In the early 20th century the temperance movement connected alcohol with immigration. To many Americans at the time, the country had succeeded because of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and immigrants were portrayed as threatening that success.
Built on white supremacy, Protestant nationalism, and xenophobia, the Klan naturally found common cause with Prohibition, which became law through the 18th Ammendment in 1920.
The Klan reached its peak in the 1920s, and support for Prohibition was a major part of its growth. The organization presented itself as a defender of law and order, pushed for strict enforcement of the Volstead Act, and even took enforcement into its own hands. Klansmen hunted bootleggers, raided illegal saloons, and attacked those they viewed as violating traditional American values. As historian Leonard Moore wrote, the Klan’s “support for Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation.”
The Klan’s membership, grew into the millions, commonly estimated between 1.5 and 4 million members. The Klan grew so powerful that it became a major issue at the 1924 Democratic National Convention. The nomination of Catholic anti-Klan candidate Al Smith drove many Klansmen away from the Democrats, helping Republican Calvin Coolidge win reelection. For a time, the Klan successfully presented itself as a patriotic defender of law, morality, and “traditional” America.
That image began to collapse when Indiana Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of state education official Madge Oberholtzer. The case shocked the nation and caused many Americans to reconsider the movement. The fact that Oberholtzer was a white Protestant woman was, tragically, a major factor in why the scandal resonated so strongly with the public.
If you’re interested, I did an essay on the Prohibition era in detail here; but let me know your thoughts on political artwork: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-106-prohibition?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
On January 17th, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. The manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquor was prohibited.
Prohibition had been a long time coming. Temperance movements had existed for over 100 years, driven by religious groups (especially evangelical Protestants), social reformers, and, most importantly, women. With physical abuse rampant and often made worse by men drinking, and with women having little legal recourse, temperance organizations became a major avenue for women’s activism.
Before the Civil War, 13 states had adopted some form of prohibition, but the war slowed the movement’s momentum. It returned with the rise of the Anti-Saloon League, a single-issue lobbying organization that was incredibly effective at spreading prohibitionist messaging through politics and popular culture.
Part of their success came from tying alcohol consumption to immigration and leaning heavily into American xenophobia. Immigrants, especially in growing cities, were portrayed as the source of America’s social problems, with alcohol blamed as a major cause.
World War I became the final push. Fighting Germany weakened one of the strongest anti-Prohibition groups, German Americans, while the argument that banning alcohol production would free resources for the war effort helped push the amendment forward.
Prohibition went into effect in 1920, and almost immediately the Prohibition Bureau, created through the Volstead Act to enforce the amendment, faced an impossible task.
While many Americans supported Prohibition and stopped drinking, many others, both those who had always opposed it and those who were simply indifferent, found ways around the law.
Bootlegging exploded. Alcohol flowed into the country through rum runners crossing from Canada and Mexico, as well as smuggling operations overseas. A major boon to Organized Crime in the United States.
Others exploited the medical exemption. Doctors had successfully lobbied for the ability to prescribe alcohol, and soon Americans were receiving government-stamped “medicinal whiskey” for everything from legitimate ailments to questionable ones.
Another option was making alcohol at home, often using industrial alcohol. The government instructed companies to denature industrial alcohol, hoping the taste and danger would discourage people from drinking it. It did not.
So the government ordered companies to add toxins. People still drank it.
Medical experts warned this would kill people, but the policy continued. More than 10,000 Americans died from poisoned alcohol. New York City Medical Examiner Charles Norris said:
“The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol... yet it continues its poisoning processes.”
Prohibition was always doomed to fail. Despite scenes like this, barrels of seized alcohol being destroyed, the government was fighting a battle against demand itself.
If interested, I cover the Prohibition era in detail here 😃: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-106-prohibition?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
On August 4th, 1892, the prosperous mill city of Fall River, Massachusetts, was thrown into a frenzy when wealthy mill owner Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were found brutally murdered in their home.
The obvious suspect quickly became Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter, Lizzie Borden.
Lizzie and her sister had lived lives controlled by their overly frugal father, who they believed favored Abby, their stepmother, whom Lizzie referred to as “Mrs. Borden,” and her family. Tensions had been escalating in the household, and the family’s live-in maid, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, would later say the family rarely ate together and the atmosphere in the house was tense.
Lizzie gave conflicting answers about what she was doing that morning, appeared strangely calm after finding her father’s body, and investigators found a hatchet with a broken handle in the basement. A neighbor who stayed with the pair testified to seeing Lizzie burning a dress afterward.
Yet the police investigation was so poorly handled that much of the evidence was questionable, and Lizzie’s inquest testimony, which the DA essentially treated as an interrogation, was later ruled inadmissible.
The trial became a national obsession. Could a wealthy Victorian woman really have taken an axe and murdered her own parents? The public, police, and jury struggled with the idea, not necessarily because of a lack of evidence, but because of the social expectations of the time.
Lizzie was supposed to be quiet, religious, obedient, and respectable, if somewhat of an odd woman.
On June 20th, 1893, after deliberating for less than two hours, the jury acquitted her.
No other serious suspects have emerged, and speculation about the murders ranges from Andrew abusing Lizzie, something there is no evidence for, though that does not necessarily mean much, to theories about an affair between Lizzie, a lifelong bachelorette, and Sullivan. Sullivan allegedly confessed on her deathbed that she had lied to protect Lizzie, though what exactly that lie was remains unclear.
Whether Lizzie Borden was a cold-blooded murderer, a victim of a restrictive society, or both remains debated to this day.
I cover the case in full here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-105-lizzie?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
On August 4th, 1892, the prosperous mill city of Fall River, Massachusetts, was thrown into a frenzy when wealthy mill owner Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were found brutally murdered in their home.
The obvious suspect quickly became Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter, Lizzie Borden.
Lizzie and her sister had lived lives controlled by their overly frugal father, who they believed showed favoritism toward Abby, their stepmother, whom Lizzie referred to as “Mrs. Borden,” and her family. Tensions had been escalating in the household, and the family’s live-in maid, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, would later say the family rarely ate together and the atmosphere in the house was tense.
Lizzie gave conflicting answers about what she was doing that morning, appeared strangely calm after finding her father’s body, and investigators found a hatchet with a broken handle in the basement. A neighbor who stayed with the pair testified to seeing Lizzie burning a dress afterwards.
Yet the police investigation was so poorly handled that much of the evidence was questionable, and Lizzie’s inquest testimony, which the DA essentially treated as an interrogation, was later ruled inadmissible.
The trial became a national obsession. Could a wealthy Victorian woman really have taken an axe and murdered her own parents? The public, police, and jury struggled with the idea, not necessarily because of a lack of evidence, but because of the social expectations of the time.
Lizzie was supposed to be quiet, religious, obedient, and respectable, if somewhat of an odd woman.
On June 20th, 1893, after less than two hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted her.
No other serious suspects have emerged, and speculation about the murders ranges from Andrew abusing Lizzie, something there is no evidence for, though that does not necessarily mean much, to theories about an affair between Lizzie, a lifelong bachelorette, and Sullivan. Sullivan allegedly confessed on her deathbed that she had lied to protect Lizzie, though what exactly that lie was remains unclear.
Whether Lizzie Borden was a cold-blooded murderer, a victim of a restrictive society, or both remains debated to this day.
I cover the case in full here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-105-lizzie?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
On August 4th, 1892, the prosperous mill city of Fall River, Massachusetts, was thrown into a frenzy when wealthy mill owner Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were found brutally murdered in their home.
The obvious suspect quickly became Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter, Lizzie Borden.
Lizzie and her sister had lived lives controlled by their overly frugal father, who they believed showed favoritism toward Abby, their stepmother, whom Lizzie referred to as “Mrs. Borden,” and her family. Tensions had been escalating in the household, and the family’s live-in maid, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, would later say the family rarely ate together and the atmosphere in the house was tense.
Lizzie gave conflicting answers about what she was doing that morning, appeared strangely calm after finding her father’s body, and investigators found a hatchet with a broken handle in the basement. A neighbor who stayed with the pair testified to seeing Lizzie burning a dress afterwards.
Yet the police investigation was so poorly handled that much of the evidence was questionable, and Lizzie’s inquest testimony, which the DA essentially treated as an interrogation, was later ruled inadmissible.
The trial became a national obsession. Could a wealthy Victorian woman really have taken an axe and murdered her own parents? The public, police, and jury struggled with the idea, not necessarily because of a lack of evidence, but because of the social expectations of the time.
Lizzie was supposed to be quiet, religious, obedient, and respectable, if somewhat of an odd woman.
On June 20th, 1893, after less than two hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted her.
No other serious suspects have emerged, and speculation about the murders ranges from Andrew abusing Lizzie, something there is no evidence for, though that does not necessarily mean much, to theories about an affair between Lizzie, a lifelong bachelorette, and Sullivan. Sullivan allegedly confessed on her deathbed that she had lied to protect Lizzie, though what exactly that lie was remains unclear.
Whether Lizzie Borden was a cold-blooded murderer, a victim of a restrictive society, or both remains debated to this day.
I cover the case in full here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-105-lizzie?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
Henry I of England was the youngest son of William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, who successfully invaded England and was crowned king in 1066. As the fourth son, Henry was not expected to inherit much of anything.
Instead, he purchased the County of Cotentin for himself, only to lose it when his eldest brother Robert, who had inherited Normandy, removed him from power. Henry then allied himself with his brother William II, who had succeeded their father as King of England, against Robert. But in 1100, William was killed in a hunting accident, and Henry quickly seized the throne.
