Bad Nuns - the extended edition

An extended ending - you decide which you prefer

Thanks to everyone who read my latest story, Bad Nuns.

Some of you were left wanting more so I’ll give you an insider insight - I cut the last 300 words at the last minute.

So I thought I’d share the original end with you, and let you decide.

Which ending do you prefer?

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Terri returned to her empty one bed flat, and found it smaller than she’d remembered. The place she’d once thought of as home felt like someone else’s and she could not settle. Before a month had passed, she’d moved out, quit her job at the paper and found work as a freelance marketing consultant. She preferred not to stay put for too long.

Despite her attempts to stay under the radar, Terri received several approaches about the case of the convent, as the true crime nuts called it. Various sums of money were suggested, and a major publisher even offered her a lucrative book deal for an insider account of what went on in that strange little town. Terri refused them all. The desire to tell the story had all dried up.

The public facts were these: after receiving an anonymous tip off, the police had raided the convent, and found three missing teenagers, ranging from 15 to 19 years old. They were dressed in novice’s clothes, and claimed to be there of their own free will, saying that the nuns had saved them from some demonic “curse”, and would not testify a word against them. A number of the nuns were arrested and charged with kidnapping, including novice Claire, and the convent was shut down. Mother Agatha was found in Sister Francis’s rooms, barely clinging to life. She died soon after of her grievous injuries, but on her hospital bed, she confessed that she was the one responsible for killing Sister Francis, imprisoning the young people, and forcing the other nuns to assist her. It was her sin alone, she said. May the sweet Lord forgive her soul.

They never found Jenny Marie. The nuns said she had jumped from the window, and been seen sprinting across the gardens, covered in blood. Then she’d disappeared, and not been seen again.

Still, Terri always checked her window at night before she went to bed. And when lay down and closed her eyes, she would often hear the thud, thud, thud of a stone, and that terrible, hateful laugh.