Work Text:
“You haven’t changed.”
My face flinched before I could think.
It was something that I did not want to hear, need to hear.
An awkward, heavy silence reigned in the suffocatingly warm shed, the tumult outside pleading with the worn wood planks that made up the four squat walls. Smelling of dirt, rain, sweat…of blood. Bodies, nearly pressed up against each other, faces turned away. Not like I wanted to see her face anyway.
“I did what I had to.”
Ten whole years can eat away at you, Ma said in a low whisper. Staring like a startled deer from our supper at the young, mangy woman that had just sat at the far end of the table. Eating like the plagues had returned. Mavis would be the only one to raise questions, asking for more or in a sour encouragement for us to speak. Speak unlike we did, like the very last time we saw her.
If anyone hadn’t changed, it would have been her.
“That’s fresh, comin’ from you, Will.” Is the calm, raw response. Her fingers scrape painfully against the wood knots spattering her side of the wall. Breath hitched, as the sounds of dogs, men, slicing through the torrent outside.
“We had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
My fists grow tighter around the knife hanging like a broken appendage, blood oozing down in snakes along my arms.
Flashes of death.
Glass doll eyes, a strange, visceral power humming beneath my skin. A power, too dangerous and frightening to comprehend, something that flashed in my own father’s eyes.
May was always a magnet for trouble, with those vivid, green fox eyes, dark waves that easily reached her toes. Pa was the darker, more fiery one; the one who’d take a gamble with a man’s life, drink until he could hardly speak. It ate away at our money jar, from our savings. Debts are inescapable, and May…May was the prettiest price.
It wasn’t nobody’s fault that my sister bore the shame of it on her shoulders. That us kids, Ma, did. That I did.
“May, I…I’m sorry.”
It's barely a whisper, her scraping screeching to a halt. Words, a sorry, weak sigh of regret.
“Yeah, well, it's a bit too late for that now, isn’t it?”
Tears begin to mingle with the filth dripping from my face, metallic taste tainting my tongue. “Those men, they…”
“Just a nightmare.” May begins to tremble, likely fighting the invisible tears. Clasping her shoulder, as she aggressively pulls away. It’s too late.
Don’t you remember me?
Your little brother, the one you’d read all those ghost stories to fight the fear tinging the air, that we were bigger than the darkness outside where all those bodies lay in a pile of ash. Stronger than our father. That’d I’d fight the monsters under the bed, defend you from them as they’d come knocking.
Don’t you remember me, before life drained from Pa’s eyes, beneath the muzzle of a pistol? Shaking, in my small, weak hands?
Remember me.