Another chapter. As usual, it took a while, blame my muse she went on extended leave and didn't tell me…

In something, which will come as a shock to my loyal readers (all three of you) I am actually happy with this chapter; this is a new feeling for me and I'm not quite sure how to deal with it.

Additional notes: The quote from Tennyson, come is as excerpt from 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' written to celebrate a particularly famous act of military bravery and command stupidity.

As always, thanks to 'tasha, who did her usual beta-ing marvel.

Please read and review – if you want to – I'm feeling lonely 

Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.

If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
-- Marvin Kitman

Idiot, n.:
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Harvard Law:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
do as it damn well pleases.

Sister Magdalena, or, as she was more commonly known throughout the orphanage, Darth Nun, was not one to be easily startled, in fact her equanimity and implacable calm were legendary. Whilst the hordes of larcenous little psychopaths, cunningly disguised as children, had turned even the most vindictive of the nuns to drink, Darth Nun would barely raise an eyebrow in polite interest. Rumour, always a veritable mine of reliable information, had it that prior to becoming a penguin, Sister Magdalena had been either a drill serjeant with the SAS, or a member of the secretly ongoing Spanish Inquisition. The truth was far different. Prior to her taking her final vows, Sister Magdalena had been firstly, a librarian and then a primary school teacher and therefore had extensive experience in dealing with agents of evil who were less than five foot in height; usually a mildly irritated look that intimated that the perpetrators would be treated in the same manner as those who bent the spines of books. For this reason it was common to find the inmates at the opposite end of the building and in the depths of the evening gloom, when all good inmates should have been asleep, they could be heard to add into their bed-time prayers a request for a Saarlac.

Yet, despite her stern mien, Magdalena cared for the children in her charge with a devotion more common to the proprietary concern demonstrated by a mother bear when explaining to a hunter why she would really prefer it if he didn't come within several kilometres of her cubs. In much the same way, the sister stood ever vigilant against the prospective parents who visited the orphanage. Admittedly, her superiors would have preferred it if she didn't scare quite so many away but they recognised her actions devolved from sincere pastoral concern and not from an obscure desire to torment random groups of adults.

This particular day the good sister's meditations focused on precisely what she was going to do to the ungrateful little wretches who had decided, in their wisdom, that the orphanage's cat would look better with purple day-glo stripes; even now, after a thorough cleaning, the poor creature refused to leave the safety of the sister's room. It had taken a while but Magdalena had finally accepted that the Mother Superior would never acquiesce to crucifying those involved and was happily working through, in her mind, a proposal involving boiling oil, when the front door opened. Sister Magdalena was somewhat surprised, while it was not unusual for people to visit the orphanage throughout the day visitors this late in the afternoon were not usual.

Nevertheless, training reasserted itself in the face of her disquiet and she approached the man

"Good day, can I be of assistance?"

As the man faced her he brought to mind an image of an ill-guided marionette whose master, while present, appeared to having only a passing knowledge of how to control his be-stringed simulacrum. "Assist?" He drew the length of his coat aside to reveal a long, sharp-bladed knife, "why yes, I do believe you can be of assistance."

Fabulous, thought Magdalena, it's a refugee from a Hammer Horror. Resisting the urge to inquire as to whether the sister of the bride of Dracula's mother was waiting in the car outside, and noting the extreme care and professional looking edge of the knife at the man's belt, decided that proceeding with some small measure of caution was probably a far wiser course of action than advising him to return to 'Clichés Anonymous' for a better costume.

"Might I ask why you've brought a knife into an orphanage, you'll scare the children." Mentally, she berated herself for the redundancy of her comment, what else did one expect to find in an orphanage: used garden furniture?

"How else shall I kill them if not with my knife?"

The response was matter-of-fact, and all the more chilling for its patent lack of emotion and stilted, overly formal mode, of expression.

"Why kill them at all? What do you achieve by killing anyone at all let alone a bunch of children whom have done nothing to you"

"I kill because I must."

"I think you have the wrong orphanage then, Crystal Lake Orphanage is ten miles down the road."

