Content warning: Hate crime, gun violence, political themes

GENE ACHED TO reclaim America, and he was prepared to visit all possible and necessary horrors upon its enemies to do so.

When the day of action finally came, he donned his black-and-gray urban camo, his black nylon tactical vest, and his black baseball cap with the embroidered American flag on the front. He pounded a protein shake, half of an energy drink, and a shot of whiskey for good measure. He wrapped a black gaiter around his face, hiding everything but his eyes, and slung his beloved, heavily-customized automatic rifle over his shoulder. He saluted the photo of the President—defiant in the moments after a failed assassination attempt—that hung above the computer in his spartan studio apartment. He touched the cover of the Bible on the desk, closed his eyes, and whispered, “For God and Country.”

And then he walked out the door.

He’d been itching for this for years, along with everyone else on the Shadow Warriors chat server. Frustrated, they’d all watched the country stumble and slouch its way toward Hell ever since the Clinton Administration—secularism, homosexuality, DEI—but there had been political gridlock for just as long, and there was always some liberal special interest group angling to violate America’s purity, always some activist judge or socialist politician fighting to dismantle God’s own commandments.

But this last election changed everything. The Presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court: all theirs. The Shadow Warriors server lit up like fireworks on Independence Day. The guys—they were no women in the group—celebrated with a flood of internet memes and a server-wide prayer thanking God for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take their country back.

It was time for a reckoning, and the Shadow Warriors stood ready.

Two of Gene’s hunting buddies—also Shadow Warriors—waited for him in the hall.

Carl wore a black muscle tee sporting the Punisher skull, black jeans, black wraparound mirror shades, and a black gaiter hiding his face. A silver cross dangled at the end of a chain around his neck, and he wore a black nylon double shoulder holster that held a pair of semi-automatic pistols at his left and right sides.

He looked like a badass, prepared and on point, as always. Gene would never admit it out loud, but sometimes, he wanted to be Carl.

Hutch, on the other hand, had come in grease-stained gray sweats, dirty white sneakers, and a makeshift gaiter repurposed from a dingy garage rag. He held a beat-up hunting shotgun with a wooden stock, so old it may as well have been an antique. His bald head glistened with nervous sweat.

Carl tapped his watch with an impatient frown. “Took you long enough.”

Gene’s cheeks burned. He gestured at Carl’s pistols and said, “At least I’m ready. We finally get to dispense justice for God and America, and you bring pea shooters?”

Carl shrugged and jerked his chin toward Gene’s rifle. “Nothin’ I need to compensate for.”

Gene rolled his eyes. “Har har. Listen, I’m not taking any chances in there.”

Hutch shifted his weight nervously; he was almost shaking. In a small voice, he said, “They’re not… actual witches, are they?”

Gene stepped right up in Hutch’s face and put a firm hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Don’t be a pussy, Hutch. We finally get to give ‘em a fight, and you want to, what? Go back to doxxing students from your basement?”

Hutch lowered his eyes. “No. Not really.”

Gene took a step back, relinquishing the space. “Okay, then. Man up.”

Hutch made a vaguely constipated expression, but to his credit, he straightened his posture, tightened his grip on his shotgun, and kept his mouth shut.

Carl tapped his watch again. “It’s almost time,” he said. “Let’s move out.”

Gene nodded, put a finger to his lips to signal quiet, and motioned for them to follow.

The response to the election from the enemies of America was predictable: protesters in the streets, confrontations with police, rioting, looting. Journalists accused the President of treason. Activists warned about the fall of democracy and the rise of fascism. Occasionally, members of both groups caught a bullet.

Amid the rising violence, the new President issued an executive order classifying the activists as domestic terrorists. In the press conference, he called the resistance movement an insurrection. It was time, he declared, for the patriots to fight back.

The Shadow Warriors took that as their cue for action.

Gene’s neighbors had long lived on the wrong side of history. He’d only met them in passing, but he knew they were a trio of college activists—terrorists, now—who loudly rejected God and called themselves witches. Rowan’s quiet self-righteousness, Sinead’s sullen cynicism, and Faith’s outspoken belligerence all reminded him of his ex-wife Lisa, an unsatisfiable shrew who had accused him in the divorce of being in a right-wing cult, and that alone was enough for him to hate them with every fiber of his being.

