I'm not sure when I manged to fall asleep. At some point my eyes must have blinked, and by the time I opened them someone was rocking me back and forth violently by the shoulder.

 

     “Lola!... Lola!” The voice called out.

 

I very nearly screamed out, 'WHAT?' but luckily I remembered where I was. I restrained my voice and in a whisper and strained high pitched voice answered.

 

     “Huh?”

 

     “Oh good! Everyone, she's up!”

 

It was Feena. She seemed to have already dressed herself; and looking past her, everyone else seemed to have done the same. The dresses, uniforms, were hardly any different from the sleeping gown. The only real difference was the longer sleeves and skirt which reached down to the ankles. With petite utilitarian leather shoes, the three other girls scrambled about their bunks and tucked them in. I thought for a moment I had been shipped off to boot camp. The dreary stone walls of the room gave me that impression.

 

The attention to detail in making them perfectly presentable without flaws was a little unsettling. Granted, I hadn't yet fully woken up, so everything was unsettling. I had very nearly forgotten where I was when I woke up.

 

When I tried to pull myself out of the bed, I realized it was a pipe dream to catch up with the girls. I felt forty years older when my joints started popping as I tried to flex and straighten myself out. It wasn't a good pain like a nice stretch. Feena tried to goad me on to go faster, but I was in too much pain and far too groggy to comply. When the other girls had finished and looked over at Feena helping me out of bed like a good nurse assisting an old man, their expressions became frightened.

 

The door handle turned suddenly, and the door was violently flung open. Floating silently into the room was a round ball of a woman. She was another one of the abbey's nuns, and her habit seemed to grant her the power to levitate as her bulk seemed to float across the floor effortlessly and without noise. She wasn't nearly as ancient as Sister Scarlet, only just over the hill, but her pudgy face was somehow twice as scary. When our eyes met, I realized she was also four times as strict.

 

     “What is this?” She bellowed, and her flabby jowls danced. “Why is this bed not made?”

 

The nun somehow managed to squeeze through the door and march right into Feena's and my face. She had locked onto the one thing unlike the others in the room with lightning speed. She didn't care much for what went right, only what went wrong. Feena was caught between standing to attention while trying to keep me on my feet. She seemed to have a soft heart because she failed to do the former and bravely kept doing the latter.

 

     “L-l-lola is new!” Feena shouted out like she was answering a rhetorical question from a drill sergeant.

 

     “Lola?” The fat nun screamed back.

 

Her baggy, brown and bloodshot eyes studied me up and down quickly, and thankfully her breathing went from enraged bull to almost normal.

 

     “Lola?” She repeated herself. “Lola. I remember hearing about you. Headmaster Scarlet told me about you. You can expect sympathy from the Good Lord for the long legs and face he graced you with at birth, but you'll only get it from me once. Before the sun rises, we expect you awake. Morning prayers, but before that your bed is to be perfect!”

 

     “Yes Sister Samantha,” the four girls answered in unison.

 

Sister Samantha walked over to the beds made by the other girls and inspected them thoroughly. I think the sour expression on her face was because she was unable to find anything else to fuel her anger. The beds of the other girls were already immaculate and flawless. There wasn't so much as a crease.

 

     “It's a dangerous world out there, girls,” The nun said; her yelling voice turning subtlety into a stern lecture. “A world filled with evil. If you want to save your souls from that evil, you need discipline. You need a pure heart. Love your husband. Love your Lord. Your hands and your thoughts must never be idle.”

 

The fat nun walked her way back to the door where she produced a tablet with a piece of parchment on top of it. She read down the lines of runes until she found one she was satisfied with. With a nod and a slight smile that worried me, she took a graphite stylus and ticked it off.

 

     “For you girls and just for your new friend here, I want you to dust the storage shed.”

 

Gloria groaned on reflex but quickly remembered to shut herself up when the hawk eyes of the nun tore into her.

 

     “Oh yeah?” Sister Samantha said sounding a little pissed off now. “Then you can skip morning prayers to get it done. But I want it well done. If it isn't, then you get no breakfast. Do you understand?”

 

     “Yes, Sister Samantha,” The four girls all said in unison again.

 

When I failed to do the same, the nun waddled her way back to me. At least now I was able to straighten my back, so this time the woman was a little intimidated when she approached. Perhaps I was the tallest 'girl' she had ever seen. Years of experience allowed her to rebound quickly enough, and she was staring up at me and bellowing in no time.

