Like nearly everyone, she is born screaming and covered in someone else's blood.
She died like that as well. She won't find out that isn't quite common until later on.
Her first memory isn't of being born; it's of pain in the lower body, cold tears, and hugging a colder body. It's bleeding out on dewing grass. It's dying and feeling the rising sun touch a half-empty corpse.
Her second memory is of a warmer death. Hot water surrounds her and her head burns until the body takes a breath. She chokes on the lack of air and the arms pressing her down tremble until she loses consciousness.
The last memory of death, before she stops counting, is relatively short. A bare laundry room. A man. A weapon. A betrayal. She feels herself mouth the word why, but he's already answering her with a shot. Even when she doesn't remember his name any longer, doesn't remember the name of this own body, she does retain this knowledge: that son of hers was always good with a gun.
Her first memory as Merope is shadowed by screaming and fear and a baby's instincts. The anchor is that she doesn't die. It's always a gasp of air before being pulled underneath a wave of continuous death.
Blank ceilings, unknown faces, rough blankets. She has died in soft sheets, warm arms, and loud applause, but it's with those unpleasant characteristics she finds her small haven.
Why am I here? Who are you? Is this the afterlife?
She doesn't have those thoughts. Accepts every snap of the neck and nappy change with the attitude of a dreamer looking outside their body.
The ego, the ich, the I, of Merope takes its first steps when he looks at her and says-
"Tom."
The scar on her soul pulses with the sound of his voice. Intuitively, she recognizes the face of her future-killer. Tom will mean her death, because death drags at her using bonds of blood: son, sister, mother. And now twin.
Tom ignores her realization and continues to repeat the sound of his own future etched in a name.
"Merr-ry," he said and clumsily touched her head.
Their names were the only words he knew. Well, his own forename and half of hers. It didn't help that the small teenage girls who came in to feed and change them kept on singing her name with 'merry merry, merry little Merope'.
She couldn't really blame them for trying to liven it up. 'Merope' was an ugly name; it sounded like a tragedy. However, calling her "Merry" was an ironic blade that cut every time she heard it.
She let him cuddle closer to her, despite the overbearing heat of the day. Apathy and shamelessness were the only ways to stay coherent in a body still learning to bend to its master's will. Crying for hunger, crying for sanitation, crying to break the blankness of the day. She went back to dying every time her mind wandered off and when the days lasted weeks she let it happen. Her cot-mate only occasionally relieved her ennui.
Tom was a clingy baby. Or maybe he was a bored one. Besides themselves, their cot held but two blankets and nothing else. The ceiling was plain of decoration and the window across the room was too far to make out any interesting forms. There were two other little beings in their own individual cots. They didn't move much.
"MerrRY," he gurgled closer to her ear.
Tom made other curious sounds, but stopped when two people entered the room.
"After three until five, you'll take care of this room," the larger, older woman said.
A slip of a girl nodded and walked up to peer into Merope and Tom's cot. She was barely in her teens with light brown, braided hair. Hesitantly, she reached down and was pulled away before she could touch either of them.
"Play with them later," the woman said. "You need to know where things are."
What followed was a short commentary of the room: the nappy station, the food station, the blankets and clothing for winter in the cabinets. The nursery and bathing room down the hall were the only places Merope had ever known.
Introductions were last. The infant closest to the window was called Laverne. The other one was called Wallace.
"What's wrong with him?" the girl asked when they got to Wallace's cot. She poked at his cheek through the bars. Wallace didn't react. At least Laverne cried out for denied affection when the pair went to him.
"He's dumb," came the answer, "or depressed. Sometimes, when they're really young, they get like that: missing mothers they never had. They don't last."
The girl stopped touching him.
Merope watched them approach her own cot. The matron(?) seemed too young for someone with such a cranky voice. Tom shifted at her side, spending the effort to sit up to greet them.
Amazing, she thought, a touch sarcastic, You're already such a polite lad.
"This one is Tom, that one's Merope. Some of the other helpers call her 'Merry'"
"Why are they in the same cot?"
The matron gave a pinched face, "He," she pointed at Tom, "cries when they're separated. Maybe it's a twin thing. If one of them needs to get changed, you need to bring the other."
The girl eagerly bent down and picked up Merope, "Hello, little Merry. My name is Rebecca."
That nickname was going to be a permanent stain. She thought about crying to make her dissatisfaction known, but felt it took too much effort. Instead, she stared at Rebecca, giving the air of an animal which couldn't comprehend something as complex as a person.
Rebecca didn't mind and continued to smile. Was Merope considered as nothing but a living plaything to a girl so young? The other helpers once tried to fit her into a doll's dress. After some hassling and an annoyed cry they realized the chubby body of a baby wouldn't fit in anything so elegant.
