Apparently I missed Vigils, breakfast, Lauds, Mass, Lectio Divina, morning works, Midday Prayer and lunch. So the others had grown concerned and Valeria went to check on me. I was fine for the most part upon my awakening, but there was a strong sense of heaviness, as if I was an empty vessel suddenly filled with lead to the very brim. Even my eyelids felt leaden when I blinked the drowsiness out of my eyes. And when I got up – mind you – from the floor, the whole body felt as if it was cast out of iron.

To Val’s question, “What happened?” I simply had no answer, for I simply had no memory of what the fuck had actually happened. It was a dream-like state, blurry bits and pieces of me crawling through the vines in the greenhouse, lighting the candles. Book. Salt. Shadows. What for? I couldn’t remember shit from last night, scratched the back of my head and shrugged my shoulders like I were hangover. 

“Well, thank fuck you’re okay. No need to isolate you like the others.”

“The others?”

“Sarah, Nancy and Elizabeth. No shows like you.” 

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Mhm.” Val shrugged. “Sick, I guess?”

“Sick?”

“Fever and stuff. Maybe a flue. I’m not surprised. This place is a fucking ice cube. They don’t even carry heaters! What a joke… Imma ask Ronan to get me one. You need?” Ronan. This boy would get her an elephant, a purple one with green stripes, if she wanted to. 

“Er…would be nice.” 

“No shit it would.”

“So what’s with Nancy and all? They’re–isolated you said?” 

“Yeah, we put them in infirmary in case it’s contagious. What’s all this?” Valeria pointed to a pile of salt crystals mixed with crumbled plants and candle wax. 

I gawked absently at the mess on the floor, then back at Val. 

“I–don’t remember,” I mooed, stunned by my amnesia.

She raised a quizzical brow. “Were you summoning? I got your text.”

Fuck. Was I? Why can’t I remember? 

“I thhhh–ink. But…no? I don’t think so.”

Val frowned, scrutinizing me a moment. “Are you sure you’re feeling ’aight?”

“I’m fine.”

“Come here.” She felt for my forehead. “No temperature?”

“No.”

“And nothing’s bothering you.”

“No.”

She threw her hands in the ear. “Then get yo’ lazy ass up! I’ve been scrubbing cow’s shit all by myself since eight!” 

My absence was to be explained by a common headache, for I had no desire to be around actual sickos. I told the nuns I felt perfectly fine otherwise and ‘eager’ to resume my duties. When I went ahead with work, however, I found I could not move a muscle without applying immense amounts of energy as the earlier heaviness seemed to magnify tenfold. It seriously felt like I had gained 300 pounds. Or 400. Or wore a 400-pound armor that weighed me down. I could hardly lift my legs from the ground to move. Every step was laborious, to the point were I needed a breather in between walking from one room to the next, and that was with no staircases. Only my head was light, emptied of recent memories. Have I fallen and hit my head? I speculated. Why can’t I remember a thing? What did I do last night? It bothered me so much that at some point I let it go for how stressed it had made me.  

That day was going by exactly how it was supposed to go, very repetitively, very boring, very blah. But weird shit began to happen closer to the evening. The monastery had appointed me as the helper to sister Ann-Mary who was the head of the Eucharist bread department. So sister Ann-Mary and I were just wrapping up with cutting sheets of bread into communion disks and bagging them into boxes when I had a sudden urge to feed someone. The thought was so random and so nagging that I had to stop what I was doing and listen carefully to what went in my head. Then, I remember, I heard someone say, feed me. But who could have said it besides Ann-Mary? No one else was in the kitchen, just the two of us. When I asked the nun if she had said something, she replied with a definite no. I had nothing else to do but to shrug it off. I was also pretty tired by then – a possible reason for my impaired judgment. I let it go. 

Vespers. The community had gathered together in the chapel at about 4:50 p.m. and at 5 o’clock the evening prayer had begun. Exactly then another strange thing had happened, a flashback. Vespers were sung in Latin, so while I was pronouncing the words, a picture immediately emerged: I am reciting a Latin prayer midst burning candles and arranged herbs. Hello. I stared at the words on my prayer sheets, trying hard to recreate the rest of the picture while the others hailed their throats apart. I couldn’t remember the harder that I tried, gave up after several attempts and resumed the vespers absentmindedly. 

