Welcome to a quirky little tale that I dreamt up to background a rather striking faux movie review in IPC’s adult SF comic series Crisis, involving two battling red and black clad nuns, scalpels and mayhem. Enjoy…

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In the Belgian convent, Sister Gertrude yelled obscenities at the new management of her institution, where she alone had been hidden away, while all the other inmates over the years had either died from ‘medical mishaps’ or had been lobotomised, or finally released onto a reluctant world. In her constraints, he writhed as Dr Xuberon loaded his hypodermic.  In the background, Pope Sixtus VI looked on, and a rictus smile slashed across his cadaverous ancient figures:

“Is she ready?”
“Yes, Your Holiness.”
“Then inject her with the substance.”
“You know the risks, Your Holiness. She will be superhumanly strong- and insane. She will be unable to control that strength.”

“No matter. She has been cultivated for this task for years, has she not? And there is no-one or nothing alive that can stop her. Do as I say, Doctor.”

Five hours later, a hypersonic transport touched down at a derelict airfield in Quebec, and a chalkfaced figure, with a slash of bloodred lipstick on her features, stalked out of the plane, her memories crowded with the image of Canada’s Prime Minister, and Bill c-25, the Death With Dignity (Assisted Suicide and Alternative Options) Act. She kept seeing herself running forward, crushing the throats of his CSIS guards, then punching a hole through the chest of another, before her fatal frenzy. She was no longer Sister Gertrude, nor had she been so for many years. She was the Black Nun, and she would stop history being made this day.

“Miriam…”

“You can’t stop me, Sarai.”

“This is against everything Womenchurch Alternative stands for, the wanton use of hypermeth for this specific purpose.”

“Even if the purpose is just? I don’t see it that way.”

“Is there nothing I can say or do to stop you? You don’t have to be the Red Nun anymore.” Miriam kissed her young friend on the forehead:

“They’ll need a tech when I’m gone.”

“You’re not coming back, are you? Miriam, I…”

“I know, sweetheart. I know. Now go, and tell the others. And remember me.”

And with a blur of scarlet and flash of silver, she was gone. On the table was an empty syringe.  As she registered its final and immutable significance, Sarai sank to her knees, tears brimming over in utter desolation. But she wouldn’t cry. Ever. It was a sign of her strength, some said, but she knew it for weakness. In her hands, she held a cobalt scarf, and she remembered the day in Paris.

The Black Nun barrelled through the cordon, which should have alerted the contingent outside that something was badly wrong, except for a single form, clad in ebon and carrying nothing in her mind but deafening and blinding imagery where her conscience and memories should have been, as narcotic vitriol surged through her veins, causing her to move superhumanly fast and with unholy focus.

The Red Nun was only a minute behind her adversary. With the crushed and twisted bodies, she felt nothing but a sense of rage and fury at the other woman, but she was her match, more than her match. Then she saw her, and vaulted over the fence, landing only two hundred yards away from her: “Gertrude!”

“Don’t call me that!” cried the Black Nun and leapt for her, her face contorted in a snarl. For a moment, the Red Nun remembered that night in Antwerp nearly thirty five years ago, and bit her lip. She hoped that Gertrude was still inside there, underneath the funereal black habit, and would somehow remember their bodies entwined in the heat of the night, the taste of the wine on each others lips, the feel of the morning sun on their bodies.

And then, any hope of a safe harbour of women’s touches and gentleness and the memory of strawberries and sorbet was ripped forever away, as the Black Nun slashed at her scarlet counterpart. The Red Nun stumbled back, glancing at her reflection, beginning to pallor. So be it, then. If she had to die to stop the figure that had once been Gertrude Deschaines, then so be it. She leapt forward, her own scalpel in her hand, slashing a vivid red scar across her adversary’s stomach.  The Black Nun howled like a banshee, but showed no sign of any relenting, or weakness, for it was a cry of defiance and not pain.

They fought like that for hours, as each inflicted wounds on the other. Here a forehead slashed, there a breast, and there a leg. The world watched, with orders not to intrude. In the fastness of the Vatican, Pope Sixtus waited and gritted his teeth, as the Black Nun acquired the ascendancy one moment, then her Red Nun antithesis. 

Finally, though, the Black Nun began to waver, and then pitched forward, gasping for breath. The Red Nun staggered to hold her mirror image, as the Black Nun writhed and howled and finally let out one last scream of terror, progeny of a vision of failure bequeathed from a computer-enhanced Bosch.  The Red Nun held her, her own vision failing as the dark pit that was the price of her success yawned increasingly, obliterating consciousness.  Before it was lost completely, the Red Nun leant forward and gently kissed her former lover on the lips:

“Ma soeur. Je t’aime. Je t’aime.” Miriam whispered, even if Gertrude would never hear her.