 

     “We also show respect for our elders and the Sisters... Miss Lola,” She said threateningly.

 

I struggled to keep my temper. I kept my shoulders pinched inwards to make myself as thin and weak as possible and reluctantly answered with a forced high pitch voice that very nearly cracked.

 

     “Yes, Sister Samantha.”

 

Satisfied, the fat nun turned around and left without another word. After giving the nun enough of a head start, the other girls followed her lead. Heather appeared to be ready to burst into tears from all the stress. She had kept the waterworks on hold like a real trooper, but Feena had to console and pat her head to calm her down. Gloria, likewise, patted her on the back and spouted empty threats to the no longer present Sister Samantha. All of it to calm the delicate girl down and reassure her that people were there to look out for her and protect her.

 

I seemed secondary now, except to Isabelle. Once again she was staring at me, studying me. I wanted to look away, but a nervous tic of paranoia kept me gazing back right at her. I squirmed on the spot and acted the part of the shy awkward tall girl. I couldn't figure out what was going in that head beyond those thick glasses, but she eventually turned around and followed the other three. Since I had no idea where this storage shed was, I quickly followed them.

 

When I emerged from the room, the hallway was populated with a wave of girls of all ages from preschool to junior high. It didn't take more than three seconds for about a dozen pairs of eyes to turn in my direction. The one lone person who stood many heads higher than everyone. Add in the white bonnet and brown dress, which were surprisingly the most colorful things in the building, and saying I stood out was putting it too lightly.

 

Withering further under all the glares, I desperately searched for and quickly found the four girls heading in the opposite direction from the other girls. When we finally disappeared around the corner and left the building, I noticed there on the other side of the field was a large wooden shed. Inside it was dusty, moldy and overall unpleasant. Rows of tools for gardening and construction, unused furniture, barrels of semi-perishable foodstuffs and tons of other odds and ends with no definitive purpose or explanation lined the shelves and cluttered the floor.

 

I quickly understood this was a punishment job. There was a certain amount of animosity from the other girls as well. They couldn't completely hide it. It didn't matter if they realized it or not. The worst part is that if I wasn't mistaken, when those prayers are over, it was breakfast time. Then it was chore time. I don't know how long those prayers last, but to get all this done before then was a tall order. It also had to pass inspection from the drill sergeant.

 

     “Okay everyone!” Feena cheerfully shouted out while she clapped her hands. “Let's get started. We might even beat everyone to the dining hall!”

 

Her enthusiasm was not met with an equal amount from the other girls. There was even three of them to spread it out among themselves, and they still failed. In the end, that bravado was thrown back at Feena who herself sighed when she was forced to confront reality. The four girls broke off into individuals with their cleaning cloths and water buckets.

 

I stood there silently and in the corner like a statue. My presence still seemed to be the elephant in the room. Perhaps none of them had the slightest clue on how to deal with this very sudden change in their lives. Sister Scarlet had dropped me off and told them the short version of the story already. Her word appeared to be the law here, second only to The Almighty. Any questions or doubts were reeled back in before they put them out into the open.

 

It didn't take long for the pangs of guilt to overtake me. I had been standing there and watching the girls work while I was stuck introspecting. If it was just cleaning, then an extra pair of hands could only help. Everyone was in a frenzy to do everything as quick as they could. Everyone but one. Over in the far end of the room, Heather was struggling with a wet cloth that dwarfed her tiny hands. She too was looking back and forth at the other three girls and looked ready to break into tears once again. The same pang of guilt that hit me was dawning on her as well. Everyone was working so hard and she wasn't able to keep up.

 

There was only so much I could take of it, so I approached her quietly. I took great care in not scaring her. I crouched down behind her so that I would be at eye level with her and called her name.

 

     “Heather?” I said.

 

She turned around like a frightened rabbit. I realized I had forgotten to change my voice and quickly scrambled to recover.

 

     “You want to help me, Heather? I can't reach aaaaaall the way up,” I spoke gently to the skittish and frightened girl in a high pitched voice.

 

Her eyes were wide open, and her expression reeked of fear. You would think she was facing off against a wolf. I played it as normal as I could so that I wouldn't make it any worse. I simply scooted around to show her my back and hunched over further.

 

     “Come on, get on my shoulders,” I said.