"I do not understand; all that matters is that there is death."

"Then shouldn't you be wearing a hockey mask?"

Holding her tongue was proving a difficult proposition for the sister although it was a toss-up as to whether she was going to berate the man or laugh in his face. For some reason, although the nature of the ostensible threat was readily apparent, she couldn't take the man seriously, if for no other reason than that his apparent disconnection with a tangible reality appeared to move him from the world of immediate, violent action into a realm of fantasy, of monsters-under-the-bed and school visits to the dental nurse.

She was returned to reality by a sickeningly sharp pain in her abdomen and lowered her gaze to watch as the long-bladed knife was withdrawn from whence it had been thrust. Heartsick at her failure to accord the threat with true concern, she raised pained brown eyes to the man who had done this to her and ask simply: "Why?"

"Because," he answered "I must."

Stepping back, he watched the sister crumple to the floor, before he stepped over her and proceeded into the main body of the building not looking back to see if his first victim of the day lived or died.

Eyes clouded with pain, she watched him go. She tried to call out, to warn the others, the children, but all that emerged from her mouth was a rasp, indistinguishable from a chair scraping on the floor, before a ragged cough brought the taste of blood to her lips. While never one to panic, or to despair, Sister Magdalena's mind vacillated between curling up and dying or standing strong in her faith. Slowly she began to move, at first little more than a half-hearted crawl but as despair turned to determination she began the slow process of reaching the outside world with a warning.

Morning had broken with an enthusiasm that was entirely inappropriate, at least in the opinion of the two caffeine-deprived figures that lay sprawled in a matted tangle of sheets and assorted pieces of clothing.

"Wha' ti' ist?" mumbled one of the figures.

"Sometime."

Levering open a steadfastly resisting lid, a bleary eye peered in somewhat bemused fashion at her companion, "Is that an official designation or an approximation based on not wanting to bother turning one's head ten degrees to look at the alarm clock?"

"I daren't it might go off. Anyway, why are you so verbose all of a sudden, your first question wasn't going to make the Oxford Dictionary Guide to Coherent English Usage anytime soon."

"True, but my lack-of-caffeine pain receptors kicked in and semi-consciousness was cancelled in favour of a search and recover mission and thus I woke up."

"…and here we are…" the grin was lascivious, the hands grasping.

With a grin she shoved her ardent – if somewhat uncoordinated – suitor back down "Indeed, but coffee first I don't want to undermine my performance through lack of consciousness."

The grin turned sly; "How would I know the difference?"

"You…you…male; no coffee for you."

"Them's fighting words," and a second later he pounced, proceeding to demonstrate that the addition of caffeine was not a requirement for the pursuit of carnal activities.

…Several Hours Later…

Both figures stirred from their post-coital haze.

"What ti' is't this ti?"

"La'er," this was followed by a groan as tired muscles protested at, what they considered to be unfair requests for movement to occur.

"That's a good thing right?"

"Very good," the words rolled out in a sensuous purr, "You are now entitled to one coffee on the house."

A very tousled figure raised its head and grinned, "I guess all that hard work was worth it then."

"Who you calling hard work?" The double entendre slowly sunk into the conscious part of Rilie's brain and she blushed in memory, "…Never mind…"

"You mentioned something about coffee?"

"Subtle, Greg," nevertheless she rolled out of bed and threw on a robe, though not so quickly as to deprive her lover of the chance to admire her trim hind-quarters.

Moments later, a similarly clad Greg joined her in the kitchen, hand outstretched, Darlek-like, he approached the mug of coffee that innocently sat on the kitchen counter unaware of the fate that would soon befall it. Mercilessly, Greg swooped coming in from twelve-o-clock high, like a diving Messerschmitt and before the coffee could think to run, or even scream, its fate was decided.

"Ergggh, that's better. Good coffee" he added a moment later, showing his appreciation of his mate's hunting and gathering prowess.

"One tries."

"Indeed you do and indeed you are."

"Keep that up and you'll be wearing that coffee instead of drinking it."