But after today, none of them would be able to hurt him any more.

Gene stopped to the side of his neighbors’ door, avoiding the peephole. Just beneath it hung a carved, hand-painted wooden sign, the words blessed be in curly script arcing over a pentacle made of flowers. A cutesy, cartoon Baphomet peered out from the center of the pentacle with giant, glistening anime eyes.

It was everything that was wrong with America, summed up in one piece of stupid Etsy décor, and it made Gene quake with disgust.

Carl and Hutch stacked up on the opposite side of the door, ready to breach. Carl drew his pistols and pointed one at the lock, but his eyes were fixed on the pentacle and its little cartoon Baphomet. “Can’t believe you live next to fuckin’ witches, man,” he whispered. “May as well be Al Qaeda in there.”

Hutch, pale and sweating, looked like he was about to throw up.

“Get your heads in the game,” Gene hissed. “This is some Zero Dark Thirty shit. Remember: in and out, no mistakes, and no names.”

Gene checked his watch: 9:00 AM exactly. Time to fight for the soul of America.

He swung his rifle off his shoulder, flicked off the safety, and nodded to Carl and Hutch. “Let’s give ‘em some shock and awe.”

Carl pressed the barrel of one pistol against the lock, and pulled the trigger.

In response to the President’s executive order, the activists announced a massive protest: the Reclaim America March. Millions of Americans registered to take part. The organizers positioned themselves as patriots—an assertion which made Gene see red—and sold the march as a way for ordinary citizens to assert their commitment to peace.

All Gene saw was an organized movement opposing their lawfully elected leadership. It was treason, and he wasn’t shy about saying so.

The rest of the Shadow Warriors agreed, and then someone posted a gun meme and joked that a coordinated action on the day of the march would sure rewrite the narrative, and from there it took only the smallest of pushes for the joke to become a proposal, and for the proposal to become a plan.

If they all stepped up and did their duty, then 9:00 AM on the day of the march would be the moment of reckoning, when Shadow Warriors all over the country would rise up and send their opponents a bloody message: it was they—not the activists—who held the true claim to America.

The lock exploded. Gene slammed the ruined door aside and burst into the room, yelling “Everyone on the ground!” in his most martial voice. Carl and Hutch came right behind him and fanned out to either side, guns forward.

The walls of the little studio apartment were a riot of color, an unbroken collage of punk art tacked up in layers like the band fliers on the telephone poles on the street outside. A massive rainbow Pride flag hung directly across from the door, and beneath it stood a bundle of protest signs leaned against a folding table: “no dictators, no fascists”, “America belongs to all of us”, and “the only authoritarian I answer to is my dom”. The furniture had all been pushed to the edges of the room, and the open expanse of wood floor under the hanging pendant lights bore a five-foot-diameter pentacle drawn in white chalk, with lit candles burning at each of its five points. Rowan, Sinead, and Faith, all dressed in their signature Bohemian chic, stood equally spaced around the circle, staring back at the men and their guns like terrified does.

Carl's gaze locked onto the pentacle on the floor. “What did you just drag us into, Gene?”

“I said no names, Carl!”

Rowan blinked and visibly shook off her shock. “Gene?” she said, incredulous. “Seriously?”

Gene’s heart leapt into his throat; they weren't supposed to be recognized. Stupid Carl and his big mouth. “Uh, no,” he said, lamely pitching his voice down. “That's just, uh—a code name.”

Rowan’s expression flitted between confusion and outrage. “Gene, you're our fucking neighbor, man! We brought you Christmas cookies! What's going on here?”

Gene's nerves sharpened at her tone. “I said everyone on the ground!” He waved his gun at them for emphasis. He tried not to think of the cookies, which had been the first kind thing anyone had done for him in years. “You're all under arrest for terrorism.”

Faith, who stood nearest to Gene, laughed out loud. “Terrorism?” She stepped forward brazenly, her eyes smoldering. “Are you high?”