 

Heather was reluctant at first, but time went on, and nothing bad happened. Her curiosity started to get the better of her. After about ten seconds, I heard her pitter patter closer and place her small hands on my back. With a bit of effort she finally climbed up. With her legs dangling over my chest, I slowly stood upright. She gave out a little yelp of surprise at the sudden change in perspective. Her hand tugged and pulled on my hair through the bonnet, but by the time I was standing tall, she had gone silent.

 

Instead of whimpers of fear and the hic of crying, there was a sigh of wonder in her voice. Then I was treated to another sound I had yet to hear: a playful giggle.

 

     “Whoa!” Her chipper high strung voice cried out.

 

She broke out into laughter as she reached up with her hands and touched the smooth wooden planks that made up the shed's roof. In all her short years, never had she thought she'd be able to touch the ceiling like that. The novelty of it didn't wear out for about a minute.

 

Heather's playful laughter caught the attention of the other girls who were stuck at a halfway point between bewilderment and a smile that couldn't be wiped off your face. Maybe Heather's laughter was that rare a thing?

 

     “Let's get it done, Heather. You tell me where to go!” I said playfully.

 

The little girl smiled, nodded and agreed with further laughter. I held her feet to my chest with one arm and held up the bucket of water with the other. When she waved it about and called out 'Lola!' I raised it so that she could clean and wet her cloth again. She urgently called out to me to move left, right, forward and back while she wiped down the top shelves all around the shed. She worked so earnestly and with so much energy, that before we realized it, we had already done a full circuit around the shed. There was nothing else high up to clean.

 

All five of us stopped at about the same time and came to the same realization. None of us were very sure of confident that we had actually finished at all. We milled about inside the shed for another minute before we realized that we actually had done everything.

 

     “So... We go get Sister Samantha?” I asked.

 

     “Can't walk in on prayers,” Gloria said gruffly.

 

     “Right,” Feena nodded. “We'll go straight to the dining hall.”

 

While everyone broke off again to put away their towels and empty their buckets, I started to crouch down in order for Heather to get off my shoulders when she flung her arms around my head and protested.

 

     “No! Outside! Let's go!” She pouted.

 

I sighed and stood back upright to giggles behind my head. I had to stoop down low as I stepped through the door and out into the yard where Heather ood and awed. She waved her arms in the air and looked around at everything from a vantage point she had never experienced before. Feena and the other two girls came up after cleaning up, and we gathered round. I was stunned for a moment, and that was met with a perplexed look from the freckled girl.

 

     “What's wrong Lola?”

 

So now I wasn't being ignored?

 

     Heather lightly pounded her tiny fists on the top of my head and shouted, “Let's go, Lola! Brekkie! Brekkie!” She chanted.

 

I guess Heather had a soft spot in the hearts of these girls. If this shy little girl opened up to me, the others couldn't go against that. Gloria did look sullen and jealous though. She did know better than to pout and raise a stink about it though. Even Isabelle couldn't hide a smile behind her thick glasses and bored expression. For the first time I saw that bookworm girl smile genuinely.

 

So we left the shed behind us in order to report back at this cafeteria in the dormitory. When we got there, there was no one else. The sun was hardly in the sky, so that could only mean one thing: we really had finished quickly.

 

From a room hidden on the far end of the dining hall a single person emerged. One of the sisters in a white chef like uniform had emerged to see what the minor racket was about. Unlike the other sisters, her face was younger, thinner and also significantly less hostile.

 

     “You girls are here early- Oh?”

 

She stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted me and the odd sight that was Heather still riding on my shoulders.

 

     Feena spoke up quickly, “She's new. Headmaster Scarlet told us they don't have a room for her yet. She's gonna go through becoming another sister, but she's still a year too young. She's really tall, gruff and scary looking, but she's actually really nice!”

 

It warmed my heart for her to be so quick in defending me. It also made me feel bad... Also a little worried. These girls and nuns were buying this whole story a little too easily just because Sister Scarlet told it.

 

     “Is that so, Feena?” The chef nun said glowingly. “But what are you girls doing here so early?”

 

     “Had ta clean the storeroom,” Gloria said.

 

     “We did it really quick,” Isabelle followed up.

 

     “I'd say,” the nun said, obviously impressed. “Everyone else is still in prayer. Well, I suppose good work deserves a reward. Since you're here first, you get the choice picks.”