Thirty-four years after the Norman Conquest, England remained deeply unsettled. The Norman nobility was still trying to establish itself, and Henry faced challenges from both within and outside the kingdom. He defeated his brother Robert’s attempt to claim the English throne and conquered Normandy from him as well. A harsh but capable ruler, Henry skillfully strengthened royal authority, bringing a degree of stability.
Henry married and had two legitimate children. His daughter, Matilda, was married at eight years old to Henry V, the future Holy Roman Emperor, while his son, William, was groomed from birth to inherit the throne. William became heavily involved in his father’s politics, helping secure Normandy under English control and acquiring the County of Anjou through marriage.
But on November 25, 1120, everything changed.
William and around 300 other passengers boarded the Blanche Nef (“White Ship”) to return to England from Barfleur. The 17-year-old heir had been drinking heavily, not only with his entourage and illegitimate half-siblings but with the crew as well. The drinking became so excessive that several passengers abandoned the voyage, including Stephen, Count of Blois, William’s cousin, who was reportedly so drunk that he was vomiting.
In the dark and stormy waters of the English Channel, the White Ship struck a rock. The crew and passengers were unable to free the vessel or prevent it from filling with water. William and several companions managed to launch a small lifeboat, but at the last moment, William learned that his illegitimate half-sister was still aboard. He turned back to save her.
When William, his sister, and several others climbed into the already overcrowded boat, it “capsized and sank and buried all indiscriminately in the deep.”
The medieval chronicler Henry of Huntingdon wrote that William, “instead of wearing embroidered robes, floated naked in the waves, and instead of ascending a lofty throne, found his grave at the bottom of the sea.”
Henry turned to his daughter Matilda as his heir, but the medieval nobility was not prepared to accept a woman ruling in her own right. This opened the door for the aforementioned Stephen of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror, to seize the throne, beginning the devastating 15-year civil war known as the Anarchy.
If interested, I cover this period of English history here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-103-king?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
John Plantagenet was the youngest son of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry controlled not only England but enormous territories across modern France.
Henry was an effective but ruthless autocrat, and with encouragement from Eleanor and Henry’s enemies in France, his older sons rebelled against him. Henry defeated them, but the rebellion had one unexpected consequence: five-year-old John, nicknamed by his father Jean sans Terre (“John Without Land”), became Henry’s favorite son. From there, John went from having nothing to inheriting lands, titles, and political importance.
John grew into a jealous, insecure, and temperamental man, prone to fits of rage and known for extravagant clothing and jewelry. After years of family conflict, his older brother Richard, famed as the Lionheart, rebelled against their father yet again. As Richard’s victory became inevitable, John switched sides.
When Richard became king, he joined forces with the ambitious King Philip II of France for the Third Crusade. Richard attempted to keep his younger brother under control by granting him titles while getting him to stay out of England. That plan lasted until Eleanor convinced Richard to allow John a greater role in governing while he was away.
While John saw an opportunity. He declared himself regent, built his own administration, and effectively launched a soft coup as word from Richard stopped. Richard, was not dead but had managed to get himself captured.
John claimed his brother was dead and that he should inherit the throne. With support from Philip II, who had fallen out with Richard during the Crusade, John launched an unsuccessful rebellion. When Richard returned after buying his freedom, he confronted his brother, stripped him of some lands, and dismissed the 27-year-old John as “a child who has had evil counsellors.”
John spent the rest of Richard’s reign supporting him, and proved capable in campaigns against the French. But in 1199, Richard was struck by a crossbow bolt while besieging a small and ultimately meaningless castle.
John won the succession struggle against his nephew and became King of England, beginning one of the most hated reigns in English history.
John was an unpleasant man, but he was not a uniquely evil ruler. His father and brother had both ruled as powerful monarchs who expected obedience. John continued that tradition.
He introduced important judicial and administrative reforms that strengthened the English crown, improving local government and creating systems that would influence English law for centuries. But after losing much of his French territory to Philip II, John became obsessed with reclaiming Normandy and his other continental possessions.
To finance these campaigns, John aggressively raised taxes, expanded royal revenue collection, and pressured the English nobility. This only worsened his already terrible relationship with the aristocracy. His conflicts with the Pope, including a period of excommunication, added to the growing resentment.
John’s ambitions collided with French power at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. Philip II defeated an allied force made up of John’s allies. John himself was not even present: many of his nobles refused to support him. The defeat destroyed any chance John had of recovering his French lands. When he returned to England, the relationship between king and nobles collapsed.
In 1215, a group of rebellious barons seized London and forced John into negotiations. They met at Runnymede, a meadow beside the Thames near Windsor Castle, on June 15th, 1215. There, John signed what became known as the Magna Carta, the Great Charter.
The document was not originally written as the foundation of democracy, but its later importance would become enormous. It went far beyond simply addressing the nobles’ complaints. It established limits on royal power, promised protections for the Church, restricted unlawful imprisonment, guaranteed access to justice, and declared that new taxes could not be imposed without consent.
It also created a council of 25 barons whose job was to monitor John and ensure he followed the agreement.
For the first time, an English king had explicitly accepted that he was not completely above the law. It placed England on a path that would eventually contribute to the development of Parliament and constitutional monarchy.
It was one of the most important documents in history.
And John immediately ignored it. The barons did too, because they correctly assumed John would never accept these restrictions willingly. Civil war broke out, and John would not live long enough to see the end of it. He died of dysentery in October 1216, leaving behind a divided kingdom and a reputation as one of England’s most hated kings.
If interested I explore King John and the Magna Carta here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-103-king?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
John Plantagenet was the youngest son of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry controlled not only England but enormous territories across modern France.
Henry was an effective but ruthless autocrat, and with encouragement from Eleanor and Henry’s enemies in France, his older sons rebelled against him. Henry defeated them, but the rebellion had one unexpected consequence: five-year-old John, nicknamed by his father Jean sans Terre (“John Without Land”), became Henry’s favorite son. From there, John went from having nothing to inheriting lands, titles, and political importance.
John grew into a jealous, insecure, and temperamental man, prone to fits of rage and known for extravagant clothing and jewelry. After years of family conflict, his older brother Richard, famed as the Lionheart, rebelled against their father yet again. As Richard’s victory became inevitable, John switched sides.
When Richard became king, he joined forces with the ambitious King Philip II of France for the Third Crusade. Richard attempted to keep his younger brother under control by granting him titles while getting him to stay out of England. That plan lasted until Eleanor convinced Richard to allow John a greater role in governing while he was away.
While John saw an opportunity. He declared himself regent, built his own administration, and effectively launched a soft coup as word from Richard stopped. Richard, was not dead but had managed to get himself captured.
John claimed his brother was dead and that he should inherit the throne. With support from Philip II, who had fallen out with Richard during the Crusade, John launched an unsuccessful rebellion. When Richard returned after buying his freedom, he confronted his brother, stripped him of some lands, and dismissed the 27-year-old John as “a child who has had evil counsellors.”
John spent the rest of Richard’s reign supporting him, and proved capable in campaigns against the French. But in 1199, Richard was struck by a crossbow bolt while besieging a small and ultimately meaningless castle.
John won the succession struggle against his nephew and became King of England, beginning one of the most hated reigns in English history.
John was an unpleasant man, but he was not a uniquely evil ruler. His father and brother had both ruled as powerful monarchs who expected obedience. John continued that tradition.
He introduced important judicial and administrative reforms that strengthened the English crown, improving local government and creating systems that would influence English law for centuries. But after losing much of his French territory to Philip II, John became obsessed with reclaiming Normandy and his other continental possessions.
To finance these campaigns, John aggressively raised taxes, expanded royal revenue collection, and pressured the English nobility. This only worsened his already terrible relationship with the aristocracy. His conflicts with the Pope, including a period of excommunication, added to the growing resentment.
John’s ambitions collided with French power at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. Philip II defeated an allied force made up of John’s allies. John himself was not even present: many of his nobles refused to support him. The defeat destroyed any chance John had of recovering his French lands. When he returned to England, the relationship between king and nobles collapsed.
In 1215, a group of rebellious barons seized London and forced John into negotiations. They met at Runnymede, a meadow beside the Thames near Windsor Castle, on June 15th, 1215. There, John signed what became known as the Magna Carta, the Great Charter.
The document was not originally written as the foundation of democracy, but its later importance would become enormous. It went far beyond simply addressing the nobles’ complaints. It established limits on royal power, promised protections for the Church, restricted unlawful imprisonment, guaranteed access to justice, and declared that new taxes could not be imposed without consent.
It also created a council of 25 barons whose job was to monitor John and ensure he followed the agreement.
For the first time, an English king had explicitly accepted that he was not completely above the law. It placed England on a path that would eventually contribute to the development of Parliament and constitutional monarchy.
It was one of the most important documents in history.
And John immediately ignored it. The barons did too, because they correctly assumed John would never accept these restrictions willingly. Civil war broke out, and John would not live long enough to see the end of it. He died of dysentery in October 1216, leaving behind a divided kingdom and a reputation as one of England’s most hated kings.
If interested I explore King John and the Magna Carta here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-103-king?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
Born in 1661, Charles II of Spain was the product of centuries of Habsburg inbreeding, which the Austrian royal house pursued to an almost unparalleled degree. This was further reinforced in Spain by ideas of limpieza de sangre (“blood purity”), which encouraged marriages within a narrow circle of Catholics.
The result was an exaggeration of inherited traits, most famously mandibular prognathism: the infamous Habsburg Jaw. Carlos may have suffered from the most extreme version of it in the dynasty’s history. His underbite was so severe that he struggled to chew his food properly, contributing to lifelong digestive problems. His tongue was also unusually large, reportedly making his speech difficult to understand at times.