The service was followed by supper. We ate to a brittle voice of an elderly nun reading Psalm 22 and right after had about an hour of quiet time to ourselves before the Compline, or Night Prayer. While most of the sisters enjoyed their crafts in the recreation room, Val, a few other sisters and I were sitting in the living area near our small library (the place was the warmest), minding our business. 

Feed me. 

I looked at Valeria. “What?”

She gave me a reciprocal side stare. “What?”

“Did you say something?”

She shook her head no. 

I frowned. “Never mind.” 

Val resumed flipping through a Christian periodical, which she had chosen merely to look at pictures as the journal was heavily illustrated. 

Feed me. 

I stared at Valeria. She was vacantly turning pages. I frowned deeper. My eyes slowly scanned the others. Sister Sofie – the old nun who was reading the scripture earlier was now knitting a scarf in a comical slow-mo. Sister Mary Rehema, a middle-aged Kenyan woman, engrossed by the Bible in her hands. Next to her another ‘stone’, unmoving Kenyan female Sister Fatima who also studied the word. Sister Lorraine, an artsy asian lady enjoyed her coloring book with a softly squeaking felt-tip pen. Beside her – Sister Alice, enjoying the process of sister Lorraine’s precise coloring. And sister Beatrice (out of all the nuns she seemed the most peculiar) was roaming in circles about the spotless bookshelves hunting for specks of dust. 

What I’m trying to say here is that none of them looked hungry. 

So I purposely did nothing for the remainder of the resting hour and instead of calming my tits like the rest intently observed my company, hoping to catch the hungry fellow. No one uttered a syllable. Only Val sniffed occasionally as she had acute sinusitis and couldn’t help her ever stuffed nose. I let it go. 

8 o’clock: Compline, our final gathering. No incident had occurred during the prayer, and afterwards the Grand Silence followed. But as the women each creeped into her cell, the electricity went ballistic. Literally. The lights flickered, turned on and off, some of the bulbs were heard bursting, including the ones on a big chandelier in the refectory which blew out, trembling violently, as abruptly as it had turned on. When I had flipped the switch on in my room, the light shattered to total darkness. Of course the grand silence had to be postponed, and Compline was evidently not the final gathering of the day. With candles and flashlights in hands the nuns thronged the hall, each one speculating about possible reasons for the malfunction. 

Lack of insulation? 

Power surge? 

Faulty parts? 

Another light bulb exploded in the distance. And another one. And one more! And three more! All were loud and aggressive.

“Good Heavens! What is this?” Exclaimed sister Fatima. 

“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” replied sister Dorothea. She was our ‘electrician’ nun who’d usually fix little things like changing a bulb, or taping a broken wire, or replacing an outlet. But now she looked totally perplexed. “I’ve never seen it happen before.”

“Me neither.” 

“We should check on the sisters in the infirmary,” someone in the shadows suggested.

“I’ll go with you.” Someone in the shadows agreed. 

Two nuns were heard shuffling away.

“I will make a few calls,” said the abbess. “Someone needs to come and check what is going on here. Everyone, please stay put as it might be dangerous to walk around with all the light bulbs bursting.” Holding a candle, which reflected in her huge eyeglass lenses, she disappeared into darkness accompanied by the ongoing, echoing explosions.  

I found Valeria in the crowd. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“No, but I need it to stop soon. I’m–” Val looked around to make sure no one heard her before she hissed into my ear, “I’m fucking exhausted.”

I sighed. If she was exhausted, then I was dead. In fact I was so dead that, despite the lamps and bulbs and chandeliers ceaselessly blowing up, I still managed to fall into a slumber, albeit unpleasant for how cold I felt all the while. 

Upon the arrival of electricians, the sounds of exploding glass had completely stopped (perhaps because there were no more light bulbs to explode) and the area hummed with silence. And so, when inside had marched three loud men in sturdy boots, 3 grave warriors buckled up and equipped with all sorts of tools that jingled to their each step, I shivered back to consciousness. The men took about an hour to go over every floor and every room and every socket that existed in the building. The result – no source of electrical leakage was found. Baffled electricians only shrugged but had no explanation for what might have had caused it. The one useless thing they could confirm was that, indeed, there were no more working light bulbs as absolutely all of them blew up to tiny crystals. And so, we were simply dealing with hundreds of exploded light bulbs and a full day of cleaning up their shards. 

“Great.” I heard Valeria grumble as she trailed back into her cell along with everyone else.

