Chapter Text
Jake felt like shit.
Not only had his entire day been gloomy, but a series of unfortunate occurrences kept hindering him.
First, he had to bathe in ice-cold water since the Boiler magically seemed to have a blockage in its pipes. His muscles had stiffened considerably as time proceeded, so that one would think he was cosplaying a stick figure.
Just when he thought that it couldn’t get any worse, he accidentally tripped down the stairs and sprained his right ankle. As a result, he sluggishly limped around and burned his toast.
He ate cereal instead.
Thankfully, the rest of the afternoon had been devoid of any mishaps.
His Mother had stayed in her room all day. This pattern had been unbroken for the past few months.
9 years
It had been 9 years, and she was still trapped in the memories of a long-gone past.
Although her presence had been fleeting over the past year, it wouldn’t subdue the torment he had been subjected to in his early years.
He hardly knew who she was anymore.
The evening brought new challenges.
Layla, bless her heart, had run towards Jake across the hallway, to steal the candy fisted in his palm that was supposedly hers, and caught her leg in the multiple layers she wore, as she had gone down on her bum along with the telephone situated to her left, in a fit of giggles.
Jake had closed in on her, hopping on the good leg as quickly as he could. Despite his concern, his sister had found the situation immensely hilarious.
“Aw shucks. We could have been the broken-ankle siblings.” She whined while making a Superman pose at the lack of any injuries.
The telephone, however, looked terrible.
The cap of the handset had come apart while its transmitter had steered under the wooden stool the telephone had been situated on. The keypad was pushed into the inside of the base unit, which itself had several pieces missing. Somehow, the coiled cord had survived.
Three hours before that incident, he did call local management multiple times to get the Boiler fixed. If he had to go through another day in that crippling cold, he would jump into the fireplace.
But the curse doomed on him since morning had yet to play another trick, as the outgoing calls had never been answered.
Now that the telephone had broken, a call back would be out of the question.
He would have to figure out how to contact them without driving back to the closest towns through the thick trees, partially covered with the initial snowfalls of the year.
Jake had settled on porridge for lunch. His sister hadn’t complained. She knew the cold had made them reluctant to even get up from bed.
He had also set a bowl in front of the Rustic wooden doors of his mother’s room, knocked once and went back to the kitchen to eat with his sister.
His mother would open it slightly with a creak, and an empty bowl would sit there a while later. It had been like this for a bit.
Jake was curled up in the sheets. His neck bent at an awkward angle. His glasses slid to the tip of his nose, and a double chin had formed as his neck strained to read the words of the novel, illuminated by the soft glow of his bedside lamp. But he didn’t care. Not when he was completely immersed in the descriptions of the text he read.
“What could possibly lead someone to murder....” He whispered to himself, frowning at the pages of the book, eyes darting to soak in the words quickly.
Charlie lived at an old farm in North Carolina with her two younger siblings and her twin sister, along with their alcoholic father, who had abused their mother to death. Their aunt would visit once in a while. Help them ration food and check on the farm. She would never stay long.
“Evil resides in this very place.” Her aunt would say when the topic was brought up. She would never specify what she meant but made sure to repeat it like a mantra in case it somehow escaped their minds.
Her twin sister, Valerie, had always been an odd child. She would keep to herself and only speak when necessary. ‘Like sun and moon’ was how her late mother described them. She would leave home at odd hours and would squeeze her wounds, stating her fondness for oozing blood.
There were times when she would look into Valerie’s eyes and see… a void. A chill would creep through her back if she stared long enough. It was as if the body alone stayed while the soul had escaped. She knew her sister was emotionally distant. But could she be… soulless?
She never let that thought grow. All she knew was that she loved her.
Well, that was until she saw her sister clawing at a fisherman’s gut.
Jake took a deep breath and set the book aside. He rubbed at his eyes and stretched his arms, squeaking a little when his elbow shifted with a click. The sun had set. Jake wasn’t sure how long ago. He got up from his bed, making sure to put his weight on his left ankle. The other ankle almost seemed fine, as if mocking him for overreacting to a small injury, but he could feel the subtle palpitations of pain.
He looked out of the window, staring into the small patches of white on the dark canvas. It would seem like floating globs of ice if the moon hadn’t illuminated the outline of prickly leaves on wooden twigs.
The woods had always intrigued him. The secrets that lay within it, enclosed and hidden within the stretch of vegetation. It seemed like the trees were in on it. As if they would gain something by hiding the atrocities of human nature.
Jake’s room couldn’t be called luxurious, but it sure wasn’t small. His bed lay in the middle of the room, pink blankets lined with fur, along with a small turtle his dad had gifted him on his fifth birthday, sitting in a tangled mess. To the left was a long mahogany desk with a less-than-comfortable padded chair. His physics volumes stacked on top of each other, a few unbound pages peeking out. He had also bought a tiny lamp since the woods rarely seemed to grant him enough sunlight. Jake had thrifted the closet at first sight. He liked the idea of having an inbuilt mirror. The large window opened to his backyard, the desk blocking a quarter of it.
