This story is based on the limited run series Revelations that aired on NBC April-May 2005, just in case anyone was confused about what this is. Anyway, while playing with my DVD of the show, I found that if I freezed on the articles that Dr. Massey was looking up about Sister Josepha on the computer, I could make out part of what it was said. Well, to my surprise, I discovered that Sister Jo and her sister had been abandoned when they were infants and had grown up in an orphanage. I was quite intrigued by the idea of this, and not surprised by the fact that this plot was never developed in the show (unless you freeze frame the DVD, chances are you wouldn't make out what the articles said). Therefore, this story is about her thoughts regarding her childhood, her sister, and the current situation that she is in.
Some of the info in here is accurate to the show, some of it we weren't told and wasn't implied, so I used a bit of creative license. I hope I remained true to the character throughout. And the word sister is capitalized a few times in here: that is quite obviously because I'm referring to a nun. Anyway, that's all. Read andreview, por favor.
INTHE BEGINNING, THERE WAS DARKNESS
My story began a long time ago, long before I was even born, long before this century, or millennia began. It began long before the child came to earth to die and save the world. Yes, everything has been planned out since the beginning of time itself. My very existence was carefully thought of and executed in due time, and that is why I am living in this time. It is my job to remind the world of love and goodness, and to postpone the imminent ending.
I know everyone thinks I am crazy. They see what I do as blasphemy, turning against the very faith I have dedicated my entire life to only to cause trouble, or make a name for myself, or anything of the like. That is not what I am doing at all. I have been called by God, as one of his children who is supposed to make a difference in the world, and I know that he wants me to stop the end of days. I have to. It must be why I am here; I know that God has called me for this. I know this because it is the story of my life, overcoming odds. I can overcome this odd; there is no doubt in that.
I've never told Dr. Massey about my parents, but I suspect that he knows. If he knew about Denise's death, he must know about how we were abandoned. It was in plenty of published articles, as if that could be used to explain away my insanity and give everyone an excuse to coddle me and patronize my beliefs. I'd been so angry at first, reading my entire life story in some international newspaper, on display for the world to read. But Mother Francine had quickly reminded me that my dedication was to God, that the outside world would certainly not understand no matter what, and that it was my job as a messenger of Christ to ignore these and accept them with grace and humility. So that is what I did.
But secretly, I found myself thinking about it frequently. As children, Denise and I wondered often about our parents, what they were like and the sort. Denise always used to ask, "What is wrong with us? Why did they hate us so much? Why, Josie? What did we do?" I never had an answer for her questions. The only way I could respond was that I didn't know why we had been left, but God must have a reason. We were both raised in a Catholic orphanage, surrounded by Sisters and Priests, but Denise's faith was never very strong. Perhaps that is why she asked those questions. I instead found myself wondering more about what I could do with my life because of this. There were obvious differences between my sister and I, even at such a young age.
I was just under a year old when we were left behind; Denise was a mere three months old. Neither of us knew anything but the orphanage, but the uncertainty had never quite been welcome to us, never quite adapting to such a provisional arrangement. Denise grew up suspicious, always very shy, and never trusting of anyone out of fear that they would leave her. Perhaps it was for that reason, or maybe because we were all each other had left, that we never left each other's side. I would talk occasionally to the other children, but ultimately, the two of us remained at a distance, watching the other children with disinterest and playing with each other. To be honest, I didn't want to leave Denise's side either. Not out of fear of being left, but out of fear of my leaving her. She needed me, more than anyone or anything. Even more than God himself, I'd thought at the time.
We never had anyone but each other. The nuns were kind enough, the other children tolerated us with a forced politeness, but truly, we were the only family we had. That made us both so vulnerable, so reluctant to trust or even to be trusted, out of fear of letting someone down the way our parents had let us down. I no longer blame them for what they've done, of course. If our parents had not left us, I may have never become a Sister myself. But Denise, my sweet girl, she struggled all through her life with everything. Her identity, my identity, her independence, her faith… she never had it easy, not once.
I'll never forget the day she told me she'd joined the cult. I was in school at Oxford, the frustrations of my childhood certainly not forgotten, but I had discovered my purpose and had been so intent on learning everything about the Bible I could. The prospects of being a Sister were no longer new to me and not in the slightest bit frightening. It never had been. I had never been more comfortable than in my long dresses and with my habit on my head, and it wasn't at all strange giving up the luxuries of modern life. Growing up in an orphanage, you don't have much of anything to call your own anyhow. I had submerged myself into that place of solace I had discovered so deeply, I had become more and more detached from my sister, though I thought of her constantly, never letting a day go by when I didn't call her. She had been terrified when I went to Canada to go to college. She'd tried to look calm, happy for me, and tried to assure me that she would be just fine, but I knew by the look in her eyes that she felt betrayed and maybe even a little angry. She couldn't keep anything from me, I knew her too well. Maybe I should have stayed in England with her. Or brought her with me. Maybe things would've turned out differently for her.