“Faith, no!” Sinead cried. “You’ll get yourself shot!”

Gene leveled his rifle at Faith. She was barely more than a teenager, but she seemed unfazed by him, and that aggravated him, made him feel taunted. “I said: you’re under arrest. Now get on the goddamn floor!”

Faith rolled her eyes dramatically. “We still have rights in this country. Due process, the rule of law, a little thing called the Constitution. Maybe you should look them up?”

“You people don't get any more rights!” Gene shot back. This kind of smug belligerence was exactly the kind of thing he’d put up with from Lisa right before the divorce; hearing it now, from this little slip of a girl, made him seethe. “The President just declared all you antifa types terrorists. That makes you enemy combatants, which throws all your ‘rule of law’ shit right out the window.”

“You’re not fooling anybody, Gene,” Faith said, taking another step forward and bringing her within arm’s reach of the rifle. “You think violence makes you a big man, but you still had to wait for daddy to give you permission first.”

“Faith, shut it!” Sinead hissed. “For once in your life!”

“Gene,” Rowan said gently, “I need you and your friends to put your guns down now. You know us.”

Gene glanced to his left; Carl had one pistol trained on Faith and the other on Rowan, and was watching Gene expectantly. He glanced to his right; Hutch was locked in on Sinead, but he was even paler and sweatier than before, and his shotgun shook visibly in his hands.

Gene had command. They were waiting for his cue.

This wasn't how he'd imagined this going.

Faith took one last step forward, so that the tip of the rifle pressed into her sternum. She held Gene’s gaze with blazing eyes and said, in a low voice dripping with contempt, “You're the terrorists here, not us.”

That was the last straw. Through the haze of his hate, Gene wasn’t consciously aware of pulling the trigger, but a burst of gunfire erupted nonetheless, shattering the air and perforating Faith’s body with a half-dozen blooming red holes.

“Faith!” Sinead screamed, and the raw anguish in her voice pierced Gene’s psyche in a way he was wholly unfamiliar with; he felt her terror inside himself, as if it was his own. He grimaced, shrugged off the weird sensation, and gathered his wits; now wasn't the time to bug out.

Faith staggered backward a step, her face a mask of shock. She tried to steady herself as the color drained from her cheeks. She brought her hands to her chest as if to staunch the flow of blood—how was there was so much blood already?—then raised them in front of her face and stared in wonder at her own life running down her arms, dripping onto the floor. She dropped back another shaky step, lost her balance, and fell at last into the middle of the chalk pentacle, where she went still as death.

Hutch retched, and emptied his breakfast onto the apartment floor.

“Faith,” Sinead sobbed, falling to her knees.

Rowan moved warily to console her, her gaze fixed upon the Shadow Warriors and their guns, but nobody fired again. She crouched next to Sinead and wrapped one arm around her shoulders, now heaving with violent sobs, and looked up at Gene with the most profound disappointment in her eyes. “What the hell have you done?” she hissed.

Gene felt dizzy. He'd just killed a terrorist, in the name of God and America. That was what the hell he had done. And it was supposed to feel good.

So why didn't it feel good?

What was this gnawing pain in the pit of his stomach, this buzzing in his ears, this sense of the world spinning off its axis?

“Come on,” Carl said coldly. “We've got a job to finish.” He trained his pistols on Rowan and Sinead, and their gazes shifted to meet his, Rowan’s pleading, Sinead’s defeated.

Gene turned to stare at Carl, and a wave of revulsion swept over him. That was odd; normally, that feeling was reserved for his enemies. But now, the sight of his friend so eager to gun down two defenseless, mourning women just made him nauseous. He discovered that his hands were shaking, and he felt like he very much needed to sit down.

He’d wanted to be Carl, but now he felt like Hutch instead: weak, small, scared.

Ashamed.

Faith’s blood was pooling rapidly in the pentacle—so much blood, its thick metallic scent already choking the air—and Gene noticed something curious: the pool was not expanding past the pentacle. Even though there was more than enough blood draining from the girl’s body to do so, it only ran up to the edge of the chalk line, stopping and gathering there like a lake against a dam. That should not have been possible, and yet—

“Uhh—” he said, gesturing to the crimson pool with the tip of his rifle.

