The Virgin's Sacrifice

CAUTION: PUT THE KIDS TO BED FIRST.

The Virgin tilted her head back slightly to accept the oud and neroli. In point of fact, the initial rose oil had rolled down her porcelain forehead into her cornflower right eye. An application of Murine had been hastily sanctified and applied – this was a rite fundamentally and foremost of purity, and even broken capillaries might compromise the ritual’s chaste imagery and integrity.

Especially in HD. The Virgin’s ethereal paleness and preternaturally fine skin merely exacerbated the slightest flaw. Not so long ago, aesthetic perfection was not commonly associated with virginity -- quite the contrary. As a new Faith had flourished over the land and The Rite assumed a virtually mythical aura, The Virgin attained iconic status for her very unattainability.

As such, The Virgin’s annual Ascension had graduated from a grassroots, fundamentalist process of grooming, payoffs, and, frequently, coercion to media-driven “event” evangelism and spectacle on a par with The Bachelorette. Rather than an unplucked blossom from furrowed Heartland soils or a flowering weed from Southern clay, The Virgin today was cultivated in privilege and prosperity, a greenhouse rose raised in the glass house of adoration and speculation.

She started as the Preparation Suite door again clicked open. The PA, a calculatedly plain redhead who strove for anonymity and, ideally, invisibility. The closer to air, the less Lynnet savored the “above-the-line” title and the attached abstinence clause. However, the insane pay bump had greased her move to Brentwood, and 2030’s PATV was now showrunner for NCIS: Salt Lake and likely would lunch on this three-month gig for the rest of her stress-shortened life. After a steamy ritual bathing debacle exposed by TMZ, Lynette’s immediate predecessor literally would never work or lunch in L.A. again.

“Hour to air. Need a hand?”

The Virgin managed a weak smile and shook her head. The assistant briefly and gratefully reciprocated, and reverently draped the ivory Alexander McQueen gown over the meditation settee before fleeing the creepy-AF white chamber. Given the very nature of the ritual, there was no need and, as last year’s disaster demonstrated, significant peril in forming lasting bonds with talent.

The Virgin rose, slipped the robe from her creamy shoulders, padded across the seamless marble floor, and delicately lifted the translucent, floor-length garment. Her mother had worn a vintage McQueen piece to the 2026 Oscars, but this ritual gown had been specially crafted by GM McQueen himself, and bioengineering had not dulled the once-late designer’s eye for macabre beauty and narrative theatricality.

Where Mother’s ensemb had been designed for restrained sensuality, McQueen had been charged with a more challenging aesthetic – chaste sensuality, ritual glamour. A high collar reminiscent of Elizabethan mourning garb, paired with a lab-cultured cruelty-free whale bone corset that evoked an era of purity and control. The hem was artfully frayed as burnt parchment, and embroidered in McQueen’s Network Standards-compliant take on the required “Path of Sacrifice.” In a signature motif, the restored Mr. McQueen had strategically incorporated human hair into the “floating” silk and chiffon to promoted discomfort, blur the lines between body and costume, and offer a nuanced sop to the errant virgin fetishist in the 17-65 demographic.

A secretive smile blushed across her pallid features alone in the white void, and she now anticipated, indeed welcomed the first purifying bite of the blade.

**

“Welcome back to American Sacrifice, brought to you live on ParaFOX by Chik-fil-A, the United Council of Faith in Government, the new Tesla, and libido-liberating ABSTENEX. ‘Flex Without Sex – ABSTENEX.’ In a few minutes, we’ll bring out the woman of the hour. But first, let’s go to Megyn Kennedy for a little history of television’s most highly-rated event. Megyn?”

“Hi, Greg. As you know, we’ve rounded up a veritable Who’s Who in the News for tonight’s annual ceremony, and I’d like to think my late husband, the former Secretary of Health and Behavioral Ethics, might be looking down and smiling right now. Six years ago, after Liberty University scientists and the National Society for Second Amendment Studies in the Public Interest released its landmark report conclusively linking a rising epidemic of school and courthouse shootings and reemerging childhood communicable diseases to an upswing in casual sex particularly among at-risk and high-risk populations, my husband and the administration felt a strong public health campaign was crucial to future generations. Since that first broadcast back in 2027, National Institutes of American Health surveys have indicated a significant decline in uncounseled and indiscriminate non-criminal sexual activity among teen youth alone, and a 78 percent rise in domestic morality.”

