THREE TIMES A LADY by Jon Osborne

he snarled.  ‘Do you even know who I am ?’
    A brief look of confusion coloured in Sara Whitestone’s beautiful face, followed almost at once by a horrified jolt of recognition that Dana could feel inside her own chest.  ‘Jeremiah,’ Sara whispered.
    Rearing back, the monster slapped Dana’s mother so hard across the face that Dana could hear Sara Whitestone’s teeth rattle in her mouth.  ‘That’s not my name anymore, slut,’ the monster spat.  ‘You made damn sure of that a long time ago and now I’m going to kill you for it.  For your information, my name’s Nathan Stiedowe now – not that you give a flying fuck.  Stupid little cunts like you never give a flying fuck about who you hurt, do you?  Only worried about yourselves and your precious goddamn families.  But before I kill you, tell me something first, Mom .  How could you do it, anyway?
    ‘How could you give away your own fucking baby ?’

CHAPTER 6
    Annabeth Preston had performed her rudimentary version of a castration on Nicholas the day he’d turned thirteen – the same day she’d started giving him the testosterone shots to ensure his continued physical development.  After all, she certainly wouldn’t want to arouse anybody’s suspicions, now would she?  Of course she wouldn’t.  Wouldn’t want anyone to suspect that the devil’s soul lurked just beneath the façade of that gorgeous angel’s face of hers.  And apparently she’d grown weary of arousing other things on Nicholas, too.  Unholy things.
    Even though they weren’t Jewish – they were Catholic – Nicholas had received a horrifying bris when other boys his age who actually were Jewish were busy celebrating their bar mitzvahs .  Not that the Catholics had anything to puff out their chests and crow about when it came to the ghastly practice, though.  In medieval times in Europe – back in the days when women weren’t permitted to perform in choirs during religious services due to their lowly social standing – the Roman Catholic Church had often castrated boys in order to prevent their voices from breaking at puberty, allowing the lads to develop especially high vocal ranges.  Italian church records dating all the way back to the 1550s mentioned castrati , and it wasn’t until the late-1880s that the church had finally condemned the practice officially.  A hundred years later – when Catholic priests would fill in their time by molesting untold numbers of altar boys behind the locked doors of vestibules, the church would turn the same blind eye to the sickening abuse, led by none other than cover-up master Pope Benedict the Sixteenth himself.
    Early-onset puberty had allowed Annabeth Preston to dismiss the concerns of Nicholas ’s voice not developing properly.  His adult voice was already there.  Even at thirteen years old, he possessed a deep baritone that people often mistook for an adult’s whenever he spoke with them on the phone, often leading them to think that his cadence and pitch belonged to his deceased father.  ‘You sound exactly like him,’ they’d say with amazement in their own voices.  ‘It’s uncanny .’
    So, Jewish or not, Annabeth Preston had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about going forward with the extremely dangerous procedure.  And why in the hell would she have any qualms about it?  What did she have to lose at this point?  Another child?  Probably not one of her biggest concerns, considering her history.  Only Nicholas’s special bris – which translated to ‘covenant of circumcision’ from the Hebrew – had gone quite a bit further than simple removal of his foreskin.  Quite a bit further, indeed.
    In some early cultures, castration was performed on soldiers who’d lost in battle.  The winners did it to symbolise their complete victory over their defeated foes.  To take away their very manhood and ensure they could never retrieve it again. 
    For her part, Annabeth Preston had symbolised her victory