Carl saw it too. “What devil shit is this?”

Hutch had gone white as snow and was muttering a repeated prayer under his breath.

“Nobody should've entered the binding circle,” Rowan said, still cradling Sinead’s head against her chest. “Now she'll be a vessel.”

“A vessel for what?” Gene asked, his voice tremulous.

Faith’s leg twitched. Gene’s eyes widened.

“A protector spirit,” Rowan said. “We called her to bless us for the march today. After so many protesters have been killed—”

Faith drew a long, ragged breath that sounded like scraping stone. All three of the Shadow Warriors took a reflexive step back.

“The circle was meant to bind her,” Rowan continued, “so she couldn’t lash out and break the world.” She gestured to Faith, from whom now issued a guttural, unnerving moan. “So much for that.”

A charge raced through the air, accompanied by the unmistakable smell and taste of ozone. The pendant lights hanging overhead flickered and swayed. The pool of blood filling the pentacle began to boil.

Then Faith’s body lifted up into the air of its own accord, arms and legs dangling as if there was a harness wrapped around her waist. She pivoted into an upright position, levitating at least a foot off the ground, her long blond hair and blood-streaked white dress floating lazily around her as if she was underwater.

Gene felt warm piss spread down the leg of his urban camo pants. This was definitely not how he'd imagined this going.

Gracefully, Faith lifted her arms and clasped her hands together over her heart. She opened her eyes, and they were empty white orbs. When she spoke, the apartment shook, and her words reverberated with the otherworldly fury of a goddess:

“Mother is angry.”

Faith was very sure she was dead. She didn’t know what she expected from the afterlife, exactly, but it wasn’t this.

She was still tethered to her body, for one thing, but there was a sense of separation, like it wasn’t hers any more, but something she’d rented from the universe and was now about to return.

And stranger still: she was no longer alone in it.

The interloping spirit was more of a feeling than a concrete presence, like the hair-raising sensation of being watched. But while in life that sensation most often attached itself to creepy men, here it felt watchful, almost comforting, like the gentle gaze of a protective parent.

“Mother is angry.”

She didn’t speak the words, but she felt them leave her body’s mouth anyway, and then she understood the spirit was much, much more than a feeling.

It was a partner.

She turned her head slowly, taking in the three men before her. Gene kept his absurd rifle trained steadily on her, but the perspiration glistening on his exposed forehead and the wet stain spreading from his crotch gave away his terror. Hutch was the color of curdled milk, and he shook so badly he could barely keep himself upright. Carl was a deer in headlights, wide-eyed and frozen, his every survival instinct having fled in the face of the first perceived threat.

Faith remembered how the bullets felt when they tore into her, the searing agony, the violation of it… and then a sickening vertigo as she toppled backward, her whole world shrinking down to nothing but the stabbing echo of Sinead’s scream before even that settled into the silent, lonely, bone-deep chill.

And then came the rage.

“How dare you.” She said it quietly, barely above a whisper, but it meant she still had some control of her body. The spirit—Mother?—wasn’t fighting her; it was offering.

“Th-that’s impossible,” Hutch stammered, pointing and backing away.

Mother offered, and Faith accepted.

“How dare you!” Mother shrieked, and this time her voice rattled the windows in their frames and set the pendant lights swinging and the shadows dancing about the apartment like revelers at a Witches’ Sabbath.

“You.” Mother raised a hand and pointed one bloody finger at Hutch. “You will do penance.”

At her pronouncement, Hutch’s shotgun fell to ash in his hands. If he noticed, he didn’t care, as he went prostrate before her and touched his lips to the floor, right in the puddle of his own sick.

“Hutch, what are you doing?” Gene cried, his voice pitched high with terror. Hutch looked up with tear-streaked eyes, then bowed and kissed the floor again.

He’s not in control, Faith realized. We’re doing this to him.

Mother smiled.

