What is wrong with this city? After having seen one crucifixion, yet another? We’re falling from one excruciating scene into the next. When will this end? Can anyone tell us what the hell is going on?

The turmoil began some weeks ago with the announcement of the prohibition. That was also when the kidnappings started. One after another, Vie MacClawden, Nick Kytori, Rhoslyn Ritter and Titi were abducted, disappeared for a few days and came back a changed person. The kidnappings themselves were swift and brutal. Lyssandra was almost killed by an assassin while trying to prevent her wife being taken. All the women seemed to have endured unknown atrocities and some sort of brainwashing once they returned. Nobody knows exactly how many citizens of DE were exposed to such kidnapping and brainwashing, but one can only assume that the victims named here were just the tip of the iceberg.

Who was responsible for this? According to rumors a woman called Syn Rosa, also calling herself ’Mother’. Once a respected member of our community, founder of the Shelter for abused women and ex-psychiatrist in the Asylum in the Dead End Memorial Hospital. After having disappeared for a number of years she apparently returned a menace to the city she once claimed to want to help.

A week ago parlor employee and suspected Black Mamba member Kyna Teagan got tortured by a nun, who identified herself as having been present in the kidnapping of Rhoslyn and who had tried to assassinate Lyssandra. She tortured Teagan in horrible ways to get information on the whereabouts of three people, Dee, Dion and Lyss,”miscreants beyond repair” according to the nun’s words. Further misdeeds were prevented and the nun pointed with her last breaths to the brainwash center before she died. A few hours later a group of people, identity unknown to this reporter, broke open the door to a penthouse above the Babylon bathhouse and the woman known as Syn Rosa was dragged outside and taken away.

Witnesses told about a warehouse in the Red Light District which was frequented that night by members of Hellcats, Syndicate and Black Mamba. Apparently unspeakable things happened there, because the next day hooded figures in dark robes dragged a broken Syn Rosa out with a cross on her back and forced her to walk all the way to the basketball courts. People who witnessed the procession declared to have felt sick with the display of cruelty. Yet there were also people who cheered…

At the basketball court the tortured woman was bound to a cross and a cobra was wrapped around her neck. This reporter witnessed how the woman had several severe injuries, had been beaten and tortured in ways she dare not think of and had burn marks on her body stating ’Hellcats’. One of the masked people declared all brainwash victims of “mother” free of her program, the idol had fallen and mother would have no more power over them.

Were these atrocities necessary? Apparently the people gathering around felt she had deserved what was coming to her because nobody came to her aid and when Syn Rosa tried to convince the crowd of her good intentions, she got yelled at, laughed at and even mocked in numerous ways. It was obvious she had only enemies left and civilization had taken a leave of absence .

When finally the police showed, the hooded figures withdrew and the paramedics stepped in. An asylum guard wrestled with the cobra and Syn Rosa was taking from her cross. However, the woman had gone completely insane and in her madness she attacked the ones trying to help her. It was at that point that an Asian woman, according to some none other than Ming Yheng, a former officer of the Dead End Police Department stepped in and speared Syn Rosa with her high heels. Syn Rosa died unloved and brutally.

What do we learn from this?

The gangs of Dead End, mainly Hellcats, Syndicate and Black Mamba are able to lay personal feuds aside when it comes to a common enemy, and they act with ruthless cruelty against those crossing them, as the murderous nun and the brainwash-mistress both had to learn the hard way. But is this the end? Was ’Mother’ really the root of all evil? What is this cult that we have witnessed at work lately? And are the gangs of this city trying to save us or will they now really be unleashed? One can only wonder who the bigger evil is. Will the Sheriff be able to stop any of this?

This reporter has seen enough crucifixions for two lifetimes and thinks something should be done about all this.