The Pfister sisters and other God-blessed heroes

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will have absolute revenge.

Blessed are the meek, for they will be terrible with strength in the Lord.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will take nourishment from the wicked.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for no evil shall stand against them.

"You okay Boss?"

"Humanity! Their damnable greed! Get Michael. And Raphael."

"You moving up the End Times? It's kinda short notice, but I think we can pull it together. Want me to rally Death, Famine, War, and Conquest?"

"No, Gabriel. Not yet. Leave the Horsemen be. You and the other archangels are going to make a few Annunciations."

***

Albert Johnson groans. He does not want to be lucid. He hates it...

He pulls weakly against his restraints then groans at the lead researcher who looms over him. "Just let me die!"

Doctor James Duke smiles but does not blink. His stare is intense-- the whites of his eyes are all too bold, sclera visible on all sides. But Bert does not let himself look away, nor does he let himself blink. He feels his own eyes crisp in the stale air, they might crumble out of his eye sockets-- but he forces himself to hold the doctor’s evil gaze.

"James please. I’m begging. Let me die..."

And James' lips draw further back. His grim shows even more teeth.

He’s enjoying this.

Albert wonders how he never saw the crazy in this man's eyes back when they were colleagues.

"No Bert, I won't let you die. You're too valuable. But I'll put you under again after I collect the data from this next test."

He says it like a gift or a mercy, but Bert feels like a Robin clamped between the claws of a purring cat— his life and his death, both playthings for the cruel doctor.

***

Shanice Pfister crawls to her little sister and drapes her arms across her on the floor. She pulls her close, scoops her up and rocks her softly.

"I'm so sorry Chantal."

Chantal sobs into Shanice's chest. She clings to her like a drowning girl clings to driftwood as she is tossed among the waves.

Chantal asks between her wracking sobs: "Why did he do that?"

Shanice bites back her own tears. Her face is bruised even worse than Chantal's-- one eye's swollen shut and her lower lip oozes. But her physical pain is distant. Her tears are only for Chantal-- whom she has now failed to protect.

Once Shanice had told herself: if I let him take out his ringer on me, he'll never touch Chantal.

She had born his violence as duty, all to spare her baby sister.

But when she'd seen him looming over Chantal that morning, his hands balled into fists she’d realized she’d been stupid to trust their unspoken deal.

All her years of abuse reached a crescendo then.

But her kicking and scratching and biting had done nothing to slow him.

He'd beaten them both, brutally.

Now they were locked in the back room, with nothing to hope for and everything to dread.

"Shhh Chanti. We’ll be okay someday.”

Chantal touches the bruise on her temple with trembling fingers and winces. A fat tear rolls down her face. "You remember when mom was in hospice, she told us to trust him and he’d always take care of us? Why did she think that?”

Shanice hugs her tighter. "I don't know."

Their mother used to hum little songs to sooth them whenever they were sick.

Now she wants to hum to sooth her sister, but the only pretty thing she can remember is a Christmas hymn they’d heard in church, before things went bad.

The lyrics and melody spring to her mind:

It came upon a midnight clear….

But Shanice cannot bear to contemplate praise and prayer, not when she and her sister are so forgotten by God.

So she remains silent and rocks her little sister and kisses around the bruises, where the flesh is not so tender.

***

Albert hovers between perpetual agony and the stupor of shock. His body is infected, battered with germ cocktails. He is pushed to the brink of death and beyond. Then, as always, he is resuscitated.

Denied the finality of death, his bodily functions are surgically and chemically restored.

Then, he is allowed the fleeting, dreamless relief of a medically induced coma, while the twisted doctor and his surgeons strengthen his body for the next battery of tests.

And in the empty dark of this chemical sleep, Albert hears a voice— it rises up out of the void where before there was only darkness. "Hail Albert, be not afraid! The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among lepers. Behold you shall conceive in your blood and bear forth a Holy disease that shall convey the wrathful symptoms of God’s justice! You shall carry it hence and it shall afflict the unrighteous, but to the righteous it shall do no harm. Now, wake up and rise!”

***

A sound at the door stirred Shanice and she woke Chantal.

The younger girl's face wilted into an expression of despair. "He's back?"

Then the door opened and the darkness was slit by a beaming light.

Shadows seemed to flee from the angelic face that appeared before them.

"Hail Pfister sisters, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among the beaten, abused, and the defenseless. And blessed are your fists. You shall carry God's own fury in the strength of your arms. You shall be loosed upon the world and you shall execute the Lord's vengeance upon those who prey upon the weak."

When the angel departs, he leaves their prison door swinging wide on its hinges.

***

Albert wakes.

The vision is still fresh in his mind.

And he finds, to his surprise, he’s willing to trust it.

Perhaps it’s desperation.