”Wow!”

“Well, it’s really quite simple, Greg. We – our federal leaders, that is -- wanted to help clear the tangle of woke miscommunication, agenda-driven deception, and general media-driven confusion about so-called personal liberties, women’s reproductive ‘health,’ public responsibility, and just really values-driven conduct and unity of message. And the message is, in the wrong hands, sex kills.”

“Amen. So who’s on hand for tonight’s ceremony?”

“It’s quite an auspicious lineup, Greg. We have pop music phenomenon and Grammy winner Tracy Lee Breeze; late-night talk show host Colby Stevens; Massachusetts Sen. Rina Mendes, who you might remember from the recent televised debate over federal ‘health’ spending; former Marine General Frederick Huston; and Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Phoenix Winters of the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Stem Cell Research. And of course, we’ve got a special satellite AI transmission from the president, and none other than eight-time CMA winner and Tennessee Governor Morgan Wallen will perform Lee Greenwood’s sacrificial anthem Sanctified Soil. And of course, our honored 2037 Virgin will be coming out soon for the Rite of Purification.”

FADE IN VIRGIN SACRIFICE MONTAGE ACCOMPANIED BY ANDANTE ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENTAL VARIATION ON SANCTIFIED SOIL.

“You know, Greg, the role of The Virgin in sacred rites of purification, protection, and prosperity actually goes back millennia, even centuries, across multiple ancient cultures in Africa, pre-civilized America, and Europe. According to scholars and theologians, the virgin’s self-sacrifice symbolized renewal and rebirth, representing society’s hope for rejuvenation and divine fortune. This concept was founded on the ancient belief that the untarnished essence of virgins could be transferred to land or society and ensure revitalization. They offered virgins to spirits when they faced domestic threats or sought extraordinary divine intervention. In Aztec rituals, the chosen was honored before her sacrifice and ascension, and in the Greek ceremony of pharmakos, a so-called human ‘scapegoat’ was paraded and then either expelled or slaughtered to cleanse society. Just before the virgins were sacrificed, they were dressed in beautiful attires that symbolized a special gift.

“Certainly, by modern American standards, violently sacrificing young virgins seems barbaric, horrifying, even perverse. That’s why, at its inception, American Sacrifice essentially flipped the script. Of course, some traditions remain the same, and that’s why fashion giant Gareth Pugh has designed a truly special gift for the Rite. Now, if we can move to the main stage for just a minute--”

“Meg? Megyn, sorry to interrupt, but due to developments in the U.S.-Portland Peace Talks, the president has had to move up his special message to The Virgin and the American people. We now go live to Washington and the President of the United States. Mr. President.”

“Yes, Greg. Very, very busy – too busy to talk about, and certainly politically sensitive, global-wise. But never too busy for might I say an extremely beautiful young woman like Virgin. Little amazing Virgin is still Virgin. Superhuman willpower. Virgin, just wanted to let you know we’re all behind you – you’re a great American, and you just get right to it, OK? Gotta go, Craig—”

“Um. Ah. And that was the president, officially kicking off this year’s ceremony with some inspiring words. And now, ladies and gentlemen, please rise for MISTER Morgan Wallen…”

**

The Virgin ascends.

Raise your hand if you’ve never strayed,

From the path the Fathers paved.

She can only hear the invisible Faithful, the Fans, erupt as she strides barefoot across the stage. The Firmament of Purity -- actually a cordon of 200,000-lumen military-grade floods lining the invisible electronic barrier between celibate and celebrants – had been installed for the public’s safety as much as for spectacle, and the Virgin Halo – a ring of flood-mounted Italian marble pylons crowned with surveillance drones – pinned the star isolated and disoriented to the stage. Wallen glanced down momentarily from his bulletproof booth above, straight into the raise cornflower eyes of The Virgin. The artist/governor faltered with a false chord, then aggressively powered into the next line.

No lust, no lies, no books unburned

In Sanctified Soil, the pure return.