“Fucking shoot her!” Carl yelled, and he and Gene both unleashed a torrent of bullets, filling the air with sound and smoke and spent shell casings and Rowan’s and Sinead’s terrified screams.

When silence reasserted itself, Mother looked down at her bloody dress. The bullets had all been stopped by the fabric as if by an impenetrable wall, compressed flat by their own impact force so they resembled a loose scattering of rivets.

“You.” Mother pointed her accusing finger at Carl. “You will receive retribution.”

“I walk in the light of Christ,” Carl growled. “You can’t touch me, witch.”

But she didn't need to.

With a dismissive wave, she lifted Carl off his feet and slammed him back against the wall, pinning him there with his arms outstretched in the Crucifix position. His pistols turned red-hot; he screamed and dropped them, and when they hit the floor, they burst apart into sprays of ash.

“You act in the name of one who died for your sins,” Mother said. “Your choices forsake that gift. Now, you pay your own way.” She twisted her outstretched hand into a fist, and ragged red wounds tore themselves open in Carl’s hands and feet. He shrieked and thrashed with animalistic terror, but the ethereal force of the stigmata kept him pinned to the wall, helpless.

Distantly, Faith felt Rowan’s and Sinead’s presences behind her, watchful like Mother, but also fearful of her. She wanted to comfort them. She wanted to protect them.

She bid for control of her body, and Mother allowed it.

Still levitating, Faith turned to her sisters with a soft smile. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, holding her hands out to them. “I’m still here. Mother is protecting us, but I’m still here.”

Rowan stared, and Sinead gave a hopeful little cry. “Faith?” she said. “Is it really you?”

“It's really me. Come, let’s join hands.”

At their touch, she felt an ethereal warmth bloom, and she looked down in surprise to see a golden glow growing where each of their hands met hers. The warmth spread up her arms and into her chest, wrapping itself around her heart like a gentle hug. Then came a rush of sensations: the sound of eight-year-old Faith’s laughter as the three girls chased each other around the yard; the warmth of the sun on their faces as they lounged together by the pool in high school; the taste of the absinthe Faith gifted Sinead for her college graduation, on which they all got far too drunk together; the smell of the gingerbread Christmas cookies they baked together last year, then went around leaving at the neighbors’ doorsteps… including Gene’s.

Faith's lifeblood, pooled and bubbling within the pentacle, began to rise, thin red tendrils stretching up toward her like verdant spring shoots, twisting and weaving themselves together into ornate, braided strands that snaked around her like vines. A minute later, not a drop of blood remained on the floor, not even a stain, and the woven strands were no longer made of blood, but of divine light, a manifestation of all three sisters’ collective memories of Faith, channeled by their mutual connection and love.

Faith released her sisters’ hands and turned back to Gene, who trembled visibly in the face of his judgment.

Faith closed her eyes, and Mother opened them.

“And you,” Mother said to Gene. “You will atone.”

Gene took two steps back toward the door, but Mother flicked her wrist, the door slammed shut, and the deadbolt drove itself home.

“Just let me go,” Gene cried, barely containing his panic. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry, okay? I don't want to die!”

“Oh no, dear,” Mother said. “Death is not your fate.”

Gene’s voice shook. “Then what is?”

“Knowledge.” The word pealed like thunder.

With a flash, the weave of light surrounding her burst apart into stardust, and the flickering motes rushed into Gene in a torrent of memory. His eyes glowed golden as the essence of Faith washed through him, connected with him. He let slip a strangled scream as years of suppressed anguish tore themselves free of his soul.

He knew her.

As the last of the motes vanished, Gene fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. He tore off his gaiter and cast it aside with a frustrated snarl. “What did you do to me?” he demanded, staring up at Mother with equal parts fear and wonder.

“Your atonement is to live with the knowledge of her,” Mother said, in a voice like an earthquake. “Whether you become a better man is for you to decide. Choose wisely.”

She waved a hand toward Hutch, releasing him from his penance. He stood, shaky and bewildered, and ran a dirty sleeve over his mouth, wiping off the ashy sick that lingered there.

She gestured toward Carl, still pinned to the wall and whimpering, and he fell to the floor in a heap. He staggered to his feet and looked with wonder at his hands: the stigmata had vanished, leaving behind nothing but dried bloodstains.

