The first duty of a revolutionary is to make the revolution.
—Ernesto
“Che” Guevara
Befana, Befana, Befana who
flies in the night,
bless this home as you pass
by in your flight.
Befana, Befana, Befana,
banish all trouble.
Leave blessings and good
fortune, we ask.
—Traditional incantation
One stressful day ended in
even greater annoyance.
The past week had been
exhausting for Pammy Bionde, the U.S. Attorney General. The government
circle—Möller, Vantz, Hogsett, and the rest, since President Drumpf had lost
all vestige of his former lucidity, simplistic as it was, weeks ago—had
determined that the bread and circuses needed to appease the increasingly
discontented public would be the release of the Eppenstein files… and it was a
task they had left entirely in her hands.
She had spent the entire day
overseeing the final preparations for releasing the files. They were so
numerous that in recent months she had been forced to hire hundreds of
temporary workers to review document by document, carefully classifying and
censoring each page to prevent any compromising material from leaking out.
Because there were so many. But now, at last, everything was ready; in a few
hours, the documents would be released, and this would give the critics and
malcontents a perfect distraction, combined with the timely and well-calculated
proximity of the Christmas holidays.
She hadn't even had a chance
to eat lunch, and as she relaxed in the back seat of her car, she experienced a
slight dizziness. She wanted nothing more than to get home and sleep; but that
would be impossible.
Ronald Drumpf had won the
first of his two presidential terms thanks to the Eppenstein affair; the Q-Anon
conspiracy theorists had spread the Pizzagate rumor, about how most of the
Democratic leaders belonged to a perversion and sex trafficking ring whose
activities were carried out in the basements of a pizza chain; What began as
allegations of corrupt activities soon grew into exposing a supposed reptilian
elite behind it all. Some, like Bionde herself, knew that this had all
originated directly from Russian intelligence, which had generated and spread
these rumors.
This story didn't spring
from nowhere, of course; two such organizations did indeed exist. The first was
the NXIVM cult, which had been uncovered and dismantled in 2019; the second was
the truly problematic one. Due to the links between the two, it had been
discovered simultaneously, and its leader, Jefferson Eppenstein, was arrested
and died, in the public's opinion, under suspicious circumstances, committing
suicide in his cell while awaiting his imminent hearing and testimony.
It was true that several
Democrats had been regular clients of the criminal sex services that Eppenstein
ran on his private island, as well as aboard his infamous plane. The real
problem was that many prominent Republicans had also been his clients…
especially the most problematic of them all. When Bionde ordered all mention of
the name Drumpf to be removed from the Eppenstein Files, he didn't imagine they
would be so numerous that it would take months. But at last, the job was done; the
materials would be presented selectively, any mention of Trump made illegible,
and the incriminating evidence against a former Democratic president and one of
the leading left-wing ideologues would be emphasized; they had even ensured
that some fabricated evidence involving artistic celebrities would be added to
the existing evidence. All of this would provide a legion of scapegoats, make
many Democrats disillusioned with their idols and their party, and the
government would have fulfilled the demands of the citizens; Christmas, with
its family and festive activities, would complete this release of pent-up
tension, and the country would once again be relaxed and easily manipulated.
They even hoped to lay the groundwork for justifying the definitive elimination
of the Democrats.
Now, Pammy Bionde could
focus on the last challenge of the day, even if she found it unbearable after
everything that had happened: the obligatory meeting with her relatives who
were visiting Washington.
Bionde didn't like her
family; besides, their presence—not to mention their very existence—was
awkward. The regime's anti-immigrant policies made belonging to a family of
Italian immigrants uncomfortable, and her aunts clung to their European
heritage instead of adapting to a modern, American life as they should. But it
would only be a few hours these days; then they would leave, and she would be
free of these exhausting commitments.
She went inside and took a
breath, preparing herself to face her visitors.
“Pammy!” Aunt Gianna came
straight to her as soon as she crossed the threshold; she was improbably agile
for her age. She hugged her and planted kisses on her cheeks, not in the air as
was the custom here. Bionde forced herself to smile. Just a few days, she
reminded herself once again.
Her cousin Lucia was nowhere
to be seen, probably in the kitchen; she had insisted on cooking since her
arrival the previous afternoon—it was the only good thing about this, as her
dishes were delicious. The children, Enzo and Chiara, were sitting on the
carpet watching a Christmas cartoon on a laptop.