She knows the Senator and Mother were somewhere just beyond the blazing lights, in a place of honor – her lawgiver father would not have displayed the weakness of misgiving, and Mother had made the rounds of the surviving afternoon talk shows and prime-time interview shows. A few of the girls on her old floor back “home” had been pageant queens since they’d mastered walking down a smalltown runway, and their stories of proud, peppy, preening, penalizing, punitive stage mommies propelled her beyond any single-minded, gaslit desire to please into darker areas.

It was one of her father’s colleagues, head of some caucus or committee she couldn’t pretend to understand or indeed care about, who’d nearly usurped her title before Mother even dreamed of petitioning the network. She’d retired earlier from the birthday/reelection soiree at the Nantucket home, and the shrieks and tortured pleas had brought the Senator storming, armed, into the bedroom suite only to pull up short to the bloody tableau and his daughter, blessedly intact save the blood crusting her serene Giaconda smile and the front of her Wednesday Addams “This is My Happy Face” tee.

She’d left the Senator few options but to grant the Gentleman From Florida a quick, cathartic mercy and then variously beg, bribe, deal, extort, and outright threaten his way through the remaining guests. With Florida’s native son committed to the rocky depths, his previous misadventures and a salaciously fiction string of bread-crumb emails laid anonymously bare as the Coast Guard played a futile game of Marco/Polo through his favorite fishing holes and nookie coves, She was consigned to high-end shrinkage, and eventually to upstate Connecticut after the therapist dissolved her practice and disappeared somewhere on the Left Coast.

We silence the wicked with holy song,

And march the impure right where they belong…

All of this was easily kept out of the media, which had pretty much gone out of the rock-turning business. And when the network and the White House Press Office had announced a significant format change in America’s top-rated reality ritual, Mother saw the opportunity for the social “debut” robbed from their daughter on her 16th birthday.

One nation, one voice, one virtue, one law—

Praise be the nation, the rifle, the cross.

The masses beyond The Firmament explode as one, and The Virgin starts momentarily before straightening her shoulders as her mother had tutored and cajoled her and catwalks to the gold altar center stage, ringed by the blue flames of the Purifying Pyre. Only the stage techs note Wallen scampering off presumably toward Tennessee Airship One (“Righteous Redneck Thunder”) like it was SNL closing credits and Bowen Yang had lunged for a hug.

The cloak, custom-tailored by the House of Pugh, fills Her certified pristine loins with a tingling anticipation despite the bloodletting to come. Bone-white leather with crimson highlights, broad shoulders that would resculpt the pallid gamine from New England, clipped winged sleeves with deceptively wicked talon/spines.

The Virgin exhibits her single-use ‘gift’ with an unbidden grin, like a 16-year-old girl displaying the Road Ranger Evoque she’d never drive. Then, with an uncannily intuitive eyefuck with the camera and some 2.9 billion viewers across the U.S., Russia, the Saudi Union, and the Reunified Republic of Korea, She tugs the cloak over her ethereal gown and completes the transformation. The audience, treated to the 75-foot VirginCam screen hovering above the stage, fall mute as one as they witness the seemingly crystalline maiden coalesce into something else. Become something else.

The Virgin’s blue eyes again peer unflinching into the floods, and a red LED flickers in the inky depths of the production bunker as the corset implants vibrate almost imperceptibly. The cornflower orbs dart back to the altar, where the final element of the ritual lay.

“Greg, this year’s ceremonial Purification Blade was crafted by the folks at Longship Armory, for more than 15 years producers of fine hunting, gourmet, and home protection knives, and official supplier to the National Confederate Fantasy Reenactment League and ParaFOX’ Death Cage Ninjas, Thursdays at 8, 7 Central. The short sword’s 18-inch blade is cold-forged from Damascus steel, with a silver-etched blood-groove, bone-inlaid grip wrapped in white leather and stitched in red, a Crusades-themed cross hilt with purity glyphs etched in platinum. The blade’s black lacquered sheath uses actual wood from the final 2029 State of America lectern and features a gold-stitched velvet lining. Blending artistry, mythos, and martial precision, and, best of all, Longship White House Mint will release a limited-run, tenth-scale, stainless steel reproduction of this iconic blade at 30 percent off the $4,000 original price for the first 100,000 viewers who use the QR code currently onscreen.