 

That one sentence blew the minds of the four girls more than any other mustering of words could have. They didn't waste much time standing around with their jaws hanging low though. Heather started kicking back and forth to let her down. I did it quickly because it actually began to hurt. Then she too ran off to catch up with the other girls who were following the nun into the other room. I was a bit perplexed when I followed behind them.

 

Inside was a basic and primitive kitchen. However, prepared on the tables were meals for several dozen hungry mouths. There was plenty of bubbling fresh porridge, but the prize was in the few luxury items on the menu: slices of fresh bread, soft butter cream, fresh scrambled eggs. What got the attention of the four girls was the side pork. The scent of grease hit me hard, and it was pleasant nostalgic sensation. However, there was obviously not enough to go around for every girl in this abbey.

 

Today was special for these girls though. With the help of the chef they loaded their plates with not so modest portions and soon we were back in the dining hall with a real feast. There was more porridge than I thought every mouth in this abbey could eat, but the way these girls dug into their breakfast made me think they were starving. The expressions on their faces made me think they had reached nirvana.

 

After about two minutes, the girls from prayer started to pour from the church. The expressions on their faces were quite priceless when they spotted the five of us with the plates we had. They marched in order to line up for their own meals, but every pair of eyes glared at us as they passed by. There was a strong feeling of resentment, confusion and jealousy. As the new girl I did my best to lower my profile and shrink myself. I was sitting now, so my height wasn't as obvious. I'd gladly take freedom from feeling like a giraffe in a zoo for just a few minutes.

 

Eventually the whole dining hall was filled to the brim with chatting girls. The usual reservedness was not present because it seemed that the nuns and their constant supervision was absent. No one was overly loud or obnoxious either. No doubt so they don't attract their attention and intervention. It was rather orderly and wasn't used as an excuse to let loose.

 

Or so I thought.

 

The chatting suddenly died down very suddenly. It happened so quickly and in unison that it creeped me out. It didn't take me long to figure out why.

 

A trio of girls had entered the dining hall. Two girls flanked the one, both who were rather unremarkable. The girl they were escorting though. Even from the center of the dining hall where we were seated, I could tell the girl at the entrance was big. She was fat, round and with a face and build like a pit bull. Ugly if you didn't catch my drift. The way she walked reminded me of a mastiff even more. Her hair was short, scruffy and ginger orange. The expression on her face was vicious, like a rabid dog. The smell on her was even worse as she got closer... And she was far enough away to walk past me on the other side of the table.

 

I dared for a moment to think that nothing would come of it, but when from the corner of her eye she spotted the remaining half of the feast in front of us, she stopped in her tracks.

 

     “What's this?” She spat while turning toward our table.

 

Feena and the other girls went stock-still. There would soon be beads of sweat on their foreheads if they tensed up any harder. We shared a long table with other girls, but they quickly scooted down as far as they could get. A buffer zone quickly formed all around the five of us with the three girls looming over the table. And this girl did loom. The reaction to my height wasn't subtle before, but now I'm starting to get why it didn't start a riot.

 

     “H-hello. Tracy,” Feena said weakly toward the pit bull like girl.

 

     “Huh?” Tracy answered rudely in kind.

 

She leaned in and got her face right up into Feena's personal space, and the poor girl shrunk in response. Even though this Tracy didn't touch her, you'd think she just rolled the girl up into a ball and was ready to toss her into the waste basket.

 

     “Did I say hello, freckle face? I said, 'what's this?'.”

 

Feena was too scared to say anything more. She was a girl built for motivational speeches, not dealing with hostilities. Tracy's search didn't stop there. Her eyes wandered over the other girls until she laid her eyes on Heather who was shaking like a leaf in the wind with tears welling up in her eyes.

 

     “Hey. Heather. Why do ya got so much on your plate? You can't eat all that.”

 

I could feel my upper lip go stiff, nostrils flare and my brow furrow.

 

     “Leave her alone, Tracy!” Gloria shouted and stood up.

 

Hearing the threat against her hegemony, Tracy slowly turned to face the tomboy. She didn't say anything but did reach out with her fat fingers and pluck a strip of side pork off Heather's plate and stuff it into her mouth. The chewing sounds she made were obnoxious and frankly disgusting. Gloria seemed to pride herself on protecting Heather, so that was enough to set her off.

 

     “I said leave Heather alone!”

