Chapter 1: Dear Lord!

"Dear Lord!" Yvette rant aloud as she looked at herself clad in a habit in front of a standing full body mirror, a cornette bulging on top, attached on the coif.

"Come on now, Yvette. It is rude to use the Lord's name in vain," Sister McKinney hushed, her palms brushing down the appearance in likeness to a swelling head on the surface of her hair.

"I don't simply get why I have to do this. Isn't it not allowed in your Holy whatever to...I don't know, probably — deceive the gods?" An infuriated grimace caused the contortion of her face.

"God," the celibate woman corrected. Yvette nodded, helplessly.

"Okay, God, whatever." She held her waist with both her palms slouching her back to induce her disinterest. "I wouldn't even know what to do. You can't just simply say I should just make an appearance for Lorelai!"

Sister McKinney could only tap her shoulders with her usual quote: It's all in the grace, even though it was relatively too far to explain certain situations. "Fuck grace, I don't even know the prayers!"

McKinney laughed at her warm expressions, perhaps they were too vulgar to represent the calmly composed twin, but to behold her big expressions on something that would've been trivial was a tease to the Sister's sight.

"You most probably understand that I am a criminal, don't you? And you're adding more to my sins not only by the law, but for the glory of—" Yvette grew at lost for words, leaving behind the other part of the sentence in the air. She had grown too frustrated to even think righteously and further exemplify her point.

"You just had a criminal record, Yvette, you're not considered a criminal anymore."

She rubbed her temple with her thumb and forefinger, her eyebrow twitching with such contempt. "You do realize what grave sin I committed, right? It wasn't some beginner crime, you know full well. I honestly feel like your sacred holy palace..."

"A church, Yvette," Sister McKinney corrected her once again. "Fuck, okay, a church. But what I was going to say was — wouldn't that thing break if I enter there? How will I be able to disguise as my sister then?"

Sister McKinney finished her look with a final touch. She looked at her face with a smile.

Why does Lorelai have to fly to another country knowing she'd be late for this? I never knew she'd use me to stand in like this, clenching her teeth, Yvette thought whilst the other woman meticulously looked at her making sure she was presentable enough.

"Now you look like all your sins are purged." Sister McKinney walked toward the door slightly opened and once again looked back to her best friend's sister. "It's all in the grace," she purred, her voice almost as if she was whispering, disappearing yonder the hallway from beyond the door.

Yvette rolled her eyes feeling inevitably annoyed by the circumstance she was brought into.

"All the belief, the crosses, the demons fucking you in your sleep, the eerie sound of ghosts, the prayers, the mass, the crossing to wherever whatnot they mentioned—" she had a sluggish tone etched on the back of her throat. She scratched her head, aggressively murmuring everything her twin, Lorelai had told her while she was in the convent."This is all fucking me up!"

Her legs wide open with her elbows supporting the weight of her upper abdomen, a frown sketched up on her face. Her thick brows furrowed together as if slowly meeting each other halfway, her mouth into a pout. "Out of all the women, me? If that's the case they could've just captured an atrocious beast, sprinkled some magic fairy dust or called Cinderella's godmother to bibidi-bobidiboo their way out of this, they could've. It's like the same thing except that I'm human, so I'm less work."

She sighed, breathing out the burden as she inhaled it again. "Maybe that's the point. Haa, what a hassle."

Sister McKinney once again slid into the room with her fingers clutched on the frame. "Oh, right. I forgot you don't know the whole place."

Yvette scoffed, a phrase came out of her unending sarcasm. "And I thought nuns were made of golden politeness..."

Sister McKinney led Yvette to a pebble-stepped porch of the monastery. The layout structure of the convent was sickening for Yvette as it made her feel under stress, moreover, divulged into the whole holy roleplay. It was like it's hard to sin against, she was not breathing the air right. The whole interior and exterior surfaces of the convent was appalling to look at.

Her back slumped whilst the soles of her feet made loud gestures against the marble stones of the path, stomping languidly. She had been dragging her feet around, unwilling to follow Sister McKinney despite not having any choice. Well, Lorelai did impose a threat against her if she would bail out — she badly wished she could.

The growing silence was louder than she expected, there was nothing but thin air and the still quiet as if it was a miasma which covered the convent. Yvette could count six — seven nuns had already passed by, well, even though they walked in groups, they did not talk as if they shared semblance to mute children in the special children's department office her mom used to work at.

"Are you not allowed to speak? Or is it because it's rude to God?" Yvette blurted out with both her arms mimicking the way nuns kept them under the sleeves of their habit. Sister McKinney did not answer which gave her an eerily scare, causing her to wander into such deluded thoughts.

I don't even think I went into the right convent, this looks like I've been set up to join a demon-sacrificing cult where I'm the sacrificial lamb, she thought overlapping the usual overthought notions of many. Yvette seemed to always push further beyond the imagination of human consideration.

She sighed from beneath her breath letting out a small gasp after. If it weren't for the fact that she was my sister...Damn, if only I had something better to do with my life I wouldn't be pushed around like this.

As she walked following after the certain woman, Yvette kept her head turning familiarizing the complexity of the convent's indoors. It was strange for someone with no interest to religious activities whatsoever.

By the east side of the convent where a rectangular pool approximately eight feet in depth caught Yvette's attention, her footsteps began to decline. It was not particularly like the normal vacation ones she saw, captivating and inviting — the water was undoubtedly murky unlike pools she saw during her vacations, it was inhospitable but it drawn her line of sight toward that perspective.

"Oh, so nuns do have vacations, just inside the convent then?" Although that may sound acerbic, Yvette let the question out genuinely, ignorant of many things in the nunnery.

Sister McKinney halted her feet, her eyes suddenly glued to the pool water, translucent and fairly still. "That is prohibited."

That was the only thing the woman said so Yvette had never gotten further to press the question. But it made her live in so much awe.

"Wow, if I were to serve the man who died on the cross to purge my sins but stricts me from going to a pool and talk, I'd rather let the devil take me to hell and I'd comply."

The woman vowed to celibacy eyed her, a striking glare caused a menace down her spine as if she had said the most blatant, vulgar word any woman pretending to be a nun should. Well, Sister McKinney never had looked at her this way when she was cursing aloud so she was trying to figure which part of her speech flopped.

"What?" Although trying to contain the nervous rattling of her voice, the tension just came seeping out from her throat.

Sister McKinney sighed a forgiving sigh. It was difficult for her to treat her best friend's twin as if she was the best friend, or to even try to make her understand the perplexing, new environment they threw her into. Lorelai and Yvette was undoubtedly different from the other. Lorelai who had a pure spirit and a submitting consciousness couldn't be Yvette who lived her life as if there are a lot of tomorrows, relentless of her trespasses against the Lord.

"You should not, and I forbid you, not mock the devils, Yvette. They may take your words for serious, I'd pluck my hair out if one day your sister learns that you pledged outright to be in the devil's stead than with God's." There was a warning from every of her words making Yvette tremor with guilt or even anticipation. Somehow, it was even already redoubtable for a non-believer like her to hear the wisdom of such creatures from her sister's mouth on a daily basis every time she got out the monastery, to add, having her sister's best friend to fuel the extra details.

Sister McKinney held her wrist in an attempt to pull her away, her gaze fixated on the pool still as a low voice came so privately just between them. "You wouldn't like Hell, Yvette."