Greg grinned as he wandered into the lounge and parked himself on the couch, "You say the sweetest things." Placing his coffee on the table in front of him he sat back and relaxed – an impressive effort for someone who had just spent the previous twelve hours in various states of relaxation. Momentarily, however, he began to feel uncomfortable, as if someone was watching him, and lo, there was, for the bear they had left on the couch the night before regarded him with solemn eyes.

"Did you sleep well, little bear?"

The bear appeared to shrug as if to indicate that while it was of no real concern to him he had indeed slept well, thank you. Greg was about to ask the bear if he needed anything when Rilie joined him on the couch.

"Talking to stuffed toys, Sanders, I knew you were cracked, but still…"

"…And if I remember correctly, you were the one who told him to sleep well before you turned off the lights."

"Wasn't me."

"Then I assume it was the clone you keep stuffed in the closet."

"That's right, she does the cleaning while I'm asleep."

Greg smiled fondly at the woman as he looked at the chaotic panorama spreading throughout the house unchecked, "You need to pay her more."

Rilie, in turn, looked about, "You know," she grinned, "you could be right. So," she asked, changing topic, "what did the bear have to say for himself?"

"Not a lot, although he appeared a bit more relaxed than he was last night."

"Should you really have brought him home last night, he is evidence."

"Well…technically speaking, and semantically speaking for that matter, the bear itself is not evidence; certainly he didn't witness, as far as we know, any criminal activities, and he certainly didn't participate. Also, I took more photos of the poor wee bugger than your average Vogue shoot and picked him so clean of fibres that I'm surprised he has any fur left…"

"That doesn't really stack up as a legitimate explanation does it, Greg?"

The young man looked momentarily guilty, "Well no…but if I talk really quickly and get the little guy home before curfew I don't imagine there'll be a problem."

"Why am I not convinced?"

"That would be because you're not entirely stupid," he sighed, "I probably shouldn't have brought the bear home, but I felt sorry for him, and frankly, it feels like the right thing to have done, so the regulations can get stuffed."

"Well it's not like they can fire you again."

Greg smiled mirthlessly, "That would be something, certainly, watching Grissom pitch a fit would be a major tourist attraction, but you're right, I've already quit once so the threat of being fired isn't something they can hold over me, but if I'm being honest I don't want to leave just yet as I'm kinda enjoying myself…and…"

"…Your music career has yet to take off…" Rilie continued.

"That's right."

"So," she continued, "how is the masterpiece coming along?"

She was rewarded with the patented Sanders' smirk, "If madam would follow me to the piano…"

He stalked through the orphanage like an avenging fire, righteous, that is, but without too much thought given to consequence or action; certainly, it was just as well that he was murdering innocents in an orphanage and not crossing the road for all the attention he was paying to his surroundings. Where previously, his actions had been the epitome of planning and economy of purpose, here he was profligate, and young bodies were strewn in his wake: some dead, some live and some in that indeterminate place termed limbo, hovering between life and death and subject solely to the indefinable whim of a madman. Not that the children went through such a rigorous process of existential examination, all they knew and, for that matter, all they cared about, was that a bad man with a knife was making their friends hurt; and, for the elder amongst them was the realisation that if they didn't move quickly then they too would be on the receiving end of a good filleting.

Not that the man would have noticed.

He was beyond noticing. Beyond caring. Beyond understanding...

…and beyond redemption; not that that obvious fact stopped the nuns that ran the orphanage attempting to do so, with words, prayers, and the contents of the children's recreation cabinet. Unfortunately, while the damage a youthful miscreant is able to inflict with a baseball bat can be somewhat substantial the comparative force generated by an elderly nun is significantly less so and to the intruder it was if he was being assaulted by a particularly shortsighted, annoying and perhaps more importantly, ineffective penguin. To the man it didn't matter, they all bled the same, young or old.

To the remaining nuns it was if Tennyson's poem had come to life:

Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:

The children were their charge, their fateful duty, and their valley of death. As one they cursed the architect whom had designed the building with but one exit and moreso the church hierarchy who consistently delayed in retrofitting another as the city fire code had stipulated. Of course, the city wasn't going to prosecute the church over the matter of a simple fire exit; they didn't prosecute molesting priests, so why bother with anything else? Now would be an extraordinarily good time though, they mused.