 

The scrappy kid didn't get far. One of her escorts grabbed the girl by her arm and held her back. When she didn't stop thrashing, the second thug grabbed hold of her other arm and held her back in the chair.

 

     “Hey now,” Tracy said while licking the grease off her fingers. “The Almighty says charity and sharing are virtues. Just teaching little Heather a little about em. Ain't that right, Heather? We just getting along.”

 

Heather didn't respond. She was still shaking with droplets of salty water streaming down her puffy and rosy cheeks.

 

     “I said we just getting along nicely, now. Right?”

 

Tracy's greasy and now slimy hand roughly clamped down on top of Heather's head and pushed it forward then pulled it back to make her nod in agreement in an exaggerated manner. With her golden locks getting caught in the spaces between her fingers, Heather let out a short stifled yelp of pain as her hair got tugged.

 

That was enough to set me off.

 

     “Back off, bitch.”

 

The attention of the whole room turned on me. Once again, I had forgotten to mask my voice. At least I wasn't already the center of attention, so that wasn't what had caught everyone's attention. I didn't catch anyone's attention more than Tracy though. She took her large fatty hand off Heather's little head, but she didn't back off. She circled around the table and approached where I was sitting.

 

     “Haven't seen you, before,” She said as she approached.

 

Then her face was right in my personal space like it was Feena. The smell coming off of her offended me.

 

     “Why are you trying to get between good friend, huh? You wait your turn.”

 

If I kept quiet, she'd back away like she did with Feena. I figured out that much. But I was too riled up to listen to reason. But this time I remembered to keep my voice disguised.

 

     “Did I say I wanted to talk? I said 'back off'-”

 

I turned my head to face her.

 

     “-Bitch.”

 

Her face somehow managed to show an expression even more indignant than before. She stepped backward into the isle between the tables. The girls sitting at the other table scooted away in a hurry so they were always at least two arms lengths away.

 

     “Get up, ugly,” She demanded.

 

I ignored her at first.

 

     “I said Get UP... Ugly, get up!” She repeated herself.

 

I think Feena whispered something about me stopping, but I didn't listen. I swung my legs out from under the table and stood up. I stood fully upright and turned to face Tracy. The change her expression went through was worth the price of admission. I didn't bother to make myself any smaller or tuck my shoulders in either. She knew she was the tallest and biggest girl here, but she only came up to my sternum. To her credit, Tracy didn't stay deterred for long. She puffed her chest out and approached.

 

She lashed out and tried to push me. Her fat fingers slammed up against chest, but I only budged a bit. My right shoulder was thrown slightly off center, but I rebounded immediately. My reaction was automatic and instinctual. My arms shot up, my hands connected with her shoulders and I shoved her, hard. It was just one push, but the girl went reeling backwards and off balance. One of her legs kicked up, and she went tumbling over. The girls at the table across from us fled like rats from a sinking ship when her ass hit the back of a chair. The poor thing couldn't take the weight, and the front legs shattered. Without anything to stop her, she continued downward until her butt hit the stone floor, and the back of her head slammed against the edge of the wooden table.

 

The snap and clonk echoed throughout the dining hall. Everyone looked on horrified. Even the table couldn't stop her, and it was shoved across the floor and gave way when the back of her head pushed it aside. The contents of the table couldn't keep up, and several plates and bowls slid off and onto the girl. In just a few seconds, Tracy was on her back, covered in food with only a concussion to reward her for her troubles.

 

I felt bad about how good that felt. There was probably not much of a difference in weight class, but she was just a teenage girl. Even if she was a punk.

 

She was stunned. She floundered and tried to sit back up, but she was too discombobulated to do so. The two goons that were holding Gloria back let go, ran around the table and helped pull Tracy back to her feet. Even then, her eyes were unfocused, and she probably couldn't see anything other than stars. Without a word, and in a hurry, her two friends carried her, limping, out of the dining hall.

 

I just turned around and sat back down at the table. It was only then I opened my eyes to the stares of every girl in the room. Feena, Gloria, Heather and even Isabelle's expressions were completely dumbfounded. I picked up my fork, speared one of my last strips of fried pork and dropped it down on Heather's plate. I tried to continue eating, but the awkward silence was just too much for me, so I could only stare down at my plate and avoid all the glares hitting me from all around.

 

     “Wow!” A girl's voice shouted out from somewhere else in the hall.

