Eilish heard a loud knocking at the large oaken doors leading to the church.

“I’ll see who it is…” Father William called out.

She continued with her sweeping of the floors between the pews. “I wonder who would come today…it’s pouring down cats and dogs…” she pondered out loud. “It’s nighttime, too…maybe someone missed the mass today, or needs a place to stay…” Eilish, only recently nineteen, had a habit of talking to herself, even when the situation was better off without it.

A harsh bark startled her and made her drop her broom. “A dog? Now that’s really very ironic…”

“Eilish?” Father William said, with a strange tone to his voice.

“What?” she asked, laying her broom on the seat of the pew.

“Could you…come here for a second?”

She ran down the rows, wondering, again, out loud, whatever could be wrong.

There were four men at the door, dressed in the state military uniforms, one of whom held the dog’s leash in his hand.

“Eilish Stratton?” one of them asked.

“Yes, that’s me…”

“You’re going to have to come with us.”

She’d been taken in on her thirteenth birthday, the day her parents had “gone with” the military officers who’d showed up at her doorstep. She’d lived with one of the elder nuns at her small home just down the block of the church, and when she turned eighteen, she’d become a nun herself, then moving to the convent, which was, conveniently, right across town, occasionally coming to the church the help clean.

“C-Come with…?” she stuttered. “Wha-whatever for…?”

Another soldier stepped up from the back. “Please just come with us ma’am. Its better for your sake you do not resist.”

************************************************************************************************************************************

“Hanna…Hanna, phone for you.” The teenage girl with whitish blonde hair said, slowly approaching an older girl crouched over the kitchen sink.

“I AM DYING MY HAIR, SHAY,” the older girl.

“Hanna…i-it’s Eilish…she sounded really worried…” the teenage girl called Shay held the phone out.

The figure gave Shay the evil eye, but accepted the phone anyway.

“Yes, what do you want? Another lecture on how I should convert to a legit religion, more preferably Christianity?”

Hanna twitched. “What?”

She stood up, and put a towel around her neck to stop the black dye from further staining her clothes. “When?” She paused.

Shay stood nervously on her tiptoes, ringing her hands together.

“Dammit, Eilish. What did you do this time?” She paused once more.

“Don’t pull jokes on me!” Hanna yelled. “That not funny, you know. They execute people for that.”

She was silent for a moment. “Alright. Fine. I’ll be there ay-sap.”

Hanna glanced at Shay.

Shay gulped.

“What-What happened with Eilish…?”

“The bastards took her. They charged her with Illegality.”