After a pause, the matron's patience was up and Rebecca, after setting her down, was dragged off to be introduced to other duties. Their voices faded down the hall through the cheap door until it was as if no one ever entered the room in the first place.
"Merry," Tom said confidently after half a silence.
She turned her gaze to him and touched his face as he did to her before. He blinked under the force of her hand, but didn't cry out. He rarely did anymore unless she was the first to start.
"MERRope," she said. "MerOPE."
Intelligence flickered in Tom's eyes and he opened his mouth:
.
.
.
"Merry."
For a while, Rebecca acted the most like a mother to Merope and Tom than any adult who touched them. Even when she wasn't feeding or changing them, she still went into the room to play with the twins, sometimes Laverne as well. Rebecca rarely picked up Wallace for anything other than the standard duties.
Merope was aggravated by her actions. She had been killed by too many mothers for the girl's maternal actions to cause a positive affect. However, a distressed Merope lead to withdrawal and apathy instead of outward dissatisfaction. She never complained when Rebecca hugged and coddled her body.
Tom opened up to their new helper, in his own cautious way. He learned how to smile back at Rebecca when she did so, how to help dress himself, and how to play with the few toys in the room. The greatest development was walking and the act of trying to.
Sometimes, Rebecca would help him, but Tom liked to hold on to Merope the most. Even with more interesting things in the room, his sister was the toy he preferred than anything else. Like one strange animal, they held each other's hands and took tentative steps around the room, relying on the other for balance.
Laverne, having mastered crawling, could unreliably be brought down to distract Tom so that Rebecca could fuss over Merope.
"Sweet baby," Rebecca cooed. "You're growing so big and strong."
A bold lie, even if it was directed towards an infant. Merope rarely moved on her own unless prompted and grew weak easily.
Rebecca continued to play with the short strands of hair on Merope's head. "It must be so lonely to be with the boys all day. If my Angelica weren't in heaven, you would get a playmate."
Her hands dug into Merope's head for a split second, before returning to their soft petting.
Gradually, Rebecca stopped coming so often. The appeal of new babies had worn off and life gave her more interesting things to do. Still, it wasn't worse care than they had before. When they cried, it usually took less than five minutes for someone to come.
Tom didn't take the decrease in attention too well. He paced the cot on his wobbly two legs, pulled on the bars, and repeated words without context. 'Laverne' and 'Rebecca' had been added to his vocabulary, including the tender phrases Rebecca used, like 'sweet thing', 'little girl', and 'baby boy'.
Merope's thoughts grew organized as her experience as an infant solidified into something more than a flash thought before jumping to another life. Even when she spaced out, she stayed in the body called 'Merope'. The guarantee of dying only continued to meet her when she slept.
One day, just after the sun broke the horizon, a caretaker came into the nursery, just as she always did, to check on the four infants. Her resulting scream woke three of them up. Laverne wailed from the sudden noise. Tom fidgeted and looked to Merope. When she didn't cry, he only twisted his face and stayed silent.
The caretaker rushed out of the room only to quickly bring many other adults back. Merope made the effort to stand up and peer at the cot next to her surrounded by people. The matron with the sharp voice and high bun slowly took Wallace out of his cot. At the distance, Laverne's crying covered up any conversation.
The women left the room as swiftly as they entered it. Merope snatched a single glance at the body in the matron's arms before they left.
A minute later, Laverne's distress still continued. After fifteen minutes, he realized nothing would happen. The usual silence which filled the room seemed heavier only to Merope. It wasn't the first time she had seen something lifeless, but it was the first time in this body. In her experience, deaths followed one another and she warily eyed Tom, who made indistinguishable pleading noises and fussed with a blanket.
No one came to give them breakfast.
The sun rose, unashamed in the day, while the nursery stood empty of adults. Tom grew louder in his babblings and shouted another word he learnt. 'Food.'
And then, even though Merope was right next to him, Tom started to cry. The distinct smell of a nappy needing to be changed filled her presence. No one came.
After ten minutes, Merope tried to tune out the noise.
After twenty minutes, Merope mentally retreated further than she had gone before. She actively sought out a different body, a different life.
In a blink, she was a young man, feeling the hunting dogs of his uncle tear at his stomach. The sound of an infant was replaced by the crunch and squelch of his flesh.
In another blink, she was an old, old woman. Her unmoving body watched as her daughter tearfully signed the papers to remove life support. The machine's ringing beeps gradually faded out.
At the third blink, she didn't know anything about the body other than it ached. They pressed themselves against the freezing, wet wall. The heavy sound of their own breathing started to calm them until the scratch of the opening door incited in them terrible tremors. A figure walked closer. This was the beginning of death. It wouldn't be the ending of pain.