 

That one voice broke the dam, and soon there was a whole crowd of other girls crowding around me. It was just one big mess of noise as everyone tried asking too many questions and tried to say too many things at once. My sense of reason was having a big 'I told you so' moment in the back of my head. After a few minutes, everyone got tired of trying to shout over one another. They started to talk just as much among themselves instead of yell into my ear. They spoke about what they had just seen. There were already several exaggerated rumors forming all around about me. But at last I could actually hear the girls sitting around me.

 

     “How did you- Why are you so- When did you get that strong!” Gloria shouted at me with her eyes now shining when she looked at me.

 

     “I uh... Oh dear... Oh my...” Feena blustered with her eyes spinning round and round with swirls in her eyes.

 

     “Is the mean lady gone? She's gone! Lola! Yay!” Heather shouted and threw her arms up into the air.

 

Her face and eyes were still red; she had wet cheeks and a runny nose, but a huge million watt smile plastered itself on her face complete with several missing baby teeth.

 

It seemed like a VT day, Victory over Tracy day, but the splash of cold water soon came.

 

     “You're gonna regret that,” I heard Isabelle say beside me.

 

There was only one other person in the room that wasn't celebrating, and it was the bespectacled girl sitting beside me. Her eyes were shut and she was still slowly shoveling food into her mouth, but I swear I heard her speak just then out of the corner of my eye.

 

Only ten more seconds passed, and the whole hall went quiet again. I loathed to turn my head, but it was my responsibility to do so. Standing at the entrance to the hall were two nuns. They quickly surveyed the scene, and it didn't take them long to spot me. They hovered over in their habits and flanked me on each side.

 

     “Lola. The Headmaster wants to see you. Now,” One of them said.

 

I took a deep breath and left my half unfinished plate. I spied one quick glance at the girls still seated at the table. Feena, Gloria and Heather all had expressions you'd expect on guilty dogs. Isabelle, however, she looked at me with a pained expression. I for some reason expected a 'I told you so' face from her.

 

Silently and without ceremony the three of us left the hall behind. Flooding into the room after we left were another eight nuns to clean up the mess we left behind.

 

Not a word was said. The two nuns didn't even look at me again. They simply walked beside me and turned in the right directions that led me back to the Headmaster's office at the back of the church. When they opened the door, and I stepped inside, they closed it shut behind them and vanished. Standing at the window was Sister Scarlet.

 

     “Mr. Laven. Please be seated,” She said plainly.

 

Which was odd because I expected her to sound a bit more upset. I wasn't going to temp fate, so I took the same seat I had sat in only yesterday evening. When I pulled my chair in, the withered old prune finally turned around and took her old seat opposite of me.

 

     “Mr. Laven... Do you recall what it is you told me yesterday?”

 

     “I'm far too old for a lecture-”

 

     “Mr. Laven. Do you recall?” the old nun menaced.

 

Even I was taken aback by her tone.

 

     “...I said I was going to get to the bottom of the abductions in this-”

 

     “I asked you to let the girls be. Is this your idea of upholding your end of the bargain I gave to you?”

 

     I fired back, “And it seems like you got a rampant case of bullying going on in your orphanage.”

 

     “...That is none of your concern-”

 

     “When it happens right in front of me like that? Yeah. It is.”

 

     “You have been tasked with protecting my girls from this Sabbath. Not to protect the girls in my abbey from other girls in the abbey.”

 

Instead of responding, I sat there and stewed on the great many obscenities I'd like to throw her way. Sister Scarlet stood up from her chair and hobbled back over to the window. She stared out and watched the morning sun rise between the countless green leaves of that ancient oak for a time before speaking again. She spoke softly, so soft she might have only intended those word for herself.

 

     “I would never allow for her to take things too far.”

 

A switch was flipped inside my head. Two currents connected from her words, and a thought crossed my mind that infuriated me.

 

Would never allow? And those nuns came running in pretty fast after being so blatantly absent. They also knew exactly who they needed. My eye twitched.

 

     “You knew... This is all part of your 'lesson plan'.”

 

The old nun turned around and tried to stare me down with her cataract ridden hazel eyes. I stood up so fast I knocked my chair over.

 

     “Tracy came running right to you. Because someone actually did something. That wasn't part of the agreement with her, was it?”

 

     “Have you no shame after assaulting a young girl, Mr. Laven?”