Propaganda later further exaggerated his appearance, part of a broader campaign portraying Carlos as cursed, incapable, and mentally deficient.
One of the most famous examples used against him is the claim that after his father’s death, the new king spent days sleeping beside his father’s corpse. The story is true, but the context matters: Carlos was a small child, and he had been encouraged to do so by those around him.
Despite the myth, there is no evidence that Carlos was unintelligent. He received an education from learned tutors, participated in government after coming of age, and foreign observers described him as affable and generous, though painfully shy and lacking confidence.
He enjoyed physical activities like hunting and riding, but throughout his life, he was plagued by severe health problems. Childhood illnesses, including measles, chickenpox, rubella, smallpox, and rickets, left him frail; he reportedly needed leg braces until the age of five.
Married twice, Carlos was described as loving and devoted to his wives. He never produced an heir, and the blame was placed unfairly on his queens. His first wife was subjected to years of fertility treatments and died at only 26.
When Carlos finally died in 1700 at the age of 38, the autopsy described his body in horrific terms: his “heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.”
He had spent his life physically suffering, battling depression, struggling with self-confidence, and knowing that much of Europe was waiting for him to die, as he was the last legitimate male Habsburg heir of the Spanish line.
His death triggered the War of the Spanish Succession. The Bourbon monarchy that replaced him had every reason to portray Carlos as a symbol of everything wrong with Spain, exaggerating his appearance and abilities while ignoring that Spain’s decline had begun long before he was born.
If interested, I cover the tragedy of Carlos II of Spain here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-102-the?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
After a series of behavioral problems, Antonio’s father sends him to the Chruch of San Benedetto del Mare in the small town of Victo Sacro in Italy to work with the ministry, hoping that would redeem Antonio. The longer Antonio stays with the ministry, the stranger the church seems, and the head of the ministry may be hiding something from the rest of the ministry and town.
Antonio journals his thoughts and experience with the ministry and Brothers. What started off as repetitive days and usual church gossip turns into rumors of the devil, killers, and demons surface amongst the boys.
Author: Kiwi’s Stories
~~~~~~~~~~~~
First Entry - The Church of San Benedetto del Mare
The ministry was my father’s idea. He’d presented it the way he presented most things — as something already decided, framed briefly as a suggestion. My father said the Church of San Benedetto del Mare was accepting junior brothers for a one-year placement and that he had written to Father Cesare on my behalf. That it would be good for me. That it would help me repent of my past.
He then said I was expected by the first of the month. My mother cried at the door when I left, and my father shook my hand, finally looking like a proud man. I could see the immense relief in his eyes, like a man letting go of a weight he’d been carrying for a long time. I didn’t ask him about any of it. He was not the kind of man that took well to being questioned.
I had just turned twenty-two a few days prior, and honestly I had no strong feeling about God, his presence or his influence on any part of the world. I still don’t. My mother prayed to him every night and my father always wore a silver cross. None of it meant anything to me, not then, and hardly now. So I packed a bag and traveled south, and for once in my life, wondered if there was such a thing as redemption.
Second Entry - Days to Weeks
The church was much larger than it needs to be for a town this size. That’s the first thing I noticed arriving in Vico Sacro is how much the building swallows up the square. The locals seemed to move around its shadow like water flowing around a rock.
I’ve been keeping this journal since the second week of my arrival. Writing down my thoughts is the only way to keep myself occupied from the stagnant days. The bells mark every hour and after a while, I stopped hearing them.
Father Cesare runs the ministry. He is old, with wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, ivory hair, and he looks at you with the expression of someone without much interest. I have spoken to him directly only two times in thirty-one days. Both times he knew my name without being reminded, which should have been reassuring, one would think. I didn’t find it that way. It reminded me of my father.
Brother Luca is the one I talk with most. He is a large man, soft-spoken, the kind of careful gentleness that on another person would seem like a good quality. On Luca it registers differently. I can’t explain it. Luca doesn’t speak much of his past, and he doesn’t ask about mine, which I am grateful for. The other junior brothers I’ve largely avoided. Or perhaps they’re avoiding me.
They’re much younger, in their teens some. They seem to enjoy gossip and whispers after lights-out, I hear them chatting in the halls. Devils and curses, a crazed individual who had arrived in Vicro Sacro they said was psychopathic, and supposedly odd noises in the middle of the night out in the courtyard. No one was supposed to be outside their dormitories after lights out. Their chatter would not stop.
Third Entry - Odd becomes Strange
One morning, the new rumors started. Domenico had disappeared on the tenth day. He was at vespers the evening before. By matins he was gone, cot stripped, as if he’d never been there. Father Cesare announced at morning prayer that Brother Domenico had taken ill and been transferred to a sister institution in the next province, and then he moved on to the day’s scripture.
The dormitory talked that night, and the next few nights that followed. There had been no word of him since. Domenico had worked on the lower level, in the infirmary floor below the main building, which the junior brothers are told to stay clear of unless assigned. And few were assigned to that level. He came back from it one of the days and wouldn’t eat. He sat by himself in corners, and I overheard someone say he’d been scratching at his forearms so much, they would bleed and they had to bandage him.
The theory with the most currency was that he’d ingested something from the herb stores — accident, or something else, depending on who was telling it. The youngest brother, Pio, said they had captured the devil in the basement, and Domenico had looked the devil in the face and that was the end of it. Then, five nights ago, I’d heard it through my window that was open an inch wider than it should have been, and Father Cesare’s voice spoke softly to someone in the courtyard as they walked by, but his words were clear enough: She is becoming a problem for containment. We can’t let that happen again.
~~~
Brother Luca found me at the candle store the following morning and told me my duties were changing, and I would be reporting to the lower level infirmary at sundown. He didn’t offer a reason, but the way he said it made clear there were no questions to be asked.
~~~
The entrance was near the lower stairs, behind a door I’d assumed was storage because of its plain and slightly swollen frame from the damp that comes off the cliff face behind the building. The church is built into the rock of the cliffside the town is nestled in, and on the way down you can see where the plastering ends and where the cliff itself forms part of the wall. The air changes here, becoming much cooler. The smell changes too. Vinegar and dried herbs from the infirmary proper, which is the first corridor. The basement was unremarkable – four cots, two old men sleeping in them who didn’t look up when I passed, a young brother at the far end sorting linens.
The second corridor was sealed off with an iron door. I was not taken through it on the first day. My work was in the first corridor, and I did it, keeping my eyes only where I was told. But there was a smell coming through the iron door that I noticed on the first day when I walked by, and I’ve thought about it since. Underneath the copper and wet stone was something floral and sweet that had no business being down there.
Fourth Entry - The Basement
I’ve been on the lower level for a week now. I know the schedule. Father Cesare comes down every other day. Anselmo – the younger priest with the ledger – comes with him. Luca stands in the corridor outside. Sessions run approximately one hour. Whatever happens on the other side of those iron doors happens without any noise.
I’ve seen enough to understand the rough shape of what this level is used for. Two days ago, Luca told me that I would be needed in the basement level of the infirmary. He told me this in secret, in Father Cesare’s study. Something in me seemed to ignite with that same excitement and feeling that had been dormant ever since I had left Naples.
~~~
When I went through the iron door this morning…I’ll try to just say what I saw. The second corridor had four cells, gated with iron doors with small grates. The smell I mentioned — the copper and the sweetness and florals — it’s much stronger here.
Father Cesare and Anselmo were already inside the last cell. I came in with Luca and took up the position I’d been placed in — against the wall to the left of the door, holding an oil lamp. My job was the lamp. That was all. I was to not speak or interfere with anything else unless instructed.
As they lit torches around the circular room, a figure came to light. She sat on the floor against the far wall. I’ll try my best to be accurate – she had dark hair, lighter toward the ends, and olive skin. She was young, in her late teens.
The clothing they’d given her was damp at the collar from the heat that builds in the lower level even in early morning. Her skin was coated in a sheen of sweat. When she looked up briefly, her brown eyes seemed glazed over, the color close to amber. She looked at Father Cesare, then Anselmo, and then at me, and she didn’t look away for some time. She must have been expecting Brother Domenico, a brief look of confusion furrowing her brows.
Her movements were slow and slightly unsteady when she shifted positions, yet her eyes continued to track everything. While she seemed sedated, she remained somewhat alert.
Father Cesare asked her a series of questions, and her responses were calm to each one. Her breath fluttered every few words, as though she were fighting sleep. There was something about her, I can’t explain. I had to fight an urge to move closer, to see her in clearer light. When her gaze would sway back to meet mine, I felt a warm shiver down my spine.
Fifth Entry - Something is Wrong
Her name was Elana. She had been found after a shipwreck not far from this coast. She was the only survivor. Anselmo said she had been in good health – no signs of starvation, dehydration, or any disease. The ship held a crew of over seventy-five, yet the remaining seventy-four suffered the opposite fate.
Some of the remaining bodies had been found in pieces of the wreckage that were discovered by passing ships heading for Vicro Sacro. That was long before I had arrived. The town had suspected works of the devil – how else would she survive? They inspected her as though she were an experiment of science.
Anselmo would shine the sunlight in her eyes, dose her with holy water, shouting prayers over her. She hardly reacted to it, the only thing that seemed to bother her was the daylight when Father Cesare pulled back the thick cloths around the only “window” in the entire chamber. At that moment, I wondered how long they had been keeping her chained in this basement. How quickly they had brought her here. Or had they given her some grace?