“You're just in time for tea,”
declared Lucia, coming out of the kitchen, and this made the hungry Bionde's
smile sincere for the first time.
***
A productive day ended in
even greater satisfaction.
In a rented house on the
outskirts of St. Petersburg, where Jenny Everywhere and Laura Drake had been
staying for the past few weeks, they were finishing a delicious afternoon tea,
a treat offered by their guest for the day, Marietta Là-bas. Jenny, a
dark-haired girl with almond-shaped eyes, had swapped her usual thin scarves
for a thicker one in Christmas colors, though the old aviator goggles perched
on her head were the same, indispensable any day of the year. The red-haired
Laura, on the other hand, was wearing only a purple sweater instead of her
usual jacket of the same color, or her lab coat, which she wore far too often.
Their visitor, Marietta,
hoped she didn't have any obsessive habits regarding clothing or accessories
like theirs, though she supposed she might not be aware of it. Today she was
dressed entirely in red, in her fitted dress, and a hooded cloak that now hung
behind her neck; But it was her “work” attire, which she frequently wore for
activities like the one they had planned for that evening.
“We just need to make sure,”
Marietta said, taking a swig from her wine glass. Jenny had opted for a simple
beer. Laura nodded, as if it were a sign she'd been waiting for, stood up, and
went to her study, where the computer was already on. She typed and looked at
the monitor.
“They're uploading
everything, and it's coming along as planned,” she confirmed, looking at the
government website. “I can't believe it took them so many months; it only took
me a few days to go over everything. And the worst part is that they left a lot
of things uncensored; they're incredibly incompetent.”
“Is it wise to watch it from
here?” Marietta asked, somewhat suspiciously. Jenny winked at her casually.
“Right now, half the country
is looking at that page. Besides, even if Laura were the only one doing so, if
she doesn't want to be tracked, no one will.” Laura gave her a half-smile in
acknowledgment of the compliment and explained:
“I just confirmed it,
everything is exactly as we expected. You can finish the job now, as planned.”
“Excellent!” Jenny pumped
her fists in the air enthusiastically and hugged Laura, planting an exaggerated
kiss on her. “You're great. Why don't you come too?”
“Nah, I'm fine here. I'll
watch everything through the camera in your goggles anyway; that way I can make
sure everything goes well, and if there's anything that needs to be recorded
and isn't clear, I can let you know.”
“Great!” A second, brief,
and more serious kiss, and she turned to Marietta, who had put on her red-lensed
glasses and was adjusting the hood of her cloak. That cloak was her ritual
attire for esoteric activities, inherited from her grandmother Celeste, whose
magical moniker she had also adopted: Lady Satan. Like her ancestor, Marietta
also used this identity for her activities opposing various agents and forces
that deserved it, the main one now being the fascist government of the United
States of America.
Jenny touched the aviator
goggles she wore as a headband, as if she were just adjusting them, and
remembered that she had to put them on so that Laura's camera would focus on
what she was looking at. She put them on and held out her hand to Marietta;
Marietta took it and looked at Laura once more, who gave a thumbs-up and became
engrossed in her computer.
Jenny and Marietta started
walking and… shifted.
***
Pammy Bionde said goodbye to
her cousin after offering to clear the last of the dishes from the table. As
soon as Lucia disappeared upstairs, she set the pile of plates aside and went
to the cupboard to get a bottle of brandy. This was just what she needed to be
able to fall asleep later. She uncorked the bottle and drank straight from it.
She exhaled, satisfied with the pleasant warmth in her throat, and walked into
the living room, taking another sip. There, the lights were off to highlight
the twinkling lights on the tree. Fortunately, she wouldn't have to order
presents. True to their Italian traditions, Aunt Gia and Lucia hadn't instilled
in their children the foolishness of Santa Claus coming on Christmas Eve, but
rather an alternative foolishness: Befana, the Christmas witch, would leave
them gifts on the eve of January 6th, the night she had heard that in Latin
America it was the three wise men from the East who gave gifts to children.
