Chapter 20: Cassandra's Story

A shoe crashed through Cassandra's bedroom window. She growled into her pillow. This happened almost everyday. And it was always one of her sister's kids, since they lived right next door. She was too drowsy to go pick it up and throw it in their faces like she did every other day.

Eventually she sighed and managed to get out of bed. She had pretty much been miserable like this for the last two years. She blamed it all on those stupid kids, Pyhrra and Patroklos. Cassandra used to love her sister Sophitia before she was married. Once she got married, everything went downhill. She loved Sophitia's husband Rothion, though. He was cool. He even made weapons specially for Cassandra to wreck the next day, free of charge, when Sophitia would just bitch to her and force her to fix it, even if she used it to destroy Soul Edge and save the world. But it was when they had kids that Cassandra started to hate her life. When they were babies, Sophitia was constantly stressing out over everything. Two screaming infants would easily ruin anyone's life, but Sophitia's entire mind was destroyed by it.

Once the kids turned two, Sophitia's personality mutated into something inhuman. Now, Sophitia tried to turn the worst situations into something positive. Normally, Cassandra would like that, but Sophitia tried to turn everything positive. It was unbelievably annoying. Cassandra could not stand her sister anymore. She missed the old Sophie so much, the one that would help out physically when someone was in need, the smart Sophie that thought logically to fix problems, the normal Sophie that listened to people besides her kids.

The kids now ruled over Sophitia's life. Everything Sophitia did revolved around the kids. Rothion could barely talk to his wife anymore. Cassandra felt worse for him than she did for herself, because he actually lived in that house. Cassandra had begged her parents to let her move in with them so she could escape from those two tiny demons, but every time she asked, they would just say, "Now Cassie, you're a big girl now. Big girls don't live with their parents." Those bastards.

Cassandra's only time of respite was when the kids went to daycare, which was only a few days out of the month, since they were always booted out after those days had passed, at work at the bakery, which even then Sophitia lived near and often brought the kids to, and in the middle of darkest night when they were asleep and she could stare lovingly into the picture of her dream date, Braddicus Pitticus, which she kept under her pillow. But she could only dream.

And it only got worse over time. At one point, when Sophitia bought the kids milkshakes as a 'reward' when they stabbed one of Rothion's customers with his own sword, Cassandra and Rothion decided that something was seriously wrong, and took Sophitia to Dr. Henry Beemis down the mountain at the Twilight Zone. She was diagnosed with a rare disease called Extreme Optimism. Dr. Beemis explained that he had once read a good book called 'The Great Gatsby,' and then explained that there was no cure, and no one was even sure of the cause. So they were forced to live their hellish lives with Sophitia and Satan's spawn.

Ever gradually and fearfully, Cassandra shuffled to her armoire, got dressed, picked up the shoe, and made her way through her front door. She could hear the childish screeches through the thick, concrete walls. She stopped at Sophitia's front door and hesitated. Her right hand shaking, she placed it on the doorknob and pushed it open.

Almost immediately after she opened the door, she was struck in the forehead with a spoon. It seemed to stick to her head for a few seconds before slipping off.

Sophitia happily gasped, "Oh my goodness! Cassandra! What a nice surprise for you to come over today!" Cassandra came over everyday. She held up the shoe she had been holding in her left hand for the past few minutes, not saying a word. "Oh, why Cassandra, how kind of you to return Pyhrra's missing shoe! It would be oh so unpleasant if you did not return it and you stole it for yourself. The children have learned that it is wrong to steal."

"And yet they steal everyday," Cassandra mumbled in monotone, eyes half open with dark circles underneath. She meant of course, the weapons they steal from Rothion's shop and the everyday items they steal from visitors' pockets.

Pyhrra rushed up to her aunt and yanked the shoe out of her hand, then without hesitation, delivered a kick into her shin, crying, "Thief!" Cassandra already had a bruise in that spot from the previous day, when the exact same thing happened involving the shoe and the kick, so it didn't hurt very much.

She spied Rothion sitting at the kitchen table with his face buried in his cereal bowl, drowning himself in the milk. Cassandra sat in the seat beside him. "Why are you doing that?" she asked.

Rothion lifted his head up about an inch above the milk and turned his head about ten degrees toward Cassandra. Milk dripping from the tip of his nose, he whined, "Please just let me die this way in peace," and clumsily dropped his head back under the milk, making a slight clang upon impact with the metal bowl.

Cassandra watched him for about thirty seconds, and he didn't remove his head from the bowl, like she expected. She placed her hand on the back of his head and tugged backwards on his hair to prevent his suicide. "Come on, you have a lot to live for. Don't make a stupid decision like this."

Eyes half open, Rothion replied, "Name one good reason I shouldn't."

"You have a wife that loves you, right?"

Sophitia entered the kitchen and with a brilliant smile exclaimed, "Oh, Patroklos just brought down another jogger with your hammer, Rothion! He's such a strong little boy, isn't he?" She grabbed Rothion's cereal bowl literally from under his nose, still full, and left for another room. Rothion flinched as his head fell to the table with a thud.

Cassandra meditated on what had just happened. "Never mind," she told Rothion.

Rothion didn't move his head off the table for a number of minutes. Cassandra was starting to think that Sophitia had given him a concussion when she pulled his bowl away and killed him, until she heard Sophitia in the other room, calling out, "Children! Come for breakfast!" Rothion immediately straightened his back, lower lip quivering and his skin paling. Cassandra did the same.

Sophitia walked in with Pyhrra and Patroklos by her side, smiling brightly as the sun. She sat the kids in their seats and cheerfully hopped to the cabinets to make some food. Patroklos stared hatefully into Rothion's eyes and Pyhrra stared hatefully into Cassandra's. Cassandra stayed perfectly still. Their vision was probably based on movement.

In an instant, and for no apparent reason, a large, shirtless dude holding a stone club and wearing a caveman uniform plowed through the kitchen wall and fell face up on the table, flattening it in a fraction of a second and sending wood splinters in all directions. Everyone in the family's jaws dropped besides Sophitia's.

The man slowly, and embarrassed, pushed himself off the ground and backed out of the house through the hole in the wall from which he entered. "Uhh… Sorry."

Sophitia just smiled and chanted in her high-pitched voice, "Oh well, I guess we'll all have to work to fix it! Let's get started, shall we?" Rothion, as well as the rest of the family lifted their heads to stare at her.

"What is wrong with you, Woman?" he screamed, cupping his hands over his scalp and rocking back and forth, more stressed than Cassandra had ever seen him. Fearing the situation would just get worse, she stood up from her chair and backed out of the house in the same fashion as the caveman wannabe.

She couldn't remember ever reentering her house, or doing anything after leaving, for that matter. She just woke up in a sort of damp, dark room, with a chain running around her stomach and around someone else with a rough back. It took her a moment to realize that she was upside down, and her feet were draped over the head of whomever she was chained to.

She squinted and looked around the room and spotted Rothion in the same position as her, chained to Sophitia, who was still grinning and humming a tune, as well as Pyhrra and Patroklos chained together in the same way, a few meters to the left of their parents. Or was it to the right? It was difficult to tell, being chained to someone upside down. Come to think of it, whom was she chained to?

"Why, Sister Cassandra! You're conscious again!" Sophitia smiled, looking between Rothion's feet on either side of her face.

"Sophitia, who is this behind me? He's kinda smelly."

"Oh, you remember our old neighbor from a few years back, don't you? Remember Mr. Calcos? You remember him, don't you, Cassandra?"

Cassandra did remember, and recalled him as a drunken, nose-picking peepeehead, as she would say as a child. "Aeon? Didn't he transform into a lizardman?"

"Why yes, Cassandra, indeed! You have such a splendid memory! I'm so proud to be your sister!"

So Cassandra was chained to a six-foot lizard. No wonder he was rough and smelly. What else unusual could happen?

Next Chapter: Sophitia's Story