Days went by, and we would repeat the same procedure. Day after day I stood in that room with the lamp, watching her movements. Most people, under that kind of pressure, begin to drift, and their stories become inconsistent. Elena’s never did. Her demeanor remained the same. Her answers never changed.
She survived the wreck on rations she’d found in a lower cabinet of the hull before it went under.
She’d held onto a section of broken mast for two days before the current brought her close enough to shore to swim.
She was found on the rocks below Vico Sacro by a fisherman who brought her to the town square.
She had said this since the first day I stepped foot in this cell and she has told it the same way every day since. It had the flat tone of words that had been exhausted.
I’ve watched Father Cesare try every angle he has. The theological, the procedural, the prolonged silences meant to make a person fill the quiet with something they didn’t intend to say. Elena sits through the silences the way she sits through everything else, with her hands flat in her lap, breathing steady, waiting for the next question.
I asked Anselmo how long we intended to question her. His response was simple – Father Cesare wanted to break her. They had tied her in chains when she had broken out of the tethered binds and attacked Brother Domenico with a knife from the tray on the tables. The knife had been coated in her blood, but he did not elaborate how her blood ended up on the knife in the first place. After that, Brother Domenico had started to become paranoid, thinking he was poisoned. He was sent away.
It was hard to believe. Father Cesare had been adamant that she would not be released under any condition. Something was off indeed, but I don’t think it was Elana. I am certain of this now in the way I am certain of very few things.
But they believe her to be something dangerous, and I no longer trust that. I stopped believing it, if I’m honest, sometime in the first week. I’ve just been waiting for something to change my mind. Who she is, exactly, I can’t say with confidence. Brother Domenico’s paranoia didn’t translate into an actual disease. He was not ill.
There are no cuts on her skin, no open wounds. I noticed this on the third day and I’ve checked every day since, whenever the light let me. She had yellow bruises that were healing from the wreck, and from two days clinging to a broken mast and swimming through open water onto rocks.
The knife, and the blood on it now no longer makes sense. Where would that blood came from if her skin has never been broken? How could it be hers? I asked Anselmo this directly, two nights ago. I phrased it carefully — not a challenge, just a junior brother trying to understand the record for his own notes. He looked at me for longer than the question should have required, and then he said it had been assumed.
You assumed it was hers? I asked. He didn’t answer that. Instead, he went back to his ledger. I keep returning to the night I overheard Father Cesare through his study door. She is becoming a problem for containment. We can’t let that happen again. I think now I understood it backwards. I thought that meant whatever happened to Domenico. But now I wonder if she had tried to escape, that the blood could have been someone else’s in the room.
No. I don’t believe it. I’ve made my decision. I will free her tonight.
The chains are an old design — a single pin through the wall bracket, rusted, the kind of thing that hasn’t been replaced because no one expected it to need replacing. I’ve watched Anselmo work it loose during the sessions, when he repositions her for the light. I know how it comes apart.
The lower corridor is empty between matins and lauds. I’ve confirmed the timing for over a week now without quite admitting to myself why I was confirming it. The torches were low, just embers in most of the brackets — enough to see by by once your eyes adjust. Elena was awake, sitting against the wall with her hands in her lap. She didn’t say anything when I walked in. I knelt by the wall bracket and worked the pin the way I’d watched Anselmo do it, and it came free easier than I expected, the chain sliding off her wrist with a sound that seemed enormous in that quiet room.
She looked at the chain on the floor. Then at me. She didn’t move, she only watched me with tired eyes. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Brother Pio’s voice, calling something out in the distance. He wasn’t supposed to be down there. None of the junior brothers were.
I stood up too fast. The lamp swung in my hand, throwing the light around the room as Pio’s face appeared in the cell doorway. For a half second his expression wasn’t fear, or alarm. It was relief. Like he’d been looking for me specifically and finally found me. He opened his mouth to say something, but that was when Elena moved.
I didn’t see exactly what she threw — something small, off the floor near where she’d been sitting, something I hadn’t even registered as being there. It caught Pio across the temple and he went down without a sound, folding rather than falling, and the corridor went silent except for the chain still swinging slightly against the wall bracket. I stood there with the lamp shaking in my hand, looking at Pio on the ground, a pool of crimson starting to form where his head rested on the stone floor.
When I finally managed to look over at Elana, she was looking at Pio’s face with sad eyes.
“He’s not the one,” she whispered, almost to herself.
The one for what? I had asked. She looked up at me then; and for the first time since I’d seen her, she looked frustrated.
I looked back down at Pio. His right hand was open against the stone, palm up, fingers loosely curled around a needle with a crimson liquid inside.
After a series of behavioral problems, Antonio’s father sends him to the Chruch of San Benedetto del Mare in the small town of Victo Sacro in Italy to work with the ministry, hoping that would redeem Antonio. The longer Antonio stays with the ministry, the stranger the church seems, and the head of the ministry may be hiding something from the rest of the ministry and town.
Author Credits: Kiwi’s Stories - Substack
Please let me know thoughts as I’m still working out part 2!!
~~~~~~~~
First Entry - The Church of San Benedetto del Mare
The ministry was my father’s idea. He’d presented it the way he presented most things — as something already decided, framed briefly as a suggestion. My father said the Church of San Benedetto del Mare was accepting junior brothers for a one-year placement and that he had written to Father Cesare on my behalf. That it would be good for me. That it would help me repent of my past.
He then said I was expected by the first of the month. My mother cried at the door when I left, and my father shook my hand, finally looking like a proud man. I could see the immense relief in his eyes, like a man letting go of a weight he’d been carrying for a long time. I didn’t ask him about any of it. He was not the kind of man that took well to being questioned.
I had just turned twenty-two a few days prior, and honestly I had no strong feeling about God, his presence or his influence on any part of the world. I still don’t. My mother prayed to him every night and my father always wore a silver cross. None of it meant anything to me, not then, and hardly now. So I packed a bag and traveled south, and for once in my life, wondered if there was such a thing as redemption.
Second Entry - Days to Weeks
The church was much larger than it needs to be for a town this size. That’s the first thing I noticed arriving in Vico Sacro is how much the building swallows up the square. The locals seemed to move around its shadow like water flowing around a rock.
I’ve been keeping this journal since the second week of my arrival. Writing down my thoughts is the only way to keep myself occupied from the stagnant days. The bells mark every hour and after a while, I stopped hearing them.
Father Cesare runs the ministry. He is old, with wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, ivory hair, and he looks at you with the expression of someone without much interest. I have spoken to him directly only two times in thirty-one days. Both times he knew my name without being reminded, which should have been reassuring, one would think. I didn’t find it that way. It reminded me of my father.
Brother Luca is the one I talk with most. He is a large man, soft-spoken, the kind of careful gentleness that on another person would seem like a good quality. On Luca it registers differently. I can’t explain it. Luca doesn’t speak much of his past, and he doesn’t ask about mine, which I am grateful for. The other junior brothers I’ve largely avoided. Or perhaps they’re avoiding me.
They’re much younger, in their teens some. They seem to enjoy gossip and whispers after lights-out, I hear them chatting in the halls. Devils and curses, a crazed individual who had arrived in Vicro Sacro they said was psychopathic, and supposedly odd noises in the middle of the night out in the courtyard. No one was supposed to be outside their dormitories after lights out. Their chatter would not stop.
Third Entry - Odd becomes Strange
One morning, the new rumors started. Domenico had disappeared on the tenth day. He was at vespers the evening before. By matins he was gone, cot stripped, as if he’d never been there. Father Cesare announced at morning prayer that Brother Domenico had taken ill and been transferred to a sister institution in the next province, and then he moved on to the day’s scripture.
The dormitory talked that night, and the next few nights that followed. There had been no word of him since. Domenico had worked on the lower level, in the infirmary floor below the main building, which the junior brothers are told to stay clear of unless assigned. And few were assigned to that level. He came back from it one of the days and wouldn’t eat. He sat by himself in corners, and I overheard someone say he’d been scratching at his forearms so much, they would bleed and they had to bandage him.
The theory with the most currency was that he’d ingested something from the herb stores — accident, or something else, depending on** who was telling it. The youngest brother, Pio, said they had captured the devil in the basement, and Domenico had looked the devil in the face and that was the end of it. Then, five nights ago, I’d heard it through my window that was open an inch wider than it should have been, and Father Cesare’s voice spoke softly to someone in the courtyard as they walked by, but his words were **clear enough: She is becoming a problem for containment. We can’t let that happen again.
~~~
Brother Luca found me at the candle store the following morning and told me my duties were changing, and I would be reporting to the lower level infirmary at sundown. He didn’t offer a reason, but the way he said it made clear there were no questions to be asked.
~~~
The entrance was near the lower stairs, behind a door I’d assumed was storage because of its plain and slightly swollen frame from the damp that comes off the cliff face behind the building. The church is built into the rock of the cliffside the town is nestled in, and on the way down you can see where the plastering ends and where the cliff itself forms part of the wall. The air changes here, becoming much cooler. The smell changes too. Vinegar and dried herbs from the infirmary proper, which is the first corridor. The basement was unremarkable – four cots, two old men sleeping in them who didn’t look up when I passed, a young brother at the far end sorting linens.
The second corridor was sealed off with an iron door. I was not taken through it on the first day. My work was in the first corridor, and I did it, keeping my eyes only where I was told. But there was a smell coming through the iron door that I noticed on the first day when I walked by, and I’ve thought about it since. Underneath the copper and wet stone was something floral and sweet that had no business being down there.