A man of science, he’s distantly aware that the skeptic in him would have put up a fight. But the bright intellect of his youth is long buried. After months of prolonged agony, his ragged soul is fertile ground for a newly acquired sense of retribution.

He pulls himself up from his coma bed, and rises on trembling legs.

His muscles feel atrophied and weak. But he feels a strange and compelling power in his chest.

Is this purpose?

The technician raises his eyebrows. "What? You were in a medically induced coma.... How are you awake?”

Albert breathes out in a long, steady exhale.

The technician breaths in. And winces.

He wrinkles his nose and tries to clear his throat, but he’s shoowing visible signs of respiratory distress.

Albert watches.

There’s a trickle of sympathy for the visual aspect of another human in medical crisis.

But as he moves to help, he hesitates. He remembers the words of the angelic being in his vision.

“To the righteous it shall do no harm.”

“Are you a good person?”

The tech nods desperately.

“Then why were you experimenting on me?”

Albert knows why. He learned it long ago, from the evil doctor’s bedside boasts.

It’s not just scientific curiosity on the limits of the human body. It’s not even pure sadism or cruelty. They are deliberately afflicting him with all manner of infections and injuries, so they can develop and market treatments.

New medications.

The incentive is profit, through pharmaceuticals.

The tech nods again, desperately. But he can’t answer. He gasps like a fish out of water.

The technician runs to the wall, and slams the intercom.

But he cannot speak.

Every attempt brings a painful, wracking cough.

Blood and spittle fly from the tech’s lips as he doubles over, coughing like a mule. His muscles begin to tremor and seize and his face contorts in a rictus of pain.

The tech’s eyes roll, like those of a dying deer.

Thick, bloody strings of mucus flow from his nose and mouth, they smear across his clean white lab coat and slick the lab floor.

The coughing fit grows to a merciless intensity and the violence of the fit hurls the technician into a sudden heaving.

Even as his eyes plead for relief and a chance to breath, he begins to vomit.

His airways shudder and he gasps and sucks that morning’s breakfast back into his lungs.

He falls against the wall and slides to the floor, hai face already reaching a deadly shade.

Now a pitiful gurgling noise is all he can muster.

He tries to reach out to Albert for help, but his eyes are already losing focus— a puffy mess of weeping sores.

A film of yellow pus clouds his pupils.

And Albert stoops to watch. “Whether this is science or God, who am I to defy it?”

Albert reaches down and plucks the tech’s key card, he wipes the blood and vomit on a dry patch of the dying man’s clothing, then swipes to leave the testing chamber.

***

Shanice pulls Chantal gently but urgently by the hand. "Door's open. Come on Sis.”

"I'm too scared."

"I... I don't think we need to be afraid. You heard that.... thing."

"What if that was just a dream?"

"We both saw it, we both heard it. I think that means it had to be real. Look, we can't stay here. He'll be back soon. Let's just go."

“But what did it mean?”

“I don’t know. But we can leave, come on!”

Trembling in each other’s slender arms, the Pfister Sisters move tentatively, together. Shanice guides her sister to the open door, until they hear him in the driveway.

“It’s too late! Shanice come back in, quick!”

Shanice hesitates.

They hear him at the front door.

Her sister’s eyes speak such frantic terror she finds herself moving back to comfort her.

They scurry into the room once more, so their cruel stepfather won’t know they were about to escape. Shanice pulls the door shut, quick as she can, maybe too quick. It closes with a thud.

“What the fuck was that?!”

If he realizes they were about to escape….

They hear him yelling from the kitchen entry.

Then, heavy footsteps.

His voice, from the other side of the door, slurred and lazy: “I never asked for this. You know I work my ass off to feed you two ingrates. You’re not even mine. Not my blood. Your mother begged me to officially adopt you. She was dying how the fuck could I say no? I loved her. But she saddled me with two leeches. Fucking bitch.”

Shanice realizes with cold clarity, he’s been drinking.

He’s always worse when—

Her thoughts are shattered to pieces when the door rattles on its hinges.

“And what was that noise? You little cunts fucking around in there? I told you to sit still and be quiet until I got home! You better not have broken anything, or you’ll end up missing dinner again!”

But there is nothing for them to break in here.

This room has nothing but a gross mattress, and two scared, shrinking girls.

And when he realizes this he’ll figure out where the noise came from and then his wrath will be terrible.

Shanice pulls Chantal into a desperate embrace.

The door nob turns. They hear a cold rage in his tone, as the door creaks open. “Why in the name of Christ is this door unlocked?”

Shanice gulps. If she tells him an Angel unlocked it, he might actually kill her.

“Not gonna answer me? That’s it. That’s fucking it. I have been too gentle on you little shits.”

His eyes carry a menacing light which they’ve never seen before— he’s always angry, always violent, but this is worse.

He glares at Shanice.