Mother’s gaze fell upon Gene once more. He cradled his rifle like it was his baby, but his gaze was far away, the golden light of Faith’s memory dancing in his eyes.

Mother sighed and drifted downward, gently alighting her bare feet upon the bloodless floor. Her golden hair and flowing white dress settled softly around her as gravity reasserted itself.

Mother closed her eyes, and Faith opened them.

“Gene,” Faith said, “give me your gun.”

Gene looked up at her in naked supplication. Tears streaked his face. He held the rifle aloft like an offering.

Faith touched it, and it crumbled to ash.

“Now take your friends and get out.”

Rowan stared at Faith in open wonder. Her sister was surely dead, but the power, the rage, rolling off of her was tangible, electric, channeling a vitality like life in concentrate.

“That was incredible,” she said. “How did you do that?”

“Mother helped,” Faith said. “But so did you.” She embraced her sister, and Rowan sobbed.

Rowan had been the one to suggest the protection ritual. Sinead had long been hesitant to include their younger sister in their spellwork, but—as Rowan pointed out—Faith had undeniably come of age, and had expressed interest in their craft for years. Plus, spitfire that she was, she'd insisted on accompanying them to the Reclaim America March, and they all knew the risks, the need for protection, the names of all the dead protesters.

Sinead finally agreed, and Faith was so excited, and now she was a living corpse, a vessel for a powerful protection spirit, and it was all because of Gene and his ignorant friends and their cosplay fascism, and even though Rowan knew that, she couldn't help but feel in some way responsible herself.

“I’m so sorry, Faith,” she said, fighting tears. “I’m just so goddamn sorry.”

Sinead reached out tentatively and touched Faith’s cheek. “How are you… here? We watched you die.”

“Mother is still with me,” Faith said. “I don’t know for how long, and I don’t know what will happen to me after she’s gone, but I’m here now, and we have a chance to fight.”

“No, we have to protect each other,” Rowan argued. “Too many protesters have died already.”

“Mother is protecting us,” Faith said. “But the president just declared us all terrorists. I thought he was posturing, but if that gave Gene and his buddies permission, that makes the march even more important. Fear is the only language these people understand, so if they're going to brand us terrorists, then let’s give them some terror.”

There was power in those words; Rowan felt it crackle through the air, electric with rage. It coursed through her, so reminiscent of Mother, of the connection she’d felt when they’d joined hands with Faith. She exchanged a look with Sinead and knew that this experience was shared.

Rowan thought about Faith touching Gene’s rifle and turning it to ash. She flexed her own hand and felt the sense-memory of that very act, as if she'd touched the gun herself. There was a sacredness in it that felt like love.

She looked at the wall where Carl had been pinned by the stigmata, and she felt a sense-memory of that, too. This did not feel like love; it felt like an all-consuming fury, so deep and dark she could lose herself in it forever.

Mother’s voice stirred in her mind and she felt, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she and Sinead could now channel those powers too. And if they could do that, what other miracles—what other horrors—might the three of them now be capable of?

How many horrors would it take to achieve peace?

Afterword

ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order (NPR, WhiteHouse.gov) declaring “antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization”.

Antifa, of course, is not a group or organization of any kind; it's a colloquial term for “anti-fascist”, which itself is merely the belief that fascism is harmful and should be given no quarter. Many ordinary people hold this belief, especially those with any connection to the history of the second world war.

Shortly after that order, the President signed a national security directive (Ken Klippenstein, WhiteHouse.gov) defining several “indicators” of violent domestic terrorism. They include: anti-capitalism; anti-Christianity; “extremism” on migration, race, and gender; and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”.

If you critique the abuses of late-stage capitalism, oppose ICE’s extrajudicial kidnappings of immigrants and citizens alike, and support racial equality, LGBT rights, abortion rights, and/or the separation of church and state, then the White House very likely now considers you a violent domestic terrorist.

How long until those executive orders are weaponized against the administration’s political and cultural opponents?

How long until they’re weaponized against all of us?

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