Fourth Entry - The Basement
I’ve been on the lower level for a week now. I know the schedule. Father Cesare comes down every other day. Anselmo – the younger priest with the ledger – comes with him. Luca stands in the corridor outside. Sessions run approximately one hour. Whatever happens on the other side of those iron doors happens without any noise.
I’ve seen enough to understand the rough shape of what this level is used for. Two days ago, Luca told me that I would be needed in the basement level of the infirmary. He told me this in secret, in Father Cesare’s study. Something in me seemed to ignite with that same excitement and feeling that had been dormant ever since I had left Naples.
~~~
When I went through the iron door this morning…I’ll try to just say what I saw. The second corridor had four cells, gated with iron doors with small grates. The smell I mentioned — the copper and the sweetness and florals — it’s much stronger here.
Father Cesare and Anselmo were already inside the last cell. I came in with Luca and took up the position I’d been placed in — against the wall to the left of the door, holding an oil lamp. My job was the lamp. That was all. I was to not speak or interfere with anything else unless instructed.
As they lit torches around the circular room, a figure came to light. She sat on the floor against the far wall. I’ll try my best to be accurate – she had dark hair, lighter toward the ends, and olive skin. She was young, in her late teens.
The clothing they’d given her was damp at the collar from the heat that builds in the lower level even in early morning. Her skin was coated in a sheen of sweat. When she looked up briefly, her brown eyes seemed glazed over, the color close to amber. She looked at Father Cesare, then Anselmo, and then at me, and she didn’t look away for some time. She must have been expecting Brother Domenico, a brief look of confusion furrowing her brows.
Her movements were slow and slightly unsteady when she shifted positions, yet her eyes continued to track everything. While she seemed sedated, she remained somewhat alert.
Father Cesare asked her a series of questions, and her responses were calm to each one. Her breath fluttered every few words, as though she were fighting sleep. There was something about her, I can’t explain. I had to fight an urge to move closer, to see her in clearer light. When her gaze would sway back to meet mine, I felt a warm shiver down my spine.
Fifth Entry - Something is Wrong
Her name was Elana. She had been found after a shipwreck not far from this coast. She was the only survivor. Anselmo said she had been in good health – no signs of starvation, dehydration, or any disease. The ship held a crew of over seventy-five, yet the remaining seventy-four suffered the opposite fate.
Some of the remaining bodies had been found in pieces of the wreckage that were discovered by passing ships heading for Vicro Sacro. That was long before I had arrived. The town had suspected works of the devil – how else would she survive? They inspected her as though she were an experiment of science.
Anselmo would shine the sunlight in her eyes, dose her with holy water, shouting prayers over her. She hardly reacted to it, the only thing that seemed to bother her was the daylight when Father Cesare pulled back the thick cloths around the only “window” in the entire chamber. At that moment, I wondered how long they had been keeping her chained in this basement. How quickly they had brought her here. Or had they given her some grace?
Days went by, and we would repeat the same procedure. Day after day I stood in that room with the lamp, watching her movements. Most people, under that kind of pressure, begin to drift, and their stories become inconsistent. Elena’s never did. Her demeanor remained the same. Her answers never changed.
She survived the wreck on rations she’d found in a lower cabinet of the hull before it went under.
She’d held onto a section of broken mast for two days before the current brought her close enough to shore to swim.
She was found on the rocks below Vico Sacro by a fisherman who brought her to the town square.
She had said this since the first day I stepped foot in this cell and she has told it the same way every day since. It had the flat tone of words that had been exhausted.
I’ve watched Father Cesare try every angle he has. The theological, the procedural, the prolonged silences meant to make a person fill the quiet with something they didn’t intend to say. Elena sits through the silences the way she sits through everything else, with her hands flat in her lap, breathing steady, waiting for the next question.
I asked Anselmo how long we intended to question her. His response was simple – Father Cesare wanted to break her. They had tied her in chains when she had broken out of the tethered binds and attacked Brother Domenico with a knife from the tray on the tables. The knife had been coated in her blood, but he did not elaborate how her blood ended up on the knife in the first place. After that, Brother Domenico had started to become paranoid, thinking he was poisoned. He was sent away.
It was hard to believe. Father Cesare had been adamant that she would not be released under any condition. Something was off indeed, but I don’t think it was Elana. I am certain of this now in the way I am certain of very few things.
But they believe her to be something dangerous, and I no longer trust that. I stopped believing it, if I’m honest, sometime in the first week. I’ve just been waiting for something to change my mind. Who she is, exactly, I can’t say with confidence. Brother Domenico’s paranoia didn’t translate into an actual disease. He was not ill.
There are no cuts on her skin, no open wounds. I noticed this on the third day and I’ve checked every day since, whenever the light let me. She had yellow bruises that were healing from the wreck, and from two days clinging to a broken mast and swimming through open water onto rocks.
The knife, and the blood on it now no longer makes sense. Where would that blood came from if her skin has never been broken? How could it be hers? I asked Anselmo this directly, two nights ago. I phrased it carefully — not a challenge, just a junior brother trying to understand the record for his own notes. He looked at me for longer than the question should have required, and then he said it had been assumed.
You assumed it was hers? I asked. He didn’t answer that. Instead, he went back to his ledger. I keep returning to the night I overheard Father Cesare through his study door. She is becoming a problem for containment. We can’t let that happen again. I think now I understood it backwards. I thought that meant whatever happened to Domenico. But now I wonder if she had tried to escape, that the blood could have been someone else’s in the room.
No. I don’t believe it. I’ve made my decision. I will free her tonight.
The chains are an old design — a single pin through the wall bracket, rusted, the kind of thing that hasn’t been replaced because no one expected it to need replacing. I’ve watched Anselmo work it loose during the sessions, when he repositions her for the light. I know how it comes apart.
The lower corridor is empty between matins and lauds. I’ve confirmed the timing for over a week now without quite admitting to myself why I was confirming it. The torches were low, just embers in most of the brackets — enough to see by by once your eyes adjust. Elena was awake, sitting against the wall with her hands in her lap. She didn’t say anything when I walked in. I knelt by the wall bracket and worked the pin the way I’d watched Anselmo do it, and it came free easier than I expected, the chain sliding off her wrist with a sound that seemed enormous in that quiet room.
She looked at the chain on the floor. Then at me. She didn’t move, she only watched me with tired eyes. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Brother Pio’s voice, calling something out in the distance. He wasn’t supposed to be down there. None of the junior brothers were.
I stood up too fast. The lamp swung in my hand, throwing the light around the room as Pio’s face appeared in the cell doorway. For a half second his expression wasn’t fear, or alarm. It was relief. Like he’d been looking for me specifically and finally found me. He opened his mouth to say something, but that was when Elena moved.
I didn’t see exactly what she threw — something small, off the floor near where she’d been sitting, something I hadn’t even registered as being there. It caught Pio across the temple and he went down without a sound, folding rather than falling, and the corridor went silent except for the chain still swinging slightly against the wall bracket. I stood there with the lamp shaking in my hand, looking at Pio on the ground, a pool of crimson starting to form where his head rested on the stone floor.
When I finally managed to look over at Elana, she was looking at Pio’s face with sad eyes.
“He’s not the one,” she whispered, almost to herself.
The one for what? I had asked. She looked up at me then; and for the first time since I’d seen her, she looked frustrated.
I looked back down at Pio. His right hand was open against the stone, palm up, fingers loosely curled around a needle with a crimson liquid inside.
After a series of behavioral problems, Antonio’s father sends him to the Chruch of San Benedetto del Mare in the small town of Victo Sacro in Italy to work with the ministry, hoping that would redeem Antonio. The longer Antonio stays with the ministry, the stranger the church seems, and the head of the ministry may be hiding something from the rest of the ministry and town.
Author Credits: Kiwi’s Stories - Substack
Please let me know thoughts as I’m still working out part 2!!
~~~~~~~~
First Entry - The Church of San Benedetto del Mare
The ministry was my father’s idea. He’d presented it the way he presented most things — as something already decided, framed briefly as a suggestion. My father said the Church of San Benedetto del Mare was accepting junior brothers for a one-year placement and that he had written to Father Cesare on my behalf. That it would be good for me. That it would help me repent of my past.
He then said I was expected by the first of the month. My mother cried at the door when I left, and my father shook my hand, finally looking like a proud man. I could see the immense relief in his eyes, like a man letting go of a weight he’d been carrying for a long time. I didn’t ask him about any of it. He was not the kind of man that took well to being questioned.
I had just turned twenty-two a few days prior, and honestly I had no strong feeling about God, his presence or his influence on any part of the world. I still don’t. My mother prayed to him every night and my father always wore a silver cross. None of it meant anything to me, not then, and hardly now. So I packed a bag and traveled south, and for once in my life, wondered if there was such a thing as redemption.
Second Entry - Days to Weeks
The church was much larger than it needs to be for a town this size. That’s the first thing I noticed arriving in Vico Sacro is how much the building swallows up the square. The locals seemed to move around its shadow like water flowing around a rock.
I’ve been keeping this journal since the second week of my arrival. Writing down my thoughts is the only way to keep myself occupied from the stagnant days. The bells mark every hour and after a while, I stopped hearing them.
Father Cesare runs the ministry. He is old, with wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, ivory hair, and he looks at you with the expression of someone without much interest. I have spoken to him directly only two times in thirty-one days. Both times he knew my name without being reminded, which should have been reassuring, one would think. I didn’t find it that way. It reminded me of my father.