Maybe it was some form of gallows humour that was taught at nun-school, but Lord, they prayed, now would be a really good time for a miracle; a seven foot high, three foot wide miracle with a lintel and nice stained-glass work. Unfortunately, the Lord appeared busy with other matters and didn't have time for a piece of one-off construction.

But then again, maybe the lord moves in mysterious ways after all. For the man with the knife, and the unwholesome attitude, had stopped, transfixed in front of one of the smaller children. Too scared to run away, the child had simply collapsed where they were and there they sat quivering like an animal in a hunter's spotlight, hands clutched tightly about a precious toy bear.

…And the bear met his stare with guileless eyes and the man remembered.

Then the earth went still.

Hours, and in some cases years, later those policemen who arrived first on the scene described it as one of the strangest things they'd ever seen, for they found one of the most dangerous men in the city staring, as if transfixed, at a small child who held before them nothing more than a small stuffed bear for protection. All and sundry quite readily admitted that if the child had been holding a live, full-sized Grizzly bear that would have given the man reasonable grounds to freeze in his tracks, but neither the child – nor the soft toy – appeared to represent any genuine threat so, at that initial point in time the authorities didn't make any immediate connection between the man and the bear; they were too busy making jokes about how the energiser bunny's batteries appeared to have fallen out his arse; such is the catharsis of knowing that this day you will not die.

To be fair, the arrival of the police on the scene was, by the standards of the Las Vegas Pedal-Car Brigade, pretty rapid, but then, the presence of a staggering, bleeding nun cluttering the streets tends to elicit a reaction in even the most blasé of public officials. Truth be told, the arrival of Sister Magdalena, blood-covered and near incoherent in pain elicited a response from several pedestrians, a gaggle of school children and the head of the local temperance league. Interpreting this licentious behaviour as yet another attempt by the Catholic Church to undermine the moral fabric of society – for their male-only priests wore dresses and the women dressed as an avian life form - the upright fellow proceeded with all due diligence to contact the authorities, informing them that a nun had run amok after clearly, due to the spreading crimson stain on her habit, having overindulged in the sacramental wine.

Arriving with all due (relative) haste, the police, with the gentle restraint and understatement for which they were universally known, piled out of their cars and pointed numerous weapons of various calibres at Sister Magdalena - who was at this point face down on the curb - and informed her that not only was she under arrest but that she had the right to an attorney, and finally, that she had the right to remain silent; which would be appreciated as he moaning was scaring the children whom had gathered, along with various other vultures posing as members of the public, to watch the scene unfold.

Finally, one of the police, less impressed with the size of his weapon than his fellows noticed that the wine was still flowing.

"Sarge?"

"What is it, Mathias?"

"Well, either we're witnessing a miracle right up there with the wedding at Canaa, or that's not wine."

"Who got married at Canaa? Was it one of them celebrity weddings?" The Serjeant was a national enquirer reader, and his only contact with the bible came from reported sightings of the Virgin Mary in the local road kill.

Mathias merely rolled his eye, "Something like that; anyway, how 'bout we help the nun?"

"Ya think?"

"I doubt she's in any position to strangle you with her rosary, and if we don't stop to help here someone will be along to issue her with a citation for littering the sidewalk and that will murder the public relations budget for the year."

"I guess you're right, Mathias." The Serjeant considered his actions before addressing the nun in a voice little short of stentorian, "Are you all right there sister?"

While the reply was somewhat strangled there was no mistaking the aggravation in its rasping tone. "Do I look alright, you idiot? Is there some possible way in which you imagine that I'm doing this for fun? Actually no, I'm not a nun bleeding to death on the side of the road I'm a fucking performance artist, now either leave me some cash or piss off, I don't care which."

"Now sister," the Sergeant's voice was placating, "that's not the sort of language I would expect you to be using. Now, I ask again, how may we be of assistance?"

