Artist: Ms. Amber Forbes Title: Sister Evelyn: Part One Talent: Writer Stay Flushed, Stay Creative Sister Evelyn There is a candle on the prie dieu in the Room of Retribution, its flame dancing just beneath a painting of a witch nailed to a cross. How fitting. I smirk and snatch it off the top of the prayer desk. I draw the flame across the tender part of my forearm, hissing as it burns across the snowy whiteness of my skin. The flame teases the edges of me, but I want more. This time I want my skin to blister, for my flesh to rise in painful bumps I can tear open to let pain bleed down my arm. But all I get is ashen blackness. I push the flame into my arm, clapping a free hand over my mouth as the fire sizzles into me. I gasp, breathing in deeply. Fire is a witch’s mark, a witch’s sin, a witch’s undoing. I am a witch, a sin that is the worst of them all, and I deserve to be treated as such. The flame sizzles out. All I am left with is an ugly redness. I pull the sleeve of my gray dress over it, suppressing a scream as the rough fabric kisses it. I stare at the mural in front of me that extols hatred for witches by depicting them burning on crosses, being hung, beheaded, whipped, and all manner of torture that is supposed to drive wayward sisters mad as we sit in this room of punishment. It doesn’t drive me mad though. Why would it? My father’s tirades against witches have hardened me to what the world wants to do to us. We are never spoken of, but the witch-hating propaganda around this cold city of Malva speaks for us. I have been in the Room of Retribution more times than I can count. I have hurt my sisters for reasons I can’t even remember. Today I tore a clump of hair off Sister Ciel’s head: she wouldn’t stop poking me during class. “You are prone to violence,” Sister Jessamine once told me. “You broke a sister’s pinky because she teased you about your low marks.” Sister Jessamine hates me. Any little infraction winds me up in here, and while she thinks it is supposed to punish me, it is a brief respite from her and all my incorrigible sisters. Oftentimes I do not think vying for a position in the Professed Order as a nun is worth it, but my father wants me here for he thinks I would otherwise be useless. I am too socially awkward to be married off. Too “prone to violence” too, not that I care. “You are useless at everything,” Father told me as he taught me to waltz years before I came here. “I will have you pray to Deus for the rest of your life. Pray that you will be made useful one day.” And so here I am at Cathedral Reims, trying to become a nun, when I do not want to be one. I don’t know what I want to be. A lock creaks behind me. The door swings open, revealing Sister Jessamine, and even in a habit, one knows she is lean, for the fabric moves about her in waves. She grabs me by the arm and starts dragging me down the narrow corridor of classrooms buried in the constricted worldview of the religious elites. “Time for elocution, Sister Evelyn. I trust you have learned your lesson.” “Let go of my arm.” “I can’t have you running off. You’ve done that before, you know.” “You don’t have to squeeze then.” “I wish I could trust you, Sister Evelyn, but you have yet to give me a reason.” Sometimes I wish I could take a candle to Sister Jessamine’s bright blue eyes. What is she doing being a nun anyway? She could marry any man she desired. The only reason I think any woman would come to a convent like this and torture herself is if she had no potential to be married off. Sister Jessamine opens one of the classroom doors and gives me a shove inside, pointing to a desk at the front. Several of my classmates laugh. I bare down on them with a glare, shutting them up for good. They know what I will do to them should they persist. I have a jewelry box filled with clumps of different-colored hair. Sister Jessamine takes the front of the classroom and goes behind an aged lectern, training her eyes on us all. “Today I will partner you with another sister and give you a topic. You and your sister are to come up with a speech that will be presented tomorrow. But you only have this class to work on it. There will be no homework.” She takes a breath, continuing. “The purpose of this speech is to train you as a future nun. As future nuns you may be called upon to inspire Malva with heartfelt words during times of crises, and you need to be able to know what to say when the situation demands you step forward.” Sister Jessamine prattles on about the necessities of nuns stepping up to be leaders, and my eyes wander around the classroom, taking in all my gray-dress sisters who dutifully scribble down notes in their leather-bound notebooks. I am the only one who refuses to touch her quill that grows out of the inkwell in the corner of the desk. I never take notes in classes. I never study. I never pass my tests, and therefore never receive good marks. I don’t want to be here. So where do I want to be? Where can a witch be? We all disappear sooner or later. There was a girl here, Sister Rachel. I think she was a witch. The priest of Norbury, a rich town far from Malva, came for her one day in comportment, and we never saw her again. Never heard from her. The nuns refused to tell us anything about her. She was gone. Like that. I will be too, and even though I can control my fire, it is my fate as a witch. I didn’t find out I was a witch through any dramatic means. I just wanted to light a candle one day, and light a candle I did. Now I am too ashamed to use my fire. “Sister Evelyn!” I whip my head at Sister Jessamine, who stands over me with a ruler in hand. “Stick your hand out.” I sigh, doing as she orders. She gives me five good whacks on my hand, agitating the blister spawning across my forearm. She pulls the ruler back into her habit, crossing her arms. “You will be paired with Sister Emma.” I cringe. She pairs off the rest of the sisters, and Sister Emma comes up to me, notebook in her arms. She wrinkles her pert nose, sitting down next to me. “I don’t like you, you know,” she says, tucking a brown curl behind her ear that has fallen from her chignon. I smile. “I don’t like anybody.” “And that is why I don’t like you.” She sighs, opening her notebook. “You better take