Brother Luca is the one I talk with most. He is a large man, soft-spoken, the kind of careful gentleness that on another person would seem like a good quality. On Luca it registers differently. I can’t explain it. Luca doesn’t speak much of his past, and he doesn’t ask about mine, which I am grateful for. The other junior brothers I’ve largely avoided. Or perhaps they’re avoiding me.
They’re much younger, in their teens some. They seem to enjoy gossip and whispers after lights-out, I hear them chatting in the halls. Devils and curses, a crazed individual who had arrived in Vicro Sacro they said was psychopathic, and supposedly odd noises in the middle of the night out in the courtyard. No one was supposed to be outside their dormitories after lights out. Their chatter would not stop.
Third Entry - Odd becomes Strange
One morning, the new rumors started. Domenico had disappeared on the tenth day. He was at vespers the evening before. By matins he was gone, cot stripped, as if he’d never been there. Father Cesare announced at morning prayer that Brother Domenico had taken ill and been transferred to a sister institution in the next province, and then he moved on to the day’s scripture.
The dormitory talked that night, and the next few nights that followed. There had been no word of him since. Domenico had worked on the lower level, in the infirmary floor below the main building, which the junior brothers are told to stay clear of unless assigned. And few were assigned to that level. He came back from it one of the days and wouldn’t eat. He sat by himself in corners, and I overheard someone say he’d been scratching at his forearms so much, they would bleed and they had to bandage him.
The theory with the most currency was that he’d ingested something from the herb stores — accident, or something else, depending on** who was telling it. The youngest brother, Pio, said they had captured the devil in the basement, and Domenico had looked the devil in the face and that was the end of it. Then, five nights ago, I’d heard it through my window that was open an inch wider than it should have been, and Father Cesare’s voice spoke softly to someone in the courtyard as they walked by, but his words were **clear enough: She is becoming a problem for containment. We can’t let that happen again.
~~~
Brother Luca found me at the candle store the following morning and told me my duties were changing, and I would be reporting to the lower level infirmary at sundown. He didn’t offer a reason, but the way he said it made clear there were no questions to be asked.
~~~
The entrance was near the lower stairs, behind a door I’d assumed was storage because of its plain and slightly swollen frame from the damp that comes off the cliff face behind the building. The church is built into the rock of the cliffside the town is nestled in, and on the way down you can see where the plastering ends and where the cliff itself forms part of the wall. The air changes here, becoming much cooler. The smell changes too. Vinegar and dried herbs from the infirmary proper, which is the first corridor. The basement was unremarkable – four cots, two old men sleeping in them who didn’t look up when I passed, a young brother at the far end sorting linens.
The second corridor was sealed off with an iron door. I was not taken through it on the first day. My work was in the first corridor, and I did it, keeping my eyes only where I was told. But there was a smell coming through the iron door that I noticed on the first day when I walked by, and I’ve thought about it since. Underneath the copper and wet stone was something floral and sweet that had no business being down there.
Fourth Entry - The Basement
I’ve been on the lower level for a week now. I know the schedule. Father Cesare comes down every other day. Anselmo – the younger priest with the ledger – comes with him. Luca stands in the corridor outside. Sessions run approximately one hour. Whatever happens on the other side of those iron doors happens without any noise.
I’ve seen enough to understand the rough shape of what this level is used for. Two days ago, Luca told me that I would be needed in the basement level of the infirmary. He told me this in secret, in Father Cesare’s study. Something in me seemed to ignite with that same excitement and feeling that had been dormant ever since I had left Naples.
~~~
When I went through the iron door this morning…I’ll try to just say what I saw. The second corridor had four cells, gated with iron doors with small grates. The smell I mentioned — the copper and the sweetness and florals — it’s much stronger here.
Father Cesare and Anselmo were already inside the last cell. I came in with Luca and took up the position I’d been placed in — against the wall to the left of the door, holding an oil lamp. My job was the lamp. That was all. I was to not speak or interfere with anything else unless instructed.
As they lit torches around the circular room, a figure came to light. She sat on the floor against the far wall. I’ll try my best to be accurate – she had dark hair, lighter toward the ends, and olive skin. She was young, in her late teens.
The clothing they’d given her was damp at the collar from the heat that builds in the lower level even in early morning. Her skin was coated in a sheen of sweat. When she looked up briefly, her brown eyes seemed glazed over, the color close to amber. She looked at Father Cesare, then Anselmo, and then at me, and she didn’t look away for some time. She must have been expecting Brother Domenico, a brief look of confusion furrowing her brows.
Her movements were slow and slightly unsteady when she shifted positions, yet her eyes continued to track everything. While she seemed sedated, she remained somewhat alert.
Father Cesare asked her a series of questions, and her responses were calm to each one. Her breath fluttered every few words, as though she were fighting sleep. There was something about her, I can’t explain. I had to fight an urge to move closer, to see her in clearer light. When her gaze would sway back to meet mine, I felt a warm shiver down my spine.
Fifth Entry - Something is Wrong
Her name was Elana. She had been found after a shipwreck not far from this coast. She was the only survivor. Anselmo said she had been in good health – no signs of starvation, dehydration, or any disease. The ship held a crew of over seventy-five, yet the remaining seventy-four suffered the opposite fate.
Some of the remaining bodies had been found in pieces of the wreckage that were discovered by passing ships heading for Vicro Sacro. That was long before I had arrived. The town had suspected works of the devil – how else would she survive? They inspected her as though she were an experiment of science.
Anselmo would shine the sunlight in her eyes, dose her with holy water, shouting prayers over her. She hardly reacted to it, the only thing that seemed to bother her was the daylight when Father Cesare pulled back the thick cloths around the only “window” in the entire chamber. At that moment, I wondered how long they had been keeping her chained in this basement. How quickly they had brought her here. Or had they given her some grace?
Days went by, and we would repeat the same procedure. Day after day I stood in that room with the lamp, watching her movements. Most people, under that kind of pressure, begin to drift, and their stories become inconsistent. Elena’s never did. Her demeanor remained the same. Her answers never changed.
She survived the wreck on rations she’d found in a lower cabinet of the hull before it went under.
She’d held onto a section of broken mast for two days before the current brought her close enough to shore to swim.
She was found on the rocks below Vico Sacro by a fisherman who brought her to the town square.
She had said this since the first day I stepped foot in this cell and she has told it the same way every day since. It had the flat tone of words that had been exhausted.
I’ve watched Father Cesare try every angle he has. The theological, the procedural, the prolonged silences meant to make a person fill the quiet with something they didn’t intend to say. Elena sits through the silences the way she sits through everything else, with her hands flat in her lap, breathing steady, waiting for the next question.
I asked Anselmo how long we intended to question her. His response was simple – Father Cesare wanted to break her. They had tied her in chains when she had broken out of the tethered binds and attacked Brother Domenico with a knife from the tray on the tables. The knife had been coated in her blood, but he did not elaborate how her blood ended up on the knife in the first place. After that, Brother Domenico had started to become paranoid, thinking he was poisoned. He was sent away.
It was hard to believe. Father Cesare had been adamant that she would not be released under any condition. Something was off indeed, but I don’t think it was Elana. I am certain of this now in the way I am certain of very few things.
But they believe her to be something dangerous, and I no longer trust that. I stopped believing it, if I’m honest, sometime in the first week. I’ve just been waiting for something to change my mind. Who she is, exactly, I can’t say with confidence. Brother Domenico’s paranoia didn’t translate into an actual disease. He was not ill.
There are no cuts on her skin, no open wounds. I noticed this on the third day and I’ve checked every day since, whenever the light let me. She had yellow bruises that were healing from the wreck, and from two days clinging to a broken mast and swimming through open water onto rocks.
The knife, and the blood on it now no longer makes sense. Where would that blood came from if her skin has never been broken? How could it be hers? I asked Anselmo this directly, two nights ago. I phrased it carefully — not a challenge, just a junior brother trying to understand the record for his own notes. He looked at me for longer than the question should have required, and then he said it had been assumed.
You assumed it was hers? I asked. He didn’t answer that. Instead, he went back to his ledger. I keep returning to the night I overheard Father Cesare through his study door. She is becoming a problem for containment. We can’t let that happen again. I think now I understood it backwards. I thought that meant whatever happened to Domenico. But now I wonder if she had tried to escape, that the blood could have been someone else’s in the room.
No. I don’t believe it. I’ve made my decision. I will free her tonight.
The chains are an old design — a single pin through the wall bracket, rusted, the kind of thing that hasn’t been replaced because no one expected it to need replacing. I’ve watched Anselmo work it loose during the sessions, when he repositions her for the light. I know how it comes apart.
The lower corridor is empty between matins and lauds. I’ve confirmed the timing for over a week now without quite admitting to myself why I was confirming it. The torches were low, just embers in most of the brackets — enough to see by by once your eyes adjust. Elena was awake, sitting against the wall with her hands in her lap. She didn’t say anything when I walked in. I knelt by the wall bracket and worked the pin the way I’d watched Anselmo do it, and it came free easier than I expected, the chain sliding off her wrist with a sound that seemed enormous in that quiet room.
She looked at the chain on the floor. Then at me. She didn’t move, she only watched me with tired eyes. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Brother Pio’s voice, calling something out in the distance. He wasn’t supposed to be down there. None of the junior brothers were.
I stood up too fast. The lamp swung in my hand, throwing the light around the room as Pio’s face appeared in the cell doorway. For a half second his expression wasn’t fear, or alarm. It was relief. Like he’d been looking for me specifically and finally found me. He opened his mouth to say something, but that was when Elena moved.