The day she told me about the cult, she'd showed up at the school, waiting outside my classroom for my class to get out. Toward the end of class I noticed her waiting out there, anxiously pacing about and my heart leapt into my throat. Something had to be wrong; I knew Denise wouldn't come to my school without a good reason. But when I'd gotten out there, her eyes were bright and her smile was thrilled, and for a moment, I thought that something wonderful must've happened to her. I had never been more wrong.
As she described her newfound group of friends, a clan whom had found her in the library and began talking to her one day, I knew they must've seen her desperation, and her vulnerability. Despite the fact that I had joined the church and had been trained in loving and patience, I found that anger I'd had my whole life billowing up inside of me. My mouth always got me into trouble as a child, and it has gotten me into a few quarrels as an adult. But I recognized this group instantly as dangerous, warning signs flashing in my mind, but that joy in my dear sister's face had suppressed my urge to speak against it. Instead, I'd forced a smile, taken her hands and told her that I would pray for her and her new friends, gave her a kiss on her cheek and walked with her out into the sunlight. But I knew something was going to go wrong. The way she'd talked about them, their rituals… they preached wholesome morals, taught about God and his supremacy, but it was the leader that had worried me. Denise told me that he spoke of God and himself as if they were one, and that many of the members of this religious group had thought that he was God himself. This horrified me, but Denise had assured me that the man had denounced that theory on the spot. I didn't realize that he had denied being God, but soon after accepted the thought that he was the Messiah, and that he himself was to save the world. If only I had known.
As time went on, Denise seemed much happier, true color sprouting in her cheeks and happiness growing in her eyes, such that I had never seen in her before. I began to think that at least Denise was being exposed to God, that maybe she would eventually realize that this church, if you could call it that, was not quite what she needed in her life and would instead join the Catholic Church the way I had. Perhaps I'd gotten complacent in attempting to be humble, hoping that my example would reflect off of my sister without my having to try very hard at all.
But as quickly as the positive changes began, they were reversed. Denise became very isolated. She began phoning me only once every week, then every month, then stopped altogether, and when I did see her, she looked distant and her voice was monotone. This wasn't the sister I had grown up with and loved so dearly, and I was worried. I graduated from Oxford, and went to the United States to join the Sisters of Mercy convent, an order that I had learned about through word of mouth. I had spoken to Mother Francine May and was deeply impacted by the intensity of her faith and was impressed with the loyalty and dedication of this small abbey, hidden away in the hills of Pennsylvania. After months of no phone calls and certainly no visits from my sister, I called up an old friend of hers back in England. It was then I discovered Denise had moved to Botswana.
I wanted to talk to Denise, but I had no idea how to get a hold of her. I began asking around, asking anyone who was willing to listen if they knew about this cult and how I could get contact with one of the members. As if by chance, but more to the good graces of God, I met a man who had once been a member of this cult. He left after the leader had began preaching that he himself was the Christ, that he was going to sacrifice himself and his followers. The man had been shaken by this, and decided to leave. Never in my life had I been so afraid for my sister. I asked him if he could find a phone number or location or anything that might help me find her and we were lucky enough to find the exact location of where the cult met for worship. I had no money of my own at all, especially none to spend on a trip to Africa of an unknown length of time. But as it turned out, the man who had once been in the cult was an employee at Eklind Industries, which would later become my own place of employment. With a little help from Torvald Eklind himself, he gathered together a donation and gave it to my anonymously. I later discovered that the money, which had just shown up at the convent in a plastic sack with my name on it, had come from him. He told me he had wanted to help me find my sister so that I could get her out: he knew the cult was deadly territory. God bless his heart, I never would've made it so far if it were not for him.
I made it to Africa, to the place where the cult met for its daily meetings. I waited outside the place at a distance, not wanting to be seen but wanting to spot Denise before she entered. I did not see her go in. I realized I had missed her after people stopped flooding into the partially underground building and there was silence inside. At first, I was overjoyed, praying that Denise had not been there at all, that she had left and was back on the right track. Still, I waited for the meeting to end, just to be certain that I hadn't missed her. I waited for hours and still, no one came out. After all that time, finally, the first of the crowd began to trickle out. I didn't even recognize her when I first laid eyes on her.
