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Writing prompt: You adopt four teenage girls. As time passes, you begin to realize each of them represents a horseman of the Apocalypse. All hell breaks loose when Famine steals War's boyfriend.

"Juli, how could you?!? You jerk! You, you.. OH!" Serena beat her fists on the kitchen counter and fled to her room.

Julienne just looked at the fleeing figure of her sister.

Well, they weren't blood sisters, but they were my girls. All four of them.

Serena had been the first to come to our home 6 months ago. At first I had thought she was a quiet girl. But really she was simmering. She was always simmering, waiting for a reason to blow! She was War, but I didn't realize until after the others came.

Julienne was placed in our home a month later. Poor girl was so thin she looked anorexic. She ate like there wouldn't be any food tomorrow, but she never gained weight. She took the food I bought for special events, ate the treats I bought for the other girls, even started on the food storage we'd been working to save in case of natural disaster. She was Famine.

Candace was the next one. She came to us about 3 months ago. Her name means pure.. but she was anything but.  It only took a few weeks for her room to become a disaster. Food and wrappers, trash, dirty dishes, dirty clothes. I don't know if the mess attracted ants... or worse. I didn't want to look. Pestilence.

Aurora joined our family just a month ago. Quiet, but not like Serena was. She was calm under the quiet, not waiting to explode. She was still and quiet and... Death. I had to take out a flowerbed by her bedroom window because everything died.

The Four Girls of the Apocalypse... in my house!

The shouting in the kitchen was just the first. It got worse. Juli's things began to go missing. Irritating things- part of a favorite outfit, one shoe but not the other. We didn't know it was Serena at first. Who else would be upset enough to take Juli's things?

One morning, in the chaos that is four girls getting ready for school, Juli screamed from the bathroom. "My eyEBROW!!!" Just one had been shaved. I let Juli go to school late while we figured out what to do: shave the other and practice with an eyebrow pencil.

As I was showing her, we started talking. As a good mom, I asked her how things were going in school. She mentioned her new boyfriend.... who had the same name as Serena's boyfriend. And looked the same as the boy Serena had described to me shortly before Juli had joined the family.

Juli had stolen Serena's boyfriend.

No wonder Serena had been so upset! I don't know if Juli knew he'd been dating her sister when she met the boy 2 months ago. But I feared the damage had already been done.

That night, I asked Serena to stay up when the other girls headed to bed.

"Serena, how have you been?"

"Fine."

"No, I don't want the pat answer. What's going on between you and Juli?"

"I don't know what you mean, Mrs G. Things are just fine."

"Serena..." My mom-voice was about to get a workout.

"Really, things are fine. Can I go to bed?"

"How about things with Ben? How is he doing?"

"I'm fine, and I guess he's fine, too." There was an edge to it when she said he was *fine*... There was the simmer. But it was hotter than a simmer. She was mad. So I waited. "Julie kissed Ben last week. She fucking kissed him! He's my boyfriend, not hers. She had no right to talk to him let alone kiss him!! He isn't even... good, I want her to suffer. I'm going to destroy her!!"

"Honey, I know you're angry and hurt and you probably feel betrayed and rejected. And you probably think your heart will break into a million piec..."

She cut me off. "Maybe 4 days ago, not anymore. I just want her destroyed. I want her beaten into submission. I want the guys in this high school to think of her as the pariah she is!"

It all came out in a jumble. I had to calm her down before she did something we would all regret.