I didn’t see exactly what she threw — something small, off the floor near where she’d been sitting, something I hadn’t even registered as being there. It caught Pio across the temple and he went down without a sound, folding rather than falling, and the corridor went silent except for the chain still swinging slightly against the wall bracket. I stood there with the lamp shaking in my hand, looking at Pio on the ground, a pool of crimson starting to form where his head rested on the stone floor.
When I finally managed to look over at Elana, she was looking at Pio’s face with sad eyes.
“He’s not the one,” she whispered, almost to herself.
The one for what? I had asked. She looked up at me then; and for the first time since I’d seen her, she looked frustrated.
I looked back down at Pio. His right hand was open against the stone, palm up, fingers loosely curled around a needle with a crimson liquid inside.
The quaint town didn’t feel as abandoned as the brochures said. That was the first thing Anna and her friends noticed. It wasn’t entirely a ghost town, but the streets weren’t exactly busy either.
They slowly drove by a gas station at the edge of a small intersection, its fluorescent lights humming faintly even in the early morning sun. A small convenience store sat beside it, its windows dusty, the glass just clean enough to suggest someone still cared.
The houses had most of their curtains drawn shut, their soft pastel colors and blooming florals contrasted with the ghost-like feeling of the area. Every now and then they would spot someone on their porch or balcony smoking a cigarette, watering plants, or quietly drinking.
Heads turned as they drove by but quickly lost interest.
“Well, this isn’t creepy at all,” Anna said quietly.
Duncan glanced over from the driver’s seat, one hand resting lazily on the wheel. “I mean, it’s very fucking early in the morning. I’m surprised anyone is up at all.”
“Okay, not everyone hibernates until noon,” Anna shot back.
“Okay,” Lexie added leaning over from the backseat with a grin, “well not everywhere needs a Starbucks and shopping mall to feel alive. But I thought Italians were supposed to be more. I don’t know. Spritely.” Her nose scrunched as she looked out the car window.
Duncan choked on a laugh.
Dana didn’t seem to be enjoying the jokes. She was watching the road behind them instead, arms folded tightly. “No, this really is weird. There’s…nothing here. How is this the closest route to the trail?”
“It’s not exactly the closest overall, but it had a few gas stations nearby, and I thought it would be nice to have them.” Duncan drawled.
While her friends bickered, Anna’s attention shifted, caught by something just off the road - a break in the tree line, hidden beneath overgrowth. A narrow gravel path stretched inward, marked by a wooden sign in the distance, so weathered its lettering had long since faded.
“Wait, Duncan. Stop the car.”
Duncan frowned but slowed anyway. “What? Why?”
Anna was already reaching for the door handle. “Look! I think I know where that goes.”
Dana groaned. “No, Anna, come on—”
But she was already out, running with child-like excitement towards the unmarked trail.
It was narrower than it had looked from the road; winding into dense green oaks, their branches arching overhead, forming a thin canopy. The gravel had long since crumbled, stones shifting roughly underfoot with each step.
“Okay, no, this is super creepy,” Dana said shaking her head, her short bob moving with the same anxiousness that was painted on her face.
“I think this is kinda cool.” Lexie said, pulling her long blonde hair up into a ponytail as her eyes wandered, trying to keep up with the excitement in her movements.
Small fountains lined the beginning of the trail, carved with cherubs, roses, and weathered goddesses. Their features eroded with time.
They walked deeper. And then they noticed them, scattered about - a glove, half-buried in the dirt.
A few feet ahead, a scuffed leather shoe. Then more.
A cracked violin case. A torn shawl. A child’s ribbon, it’s pink dulled with age. The deeper they went, the more frequent the items became.
“Okay,” Dana said under her breath, slowing her pace, “This doesn’t make the vibe any better, what the fuck?”
A carved sign hung at the top of a post with faded cursive lettering. “Look,” Lexie said, “I’m pretty sure that says Teatro. It means theatre. A place like this, abandoned for so long, you’re bound to find a lot of things. It’s history.” Just then, she stepped on something with a sharp crunch.
She bent down, brushing dirt away to reveal a small, ornate powder compact. The metal was tarnished but intricate, its surface etched with delicate floral patterns on one side.
“And vintage,” she added in a whisper. “Okay, who would want to abandon something like this?” she murmured, turning it over in her hand. “This is actually super cute.”
“And probably super cursed,” Duncan mocked, “Stop touching shit.” Lexie shot him a look, but she didn’t put it down.
By the time the trees began to thin down the path, Anna was already ahead of them. And then they saw it.
Teatro Virelli.
The sign clung to the façade, several letters peeling at the edges. The building itself stood in better shape than the town, though its front sagged inward slightly, like it was tired of holding itself up.
Anna stepped closer, her expression shifting. “I read about this theatre in the guide,” she said, “I didn’t think we would actually come across it.”
Duncan raised an eyebrow. “What, you’ve been here before?”
“No, obviously,” she replied with a scoff, reaching out to brush her fingers along the cracked wood of the door. “But I read the stories about it” And then Anna pushed the door open.
Dust drifted through thin beams of light cutting in past the broken walls and torn curtains. Rows of seats stretched before them, their green velvet rotted and torn, frames splintered beneath years of neglect. Dark scorch marks crawled across nearly every surface.
Dana pressed a hand to her chest. “Yeah, no,” she said, shaking her head. “This is too weird. I think we should go.”
Anna glanced back at her, offering a reassuring smile. “It’s not that bad. It just looks creepy, but this was a place of history.” Anna seemed oddly calm and familiar as she wandered around the echoing room.
“Yeah,” Duncan said slowly, stepping further inside and kicking a piece of debris with his boot. “A historic burning.”
Anna shot Duncan a look. “Okay, you don’t have to say it like that. But yes. I remember it was a new rendition of Swan Lake, a few years after it had debuted in Russia. I think it was a small travel company, all relatively new performers.”
“Swan Lake,” Lexie mumbled absently, still examining the compact in her hand, tracing the brief outline of a bird on the other side of the ornate gold item. Anna’s gaze flickered toward her, something unreadable passing through her expression.
Duncan folded his arms, his voice lowering. “Yeah, yeah, some fire started backstage, or something, next thing you know the whole thing is up in flames. People died. Things burned. And now its just here. Can we go? I’m starting to get weirded out too.”
“You can at least attempt to tell the story better than that. I mean, there were theories about the fire.” Anna said. “Some people in town hated the owner. Supposedly he cut corners, treated the performers badly, stole money and all that. Some said the building itself wasn’t built correctly.”
Dana shifted uneasily. “So we’re just… going to continue standing in it?”
Anna didn’t answer immediately, she was now wandering toward the stage. “Well, none of the claims were ever really proven, and none of the dancers or staff ever stepped forward anyways. It all spread when the place closed permanently after the fire. Which is sad when it had reached the peak in its career. Even after burning down, they said repairs were supposed to start soon after.” Her expression shifted almost to reminiscent as she gazed around the stage.
“Yeah, I love what they did with the remodeling,” Duncan joked as patted one of the dark seats, causing a cloud of ash floating in the air.
Lexie had been tinkering with the small compact and finally managed to open it. The hinge resisted at first before giving way, dislodging loose dirt. Inside, half the mirror was clouded. The other half was coated in dark smudges streaked across the surface, uneven and thick in places. At first she thought it was old makeup, or marks from the fire.
Then she realized what it was.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. She tilted the mirror slightly, trying to catch the light – and her blood went cold when she saw the reflection staring back at her wasn’t just her own.
Behind her stood a woman.
Her skin around her face was split and burned, lips drawn back in something that wasn’t quite a smile. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, fixed entirely on Lexie. She screamed. The compact falling from her grasp, clattering against the wooden floors.
She spun and ran towards the exit, but she didn’t make it far.
Her foot caught on a pile of broken wood just outside the entrance, twisting violently beneath her. The loud crack of bone was sharp, and her scream cut through the stillness.
Duncan rushed to his sister’s side, panic breaking through his composure as he tried to assess the damage. Dana hovered helplessly nearby, adrenaline making her tremble, but she swore the temperature had also plummeted.
“Anna?” she called. “Anna, come on, we need to go, now!”
There was no answer. At least not from where she expected.
“Such a cruel evening.” The voice drifted from the stage, calm and distant. Dana spun around.
Anna stood at its center, perfectly still. “They worked so hard,” she continued, her tone carrying effortlessly through the ruined space. “And they never got to finish.”
Duncan looked up, frustration cutting through his fear. “Anna, what the fuck are you talking about? We need to go!”
“They deserved to finish,” Anna repeated gently as if to herself, but even the soft echo of her voice seemed to carry in the hollow space of the theatre.
Duncan stood, stalking toward her, his deep breaths started coming out in soft white puffs. He opened his mouth again, but the moment his foot came down on a pile of broken splinters, a strangled cry tore from his throat as he collapsed into the remains of a broken seat.
A rusted nail sticking out of a piece of wood had impaled him straight through his shoe, into the bridge of his foot, and out the other side. Blood and pieces of flesh hung from the jagged tip.
Dana ran to him, her hands shaking as she tried to steady him, but her attention kept pulling back toward Anna. The feeling in her chest had grown heavier, sharper. Not just fear. She knew something about this was off. Anna tilted her head slowly.
The wind picked up outside, curling its way into the cracks of the building, carrying distant whispers in each gust.
Anna vanished from the stage. Dana barely had time to register the movement before Anna was standing in front of her. Too close.
Her skin looked paler than usual, her deep green eyes were drained of anything human. Or anything alive. Her movements were twitchy and sharp, and light red scratch marks had appeared on her shoulder. Like claw marks gripping onto her skin.
Dana stumbled back instinctively. “Wait, Anna,” she breathed.