Her pretty eyes had sunken in, she'd cut her hair short and it looked greasy and unkempt, and her skin was an ugly, pale pallor. I leapt up and ran over to her, calling out her name as I approached her. She didn't respond at first, but when I touched her, she stopped walking and turned around slowly. The woman I was facing was not my sister. She couldn't have been, because my sister would never have spoken to me the way she did.
"Oh, hello, Jospeha," she said in a hoarse voice. "Finally able to take time away from your mediocre, brainwashed creed to visit your forsaken relative?" She sounded serious, and I was taken aback by the harshness of her voice. But after a second, a huge smile spread across her face. It wasn't a happy smile; it was a horrifying smile, almost evil. Grabbing my hand, she began to laugh. "Oh, dear Josie," she sighed. "I'm just giving you a hard time, darling. What brings you to our humble abode here in the middle of Africa?"
"I've come to take you home, Denise," I told her in a low, quiet voice, not wanting any of the others to hear me. I'm sure my nun's outfit was already arousing suspicion and I desperately wanted to get her away so that I could speak freely with her.
"Oh, but I am home, Josie. This is my home; this is my family. I do wish you'd cut out that Catholic stuff and join us, dear. It's wonderful, and not as stifling as a traditional church such as your own." A man walked past Denise and as he passed, she grabbed his arm. "Alistair, I want you to meet someone."
The man called Alistair turned to me, a strange look on his face. The same smile that Denise had had began to appear on his lips. "This is my relative. The only one left."
"Jo—Josepha, her sister," I stammered, nodding formally in his direction. I was afraid of this cult and the people involved and this man was probably the most intimidating of all. The man's smile grew wider.
"Ah, dearest, Josepha. The only sisters we have are those in God. But seeing as you are already a Sister in God, I suppose the term would suffice," he said sarcastically, motioning toward my clothing, a mocking smile on his face. I felt myself flush, anger building in my soul. I fought to keep it down. "Now, what can we do for you on this fine day?"
"I would like to speak to my sister… the one of my God and my blood," I replied, a cold, hard edge had replaced the intimidation I had first felt. The smile dropped from Alistair's face when he heard my defensiveness. All at once, he looked angry and I became worried about what he would do. He turned to Denise, and spoke to her. I was alarmed to realize that I didn't recognize the language. A neutral look on her face remained and she nodded automatically. Alistair began to turn away, but before he did, he said to me, "A pleasure to meet you, Josepha. May my God bless you eternally." With that, and one last disturbing smile, he turned and walked away.
Denise waited until the man was out of earshot before she turned to me and hissed in a tone so angry I was startled, "Get out of here, Josepha. Go back to your perfect little life and leave me alone. I'm not leaving. I'm happy, why can't you just be happy for me?"
"Denise, this is dangerous. I know what your leader implies, but he is not Christ. Our king has already come, Denise, you know that! Don't fall into this trap and risk your soul!"
A cool gaze was fixated on me as I finished. A moment of silence passed between us, while in my mind, thoughts were clamoring violently, telling me to grab her and run, forget whether or not she was happy with me or not. I am her big sister; it was my job to protect her from this. But I failed. Because what she said next had brought me to my knees.
"Josepha, you are… pathetic. Pitiful. You believe your God has a plan for you, but he doesn't. He has never cared about us, no one has. You always told me how much you loved me and how you would never abandoned me the way mum and dad did. But you didn't. You never really cared; I see that now. You hypocritical fool. You have chosen to dedicate your life to your God and yet you show the world no compassion We have chosen our paths and we must go our separate ways now. Do not come back here again."
I was speechless. What had happened to my sweet baby sister? What had happened to our love, our connection, our dedication to each other? Where had I failed in her? I preached to the world, I told everyone about Christ and showed everyone God's love in me and them, but I hadn't shown my sister?
"And if you do come back," she continued, her voice low and threatening. "We will make you pay. Do not take this lightly. Your God will not save you from us." Her words stung and her glare was harsh. We held each other's stare for a moment, me searching for some sign of her former love for me, some sign of her former soul, she making sure that I had gotten the message. When she turned and walked away from me that day, it was the last time I ever saw her.
Discouraged, hurt, and forsaken, I went back home to the convent, where I went into seclusion, praying and fasting day and night for my sister. Then came the news I had dreaded to hear.
