"There's an iron smell of blood in the air, and now I see it everywhere."

Sundown Towns

Death, she must have been your will
A bone beneath the reaper's veil
With your voice my belly sunk
And I began to feel so drunk

Born post-flash in a still firmly sundown town located on the outskirts of a historical district, Enelle was the only child of a hyper-religious family. Her father, a retired senior sharpshooter instructor for the ARMY, believed the flash to be a byproduct of God’s anger for His children deterring from His teachings. Her mother, a chronically ill woman who was full of hatred and anger, was very distant and never established any sort of relationship with her daughter. She was both verbally and mentally abusive to her daughter and husband, though this ultimately had very little effect on the young girl, who countered the bedridden woman by simply never visiting.

Her mother and father had more of a bonding than either of them did towards their daughter, despite the wife’s vicious vexation. Inseparable, the two adults left Enelle to her own devices, often telling those who cared to listen that their daughter was an unexpected component of God’s plan for them (a planned accident of sorts). This allowed the young girl to explore on her own accord, entirely unsupervised, in an unforgivingly grim world. Enelle learned rather quickly that the people around her were interested in only themselves, and the sense of community had been replaced by selfishness and fear. Enelle had no issue with this and found the deep-set panic to be rather amusing, especially when illness would periodically strangle their population.

Enelle had always been rather strange, taking interest in the concept of death, and life after death, even without the outside influence of her overtly superstitious parents. She was taught, by her father, that every single occurrence in life was pre-destined, immovable, and static. The dynamics of life were concrete, and perfectly articulated by the Lord— His plan was divine, correct, and powerful. Those that opposed his structure were bound to eternal suffering. Despite being Orthodox Christian, a branch that denounces predestination and preaches free will, her father was a devout believer in this heavenly plan, one that only heretics and scum would deny. These frantic, superstitious prophecies only worsened when her mother passed away due to mysterious circumstances. Enelle’s father spiraled, and gradually became significantly more unhinged with his teachings, as he struggled to process his grief for his wife’s sudden, unexplained death being a part of his own plan crafted by God. A test of faith, one he would not fail, though his mental suffered drastically; he eventually went into hiding, and his whereabouts are entirely unknown to present-day Enelle.

She lived her childhood carefully, as one can be in a post-apocalyptic world. She found no use in companionship, as she felt that this simply was not God’s plan for her. Every single occurrence has a purpose, a meaning greater than she could comprehend. So when her mother passed away due to strange complications, Enelle was thrilled to realize that even death was incorporated, complexly interwoven into the ever-structured world. Coupled with her newfound obsession with the “planned” loss of life, Enelle found herself incredibly drawn to ensure God’s plan was carried out in an orderly, correct fashion. For people to cheat God’s plan and ruthlessly deny it was more than enough to push Enelle into the work of assassinations. Before her father was reduced to a madman, he had shared quite enough knowledge to fuel her religiously-driven vigilante persona, thus producing a well-trained, dangerous individual.

Archangel

Candle, candle, on my clock
Oh Lord, I must have heard you knock me out of bed
As the flames licked my head
And my lungs filled up black in their tiny little shack
It was real and I repent
All those messages you sent, clear as day, but in the night
Oh, I couldn't get it right

Practice was quite easy to come by. Sinners or those that Enelle deemed to be defying God’s plan were excellent targets to begin her journey into this grim business. She found that she performed quite well, well enough that others were willing to pay for her services, even from the town she spent her childhood within. Enelle found herself eliminating those that she shared prayers with, but they had few reserves for doing so. At this time in her life, Enelle had become quite detached from the concept of forgiveness and understanding. With her father practically riddled with madness, and her mother now gone, Enelle found herself with no proper parental figure to teach her how to handle these strangely complex emotions. Instead, she decided that turning to God was the best decision she could make. She found her only sense of companionship in the Scriptures– although typically a healthy feat, Enelle became so incredibly dependent on this and began to shut out all possible interactions with others, unless discussing an assassination.

Enelle denied the creeping suspicion that she herself was subject to the same madness her father suffered from. With God, she was invincible; this sense of indestructibility prompted Enelle to take on far more dangerous jobs. Albeit successful in her endeavors, these otherwise impossible feats drew attention to the reserved hitman. Her orders came flooding in from people who offered to pay in nearly any currency imaginable, including body parts, perhaps not acquired by ethical means. Overwhelmed by this, and rather startled by the negative attention she received from factions, Enelle stepped back from this line of work and turned to the CDF for assistance in asylum and a more stable occupation. Enelle was taken in as a hireling, given a rifle, and left to her own devices on various outposts that the organization had little regard for.

Enelle did her job well, but in a regard that, again, prompted too much scrutiny from her faction affiliates. The woman had absolutely no hesitation with the trigger– this ruthlessness worried her higher-ups and those apart of her squads; other hirelings began rejecting offers to patrol if it meant Enelle would be with them. Reports of startling, eerie, offputting comments from Enelle regarding her religion and how she felt about others filled the CDF’s logbook, enough that she was discharged from her duties and ‘politely’ told that she was no longer welcome within its territories.

Enelle didn’t seem to mind. She left without much trouble, though the men and women that worked alongside Enelle eventually, one-by-one, went missing.

Hollowed Soul

Here is a church and here is a steeple
Open the doors there are the people
And all their little hearts at ease
For another week's disease

Enelle set to traveling the wasteland alone then and found herself taking one more of the hitman contracts from before. Her faith never seemed to waver despite all of the death and despair all about her, instead, her belief and reliance on God seemed to only vitalize. Her talents also improved drastically, enough that her occupation became second nature and incredibly less risky to conduct on a weekly basis. She had enough currency and trade value to live comfortably within the city ruins, finding that food and medicine was quite obtainable with the amount of wealth she had accumulated over the years.

Enelle began to shy away from taking on new clients, finding that they were untrustworthy and too dangerous to work with. Unless their pockets were deep, the woman only tended to recurring customers and found that even blameless, Lilly-white faction higher-ups had pests they wanted gone. Humored by human nature, Enelle gradually began to garner a certain fascination with the process of her occupation– what once was a simple act of godly vigilantism morphed into a strange obsession. She was incredibly captivated by the complex inner workings of the human mind, especially of one that wanted another dead.

Still without friends, Enelle currently roams the ruined cityscape, completing jobs nearly once a week. Now engrossed with a new line of study, her love for the craft seemed to bolster significantly so, enough that she has now started accepting jobs from complete strangers that leave her notes scattered about the city; the monetary reward has gradually become entirely irrelevant.


And eagle, eagle, towel, and scream
I never once left in between
I was on the fence and I never wanted your two cents
Down my throat, in the pit, with my head upon the spit
Oh Reverend, please, can I chew your ear?
I've become what I most fear
And I know there's no such thing as ghosts
But I have seen the demon host