 

                                                                                                                    †††

 

The following day was nothing less of bonebreaking torture. We prayed and cleaned, and prayed and cleaned. And prayed and cleaned. Floor after floor. Swept shard after shard. Replaced bulb after bulb. And the worst part about it is that we wasted too much time on praying in between cleaning when we could have been done with the mess a long, lo-o-ong time ago. But with constant divine offices the cleaning seemed never-ending, for the monastery itself felt like a Minotaur's maze. I want to point one thing out, however. During prayer I was praying. Usually I’d not waste my breathe on idolizing thin air, but that day I sincerely kneeled and worshipped, as I there was another me inside of me who believed in what I did not and forced me to comply. 

It was 4 p.m. when we, and by we I mean the elders with arthritis, had agreed on a break. My joy could not be contained when I flopped on the chair in a parlor to rest my buzzing legs. My head pounded, and I could still hear the crunching sound cutting my ears. For how long do you imagine should you sweep those damn shards to be hearing them crush beneath your feet when your feet barely touch the ground? Madness. I had been sweeping those damn shards for way too long. I did need a break. 

A small break.

I closed my eyes for just a moment, my body turning to mush, when I heard Philip bark. Who cares. I disregarded it and kept on drifting off into a slumber. Then sister Dominique, the youngest of the nuns besides Valeria and me, twenty-seven years of age, yelled at the top of her youthful lungs all the way from the main entrance: Fire! Fire! The barn is on fire!  

I sprung right up, exhaustion turning to adrenaline as I sprinted to the barn. I remember how before helping the others I was momentarily paralyzed by the view before me: the purest snow, and the brightest fire. The picture was so surreal, so vivid and loud, it momentarily rooted me to the spot. And then another flashback of one instant: Two flames burning. No. Eyes. I shook my head. Sisters Dominique, Dorothea, Beatrice and the Kenyan nuns along with several others where already running in and out, fabric over their faces, pulling sheep by the ears and carrying flopping chickens out from the smoke. 

“Are there more?” I yelled.

“Yes!” Rehema yelled back. 

I dashed into the barn to Rehema’s, “Be careful,” my eyes teary and stinging from the gases as I tried to make out living beings through toxic fog. Footsteps behind me. Some nun bolted in and out with something in her arms. Must be a chicken again. I moved further in, heard agitated moo-oo-oo and baa-aa-aa. Two cows and two sheep stood against the wall, encircled by a ring of flames. And on a pillow of hay – Paul, the dumbfounded goose. As I was about to make another step towards the animals, there was a dull creak, not something you want to hear when you’re standing amidst flames inside of a burning barn. A spark fell on my skin, bit it hard.

“OUCH!” I cried out. “Argh! Fucking hell!” 

I heard my name then. It was Val. 

“EVE! WHERE ARE YOU?” She shouted. 

“I’M NEAR THE LADDER!” I shouted back, rubbing on a sore. “THERE ARE MORE ANIMALS HERE!”

“COME BACK NOW! THIS THING IS ABOUT TO COLLAPSE!” 

I did not respond. There was simply no time for talking: I needed to act quick. So I yanked at a rope that was hanging on a pole nearby, jumped over the flames (thankfully they weren’t big), in a mad rush tied it around whatever furry necks I saw, grabbed a goose and quickly began to pull the beasts out of the flames. They wouldn’t budge, too afraid of the fire in front of them.

“KEEP PULLING!”

I looked over the shoulder to see Valeria dart past me. She was fast, leaped over the flames like a doe, with a whip in hand, and began striking the cows to force them to move. 

“COME ON BITCHES! GO! GO!” She roared.

It worked. The cattle sprinted out of the smoke, missing Fatima by a hair as the latter hopped in to help us pull out the animals. It was a miracle the building, consumed by angry flames, still stood even after we had all came out of it. The firefighters had arrived just minutes later to extinguish the fire. The end result – a few broken logs, parched walls and a hole in the roof. The cause of  the fire – unknown. 