Gifts and magic! What a waste of time teaching children those fables and making
them believe they were real. He tilted the bottle once more and thought he
heard a hiss, shhftt… like something
being dragged across the carpet. The alcohol was starting to take effect, and
he debated whether to sit in the armchair or take a couple more drinks and
retreat to the bedroom. As he pondered this, he stared blankly at the bottle,
on whose surface the Christmas lights flickered, and he noticed a change in the
lights, both in the reflections and all around him, as if they were suddenly
moving, when he perceived some muffled sounds.
Those
are footsteps, she thought; they’re footsteps right
behind me.
She realized she had
actually heard that, and her eyes widened. Could it be the children? But they
must be asleep. She started to turn around, with an irrational fear fueled by
the brandy, but she didn't manage to: flashes of red, blue, and green passed
before her eyes, and something encircled her neck. She felt a tug, and it
tightened around her throat; she touched it with her free hand and, as she did,
dropped the bottle in horror: it was a string of Christmas lights, perhaps the
same ones from the tree, and it had just been wrapped around her neck. Someone
was behind her and intended to strangle her.
Bionde groaned in panic and
tried to grab the string of lights, but it was firmly tightened around her
neck. Then a foot violently pushed between her shoulder blades, and she tumbled
face-first onto the carpet; The wire pressed taut against her windpipe, and the
shifting glimmers around her cheekbones told her the lights were still on, even
now. She tried to sit up, terrified, but the foot pressed against her back,
pinning her to the ground, and the wire tugged at her neck, forcing her head to
tilt precariously to breathe.
She turned her head as far
as she could to look behind her; she vaguely wondered why the alarms hadn't
sounded, where the security personnel were who were supposed to be monitoring
the outside of the house. She caught a glimpse of a red boot, the hem of a
skirt or coat of the same color hanging over it. A woman's boot. Beyond that,
she made out two more legs encased in denim and winter boots, generic clothing,
taking a couple of steps closer. Visions of being kidnapped, or worse, flashed through
her mind; she remembered the rolls of cash she kept in the small box by the
window and thought desperately that perhaps she could buy her freedom.
“I have…” her voice was a
hoarse hiss because of the cable strangling her— “I have…” but the words blurred
in her head; panic prevented her from thinking clearly.
“I should free her from her
misery once and for all,” said a woman's voice.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait,”
said another female voice, “that wasn't the plan. I swear, between you and Lau…”
“Shh!”
Were there two women? Bionde
regained her composure somewhat. If there was no one else, perhaps she would
have a chance to escape. She tensed her body, but remained still…
“Okay, okay, I didn't say
it. Now, let her breathe, okay?”
The cable loosened slightly.
Now! Bionde spun around, pushing herself to the ground with both hands, and
managed to get that foot off her. The woman in red stumbled and took a couple
of steps back, tugging at the cable, but Bionde was already standing and
couldn't pull it taut. If she tried to run, she would be strangled again.
She saw a tall, hooded
woman, all in red, holding the string of lights loosely in one hand; she was
looking at her companion. The other was a young girl with short hair, wearing a
hideous Christmas sweater and strange goggles. But most importantly: she saw no
weapons in their hands.
With an inarticulate gasp,
she lunged at the woman in red, going for her face and throat. She didn't see
the movement, only the fist that filled her field of vision and the intense
pain that spread across her face. Bionde fell backward, her nose broken. Her
neck hung from the wire, preventing her head from hitting the floor, and blood
from her nose trickled between her lips. Dazed, she was overwhelmed by the
metallic taste and the pain, which her mind visualized as some kind of block
crushing her face.
When her mind began to clear
again, they forced her to sit up, holding her arms. It was hard to focus her
eyes. They were wrapping the Christmas light string around her arms. The lights
continued to blink. They pulled her once more, and she felt herself being
lifted into the air; the girl with the strange glasses was standing on a chair
next to her. What was happening? She looked up and saw that she was tying up something
to the ceiling fan. The terror returned. Were they going to hang her? She tried
to scream, but only a low whimper escaped, triggering a fit of coughing.
“Be quiet or you’ll wake
your family,” said the woman in red behind her. The girl with glasses climbed
down from the chair and looked up, inspecting her work; the hands holding her
arms released her, and she slumped, her legs limp. For a moment she expected a
tug on her throat that would cut off her breath; and there was a tug, but on
the cable that wound several times around her shoulders; her legs finally
reacted and she managed to stand. She looked up: they had hung her from the
ceiling, to keep her upright, but without tying her neck, thank God. The cable
was taut around her arms and thighs, and was tied firmly around her wrists, behind
her back. And the damned lights were still blinking above her, as if she were a
giant Christmas ornament.