 

     “I'm too angry to worry about shame right now, Scarlet. I gave one punk girl a concussion. Once. She got some of her own medicine, and she'll get better.... What you're doing, and have been doing for fifty years, is hurt girls for life.”

 

     “I teach girls, Mr. Laven. I am not their mother. When they eventually leave these walls, I will no longer have power over them. That means I can also no longer protect them. I teach them to respect our Lord. Instill them with Virtue. Purity. Chastity. I read them the scriptures. Teach them to read and write. This is merely part of learning how to survive in the larger world outside these walls. To protect them from the wickedness of that world, they must learn to bear the brunt of evil. If they do not, when they leave these walls, they will succumb to it.”

 

     “The only thing you're teaching them is to accept evil!” I yelled back

 

The old nun had nothing to say in response. But she was not moved in the slightest. Instead, she stared at me as she would any misguided student of hers.

 

     “I do not expect a man to sympathize with the lives girls and women must live.”

 

     “Are we done here?” I asked, losing the last vestiges of my patience.

 

     “We are.”

 

     “Good. I'll be going then.”

 

I turned halfway around to start leaving when Scarlet's voice called out in a very commanding manner.

 

     “No. You will not.”

 

I stopped and turned back around.

 

     “What?”

 

     “You are to be confined to the Church,” The old hag said.

 

     “Do you not remember what I said-?”

 

     “Have the Sabbath yet abducted anyone during the daylight hours?” She asked.

 

Those words hit me like a ton of bricks. I had nothing to say.

 

     “As I said: You are to protect my girls from the Sabbath. The Sabbath works at night. During the day, you need not be with them.”

 

     I scrambled, “And this room is well warded with all these relics along with the tree outside. What if they can watch everywhere else? What do you think they'll conclude when they scry one awkward girl going back and forth like no one else. They'd think something is off about-”

 

     “Then perhaps I too shall report to the Grand Cardinal? What else can I say other than the mercenary Laven, a man with monster consorts, seeks to pollute the minds of our children? I am sure that she would object. I have heard of your deeds and rumors. I do not believe most of them. But I have yet to hear any which claim you are a perverted and vicious imp out to corrupt the impressionable minds of our most vulnerable. I think that is why she decided to seek your help. If not for that...”

 

I grit my teeth and clenched my fists.

 

     “...Do not leave this room. Food will be brought to you. When curfew is near, you shall be escorted back to the dorm room. You will sleep there, do your business of guarding the girls, then return here before prayers. This will be the arrangement until you leave-”

 

The head nun stepped away from the window and made her way past me toward the door. As she passed, she had one last thing to say.

 

     “-To which I am glad to hear will be soon.”

 

The door shut behind her, and her footsteps slowly vanished into the distance.

 

Unable to contain my fury any longer, I roared and slammed my fist into the stone wall next to me. There was a sickening crunch, and books, baubles and the like shook slightly on their shelves. I pulled my arm back and let my fist unravel at my side. It throbbed painfully, but I could still clench my fingers. It was a pain which gave me a sensation of relief compared to the burning bile gathering in my chest.

 

So I sat there in that room. The hours went by. Scarlet did not return, and the only two brief visitors who broke the monotony were nuns delivering my other two meals. I suppose there really wasn't much of a difference from a prison after all. All I could do was watch the shadows cast by the sun move across the yard and over the furniture of the room.

 

At last, when the sun had nearly set, two nuns entered the room and told me they would take me back to the dormitory. When the day had nearly become night, the girls had all retreated to their rooms. The whole abbey, everything within its outer walls, was dead. Without life. Even the nuns themselves hardly seemed alive as they escorted me and never said a word.

 

At last I was standing before the same door I was at twenty-four hours ago. There was less apprehension this time. I only had an empty feeling in my chest. When the door opened then shut behind me, the nuns left. The girls themselves seemed sapped of life and enthusiasm. There was guilt written on each of their faces. Feena had no earnest and encouraging words. Gloria had nothing scrappy or spunky to say. Even the admiration on her face that she directed at me for a brief moment was now gone. Heather looked like she was about to cry as she watched me cross the room. Only Isabelle's expression seemed the same. It was the same expression I couldn't decipher. But I didn't care what she thought now. I could only do what I could. Hopefully that would be nothing, and then I'd be on my way.

 

I crawled onto the bottom bunk, the lights had yet to be turned off and everyone was already changed. When the bells chimed outside, Feena quietly and unceremoniously blew out the candle, and the room went dark except for one ray of light from the dusk sun that swept through the darkness.

