Bernadette Protti’s home life was just fine, by all accounts. She was born into a devout catholic family, the youngest of six children. Her father Raymond was a retired public works officer, who taught Christianity in his spare time. Mother Elaine was a homemaker, who read her bible with a stop watch. But just fine wasn’t good enough for Bernadette.

Waltraud Wagner became a nurse because she wanted to help people, to make them comfortable and ease their pain and suffering. She chose to work at Lainz General Hospital’s Pavilion 5, where many of the hospital’s elderly and infirm resided. A lot of the patients in this particular Pavilion were suffering from terminal illnesses. Consequently, it was a relatively high, but not entirely unexpected, death rate.

Olga’s life started uneventfully enough. The daughter of a bank clerk father and dentist mother, there was nothing of note to set Olga apart from any of the other little girls living in Prague. Sure, she was a bit quiet, and didn’t mix well with others. Her parents assumed she was just reserved and didn’t really give her apparent social awkwardness much attention. Well, until she attempted suicide by swallowing a ton of medication at the age of 13.

None of Theresa’s children escaped her ‘teachings’. However, her attention was centred mostly on her older daughters, Sheila and Suesan. She didn’t like how pretty they were getting. She didn’t like how much attention this beauty might attract. Attention that might be diverted away from her. Theresa didn’t like that. Not one bit.

Christa loved a good funeral. They brought family and friends together, the food was always delicious and plentiful, and best of all, black was such a slimming color. It was a nice feeling, too, when the guest of honour at such an event wasn’t someone Christa had particularly cared much for.