on your own Behalf!! IT’S TIME!IT’S FUCKING TIME!” She screamed from the stage as they dragged her off it-