 

Once again I laid there in the semi-darkness, curled up in the fetal position, and tried in vain to sleep. It would feel like more few tedious hours until I fell asleep after just a blink.

 

When my eyes opened again, they were met with darkness. The last bit of dusk sun through the small window was now only a lucent moonbeam of dreary red.

 

I sat up on the straw mattresses, and I realized the whole room was lit by a dull red. For a moment, I thought I was in a darkroom except there were no developing photos hanging from the ceiling. A red haze filled the entire room. After I sat upright, once I got over hitting my head on the low bunk-bed above me, I looked down and on the floor were two large rotating red pentagrams.

 

Blood red pentagrams.

 

Below, a shimmer and sheen grew in intensity. A low ringing reverberated inside my head, and an orangish-red pentagram like the others formed line by line underneath my own bed. Runes of a language I have never seen before slowly formed within the confines of the pentagram and around it. Before I knew it, I was falling toward the floor. My body seemed to pass through the bed and the floor. I was cast into a shining green tube of what looked like a daemon magic hyperspace. I tumbled end over end, but with the ringing and perhaps nature of the space where sound didn't carry, I couldn't hear my own screams.

 

After tumbling through the nightmarish zone for what was probably less than ten seconds but felt like eternity, I hit stone. Luckily, I didn't hit it face-first, and the rest of my body hit it so that the force of the fall was spread out and marginalized over my whole body. Even then, it felt like I had only fallen half a meter. What hurt more was when something, or someone, landed on top of me.

 

She made a grunt when her butt hit my spine, and it was only then I was able to get a good scream of pain out when all the air was pushed out of my lungs.

 

     “L-lola?” The voice called out to me, frightened.

 

I was able to contain my writhing and screaming in pain to take a glance. Sitting on my back was Isabelle. She was still putting her glasses on her face. Her face was abjectly terrified.

 

     “Waaaaah!” A babyish voice cried nearby.

 

As my eyes adjusted to the light, or lack thereof, of where we were, I spotted Heather bawling her eyes out. Feena was cradling her and trying to calm her. Gloria was likewise trying to console the child. This was not isolated either. There were about another two dozen girls from the abbey all around us. All of them were in varying degrees of distress. Some were injured slightly. Some of them were still piled on top of one another in heaps. A few older girls were trying to calm the youngest.

 

When my eyes finally adjusted, I noticed we were in some kind of cave. The look of the walls and ceiling were definitely natural stone formations. At least it wasn't the work of a mason. Nothing looked water eroded. This was mined out. The only dim source of light were several red pentagrams on the ceiling which were still spinning. They were spinning slowly, and once they eventually stopped, they soon vanished. The whole room went dark, and there were many panicked cries and shrieks. But that too did not last long.

 

From the far edge of the room, a crack of light escaped from whatever was on the opposite side. A slab of stone opened like a door in the wall. Beyond that, the red light of the blood moon along with an eerie blue flame torch illuminated everything with a purple haze. Standing at the door was something not quite explainable.

 

A small girl appeared at the new exit. It was she who held the burning blue torch. But she also wore something far too risque and sensational for a little girl. It was a skintight suit, red, white and black. She looked like a harlequin, but the suit had too much skin showing around the thighs and armpits, and the fabric around the abdomen and chest was nearly translucent. It very nearly didn't hide anything it was supposed to. A jester's hat sat on top of a head with red and black gradient hair which billowed down to her ankles. It was a red joker from a pack of playing cards. But it soon dawned on me that I wasn't actually looking at a child.

 

Her hands and feet were completely inhuman. Her hands were uncannily larger than normal. They also looked more like claws and were colored red and black instead of her pinkish hued skin. Her feet were pointed and more like chair legs. They were certainly not human-like at all. But it was the tiny bat-like wings spouting out from her mid back and the spaded devil's tail from her bottom that gave it all away. If that wasn't enough, her red eyes had white star shaped pupils which sat above the ever present and precocious smile on her face.

 

     “Welcome! Welcome!” She rang out in an obnoxious, tooth-rottingly sweet and high-pitched singing voice. “You're all just in time for the greatest show-”

 

With a pirouette and small little dance toward her frightened and captivated audience, she put on an even brighter smile as she twirled and playfully made her way into the midst of the room.

 

     “-in heaven, hells or earth!”