ANTICHRIST | phan ✔️

interlude

TRACK TWENTY SIX
"religion"
lana del rey

👼🏻

1989

it was a cold, grey day morning on which father lucian had begun his sermon, and seeing as it was a sunday, no were children present. for them, sunday school was an escape from the dark hallways and bible pages that were their homes; the church's stuffy sideroom was crammed with little children and teens seeking sanctuary from the priest scaring them half to death with stories of heaven and hell. and even if they weren't at sunday school, kids took the opportunity to skive the sermon and risked running to the woods, just like two girls in 1969 used to do just to be alone.

"...mon ange, je tuerais pour toi, est s'il vous fait pleurer à nouveau je le tuerai..."

each week, mrs hadley assigned one of the older children to oversee the sunday school, and this time it was a girl with hair the colour of lavender in winter standing at the front of rows of uncomfortable wooden chairs. but of course, billie eilish wasn't actually going to teach all these kids anything else about god; instead, she sighed and thought of what awaited her at home; leviticus and loneliness. even if they weren't actually in the church, they might as well have been, because father lucian's voice from the next room cut through the stale air of the sideroom like an angel knife.

"wish god would have the grave to shut him up some time," nicole dollanganger rolled her pretty eyes, sat up on the window sill in the dress her parents forced her into every sunday, smoking her second cigarette of the morning. billie laughed bitterly at that, bored out of her mind but glad of being somewhere almost safe from the word of god; the room was cramped and small, with an old black phone on a table crowded with discarded hymn pages and dusty old paintings of bible scenes on the wall.

billie was wondering what it was exactly that would happen to her if she set those painting alight with nicole's lighter when the ringing of that old black phone in the room made her and surely everybody else in the room jump.

"jesus fuck," nicole sighed in relief, to which dodie gave her a hiss of "there are kids here." "you gonna answer it, billie?"

that little sideroom was filled to the brim with little child whispers over who it was on the other end of the line, which were silenced when billie actually picked up the phone.

"hello?" she asked, a little nervously, wincing as she expected mrs hadley's switchblade sharp tone. "hello?"

"billie?"a voice crackled down the poor phone line in her ear. "billie, is that you? are you at the church?

"y-yes..." billie stuttered, trying to shake off the graveyard shivers that ran down her back at the sound of her name. "who is it?"

"you're looking after the kids, right? in that church sideroom. are they all there, billie?"

the line may have been poor, but billie swore she recognised that voice.

"i..." she did a quick scour of the room, looking over nicole's rising cigarette smoke and that sad little brunet with the bruises and brown eyes. "well i mean...all the little kids from the lower class are here, i think, but most of the older kids are skiving...wait, why are you asking? who is this? what do you - "