The land's devil

“When did it stop ?”, asked Nathan.

The twins were standing in the rain, dressed in black - hand in hand.

“I have a better one for you,” said Sophie. “When did it start ?” She gazed at the tomb bearing their mother’s name with confusion. Her eyes were red from crying, her cheeks so pale. They were going to die in this cold - right there, at her feet.

Sophie suddenly heard a distant cry. Marie’s voice.

Nathan brushed his hair back and raised his face to the sky.

“What do you mean ?”

Right, what did she mean ? Sophie let go of his hand and glanced back. Marie was rushing towards them with umbrellas. From the salt of her tears to tasting iron - her jaw clenched as her own sadness became unfamiliar. There it was, this old feeling of strangeness. This old fury buried deep in her bones, slowly tamed by the passage of time; except when it felt like no time had passed at all, and she still hated Nathan to death, and she didn't care for the dead or the living. Her father was looking like a ghost somewhere, Marie was crying as she ran. Like always, Nathan was observing her. Pretending not to touch it, lost in some contemplation, but she could feel his attention focused on every move she made, every breath she drew. He’d always watch her, even when they were little - sometimes it looked like he was looking at some kind of beast. There was no recognition in those eyes, just the curiosity you’d have for a dog.

“I don’t remember high school.”

As the words left her lips, she distinctly felt fear crush her throat as some strange instinct took over. Nathan’s hand brushed against hers.

“So what ?”

Their eyes met above the tomb of their mother. He had those eyes again, that look that’d crawl out of his iris into hers and eat everything inside like a parasitic worm. The need to back down was so strong she wanted to throw up.

“How old do you think we are ?”

Her voice was small as a whisper. There was something inside her, growing; his face looked like an invitation for violence, his breath a waste of space in the infinity of this universe. His skin against hers - in a way she didn't like, in a way she wanted to twist. Her hand slowly curled into a fist at her side. But the worm, her brain kept screaming. Aren’t you scared of the worm ?

“Old enough not to play those games anymore,” Nathan sighed. “Are you losing it ?”

“Am I ?”

There was something of a threat in the way she was looking at him now. She didn’t care about the worm, she didn’t, she fucking didn’t - he squinted his eyes, a shiver ran down her back. I know better, she told herself; I know better than this. Better than to beg and borrow for mercy from a body no stronger than mine, from a mind no smarter. She was -

“Sarah.”

Face wet from the rain, he looked at her like she was stupid.

“Don’t.”

She drew a breath; held it under his stare. Her lips were half opened as she was about to say something; maybe that’s what caught him off guard. Because she didn’t speak. Her fist was closing on his face before her eyes even turned violent; just as the hit was about to connect, time seemed to suddenly slow down. Sophie saw it all like a mirage. The landscape of the cemetery turned quiet, she saw the raindrops hang in the air around them. Their mother’s tomb, like a block of gray, the splatter of red from the bouquet of roses Marie had put there. As slowly as the raindrops were falling, colors began to melt into each other around them. The sky collided with the stonewalls of the cemetery as in her peripheral vision, she stopped being able to distinguish Marie’s shape against the background of this rainy day. An incredible feeling of loss washed over her, the feeling that she had done something terrible and that it was too late to take it back. For whoever was that picture done, the picture of their melancholy, it was over; the artist had grown bored of it and was dragging the paint over the canvas, blurring the lines, changing the shapes. Something else was to be born, and the actors wouldn’t be the same.

It came to her suddenly.

Where was their father ?

The man she had never missed before in her life, suddenly so obnoxiously absent. The scream from the worm, the scream from her beating heart. The overwhelming grief, and her confused mind who didn’t know whom she was crying for anymore. She was dying. Such a terrible feeling couldn’t be anything but death.

Time snapped back like a rubber band.

Her fist connected instantly, and as the tears blurred her vision, she felt her knuckles bury into his skin. The exaltation that came from it was maddening, immediately igniting and sparkling into her chest like a birthday candle. She didn’t catch her breath. It felt like drowning, drowning again.

Again ?

He suddenly grabbed her throat like he was about to crush it.

Somehow it helped.

“You’re ruining everything.”

His voice was so soft, like in their childhood. He was using the tone their father would use to dismiss their mother’s ideas, arrogant, condescending. She was sobbing.

“We were barely leaving the prologue.”

She wasn’t listening to him. Her wide eyed gaze annoyed him, his grip became meaner around her neck. He had a plan, before this, a whole character arc. They would have been the heroes of this tragedy, the heirs to a grand empire. If only - if only she wasn't a creature of stubborn despair.

Now he just wanted to end it.

“Mom,” she whimpered like a child.

And suddenly, something changed in his eyes.

She had broken the veil of this reality only to cling to it in death. The irony of it was funny enough to break him into a smile; then into contemplation. He wondered, and in his distraction, the world shifted again - from a dark brown mess to the blackest sea. It just went dark all around, no sky, and no ground; still they stood there. Currents swam between their bodies, neither cold or warm. It felt like water, but it wasn’t. She was still crying like a child, and her tears were the only thing that made sense. She wished he would cry too. Him being so stoic made her feel alone, oh so alone.

Memories of waking up with his back against hers when they were children were haunting her. Did she need to grieve him too ?

He seemed to sense her mind was on him, because he got out of his thoughts and stared at her silently.

After a while, he let go of her neck.

Instead, he cupped her face with both hands, like he used to do while holding the dog’s head.

“It’s okay,” he said.

Except he didn’t say it. She heard him without a sound, through the movement of his breath. It crept under her skin, she tried to push him away.

“We’re doing it,” the devil continued. “Together.”

She barely had time to think that she didn’t want to.

The next second, she died.