The thing about monasteries, poor or well-off, is that they rely heavily on the little incomes from their little inside businesses, their parishioners’ charity and benefactors that want to see them flourish. The thing about the Abbey of Saint Mary was that it was neither poor nor rich, fluctuated in between. It was too big and too ancient, great as an attraction, yet a demanding building in need of oil, light, hot water and major renovation, not so great for the pocket. It stood for well over two hundred years, and as the years passed and prices grew, it began to demand not only the energy but the money, a lot of money. And now this – two accidents. The monastery had suffered two accidents. Back to back. We were now facing many damages and still more expenses to repair those damages. So as we were all sitting in sister Evelyn’s office, faces covered in soot, and the abbess pronounced the costs that had to be made, our faces grew even darker than they already were. We can wave the heaters goodbye, I thought. However, the worst part about this whole situation was that no one knew what had caused this hot mess express. And without knowing the causes there could be no way of preventing future accidents. Only hope that this would not happen again, which everyone obviously prioritized over rationale. 

“The Lord says: cast all worries on me. Let us pray, sisters.” 

What for?! I wanted to blare in despair…yet I prayed in despair all at once. When I glanced at Val she only rolled her eyes at me in a what-bullshit way. I pursed my lips at her, as if in agreement, when I did not agree. I was confused.  I prayed. That was the only prayer we had done, too busy tending to the animals we had rescued. 

The monastery had lots of space outside, which would be perfect for cattle during summer time, but because we were in winter, we had to make space inside to keep the animals warm. 10 cows, 9 sheep, 13 chickens and 1 awkward goose were all placed in the hall, which we had to clear of all furniture to make more room. Old rugs and blankets were laid out on the floor, some grain and weeds to graze on, a few buckets with water. Fortunately, the animals were all but obedient, each went into its own corner and sat there quietly. I speculated: perhaps the shock had made them so sluggish. But it was a good thing, at least we didn’t need to worry about a chick or a cow jogging inside the monastic walls. 

When the animals had settled down and rested quietly, we followed suit. After all, we had had no break and hardly any food except for Jewish bread and quick vegetable broth. I was glad to pass out anywhere, even next to sheep on a stinky rug. I didn’t care. I just wanted to close my red eyes and for a few hours forget about everything. I was so grateful when sister Ann-Mary volunteered to keep a night watch to make sure no more accidents would happen, especially now that the animals were inside the building. So I checked on them out of courtesy before retiring into my room. I sat by one of the cows that I had rescued, Missy. Her head perked up and her dark beastly eyes framed by fluffy lashes stared right into mine for a long moment. I felt it was her way of saying thank you. “You’re welcome, sweetie,” I murmured and scratched her behind the ear. She leaned to my touch. “Good night, sister.”

“Good night. May the Lord keep us safe.” Ann-Mary replied. 

“Amen.”

 

                                                                                                                     †††

And there was evening, and there was morning – the third day. 

Well, let’s start with the fact that I felt like absolute shit when I woke up. Was it because I slaved all day the day before? Or was it the hard bed? The position in which I slept? Or the nightmare about a roaming shadow haunting me all night long? We’ll never know. But I groaned and got my ass up. On my way to the washroom, I felt my stomach turn upside down. Took me a second to connect nausea to an awful stink that stretch all the way down the hallway. And each step that brought me closer to the hall made the smell and my stomach 10 times worse. I put my hand over my nose and mouth, my brows furrowed in confusion and disgust. When I reached the hall my scalp prickled. The animals. Every single animal that we had rescued was dead. Mouths open, teeth and tissue rotting as if they’d been there for a year. Bloody sores oozing all over the bodies and flies buzzing angrily all over the sores. “Missy…” I stared tearfully at the gaping lifeless eyes of the cow. It seemed like a bad dream for how horrific the scene appeared. I looked around to see if anyone else was there. No one. And where was sister Ann-Mary? Her chair was empty. Only dead silence and nasty buzzing of flies filled the air. What the actual devil is happening?! My knees shook. I turned around and bumped into Valeria. 

“Agh–Je–!”

“What the hell is this–Oh shit!” She hissed, goggling at the decaying carcasses scattered all over the area. Then she stared at me, for the first time with genuine apprehension, and whispered, “Eve. What. The fuck. Happened.” She’d said it as if it was my fault. 

I shook my head, distressed. “I have no idea.” 

“Where the fuck is everyone?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, Val. I just got here a minute ago.” I kept shaking my head, hoping I’d shake off the nightmare I was in at the moment.

“We need to notify the others,” Valeria kept her voice low to be able to curse, “in case they don’t know yet. Although I highly doubt they didn’t notice. This is fucking insane. This is out of line.”   

I was about to say something but swayed, dizzy and queasy from what I had witnessed. Val pulled my arm the opposite way, away from the hall and outside into the indigo winter morning. I breathed deep and long, clearing my lungs off of deathly stink. 