Mother Francine May had received the call. She knocked and entered my quarters and I knew that something serious had happened. A Sister's request for seclusion was always respected and never intruded upon, unless a serious emergency came to light. Tearful and mournful, she delivered the news to me. Signs of affection were rare at my order, but she instantly pulled me into a tight hug.
I cried through the night so violently that I vomited twice, and yet still no peace came to my soul through prayer. Mother Francine had instructed that there always be a Sister with me, for the simple comfort of having someone near, but after the first few hours of this, I requested to be allowed to return to seclusion. Mother Francine denied my request at first, insisting that I could not be alone in the first hours of mourning, but after some begging, it was granted. The only contact I had with the others was when trays of food were slid into my room three times a day, but those always remained untouched and retrieved later in the day without a thing missing from them. I went without food or contact for four days, until finally the hunger pains grew so intense I was forced to nibble at what I had been given. Eventually, I came out of my quarters. The pain of that night never went away.
I desperately wanted answers; I wanted to know why it had happened, what possible miracle God could create out of that. An enormous part of my world had ended, and suddenly, I became more and more aware of the horrible events going on in the world. Every life taken, in the name of God or Allah or whichever deity the crime was committed in honor of, was just an extension to the pain of losing Denise. I began studying the book of Revelation intently, certain the end of the world had to be near. I know now that I thought this because my pain had been so great. But I hadn't expected to find true evidence that the world, not just mine, but the entire world, was actually coming to an end. The end of days was upon us.
Much studying and discussion with experts and fellow scholars as well as the nuns in my very convent began confirming my beliefs. More and more evidence began to pour in, and I simply couldn't ignore it. But along with the bad, I witnessed good. Miracles of all shapes and forms began appearing in my path. So I made it my quest to seek out these miracles all over the world, and find out how they applied to the end of days. (Torvald Eklind, having read about Denise in the papers as well as my newly discovered mission, instantly remembered my name and asked the man who helped me earlier in my search for my sister to get ahold of me. He offered me a job to help me in my expeditions. I was thrilled at the opportunity and accepted on the spot.) Then came the ultimate evidence: that Christ was here on earth. Thus, my journey began.
I could never have imagined in the months following Denise's suicide that anyone in heaven or on earth could feel the pain that I was feeling, with the exception of the Lord himself. So when I was brought to Miami, Florida to investigate the strange behavior of a child in a coma, and was then led to an atheist professor who became an integral part of my investigations, I never expected that this man could've experienced anything even remotely close to what I had.
But when he turned down the chance to help me, saying he had Satanists threatening him. I knew I had to look up why. There must be a reason why this man refuses to acknowledge God and why he had captured the attention of Satanists; from experienced I'd learned that these things don't just happen on their own. So I was shocked and devastated when I discovered that Satanists had murdered his child. It made even more sense when I read that he'd followed the man who did it and had him arrested for his crimes. It certainly explained his fear to get involved with me. So I knew instantly the pain that Dr. Massey was in, and was almost ecstatic to learn that he would understand what I had thought to be incomprehensible to the rest of the world. As we went on, going from Boston to Greece to Italy, picking up the pieces of the mystery miracle child, I talked to him, read passages from my beloved Bible, and slowly, he began to change. I was thrilled as I witnessed this. I think he was partly relieved himself to find out about my sister, knowing that when I said, "I understand what you feel," that I really did understand what he felt. It was in that time after Denise's death that it started to make sense to me what had happened. We'd grown up together and never left each other's side. Denise had tried, in a blind but well-meaning way, to follow in my footsteps. I know exactly how it looked to the rest of the world: two orphaned sisters: one became a nun and the other joined a cult. To the world, it was coincidental and ironic. But to me, it was all relative.
I would even dare to say that Dr. Massey and I had become friends. I learned over time that he was a very sweet, but very confused individual, being driven by an anger and sadness at the loss of the his little girl, Lucy. I was amazed to see the parallels not only between him and I, but also between him and my precious Denise. That was, quite possibly, the determining factor as to why, through all the frustration and irrational occurrences we'd experienced together, Dr. Massey never left. He wanted answers, too; at this point, I knew that some things most things in fact, could not be answered.
By the time we'd been to the Sea of Galilee, where the Antichrist first began its journey to bring havoc onto the world, Dr. Massey and I had begun to understand one another. I had to smile when, at a marketplace in Tiberius, Dr. Massey had told me, in a rather awkward but very thoughtful manner, that we mean something to each other. I prayed that my presence in his life would begin the long process of healing that is required after such a heavy loss. Perhaps its time for both of us to heal… especially now. If there's anything I've learned in my life, it's that tomorrow could just be a myth.