He could see Layla’s bicycle from up here, leaning on the storage shed with snowy residue covering it.
The room screamed antiquated and expedient, warm lights adding to its woodland appeal.
The clock ticked on the adjacent wall.
10:30
Tucking his hands inside his cardigan pockets, he turned around and trudged outside his room, turning around the corner towards his sister’s room. The hallways maintained the wooden architecture. Four rooms were on the top floor. Two of them lay on the opposite side of the hallway while the other two were huddled closer together, which naturally led the siblings to settle within them.
If Jake considered his room to be cold, the hallway would be the Arctic.
He hastily skipped to his sister’s room, mumbling profanities at his battered ankle.
Knock, Knock
He slid into the room, softly closing the door behind him. The scent of sweet sugar immediately filling his nostrils.
“What did I tell you about Candies after supper?”
Jake spoke with an authoritative tone, climbing onto the bed beside Layla. His sister lay huddled up in her dino fleece blanket with a packet of jellies, engrossed in one of the volumes of Golden Age Captain America, which he had agreed to get her when she had raised a rumpus.
“Right, Right, Grandpa.” She huffed with indifference.
Layla looked a lot like their dad. All jet black wavy hair, thick eyebrows, a cute button nose with thin lips surrounded by tiny freckles on tanned olive skin. Her honey-like hazel eyes looked smaller than they were as she squinted at the comic book. Jake could see the mole beside her left eye. The one he always pecked before putting her to bed.
Smirking slightly, he pinched the tip of her nose between his two fingers, earning a groan from her.
“Okay, Grandma, it’s time you slept”. Jake stated, putting the comic book away.
Noises of protests could be heard under her breath, but she obliged anyway. Shifting closer to Jake, she huddled her head between the pillows and his waist, wrapping her arms around him. Though she was only eleven, her hands had the grip of a lion as she held onto the hem of his cardigan.
They both stayed quiet for a while. Jake had switched the ceiling lights off, leaving only the night lamp. Tiny bits of cool air seeped in through the windows as he patted her hair in a rhythmic manner, resting his head against the headboard.
“Jake?” Layla whispered.
He hummed, assuring her to continue.
“……Why does mother hate us?”
A ring went through his ears, deafening him.
“How dare you…” His mother’s voice tightened with each word as she trudged closer to him.
Jake stood near the kitchen counter, baffled. He didn’t know what he had done.
He was just ten.
He knew not to be loud.
He knew not to be selfish.
He knew not to disobey his mother.
But that day, He didn’t know what he had done.
“GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS AWAY FROM IT!”
She shrieked, eyes maddeningly blood red, as she whacked his hands sharply. Metal clanged metrically against wooden tiles, as the silver ring fell from his tiny fingers onto the floor below.
The next thing he knew, he was being dragged away from the fallen ring, the muffled sound of pouring rain drowning out his sister’s little cries.
Jake could hardly register his surroundings until cold droplets of water seeped into his clothes, and his back burned with blooming pain where he had been tossed onto the pavement.
“Useless piece of shit. If you even try to stain his things with your cursed hands ever again, I will cut them up into tiny fucking pieces and stuff them into your fucking mouth. You’re a demon, a devil from the very depths of hell. You bestow misfortune. You ruin families, and you’ll ruin everyone you’ll ever meet. Nobody will ever love you, Jake.”
His mother’s words registered in his mind.
A demon. A devil. Nobody would ever love him.
It dawned upon him. The ring was his late father’s wedding ring. Only wedding rings shone that bright. He knew better than to plague his father’s belongings with his lewd fingers.
“I’m sorry.” A desperate plea ran through the rain as he slowly sat up, shivering in his drenched clothes.
“Mother, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me here. It’s cold. I promise I’ll behave. Please.”
He begged and begged, fat blobs of salty tears mixing with rainwater as he curled in on himself. But his apology went unheard; the wooden door, now slammed shut, stared back at him.
He deserved it. He believed he deserved it.
That day, it had rained all afternoon.
Jake had sobbed for an hour. Or more, He had lost count. The cold wind would be soothing on any other day. But as he sat there, wet clothes clinging to his body with his bare feet masked under tons of silt and dirt, the wind only felt like gentle daggers to his skin.
He had sat under the shelter of a tree. It didn’t do much, but he had felt weirdly protected. Maybe it pitied him. Maybe it could feel Jake’s heart clenching under his ribs, craving to be cared for, to be held so tightly that every one of his worries wouldn’t have any place to reside in him if all the space were stolen by colossal warmth.
A child born to destroy the ones he loved.
No.
Nothing could pity him.
Nothing could love him.
He leaned his head back. Warm lights of the sunset peeked through the descending rain, green leaves complimenting the calm background.
“Why does mother hate me…?”
He asked the trees more than himself, hoping someone would have the answer
The trees only responded with an intricate dance of ruffling leaves.