“You good? How ‘r you feeling?” Val asked.

“Sick. And scared.” I breathed some more. “What is happening in this goddamn place?” 

She frowned as if trying to solve a math problem. “I have no fucking idea…but none of it makes any sense… Alright. Let’s find the others. And let’s hope this time they won’t fucking pray but actually do something useful.”

A dismal gathering took place in the guest parlor at the east side of the monastery, opposite to the west one where corpses rotted and reeked of death. All 31 sisters, faces gloomy as stormy clouds and bodies rigid as wood planks, thronged the space. All 31 sisters emitted pure dread. 

“What are we going to do?!” Sister Fatima despaired, looking at everyone with the widest, whitest eyeballs I had ever seen. 

“Anything but praying.” Valeria whispered into my ear derisively. 

Dominique began to snivel. In a moment, three other sensitive sisters, Lilith, Lucia and Carmel joined the crying song, and several other nuns rubbed their clueless foreheads to pink irritation. There sat panic-stricken sister Wendy, and here sat fear-stricken sister Catherine, both mature women with the eyes of a lost child. I observed them all, looked closer and saw shock, confusion, even anger displaying among the women. It’s like they were in disbelief of their God’s absence after so much obedience and worship and faith. 

“So you had noticed nothing strange?” The question was directed to sister Ann-Mary by the abbess. 

“Nothing at all,” she responded, and then added, hesitantly, “I fell asleep. I am sorry. I don’t know how this happened.” 

I felt Val’s lips near my ear again. “She literally apologized for being human.” 

I gave her a look. She did.

“Do not blame yourself,” creaked sister Agnes, a ninety-year-old with essential tremors. “We are only humans.”

“Yeah, okay…” Valeria spat into my ear.

 “These accidents are no coincidence, ladies,” Sister Sofie spoke.

“Coincidence or not, but we must find an explanation to all of this,” said Beatrice. 

“What are you suggesting?” The abbess asked no one in particular. 

“I don’t know,” replied Beatrice. 

“I do,” Val jumped in after the final tsk into my ear. “Clearly the grounds are contaminated.” 

“Contaminated?” I heard someone question. 

“Yes, poisoned. Maybe there is some kind of leakage that emits toxins. Maybe it’s coming from the soil, maybe it’s in the air.”

“Nonsense. Our nature is as pure as the Virgin’s kiss,” protested sister Ruth. 

“Well, you wanted an explanation so–” there was a pause. “That is the only logical explanation I could think of.” 

Valeria’s words made the women wrinkle their foreheads. Logical and God clearly did not go into one sentence.

“Perhaps.” The abbess replied reluctantly. “However, sister Ruth is right. Our nature is pristine. It is isolated from the city’s harmful environment. Hardly any of its poison could reach us.” A pause. “I am not excluding the hand of evil.” 

Oh, get the fuck outta here…

While other nodded vigorously, I hardly refrained from rolling my eyes to the back of my head. 

I looked at Valeria. She mouthed, What. The. Fuck. 

Insane, I mouthed back.

“This is how I think we should go about it,” continued the abbess. “We will inspect the premises for hazard, just like sister Jeanne has suggested. But I will also invite the archbishop to bless our grounds. Whatever dirt we are dealing with, sisters, we need to clean it.”

The afternoon of that day was spent on making calls and arrangement of services. The Deadstock Service, Sanitization Service, the animal sanctuaries and breeders. The wholesale LED company to order more light bulbs. Then the archbishop. And out of all, he was the trickiest to deal with as he was away and unreachable. Finally sister Rosalyn reached out to us herself (she was away then for several months) and told us that she and His Grace were doing a Milk of Eden campaign somewhere in New Mexico. We explained our situation to the nun, and she promised to bring the archbishop as soon as the campaign was over, as soon as she could. 

Around 5 p.m. the Deadstock Service had arrived to collect the animals in the hall, and shortly after came the Contamination Inspection along with the Sanitization Service. The blood-oozing carcasses were removed in under 40 minutes. The hall was sterilized in under 1 hour. The ground inspection took a bit longer, and the result was disgustingly familiar – no signs of toxins. We were all dumbfounded, especially Val since her hypothesis, the only logical hypothesis, turned out wrong. And so in a sterile monastery with nothing else to do we waited for sister Rosalyn’s return. And while we waited, we prayed.