The girl with glasses looked
at her, made a disapproving face, and took one of the stockings hanging from
the fireplace; With it, she wiped the blood from Bionde's face, who groaned in
agony as her swollen nose was rubbed.
“Shh,” the girl said. The
woman in red had walked until she was within her field of vision and was now
crouching on the carpet. She was spray-painting something on it, writing something
with red paint. She straightened up to admire the result, and Bionde caught a
glimpse of the design: a kind of stylized S. It looked familiar, and almost
immediately, she remembered why.
It had been a couple of
months earlier when Steven Möller, the government advisor, and the Secretary of
Homeland Security, Kristen Nome, had decided to move from their private
residences to military bases because they felt unsafe. Nome hadn't said why,
although Bionde thought it stemmed from an experience she'd had in Portland
(1); but Möller had been quite explicit about it. Some Antifa vandals had
filled the sidewalk in front of her house with threatening messages, and she
felt her life was in danger. Actually, the messages, while annoying, hadn't
seemed intimidating to Bionde: slogans like "No to racism" and
"Trans people have rights" might be annoying to them, but they
weren't a threat. But among the various phrases, there was a more ambiguous
symbol… a stylized S. It was the same one the woman in red had just drawn in
the middle of the rug. When Bionde questioned Möller, he told her he'd had a
visitor, something he couldn't tell the media… and he'd mentioned a name,
without further explanation.
“Lady Satan.”
The woman in red turned to
look at her through her red glasses when she heard her name mentioned.
“Now that you're awake, you
can listen to me…”
Quick footsteps interrupted
her. Lady Satan swiftly pulled a pistol from the folds of her cape, and both
she and the girl with glasses turned toward the stairs. The children appeared;
they were coming down barefoot. They must have heard the noise. Lady Satan
holstered her pistol when she saw them.
“Kids,” Bionde was about to
tell them to go back upstairs and ask for help, but something invaded her mouth
with a pungent gingerbread flavor. The girl with glasses had put a cookie in
her mouth. While she choked and coughed, Enzo and Chiara had just come down and
were staring at the scene, mouths agape. Lady Satan watched them, unsure how to
react.
Then the children looked at
each other and smiled in wonder; they said, not exactly in unison, but their
voices overlapped:
“It's Befana!” Bionde would
have let out a curse if she hadn't been coughing yet.
“That's right! Befana came
early to bring you some presents,” exclaimed the girl with glasses, smiling,
and clapped twice, stepping forward. “We were preparing a surprise with your
Aunt Pammy, who was going to dress up as a Christmas tree to give them to you.
You were supposed to be asleep!” she added in a mock-scolding tone, wagging her
index finger.
Lady Satan sighed and turned
to Bionde, saying in a very low, sharp voice, like a dagger:
“One word and you won’t see
Christmas Eve.”
Enzo and Chiara ran to hug
the woman in red, who was visibly perplexed and uncomfortable, but didn’t hide
her confusion; she patted them hesitantly on the head and tried to smile,
without much success.
“And did you bring us
presents?” asked Enzo, noticing Befana’s empty hands.
“Here they are!” the girl
with glasses said enthusiastically. She squatted down, put both hands behind
her back, and pulled a ribboned package out of thin air with her left hand,
handing it to Enzo, who took it with a “Wow!” Then she held out an even bigger
package to Chiara with her right hand. How on earth did she do that?
The girl stood up and
approached Bionde as the children opened their presents. Still smiling, she
said,
“Don’t spoil the party by
denying this, okay?”
Bionde nodded eagerly.
“It’s time you knew what’s
going on,” Lady Satan murmured, showing her an image on her phone. “Right now,
the Eppenstein Files are online, just like you ordered; And the public is
already discovering that all it takes is selecting, copying, and pasting the
canceled and censored texts to read all the parts you tried to hide”. On the
cell phone screen, an animation of the process showed her what was being
described: a word blocked with a black box was selected by a cursor, then
pasted into a text file, and appeared as: “Drumpf.” “Every censored file your
team uploads is replaced with a completely readable one before being made
available on the official website. You are in charge of the declassification,
and you will be held responsible by your people.” Lady Satan smiled slightly, and
Bionde felt a chill. “But we wanted you to know it was us. It's only the
beginning.”