She recoils but the wall is already at her back, there’s no where else to retreat to.

“Don’t look at me like that, you stupid little bitch. You know why I’m so mad? YOU WANNA KNOW? I’ll fucking tell you— I haven’t gotten any in years. A man has needs. And your mom used to provide. But then she died and left me with you. No woman will touch me, no woman wants a man who’s still in love with his dead wife. Especially if that man is stuck taking care of her two little brats! And then you had the blind, stupid audacity to mouth off to me this morning. You think I wanted to hurt your sister?”

Spittle flies from his mouth, but she doesn’t dare wipe it off her face. She can smell the beer on his breath, as he towers over her.

“No. You made me do that. Those bruises on Chanti? Those or your fault! Because you pissed me off. And when I used to get stressed your mom would take care of my needs. Who’s gonna do that now she’s gone? I’ve been without any relief for years— fucking years! and you know what? You know fucking what? There’s no reason I should have to go without. You’re not even blood. And you’re getting older now. Old enough.”

There’s a shift in his gaze now, the wrath, the fury, the evil, these are still there. But there’s a sort of hungry greed in his leering eyes, they strike Shanice with a paralyzing fear.

Whatever this new thing is, it threatens to be worse than any of his past beatings.

His drunken voice and rancid breath wash over her. “You little bitch. You unlocked the door. I don’t know how, but you did. So I need to teach you a fucking lesson. A lesson I was hoping to spare you from. But you’ve forced my hand! Yes, this is your fault Shanice! And it might be too late for you, but hopefully seeing what happens to disobedient brats, Chantal will turn out better for it!”

*

Chantal doesn’t know what this new danger is, but the threat of it is firing her instincts more than any of their prior troubles. She has never seen her older sister so stricken with fear….

Shanice was always the brave one. Now Chantal’s watching her older sister shrink against the wall and tremble like a mouse.

They must flee but there is nowhere to run to, so they are going to die. And if they are to die, they must go down fighting.

Adrenaline reaches a crescendo and her body begins to move, in sharp refusal of all the helplessness she has learned.

This isn’t thought out, conscious heroism though—it is a desperate and primal act of panic, a last ditch effort to hurt a bad man before her sister is taken out of the world.

She leaps on their stepfather’s broad, meaty shoulders and strikes his face, with all her might— and against all reason or expectation his cheek bone crunches to make way for her little fist.

He sputters and a couple bloody molars fall from his gaping mouth.

Stunned beyond his senses, he tries to grab Chantal to pull her off his back but she strikes him again— the flailing, unpracticed, attack of a child, spurned by animal instinct and empowered by a divine fury.

Her fist tears some of his skin away from his jaw, like moldy, wet leaves. His jawbone cracks and splits in two like a wish-bone, spilling blood and drool through his chin and down his shirt.

He writhes and turns to lay desperate hold of her.

Now all hate and anger and lust have fled from his eyes, leaving behind a primal, idiot terror.

He is reduced from predator to prey.

And like a hunted animal fighting for its life, he is willing to kill.

He tries to strangle Chantal, wraps his thumbs around her slender neck, calling Shanice into the fray.

She kicks him hard in the back and hits his kidney so hard it bursts like a grape under all those layers of fat and skin.

He shrieks from the pain, bubbles of blood and snot frothing from the mess of his fractured jaw.

Just as Shanice delivers the kick, Chantal grabs his calloused hands in her soft ones, she pulls them off her neck with such sudden and devastating force, that compound fractures blossom along his fingers like a bouquet of dripping meta-tarsal tulips.

He shrieks again as they drag him to the floor. Shanice pulls one leg her way, Chantal pulls the other.

One of his femurs pops out of socket with a loud crack.

The knee on his other leg is bent the wrong way and twisted like a turkey leg.

His scream is high and wild.

He begins to tear apart, right at the crotch, skin stretching and squelching like wet putty, tendons snapping like rubber bands. He is still conscious enough to know every ounce of the pain he is feeling, but he is not conscious enough to know this is justice.

Blood and shit spill from his body, soaking into the filthy carpet.

He begs them for mercy, but his words are a wet, inarticulate gurgle.

And the righteous fury in their eyes is too much for his shocked system to bear, so his eyes roll to the old gray mattress where he’d planned to teach the older one her lesson.

***

A starving mother-to-be stands on the sidewalk below a billionaire’s shimmering, golden tower.

Aside from the bump in her belly, her body is skin and bones.

If she could afford a doctor, they’d tell her carrying to term when she’s this malnourished would be extremely dangerous for her and her child.

But…

She is not so frail, not anymore.

The Annunciation is still burning bright in her mind and she will do as she was called.

She raises her sunken eyes, and licks her lips. The child in her womb shall not waste away.

They shall both be fed on the taste of justice.

***

***

***

Author’s note in comments, if ya want it.