Anna’s face smiled, but that wasn’t her friend anymore. “It’s an audience,” she said in a cheerful whisper that made Dana’s skin crawl. In one swift movement, she shoved her.
Dana flew backwards, crashing into the rows behind her, old wood splintering beneath the impact and something in her ribs snapped with a sickening sound. The air was forced from her lungs, stars igniting in her vision, and her skin seared with pain.
By the time Dana managed to look up again, Anna was simply walking back to the stage.
“They deserved to finish the final performance.”
As if on cue, the entire theatre began to transform.
At first, it was only the light - it grew warmer, filling in the cracks where shadows once clung. Then the seats straightened, their fabric restoring itself thread by thread, the bright green velvet coming alive once more. The walls smoothed, the blackened scorch marks began to fade as though they had never existed.
The theatre rebuilt itself around them with an ethereal grace.
And then the music began. Tchaikovsky’s elegant song of Swan Lake. Soft. Lulling. Beautiful in a way that made Dana’s stomach turn.
Anna moved with such ease. She quickly transformed into the dancer.
Her movements were flawless, impossibly precise, each step gliding into the next as though she had danced this role a thousand times before.
Anna, who hadn’t taken a single ballet class in her life, was executing each movement as if she had lived it personally.
Then white dress began to form around her, flowing delicately, almost glowing from the inside.
Dana tried to move. She couldn’t. None of them could.
They were bound to their seats.
They were the audience now.
Outside, the town stirred. No panic. No alarm.
A small group gathered near the theatre gates, their expressions empty. The man from the gas station stepped forward, looping a heavy chain through the iron bars.
He secured it with practiced ease. Locked it. And walked away.
Inside, the fire returned.
It began at the edges of the stage with slow, creeping fingers that climbed the curtains with greedy hunger. The heat followed, thick and suffocating, curling into every corner of the room. As the music crescendoed, so did the flames.
Duncan screamed. Lexie sobbed where she lay, unable to move. Dana tried to draw breath through the crushing pain in her ribs, her gaze locked helplessly on the stage.
Anna did not falter. Her expression was lost in the adoring audience only she could see.
The flames reached for her, wrapping around her dress. The delicate white lace morphing into obsidian feathers. Anna’s smile never vanished. Her movements never lost their pace.
Just before the fire consumed the stage entirely, she turned her head, looking directly at her adoring audience.
It was not Anna. It was the expression of someone that had waited far too long for this moment.
For an audience to admire.
The music swelled. The flames roared.
And the last performance now coming to an end.
Fin
They say in Heaven, you relive the best of your life.
Memories replay like living truths, and for eternity you live in peace and serenity.
They say some won’t make it there.
With peace, comes darkness – and some choose it.
Some souls end up here.
Those who transgressed against their own truths, now seeking retribution instead of absolution.
But never redemption, no.
Redemption is for those with hope.
I have no hope for this life.
This is the path I chose.
To suffer in Heaven’s shadow – an eternity of damnation by my own design.
And like all masochists, I call the shots here.
Piece by piece, I break into the wreckage I called a life, peeling back all that was buried deep beneath the guilt.
I want to feel the damage I’ve done.
Burn me to ash.
Freeze me solid.
Eat me alive until there is no flesh left.
Rip me apart so I feel every tear in my skin.
I don’t need to ask.
I won’t need to cry.
There is no devil here to blame.
No god to beg.
Just me, and the ruins I built with my own hands, brick by heavy brick.
I have earned every wound.
Catalogued every scar.
And when the last of me has been stripped down to nerve and marrow —
I will not ask for mercy.
I will not ask for anything.
This is what I came for.
This is what I am—
Damnation in the flesh.
Redemption be damned.
They say in Heaven, you relive the best of your life.
Memories replay like living truths, and for eternity you live in peace and serenity.
They say some won’t make it there.
With peace, comes darkness – and some choose it.
Some souls end up here.
Those who transgressed against their own truths, now seeking retribution instead of absolution.
But never redemption, no.
Redemption is for those with hope.
I have no hope for this life.
This is the path I chose.
To suffer in Heaven’s shadow – an eternity of damnation by my own design.
And like all masochists, I call the shots here.
Piece by piece, I break into the wreckage I called a life, peeling back all that was buried deep beneath the guilt.
I want to feel the damage I’ve done.
Burn me to ash.
Freeze me solid.
Eat me alive until there is no flesh left.
Rip me apart so I feel every tear in my skin.
I don’t need to ask.
I won’t need to cry.
There is no devil here to blame.
No god to beg.
Just me, and the ruins I built with my own hands, brick by heavy brick.
I have earned every wound.
Catalogued every scar.
And when the last of me has been stripped down to nerve and marrow —
I will not ask for mercy.
I will not ask for anything.
This is what I came for.
This is what I am—
Damnation in the flesh.
Redemption be damned.
By 1935, New York prosecutor Thomas Dewey had become one of the most famous crime fighters in America, making dents in New York City's vast criminal underworld.
One of his first major targets was Dutch Schultz. Schultz had been a criminal since his teens and had grown into one of the Bronx's most feared bootleggers and racketeers.
Dewey came after him for tax evasion. By the 1930s, tax charges were one of the few reliable ways to convict major gangsters; witnesses could be intimidated or killed, but financial records were much harder to silence. Indicted in 1933, Schultz went into hiding for nearly two years before surrendering in November 1934.
His first trial, held in Syracuse, ended with a hung jury amid widespread suspicions of bribery. The retrial was moved to Malone, a small town near the Canadian border. Schultz responded with a charm offensive, donating money, shaking hands, playing with local children, and cultivating the image of a model citizen. The strategy worked. In the summer of 1935, he was acquitted.
The victory came at a cost. Years of legal battles had drained Schultz's finances, forcing him to cut payments to many of his own associates. As loyalty evaporated, many drifted toward the unofficial boss of the Mafia, Charlie "Lucky" Luciano.
Expecting Schultz to be convicted, Luciano had absorbed much of Schultz's territory and criminal operations. Schultz demanded a sit-down with the Luciano’s Commission, the governing body of the mafia. Luciano assured him they had merely been "looking after the shop" during his legal troubles and that everything would be worked out.
Convinced Dewey would never stop pursuing him, Schultz proposed assassinating the prosecutor. The Commission unanimously rejected the idea. Luciano argued that killing a high-profile prosecutor would bring overwhelming law-enforcement attention onto organized crime. The other bosses agreed.
Schultz declared he would do it anyway. When he approached Albert Anastasia, a powerful Mafia lieutenant and close Luciano ally, Anastasia immediately informed Luciano. The Commission secretly reconvened and decided Schultz had become too dangerous to keep around.
On October 23, 1935, Schultz was eating dinner at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey, when two gunmen from Murder, Inc. entered and opened fire. Four men were shot. Schultz survived long enough to reach Newark City Hospital, where doctors fought unsuccessfully to save him.
His final recorded words were a bizarre, delirious stream of consciousness:
"A boy has never wept... nor dashed a thousand kim.
You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it.
Oh, oh, dog Biscuit, and when he is happy he doesn't get snappy."
If you're interested, I cover the early New York criminal underworld here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-101-lucky?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
In 1906, eight-year-old Sicilian immigrant Salvatore Lucania arrived in New York City with his family and settled in the overcrowded tenements of the Lower East Side. Like many immigrant children growing up amid poverty, he drifted into crime, joining the Five Points Gang and extorting local kids for "protection."
One of those children refused to pay. His name was Maier Suchowljansky. Instead of beating him into submission, Lucania befriended him. The two spent the next two decades climbing through New York's criminal underworld. Along the way they reinvented themselves as Mayer Lansky and Charlie "Lucky" Luciano.
How Luciano earned the nickname "Lucky" is still debated. Some credited his gambling success, others his uncanny ability to avoid prison. Another comes from surviving beatings, like the 1929 kidnapping that left him for dead on Staten Island. He survived, but the attack permanently damaged the muscles around his right eye, leaving him with the drooping eyelid that became one of his trademarks.
During the 1920s, Luciano worked for two powerful men. The first was Arnold Rothstein, the wealthy gambler, bootlegger, and alleged fixer of the 1919 World Series. Rothstein taught Luciano and Lansky how to dress, speak, and conduct themselves among politicians and businessmen, transforming them from street criminals into sophisticated operators.
The second was Giuseppe Masseria, better known as "Joe the Boss." An old-school Sicilian mafioso, Masseria preached honor, tradition, and loyalty while building one of the most powerful criminal empires in New York. He employed Luciano as a gunman, bodyguard, and occasional assassin, while constantly insulting his "lying Jew" and "dirty Calabrian" friends.
By 1930, Masseria was locked in a bloody gang war with rival boss Salvatore Maranzano. When one of Masseria's captains defected to Maranzano, Luciano helped arrange his murder, helping ignite the Castellammarese War.
As the conflict dragged on, Maranzano approached Luciano with an offer: betray Masseria and inherit his empire. Luciano listened.
On April 15, 1931, Luciano met Masseria for lunch and a card game at a restaurant in Coney Island. At one point he excused himself to the bathroom. Moments later, gunmen, stormed in and riddled Joe the Boss with bullets.
Luciano was arrested, but no witnesses talked and the case collapsed. A few months later, Luciano had Maranzano assassinated as well. By the age of 33, the former immigrant street kid from the Lower East Side had eliminated the two most powerful Mafia bosses in New York and begun reorganizing organized crime into the structure that would dominate the American underworld for decades.
If you're interested, I wrote a deep dive on the life of Lucky Luciano: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-101-lucky?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios