“Somethings not right with her,” I heard someone whisper in my room. “Do you think we should take her to the doctor?”
Morning light was pouring through my window, yet the sky was filled with clouds the color of an old gravestone. I could barely move without feeling tingles of heat run up my spine as I felt some sort of wet washcloth laying over my forehead.
“M…Milo?” My voice cracked from being parched.
My big brother appeared over me in an instant, he looked like he had been up all night in tired worry.
“Don’t you ever scare me like that again!” He said as he adjusted the clothe over my head. I groaned and tugged the sheets closer to my chin, I didn’t really remember what had happened the night before. It was hard to think coherently too, I didn’t even know what day it was by the looks of it. Dreams were fuzzy and unclear most of the time, right? Last night must have been one of my many bad nightmares.
“Where’s Claireee? Isn’t she going to take me to school?” I looked up at Milo and whined.
His face dropped. He glanced nervously to another corner of the room where a tall shadow was, but I didn’t have the strength to lift my head and look. He fidgeted quietly as he thought of what to say or do next.
“Dad,” My brother murmured. “It looks like she doesn’t remember… she thinks Claire is still alive.”
I heard the old wooden floors of our house creak as my father slowly stepped over by my bedside. He looked stressed, upset, and angry, all because of me. I immediately turned away from his gaze and shivered under my blanket.
“Where’s Claire?? Why wont anyone tell me where she is!?” I asked again. I braced myself for any cruel things my father might do, but instead he just observed me solemnly with his forest green eyes. That’s when I noticed Marin and River peeking their heads through my bedroom door. Something was terribly wrong because Daddy never acted like this, he just kept studying me with fierce intent as my brothers held their breath.
“I always knew something was wrong with you… you kill my teenage daughter and then pretend you don’t remember?! ” He finally growled.
I twitched in fear. Whenever he started a sentence in that tone, I knew it was never going to end well. Milo knew this too, he gently tapped my father on the shoulder but was instantly put back in his place when he saw the man's fist raise in the air.
“Dad, Wren’s probably just hallucinating from her fever, I don’t think she’s trying to lie-”
“SHUT IT!” Daddy threatened. “I was planning on leaving her here with the rest of you, but it looks like I’ll have to take her to Japan myself… this stupid child might kill someone again if I send her off to boarding school alone.”
“W-what?! What are you talking about?!” I stuttered. I was fully awake at this point, but the heat that burned inside my body was still actively hurting. I looked at Milo for an explanation. Was any of this making no sense to him either?! My brother turned to pace around my room and combed through his hair anxiously, as if he were trying to figure out how to tell me something very bad.
“Dad is sending us to boarding school,” He sighed. “He got a really good job opportunity in Japan, one that can provide a lot of money, but he didn’t want to take us with him… he said it would be better if we stayed here. We were supposed to tell you this morning, but then everything happened and…”
My jaw dropped in disbelief. Daddy had always provided money for us so at least Milo or Claire could walk to the nearest grocery store and buy food, but now he was really going to abandon us here in Norway while he made himself rich in another country?
“B-but why? Why would he do this to us?!” I began to panic. My father crossed his large arms and grumbled like he had had to explain this to my brothers previously. I knew immediately that was not the thing I should have said, it seemed as if Daddy was about to throw or break something by the look of how aggrivated he was.
“I’m done being your father, jerk. I wish I had never agreed to have children.” He gritted his teeth. “You’re all old enough to raise yourselves, but now I can’t trust this brat to do anything without being watched over.”
Marin stuck his head further into my room as he gulped timidly. “He’s leaving in a few weeks, we go to boarding school in two. Wren, I don’t want you to be in Japan without us, we’ll miss you so much…”
That made Daddy look insulted, he turned his head in the direction of his son and raised an eyebrow angrily.
“What do you want me to do, leave this killer by herself?! Can you imagine how much trouble I would be in if she hurt a kid at boarding school! I might as well take her to the authorities myself!” He shouted. I couldn't take it any longer. I clamped my hands over my ears and screamed at the top of my lungs, “EVERYBODY JUST STOP!”. Milo and River and Marin all looked at me with different expressions. They didn’t expect their tiny seven year old sister to raise her voice in front of their father, huh? I didn’t care. I didn’t even notice when Daddy stormed out of the room and muttered about how he would have to pay extra money to have me live in Japan with him.
“I can’t help what’s happened!” I shouted despairingly again. “I wish I was never born! Daddy said he would’ve wanted it that way, didn’t he?!”
Milo immediately looked me straight in the eyes, almost like he was going to rebuke me for doing something immoral.
“Wren Nilsen, don’t you ever say that again. Do you know how much your brothers and I love you?”
“But Daddy said-”
“I don’t care what he said,” My sibling cut me short. “I see the good in you, I always have. I don’t ever want you to forget how much you mean to Marin and River and I.”
I looked away from him with tears blurring my vision. Milo had always treated me like the princess of his castle, but right now it felt like the walls were crumbling down. I didn’t even know why anyone would want to care for me at this point.
“But if Claire could see me now… would she still love me?” I asked, trying hard not to sniffle.
My big brother nodded his slowly at first, then a little faster as he tried to reassure me. He gave me the best smile he could muster in the moment.
“Yes,” He whispered. “She knows you didn’t mean to do it.”
I sighed and flopped onto my bed again. My heart felt empty and emotionless, though I knew very well the wet sensation in my eyes. I didn't want to go to Japan, I didn't want to go to boarding school either. Norway was the only thing I had ever known, and I didn't plan on having that change anytime. Yet what was I to say? I was simply a little child with no opinions or thoughts that mattered to an adult. Either way my life was going downhill because of the accident on the cliff. Something bad was bound to happen to me, I'm Wren Nilsen after all. Marin and River and Milo sat stiffly on the opposite side of the room and did not speak for a very long time, perhaps because they waited for me to explain myself from last night.
“It felt good,” I recited in my head. “Why on earth would you say that!?”
I knew I needed to get away. I felt trapped inside my own body with nowhere to go, those three horrible words floating in my head. I slid off my bed and watched my siblings’ confused gazes follow me to the bedroom entrance, but I ignored them and opened the loose doorknob Daddy had broke long ago.
“Where are you going?” River questioned.
I didn’t care to answer. I tiptoed into the hallway and looked for any sign of my father’s shadow. He was nowhere to be seen luckily, probably contemplating in his isolated office on the other side of the house… the place he always went when he was mad. Slowly I crept into his room that he had once shared with Mommy. It was big with a large wooden roof, a bathroom on the left and a bed in the center. To a stranger, the room might have looked like a warm and cozy place to stay. Sometimes a candle with the warm scent of spices would be lit and make the entire place glow. But to the Nilsen family, we knew the room wasn’t as welcoming as it looked... It was the room my mother died in. I learned over the years that it wasn’t a place I should visit often, it hurt Daddy enough just to sleep there every night. Yet something was always urging me to go inside. Whenever Claire wasn’t around I would always sit on the edge of the bathroom counter and look into the mirror, hoping one day Mommy would answer my sad cries. It felt like the least I could do was talk to her and ask how she liked life before me. Now that Claire was truly gone, I felt no other way to escape myself but to speak to Mommy alone.
“You wouldn’t be happy with me either, I think…” I whispered. “You wouldn’t love me or kiss me or tell me that I’m loved…you wouldn’t treat me any other way than how Daddy does. What a shame it is for me to be alive.”
Mommy’s bedroom didn’t reply. The whole house was quiet and it made me want to scream or shout or do literally anything in my frustration. I looked away from the glass, it didn’t feel right to think these thoughts, but at what point would they ever stop? The love Milo and my other brothers tried to show me felt so fake and manufactured simply to cater to my happiness.
“You’re right. No one would ever want to love you.” The reflection of the mirror seemed to say. “Remember the feeling of pushing Claire off the cliff? It didn’t feel bad, it didn’t feel chaotic, it didn’t even feel like you had done something wrong. Wouldn’t you want to do it again?”
I looked at myself in horror. That was not the reply I thought I would get from talking by myself to Mommy. The figure in the glass suddenly didn’t look like myself anymore, she seemed tired and pale with crazed blue eyes that taunted me boldly. I shook my head from side to side frantically and stumbled away from the counter, trying hard to tell myself it was just a hallucination.
“N-no,” I stuttered. “It didn’t feel good, i-it didn’t! I don’t ever want to do that again! NEVER!!”
The reflection’s face contorted into a small pitiful smile. Her appearance almost seemed to come out of the mirror, but I knew it really couldn’t. Her controlling gaze put me in a trance as I felt my tiny heart race in fear.
“Aww, but you have no choice!" She crooned. "I’m just trying to show you who you really are, wouldn’t you want to follow your own destiny Wren?”
I was already hyperventilating by the time she had finished her words. I backed up against the wall as I stared myself down in the mirror, the figure continued to giggle and laugh as she saw my face of emotion.
“W-what’s my destiny then, huh?! What am I meant to be?!” I asked with the best fury I could manage.
The reflection’s eyes blazed like a raging forest fire. She put her hand to the glass like she was trying to reach out to me, her pink lips luring me into her trap of fate.
“A killer.” She whispered.
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