notes when Sister Jessamine issues our topic. I am not failing because of you.” “I probably won’t.” “Why do you hold such an attitude?” “Why shouldn’t I?” “I can give you a myriad of reasons, Sister Evelyn. You’re at the bottom of our class and in a year we’re supposed to be tested for profession in the Professed Order. If you can’t bring your marks up, you won’t be considered.” “And why should I care?” “You’re hopeless.” Sister Jessamine comes by and hands a slip of paper to Sister Emma. Sister Emma smiles and accepts the paper, unfurling it from its roll. Her brown eyes brighten as she reads over whatever is contained on that slip. Her lips curl into to a smile. “Propaganda and its purposes. What a marvelous topic, Sister Evelyn. Even you can’t be dispassionate about this.” She narrows her eyes at me. “I’m sure even you can think of something.” I can think of something, but I don’t want to, because what other propaganda is there in Malva? What other purpose does religion serve? We live to hate. I pull myself up from the desk. “I’m excusing myself to the wash closet, Sister Jessamine.” She raises an eyebrow at me. “You should have let me know before class started. You only have fifty minutes to work on this.” “I know, but I have to go.” She sighs. “All right.” She looks at Sister Emma. “Sister Emma, escort Sister Evelyn to the wash closet to make certain she does not dally.” Sister Emma nods and rises, following me out of the classroom. When we are halfway to the wash closet, Sister Emma rushes up beside me and laughs. “I know you’re afraid of public speaking, Sister Evelyn, but even this is pathetic. You should have known you weren’t going to get away going by yourself.” “I tried.” Somehow I will find a way to rid myself of Sister Emma. This is not the first time I’ve left in the middle of class to get away from an assignment I don’t find appealing. There is no way I am going to do that propaganda speech. I already drown in self-loathing; I don’t need any more. “Don’t be such a coward, Sister Evelyn. How about this? You can take notes and I will do the speech, including the speaking.” “No.” “You’re so boorish, you know that? How you ever managed to get into Cathedral Reims at all surprises me. I heard from the Mother Superior you couldn’t get into a finishing school because you failed your interviews.” Sister Emma laughs, a long drawn-out laugh that is like glass shattering. “I tried out for many finishing schools and received so many acceptance letters.” We stop in front of the wash closet. I stand, akimbo. “Oh, and what happened? Did your father finally decide you were too ugly for a finishing school?” The muscle in her jaw tightens. “For your information, Evelyn, I chose to serve Deus myself. I found the feminine world too shallow for my tastes.” She straightens, matching my height. “Mother Aurelia took pity on you, you know. Otherwise, you would have had nowhere to go.” Her tone darkens. “You fit in nowhere.” Balling my fists, I grab Sister Emma and shove her in the wash closet, hoping I can buy myself some time to get away from her. When I pull away, I gasp, realizing I burned a handprint into Sister Emma’s arm. She opens her mouth to scream, but I clamp my hand over her mouth and shove us both into the wash closet, closing the door until we are left in semi-darkness. Sister Emma takes in short, quick breaths, her eyes wide and ringed with tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!” For once this is an apology I mean—if only because I am caught. She shakes her head, grabbing my wrist. She manages to pry my hand off her mouth. “You’re--you’re a--” “You better not say it, Emma.” “How can I not?” She purses her lips, tears running down her round cheeks. “You witch.” “You can’t tell anyone, Emma! Do you know what they’ll do to me?” “They’ll take you away, that’s what they’ll do. They’ll get you away from those of us who are innocent!” I pull away from her and pull down my sleeve, showing her my blistered arm. Old burn scars cover my arm in whorls like a dried seabed. “This is what I do to punish myself, Emma. I need no outside forces.” Emma gasps, covering her small mouth with both hands. She tries to back away from me but seems to realize she’s trapped in a wash closet. “Why do you hate witches, Emma? Is it because the Vulgate tells you to? Is that it?” “You burned me.” “It was an accident.” She shakes her head. “You burned me. You are a sin, an enormous sin. Your parents are sinners. A Seven Deadly Sin births a witch, remember? We are supposed to despise that.” My eyes water as I begin to realize my options are dwindling, not that I had many in the first place. “You hate me because of what I am, but you never knew anything about me in the first place.” “I’m sorry, Evelyn, but you are a danger to us all. You could kill someone with that fire!” Gritting my teeth, I grab Sister Evelyn and shove my finger down her throat. She cries out, a tiny pathetic cry that will soon be pitched to the darkness. This is the only way I can protect myself. This is about me right now. This is not about Emma, her needs, her wants, her cruel, cruel desires. Me and my survival. Me. I funnel fire down her throat knowing I can blame her death on something else, effectively protecting my well-being. Emma convulses in my hold, unable to scream. Her eyes widen, warm tears snaking in rivulets down her cheeks. She tries to bring her hands up to grab me, but her breathing begins to slow as the fire sears her lungs. Her convulsions die down, and she goes still, the light draining from her eyes. Emma falls into my arms. I tear the burned material off her arm and throw it into the toilet. We can look as if we were fighting. Once the smoke from burning flesh clears, I start screaming. I seem to scream for eternity, my screams caught in a void. I heighten them, not wanting to run, leaving Emma’s collapsed body in a dirty wash closet. That would be far too suspicious. The doors are thrown open. Sister Jessamine finds me, a sobbing mess with Emmas lifeless body draped over my arms. My tears come on harder, thicker. “She started convulsing, and then she fell still!”
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 19:33:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015