“All right, the Texas Rangers’ Purification Guard is entering the stage with tonight’s special guests. Former country star Tracy Lee Breeze appears uncharacteristically quiet tonight – our home viewers might recall her rousing Super Bowl halftime comments on gender ‘rights.’ This is Colby Stevens’ first live appearance since his May cancellation at MAX, and, oh, here comes Sen. Mendes, who’s looking quite fit after her recent run-in with Homeland Security anti-terrorism volunteers in Austin, Texas. Rounding out our VIPs is General Huston, an outspoken champion of women in the military who had conspired with Gold Star parents in the recovery of their trans former son’s body, and Dr. Winters, freshly extradited from Canada following her publication touting supposed new pediatric cancer therapies using human-harvested, theoretically fetal stem cells. A somber moment around the Purification Pyre, reminding us what this ceremony is truly all about.”

“Indeed, Megyn. Now, I want to remind our viewers that tonight’s all-new special episode of Atlanta ICE will air in its entirety following the ceremony. Check your local listings.”

The Virgin hears none of it, now focused only the shackled cluster being nudged into formation around the fire around her. The gray Latina in the wheelchair is expressionless, her remaining eye trained on the star of the show. Tracy Lee was the only “communicant” She’d met before, backstage at the American Music Awards, but if the coltish singer remembered her, she was understandably occupied at the moment. The old Boomer guy stood rigidly before the flames, shoulders squared, silver eyes fixed on the flag flapping to the right of the stage. The wide-eyed TV guy reminded her of her sophomore English teacher, who’d given her a copy of Kurt Vonnegut in what she now with the help of the network counseling team suspected to be yet another grooming ploy. The silver-haired old woman, she guessed the doctor, looked like one of those spooky depressing old concentration camp people they used to show on the History Channel.

The Virgin’s heart pounds as the reality sets in. This was it; her fate was about to be sealed on nationwide TV and at midnight on the streamers. As the chief of the DHS Purification Guard steps up, shouldering Colby Stevens and jarring Sen. Mendes nearly out of her chair with a suppressed grin ceasing his camo mask, adrenalin courses through her. The presidentially handpicked former commander of the Oklahoma Templars of the Culture lifts the sheathed sword to the sky in a half-remembered parody of Simba and Rafiki, then draws the blade free, nearly removing an ear from America’s former pop sweetheart. The Purification Steward scowls at Tracy Lee and turns to The Virgin.

“What d’you say?” he demands hoarsely. The line actually was, “What say you?,” but neither the writers nor Standards had held out much hope from the beginning.

“Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames,” The Virgin fairly pants. Dr. Winters’ knees then buckles, Colby Stevens lurches to brace the 74-year-old oncologist, and the Steward backhands the late-night luminary.

“Let this blood…” the huge man falters. “Let this blood…”

An electronic whine slices through the speakers, and the Okie winced as he touched his left ear.

“LET THIS BLOOD BE THE INK OF TRUTH! Fuck.” He confers the blade.

The Virgin scans the faces about her, stopping at the maimed senator. Sen. Mendes’ face is now calm, sympathetic, empathetic.

“It’s all right, mi querida niña,” the lawmaker murmurs. “It is not your --”

The blade sweeps down and across the former Navy veteran’s wattled throat. The carotid dislodges, and She tugs until the blade slices through the vessel and sprays communicants and the attending redneck alike.

“I am no longer the offering,” The Virgin proclaims. “I am the fire!”

A roar erupts up from the crowd, and the stage shakes with the thunder and the power track of Sanctified Soil.

“And that’s it, Greg! Senator Rina Mendes is this year’s Purification Sacrifice, and I gotta think tonight’s other communicants will go home just a little wiser-- Hold on, Greg. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!”

The Virgin makes short order of the host, the general, the popster, and the researcher already laid out on the marble tiles following the senator’s near decapitation, then goes to work on the Oklahoman and half the remaining Purification Guard as they wail to their particular God. The president’s annual pardon comes through as promised despite the ratings-grabbing twist, and the next morning, the chief executive chimes with a ceasefire alert and a five-star on X.

HAVE ENDED WAR! SLICED AND DICED PORTLANDIAN TERRORISTS LIKE VIRGIN CANCELLING PATHETICALLY UNFUNNY COLBY JACKOFF AND RADICAL RINA AND WORST SINGER EVER AND GENERAL BENEDICT ARMSTRONG AND THE BABYKILLER WITCH. BEST VIRGIN EVER!