Sister Maria

Sister Maria made her way slowly through the halls of the convent. It was yet another night when she could not finish her supper, so she had quietly excused herself from the dining hall, her insides a heated, churning mess. Beads of sweat began to form on her forehead, and her hands became clammy. Behind her eyes she felt a piercing pain, and she knew it was about to happen again.

Though the hallway to her room was empty, she heard endless growls and screams. Visions of Nordic runes and other languages of the ancients flashed upon the walls. As she reached out to open the door to her room, Maria heard the voice for the first time. Maria Crocifissa della Concezione…It was her full Catholic title, Maria Crucifix of the Conception. The voice she heard was more menacing than any of the others that had invaded her mind over the past weeks. Maria knew that this voice belonged to one of high rank, perhaps the highest rank, of the forces of Hell. She could feel it grip her heart, feel it squeezing the breath from her breast.

She entered her room, nearly falling through the door, and made her way straight to the window. There, by the light of candle upon her desk, she did not see her own reflection, but the reflection of what had invaded her. Eyes of the brightest, unnatural yellow stared at her through reddened leathery skin; its face was framed in the blackest of hair that fell to its shoulders, and behind it was the faintest hint of large black wings.

The churning in her guts was too much, and Maria turned from the reflection in the window and flew to the chamber pot at the end of her meager bed. Her half-digested supper steamed in the cool copper of the chamber pot, but all she saw was flaming maggots amidst charred human flesh. She crawled to her desk where parchment and her quill stood at the ready.

Once Maria had taken her seat, the visions of the hallway came at her mind too quickly to make sense of them, but the voice in her head, the voice of him, carried the key to unlock those visions. He spoke to her in a convoluted mix of Norse, Greek, Arabic, and Latin. The visions that accompanied the speech were terrifying and fast, but her hand grabbed the quill and began to scratch on the parchment.

Upon a flaming hill she saw her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, consumed by Hellfire; she saw the Holy Light above his charred crown of thorns dimmed amidst the carnage, and weeping under a thundercloud of darkness behind was God Himself, wizened and powerless.

“Dead weights…” Maria heard the voice say, her quill marking the parchment with mechanical precision.

“God thinks He can free mortals…”, it said, the sweat dripping into her eyes unnoticed as she stared at the wall. Shackled and naked in her vision, mankind was left to trudge through fire-scorched wastelands as Jesus died for nothing upon the hill. Her fear petrified her, yet the quill continued to put ink to parchment. The voice continued in her head, speaking of the ills of mankind and its misplaced faith in a failed God.

The pious and the meek were down on bended knees looking to a Heaven that no longer existed. The fallen angels of the failed God stood over them, whips in hand, flogging those who had placed their faith in a powerless deity and stomping the hands of those who had given to others in His name. All souls were damned, and the voice came again, clear and malevolent, “the system works for no one…”

Even Death, he who was feared and revered for his part in the process, could not escape this future of abandoned hope. Hell was at the shores of the Earth, and Death stood at the prow of a boat, accepting the payment of one’s soul for passage. The voice again, “perhaps now, Styx is certain…”

And into the vision stepped the beast itself, the one from the window reflection, its back to her. In her head she felt his presence beckoning to her. You are the one I need, Maria, to stand by my side. In the vision, Maria saw herself getting closer to him. The panic overwhelmed her as the sky above darkened to pitch, lightning flashing so bright it stung her eyes. An Earth without Heaven, its king now the greatest evil of Creation, lay before her. Forget your God, you and I can rule this place. Your fantasies will be reality, and you shall be my queen.

The beast began to turn to her as the distance between them continued to close. Those yellow eyes encompassed her soul, and she couldn’t find the ability to let out a scream. Back and forth her head went as she tried with all of her might to deny the beast its prize. He held out his hand waiting for hers, her sign of acceptance of his offer. And the tears began to pour down her cheeks.

At the final moment, Maria saw the change in the beast’s expression, and she felt the scream of rage and fear on the precipice. His fingertips grazed hers as the scream burst forth from her lungs. The vision before her began to crack and crumble as the scream continued unabated, and the beast let out a growl of defiant anger. Finally, Maria broke free of the vision with such force that it threw her to the floor, hands covered in ink and the letter in her hand. She lay there unconscious, the fire of the candle on her desk failing in the advancing night.

Maria came to with Father Giorgio standing over, and two other sisters behind him. He was calling her name. All she could say in response was, “The Devil was here.”