“And one more thing,”
murmured the girl with glasses, “You don't deserve such cute nephews.” The
children in question exclaimed with excitement as they unwrapped their gifts
and ran to hug the Christmas Witch again; Lady Satan had anticipated this and
reacted with greater patience this time. Then they started running around in
circles singing:
“La Befana vien di notte, con la
scarpe…”
“Now, now, children,”
exclaimed the girl with glasses, somewhat preoccupied, “do you want to wake up
the whole neighborhood?” They stopped running and looked at her. “You should be
asleep, remember, so off to bed!”
“Okay,” groaned Chiara, and
shrugged.
“Are you coming, Auntie?”
asked Enzo, looking at her. Before she could say anything, the girl with
glasses spoke up:
“Aunt Pammy is a dedicated
actress, and she told me she plans to play the part of a Christmas tree until
dawn to surprise her mom. So, off to bed!” The children said “Goodnight!” and
obeyed. Once they heard the creak of her bedroom door, Lady Satan and her
companion looked at Bionde. Lady Satan held in her hands the stocking they had
used to clean the blood from her face, and she was pouring a liquid into it;
its pungent smell was familiar. She tried to protest, but the chloroform-soaked
rag was forced into her mouth.
The next thing she knew,
Lucia was repeating her name while the voices of the children circling around
her sang:
“¡Trullalá…
trullalá!”
***
“We’re starting to see the sequels,”
Laura Drake announced, her eyes glued to the monitor, as she downed the last of
her coffee and looked gratefully at Jenny, who had been ready to refill her
cup.
“Do you think this will be
enough to impeach Drumpf?” Jenny asked.
“Unfortunately, I don’t
think so,” replied Marietta, who had wandered off to the cabinet to add a
splash of whiskey to her coffee. “We’ve already seen that Americans will put up
with anything from him. But the things that are coming to light aren’t just
child abuse, which they can no longer deny; there are more varied crimes on his
hands. This will cause MAGA to lose more and more followers; anyway, it had
already become clear that the large number of accounts that gave the impression
of enormous support on social media were mostly bots from Europe and Africa.”
She took a sip from her cup. “I want to believe that after this, his supporters
will be far too few.”
“If that’s the case, even if
there’s no impeachment, he’ll inevitably lose the next election even if he
manages to get nominated for a third term,” Jenny stated.
Laura raised her eyebrows
cynically.
“Long before that, they’ll try
to cancel the next election, you’ll see. That’s why he’s looking to start a
war, with Venezuela or whoever, to use it as a pretext to suspend the
elections.”
“That’s why we won’t stand
idly by,” Marietta added. “There’s still a lot to do. And they can’t stop us
because even if they found us, or someone else, there’s no large subversive
organization, like the phantom AntiFa front they invented as a pretext to
persecute their opponents; it’s an open conspiracy, as H.G. Wells would call
it: diverse groups and individuals, independent of each other, all working
toward a common goal. And no one will rest until MAGA is out of power.”
“I hope that happens before
some new war begins,” Laura said.
Jenny slumped back on the
sofa.
"We'll hurry things
along as much as possible," she said, taking her cup from the small table
and raising it toward Marietta. “To Befana!”
Marietta couldn't help but
smile as Jenny began to sing: “Trullalá”.
Credits
“Befana’s Little Helper”
Copyright © 2025 Luis G. Abbadie. Credit must always be given to the author.
The
Available Heroes is a series of stories that bring back classic public domain
characters, orphaned or open source, to face the challenges of today's world.
The character Jenny Nowhere
is available to anyone, with one condition: this paragraph must be included in
any publication related to Jenny Nowhere so that others may use this property
as they wish. All rights reversed.
The character Laura Drake
was created by Jeanne Morningstar and may be used by anyone without
attribution. All rights reversed.
Marietta Là-bas / Lady
Satan, originally published in 1941, was created by George Tuska; it is in the
public domain due to legal quirks.
This is a work of fiction,
in which any resemblance to real-life characters and situations is subject to
the rules of parody, and is not intended in any way to constitute a faithful
representation of reality.
Fotnotes
1) Said experience is
narrated in “Night of the Frog”
2) The Befana song can be
heard here in a version by Gianni Morandi:
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