Chapter Text
Her bedroom. Where she took refuge. The only area of the church she felt like she had privacy. Where her sin was shielded from the eyes of God. In the end she knew; he saw all. He judged her, even behind her closed door. She had always felt watched, but never seen. They were always watching, she was always monitored, and yet nobody had seen her in so, so agonizingly long.
The room had a harsh, clinical feel to it, nothing in it except for worn inspirational posters that she hated (and never had the courage to remove). The walls were painted a frost blue, curtains decorated with lace. Her bed, expertly made in hospital corners, reminded her of some of her earliest memories. none with her mother of course, as she had left the nunnery right after having her. They had said her mother was corrupted by sin after breaking her vow of celibacy. She was cast out of the church, leaving with everything except for her baby. She didn't care. In her eyes, God had abandoned the both of them.
As she sat in her room reminiscing about her rather tragic coming into the world, a disembodied voice rang out in her mind. “Your very birth was blasphemy.” It spat, words lurching in the back of her mind. How could she call herself a child of God when she was marked by human sin from the very beginning? She had spent all 20 years of her life like this. Wondering, and repenting for the tragedy that was her existence. The older nuns, people she had once looked up to before she knew of her own birth, had only looked at her with sadness, seeing her as a victim of the harlot that they thought her mother was. But as she grew older, uncovering the secrets of her lineage, they looked at her with disgust. After all, once she had grown into her features, that of scarlet ginger hair, pale freckled skin, and deep gloomy brown eyes, she was the spitting image of her mother.
Carrying this guilt, she grew a voice in her that she could only describe as the words of the devil, ringing in her mind. After spending the afternoon with the devil in her ear, whispering curses and driving her to madness, she decided to go for a walk. As she opened the heavy oak door with a loud creak, peering down the corridor, she stepped outside and walked down the hall. After various turns and twists, navigating the maze of a church she had grown up in, she arrived at the garden. Two years ago, when she was 18, she spent most of her days sitting in it, staring at roses with laser focus. That was until her friend came along. Her favorite of the nuns at the time, a girl who couldn't be older than 19, tall in stature and full of poise, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. The two were inseparable. When the nun found her sitting in the garden, with nothing to do, she took it upon herself to entertain her. Every day the two would meet in the garden, and the nun would teach her a variety of things, like how to sew, crochet, and paint. It was a nice change of pace from her usual church activity. She made sure to make every moment special.
Her name was Angelica, which had her convinced she was heaven sent. She often dreamed of running away from this place with Angelica, being free, finally untormented by her past. But that dream was cut short, just like the life of angelica.
The other nuns had said she died of suicide, but she knew. Knew that angelica would never kill herself. Not without getting them both out of there.
Now she was 20 years old, older than angelica ever got to be. And still trapped here. Still waiting. Biding her time for what felt like an eternity. Waiting for Angelica, her heavensent, to return to her. She knew she shouldn't feel this way, after so long. But angelica was the only good thing in her life. And without her, her life was devoid of light. Tired of her own misery, she swiftly left the garden and walked back down the corridor. That's where she ran into sister Miriam. She was the oldest of the nuns, and resented her most. Miriam hated her mother, and saw her as an extension of the woman she hated.
Now that she was grown, Miriam was… scared of her; most of all. Seeing her as dangerous. She wanted her cast out of the church, but she knew that they both wanted that too. So she accepted sharing space with the child of a harlot if it meant they were in misery.
The two passed each other on the corridor wordlessly. But the hate was there. The resentment. Yet neither dared to speak of it.
She was on her way to the altar, hoping to find some peace. The truth is that no matter how much she hated that place, and no matter how much she resented it for trapping her like an animal, she could never shake the hold that the church had on her. She prayed every day, confessed every week like every other nun. But she was never treated like any other nun. Their whispers about her, swirling around her mind. Spoken with the same voice as the devil, rotting away in the back of her head. Every day she walks the halls, with a solemn expression. Her reputation was marred by the sins of her mother, the rumored harlot, and she sat quietly as the woman that gave her life was spoken of like a ghost story. And she sat quietly, knowing she was living evidence of the ghastly scandal.
The days were long. But it was finally nighttime when she returned to refuge in her room. It was hard for her to fall asleep, memories of the day keeping her awake. Memories of Angelica. But when she finally did sleep, she rarely dreamt.
Except for tonight. Tonight, she was struck with a rather morbid dream. No, not a dream. A vision.
In a blurred haze, she pictures a graveyard. The names and headstones blend together, until her eyes are met with a striking picture of her dearest Angelica's name on a gravestone. Laying atop it, a woman in a bloodied habit, wings of an angel sewn into her spine, weeping in a hysterical mess. The woman's neck snaps toward her in a sharp, agitated movement, showing her own face, rabid and angered. Looking at the figure in her vision, staring into her features with fear struck into her heart, she sees not her own face; but the demon that spent its life festering in the back of her head. They stare into each other's eyes for a moment, before the creature, no, the demon rises, using her battered and bloody wings to take flight, and descending on her like a harpy. A vengeful SHRIEK cuts through the air, as the figure grabs her by the neck and twists, emitting a sound nothing short of the work of the devil himself, the sounds of crunching bones and the wet sound of splitting flesh echoing into the fog as her head gets ripped from her spine by the figure, the creature, the DEMON wearing her face. As her head falls to the ground, her face preserved in a final look of agony and fear, everything cuts to darkness.
She wakes up in a cold sweat, the clock on her bedside reading 6:66, an impossible number for it to display. She throws it across the room in a panic, staring at the shattered pieces on the floor, shards of glass rearranging themselves to spell “damned.” the woman is convinced. Her prophetic vision was a final word from God, damning her.
Maybe god didn't abandon her when her mother was cast out after all. Maybe he was watching. Judging her sinful life and her sinful love of his angel. And this was his retribution, taken in the form of her mania and torment.
If only Angelica was there.