The Passion Flower of Lucca
Though she’d die in a matter of hours, Gemma kept her eyes as open as she could, focused on the guardian angel at the foot of her bed. She’d never asked the angel her name, but had always been able to see her somewhere nearby. During infancy, her beautiful friend would float above her wooden crib at night. Italian thunderstorms were rougher near the sea, but even Gemma’s parents thought it weird their child never cried. During adolescence, the bright-haired angel would appear at random, in corners of rooms, at the end of long hallways at school, from second-story windows when she’d go to the piazza. Always looking directly at the girl with eyes that felt warm.
After both her mother and Gino—her older brother—had died from tuberculosis during the fall of 1885, Gemma was sent to live with the Sisters of St. Zita at their boarding school across town. Not long afterward, she received her first communion.
“But she hasn’t lived here long enough!” Sister Catherine would bark out, throwing up her boney arms. When Gemma noticed her angel sitting in the last pew behind the Sisters, smiling like a proud parent, the girl felt warmth again. This continued for the next thirteen years. She excelled at every topic. The Passionists wanted to make her a nun. She’d seen her angel regularly. So when she learned of the spinal meningitis decaying her body from deep inside, she looked around anxiously for the friend only she could see—nothing.
Soon after her father too, passed away from illness, the orphan became a housekeeper for the wealthy Giannini family. She was still a month away from turning 18, hadn’t seen her angel for years, was still recovering from her sickness, when the first vision happened. It was of the Master hanging himself with the rope from the shed. It’d been months since the Master had started looking at her with a twisted stare. Something in the way he’d watch her from across the room while she cleaned, it made her stomach hurt. In the morning, she heard the Misses toss awake in her bed, followed by a long, shrieking chorus of screams and shouts.
“He won’t wake up! Girl—come in here! Help me!” Gemma heard all of it, but couldn’t move a muscle. Her eyes felt as if they’d been stretched open all night. Her limbs, paralyzed. A constant vision of a dead man who now, apparently laid as lifeless as Gemma had seen him the entire night in her mind’s eye. Suddenly, a figure approached the bedside. She couldn’t shift her eyes to see who it was, but a familiar warmth overcame Gemma’s body and instantly knew her angel had come back. She didn’t speak, like always. Still, a voice hummed gently throughout Gemma’s ears.
You are a Victim Soul, my Gemma. The girl didn’t understand. You will suffer for those around you, because your strength can handle their transgressions. The angel raised her hand to Gemma’s forehead, brushing her hair away slowly. But as long as you shall live, dear Gemma, no mortal of woman born will ever dare harm you. A thunderous boom sounded as the Misses burst into the housekeeper’s bedroom and suddenly, Gemma bolted free, sitting straight up in her bed, sweat dripping from her face and neck. The angel was gone. Only the two women and a dead body were left in the entire home.
The Misses kept Gemma around more out of loneliness, but after the visions increased in the years to come, they’d become harder to snap out of and the signs of stigmata which had started were impossible to hide. The day the Misses found droppings of unexplainable blood on her kitchen floor, she made the girl pack up and leave, wondering what type of demon had been living within her home and if maybe she’d killed her poor husband in his sleep.
After meeting Reverend Germanus Ruoppolo, Gemma finally began feeling that possible happiness wasn’t out of the question for her. The Reverend took her in, fed her, clothed her, kept her spirits up. The visions seemed to fade away in frequency. No more scars on her hands and feet. She began wearing a crucifix. Finally, two nights ago, the Reverend crept into her room to check on the sleeping girl and found her levitating high above her bed, in a trance, limp arms and legs hanging beneath her torso. As he leapt for the front door and howled all the way down his street towards the church, waking his neighbors, Gemma’s angel crouched in a corner, watching an unconscious friend from the invisible realm she was forced to stay in. All guardian angels have borders—both, emotional and spiritual. “Don’t watch over her too often, you’ll get attached to a Victim Soul.” The angel had heard those words for thousands of years, but never until Gemma, had she worried to keep her distance. Now in this specific room, she understood the depth of how painful losing this child would be.
As the sickness took over Gemma’s body once more, she finally dropped back down onto the bed below, a heavy thud and asleep she’d stay, for hours on end, only waking up periodically to cough up mucus or blink away tears. The angel knew it wouldn’t be long. She walked up to her friend of 25 years and cupped the girl’s rough hands inside her own, heavenly palm. The two met eye-contact like they used to before Gemma could even stand. She wanted so badly to ask the angel’s name, for once at least, but couldn’t find the strength. I’ve been given many names by people over the years. The only name I care about is the one you’ll remember me by after you leave here. No point in explaining that angels like her can never enter where the girl’s heading soon. Their only reward is eternal rest after their last soul is delivered, as hers was preparing to be.
Gemma’s lips were barely able to mouth two final words before her body finally expired. The angel floated above the bed, out and beyond the room, and into the Tuscan winds that carried her across the lands and seas and skies until she found her own place of eternal rest. A small field of forestry nestled deep within empty woods, overgrown with lush greenery, far away from sickness and evil and regret. She came upon a small plate of marble that’d been set as a base for some sculpture long ago which was either forgotten about or given up on entirely. Perfect, the angel spoke inside her mind. I too, am forgotten. She placed her head down on her tired arms and thought back to Gemma’s parting words. You’re welcome, she said, as the ethereal mass that once made up her body turned to earthly concrete and stone—covering her chest, legs, arms, hair, and wings. She’d no longer be invisible now.