Sister Magdalena turned a tortured gaze upon Mathias, as if to ask if the Serjeant was for real, or if he was some figment of her imagination induced as a result of blood loss. Mathias shrugged and quietly suggested to his Serjeant that he return to the car and call for an ambulance.

As the Serjeant ambled off, Mathias knelt by the nun and quietly tendered his apologies, all the while attempting to judge the extent of the injury. "I'm very sorry sister, I'd shoot him myself, but we're a bit short staffed at the moment and we're having to employ the terminally desk-ridden on the streets.

Through pain-filled eyes the nun regarded the younger man, "You have to get in there," she rasped, "He's there."

"Where sister? And who?"

"The orphanage and, …" it was due solely to the fact that the sister's body was wavering between passing out from blood loss, or just plain-and-simple agony that she forwent the necessity of providing a vivid description of the policeman's genetic predisposition towards redundant questions. Instead, she focused on the simple act of providing some measure of information: "…him…with the knives…"

"You mean 'that' guy with the knives?" Mathias' voice rose in alarm as he intuited the nun's less than portrait-like description. Obviously, his more rational side informed him, she couldn't know that it is 'him' simply because no-one knew that yet; yet considering the somewhat paranoid atmosphere of the city, due to the Shakespeare Killer's recent activity, the unhappy occurrence of anyone appearing, and presenting a knife with overt and entirely inappropriate enthusiasm, was enough to ensure that 'he' – in some shape or form - had made an appearance.

"Yes."

At that moment the ambulance arrived: sirens howling, brakes squealing and the crew, all care, and with better things to do that play a game of political precedence with the police, swept the nun away. Mathias watched the ambulance disappear in a distant swarm of cars before he approached the Serjeant.

"Sarge?"

"Hmmmm?" The Serjeant was paying close attention to a bagel.

"The Sister informed me that she was attacked by the Shakespeare Killer."

"…And how would she know who the Shakespeare Killer is? She's a nun, not a policeman."

Mathias looked askance at the Serjeant, the thought crossing his mind that the Serjeant, deskbound for the better part of twenty years, wouldn't recognise a criminal if he was mistakenly locked in the cells for the night and, as such, was a fine one to talk.

"Maybe so, but I'm fairly sure she didn't stab herself."

"You never know with those religious types, they're apt to do some pretty strange things; anyway, didn't she say she was some kind of performance artist?"

The urge to shoot the Serjeant warred with Mathias' need to bang his head against a wall, his head that is, not the Serjeant's, he didn't want to damage any of the surrounding architecture "We're not here to discuss comparative theology, the woman got stabbed, are you saying that because we can't be sure it's the Shakespeare Killer we should just ignore it?"

"Why not?"

"Because we're here to arrest the people committing the crimes and not make moral judgements with respect to the people who are reporting them."

"But we have no evidence that a crime was committed."

"Alright then, precisely how would you," the use of the pronoun was edged, "describe a stab wound and a victim bleeding all over a city street?"

"An unfortunate accident."

"And do you realise the exponential increase in paperwork we'll get if it is the Shakespeare guy and we don't check into it?"

The Serjeant, ever lazier than a sloth on tranquillisers, took the point immediately, informed control, and signalled Mathias - and the other policemen that had arrived earlier - to follow him into the orphanage; at least he did up until the point where concerns as to his own mortality, due to the slight possibility that it might actually be the Shakespeare Killer, caused him to wave Mathias and the others ahead. The Serjeant, for all his heroic concern as to his own safety needn't have worried, for the assailant had already rendered himself harmless.

While the assailant was of no potential danger, transfixed as he was, the result of his actions was plain to see. The orphanage was now more charnel house than children's home and small bodies littered the floors like desecrated dolls, flung aside at an owner's whim; some were broken beyond all hope of repair, while other mewled weakly as they brokenly carried out a feeble search for some small measure of security. There was none to be had; for about them lay, just as broken, just as devastated, the bodies of their protectors; protectors no more.

He had scythed through them like a malevolent whirlwind before coming to rest and yet caution was a watchword for they did not know if the storm had ended or this was but the eye at its centre.