The heavy oak doors of St. Jude’s chapel fly open mid-worship service and a flurry of leathery wings and manic chittering startles the worshippers. Two of the Witch’s winged monkeys land on the altar, sending the priest scurrying and the congregation gasping.

Stepping into the sacred place next is the hideous Wicked Witch of Wrestling! Her dark abyssal orbs never break contact with the crucifixion hanging above the pulpit as she storms up to the altar and tosses the Bible away.

The beleaguered priest tries to herd the people out a door, but it’s blocked by more of the Witch’s monkey minions.

“You will stay, God-lovers! For one of your ilk has been summoned to bring about my undoing!” She pauses a beat to let it sink in. “My minions will record this sermon, for your fellow Godly man shall see the depths I will take.”

On cue, one of the monkeys flies around like a drone, a video recording device in its hand.

“Abel Gracie…” Her sickly green body shudders at uttering his despicable name. “And you people..” A snarling snort follows, “You put your life, your soul, your being into that absentee landlord in the sky, that empty suit, that almighty sloth that sits his fat lazy rumpkin-butt on his big gold throne doing NOTHING but sleeping.”

She spits phlegm wads onto the altar.

“Men such as you, Abel, and you damn people in here, hunted me before. From village to village, shore to shore, from the Irish Isles to the Caspian Sea. You hurt me. You burned me. You set traps. You tried drowning me with your Holy Water.” She reaches out, her long, emerald fingers tracing the edge of a marble font. With a casual wrist flick, she overturns it, the holy water spilling across the floor.

“Yet, I stand, and wherefore did they go? The ground, six feet, if they were lucky. They, like you, thought that the narcissistic bi-polar maniac they worshipped would protect them or grant them rewards in death. They, like you, Abel, put their faith in a cosmic-sized boy with an ant farm who’s in an eternal pissing contest with Lucifer. Praytell, Abel..praytell.. Why, oh why, did a third of God’s angels rebel against him? How terrible was his rulership of paradise that they sought to fight him, outnumbered and outpowered?”

The Wicked Witch lets the question linger while scanning over the cowed and whimpering worshippers. Kids are hugged by their parents for safety. Others are praying, oh, how mighty are their prayers. All for nothing.

“They rebelled because they saw what I saw, Abel,” she screams, her green fists balled so tight they’re becoming discolored. “They saw a tyrant who demands the heart but offers only damnation. They saw a tyrant who created two people who never asked to be created and then demanded they be perfect. And now here you are, Abel. A millennium too late, wearing your leather and scars and smiling like a fool at the lash. I’ve seen your kind in every century… flailers in the mud, begging for a sign while the crows pick their eyes. You worship the tool of your own destruction, and you call it a blessing. You invite pain like it’s your lover, but you’ve never felt the true, gnawing hunger of a soul that has been refused its rest. Fool! FOOLISH ABEL! FOOLS.. ALL OF YOU!!!”

The Wicked One becomes more unhinged and knocks over the altar. Belching a screech, she wades into the petrified congregation, her abyssal eyes searching their faces for a spark of the life-force she craves. One of her monkeys, perched on a chandelier, drops a handful of torn hymnal pages so that it looks like it’s snowing over the weeping worshippers.

“Abel, you BASTARD, you holy RAT, you tell your followers to ‘look up’, but you, and they, are blinded by the light you seek. You don’t see the shadow I cast either, one that’s been lengthened over empires while your little desert parish was still dust upon the ground, but you shall, oh verily, you shall. You will be immersed in it on Anarchy, in the same way you immerse yourself in divine pain. You will be filled with my unholy spirit. You will speak in tongues, but it shall be screams, not holy cadence. Then… oooooooh VERILY.. Then..”

Her jagged, yellow teeth bear a horrid grin. “I shall extract the one redeeming quality about you… your essence of the martyr. Mmmmmm, I can taste it already. That heavy, stubborn vitality that’s been tempered in the fires of suffering until it’s thick and pure as the oil you anoint the sick with. Most men break when I touch them, Abel, but you, you BASTARD, you thrive on the breaking. You offer your flesh as a table of sacrifice, and I just so happen to be starving, ceaselessly hungering, for ages now.”

The Witch moves toward the cowering Priest.

“I shall not merely defeat you, I’ll siphon the grace from your veins. I want the essence of your smiling endurance, the energy that keeps your heart pulsing through broken body. Your sacrifice will fuel my restoration, woven into my rotting frame. Now….”

She yanks the Priest upright and turns to the monkey with the recorder.

“Record this well, pet. Let the martyr see his ilk like this, cowering, praying fruitlessly. Let him see who his God fails to protect, and let this be a foreshadowing.”

The Witch and her monkeys do something almost too appalling to broadcast. They gruesomely nail the Priest to the hanging crucifix in the same way Christ is always depicted. The Priest is in torment, bleeding, crying out as the Witch cackles and the monkeys chitter.

“Abel, you BASTARD, you seek to show people the face of God via pain? I shall show you the face of the one who made him blink.”

The horrified worshippers see their chance and bulldoze each other, fleeing through any available door.