After an hour, Merope learnt how to tear herself out of dying and think to herself:
Merope. I am Merope and this is not an ending.
Her screams crashed against the walls and through the window like incorporeal hands beating against glass until it broke.
Someone came.
After that day, they were moved to a different room.
It was crowded and louder. Three toddlers already slept there and now it was six. When they grew old enough for school, they would be moved to a room with even more people. Tom incessantly clung to her, like the pre-Rebecca days when they only had each other as constants.
He quickly learnt the words 'no' and 'stop' after the caretakers wanted him to sleep in his own bed and not Merope's. Then, he learnt the concept of 'punishment' and 'hurt'.
Merope oscillated between being in her body to keep on developing it and hiding inside her mind to escape the aggressive attention of the other children. Her first active venture into that headspace was not kind and she wanted to gain enough control to make it a permanent respite from other people.
At the same time her internal self gained power, the Merope known to the outside world was a small, strange child. She spoke when asked to, learned how to use the restroom, and didn't cause fights. Her brother dragged her around like a doll and got in enough trouble for the both of them.
OWith knowledge, came power.
Tom grew more confident as the years passed, and a touch cruel.
When he learned their full names, he used hers like he was breaking an enchantment. Usually, it was 'Merry'. It was 'Merope' if he wanted her attention. Tom said her full name when he was distressed at being ignored. 'Merope Marie Gaunt', he would spit out the 't' like a furious viper. It paled in comparison to when the caretakers said their names, because behind their words lay a threat of punishment.
One time, anger broke through and Tom pinched her, just as hard as the other boys pinched him. Merope jolted to the present, took one look at his willful expression, and went straight back to organising her mind. Tom pinched harder. She didn't react.
Toddlers only used little ways to hurt: smacking, pushing, pinching. They were children now and bullying became creative from the mixture of age groups in the school section of the orphanage.
The two of them stood outside in the early spring cold, away from the other children running off their lunchtime energy. Tom used a stick, used it less like a knife and more like a pointer.
Merope's scream cut through the weak branches of the surrounding trees.
He was lucky the teachers liked him.
If it were the caretakers, they would have punished him despite the lack of evidence. They nearly gave him the paddle every time he shot a resentful look in their direction. The teachers, on the other hand, only ever knew the quiet boy, who always gave correct answers in class. Schoolboy roughhousing done on the greens wasn't usually a concern.
And yet, Merope, the little shy girl, the little dull girl, who was suspected of having her smart brother do her schoolwork for her, had screamed like she was dying.
Between the school section and the working dormitory section, Merope and Tom sat in the medical room. The teacher with greater first aid experience had already wiped the blood from her face. Tom was wiping his tears with his sleeves.
No, she didn't know what happened. Yes, her eye just started hurting all of a sudden. Now, there's no pain. Very little. Maybe something just got stuck in there? She'd like to lie down and recover, please.
It's okay if you leave, Tom will be with me.
Tom was incredibly lucky she didn't tell the teachers. Not that he would learn his lesson if each of his fingers were broken in penance. Merope couldn't decide if she was fortunate or unfortunate. It was a slow death, this life as Merope. For a moment, when she did think she was dying, relief flooded her body.
And then Tom healed her.
In retrospect, she wouldn't like to die, because then it would be more of the same. Yet, she didn't enjoy living either. Her only family, thus only possible killer unless she took a lover, was Tom, and he was a little shithead. When she would die, she didn't enjoy the thought of it being by a small idiot who did it out of anger.
"If you ever hurt me again, I won't ever look at or talk to you for the rest of your life," Merope said.
Tom morosely nodded and then opened his petulant mouth, "I fixed it though. You aren't broken."
That was the elephant in the room. The miraculous healing. The boy Jesus with a mind of the devil. Merope knew enough that her repeated deaths weren't normal. What Tom did- both actions weren't normal either. One could be explained by viciousness and lack of empathy. The other, well, the teachers said belief in magic was from lack of faith in God. Merope's soul belonged to a different, unknown deity, who didn't allow her a heaven after death. So she supposed it had to be magic.
Merope grabbed Tom's upper arms and pulled him to her, "Even if you fix me again and again, I won't abide by it. I would die before I'd ever be in your presence." She leaned in close to Tom's face, "I will kill myself before I allow you to kill- to hurt me."
At that grand, revolutionary statement, he didn't twitch at all. She shook him, "Do you understand that? Do you?"
"You'll die if I hurt you again," Tom repeated automatically. He touched the right side of her face, clearly more interested in his own topic at hand, "Your eye's changed. It's lighter now."
Merope let go of him and crawled on top of the sink to see herself in the mirror. She pressed her face to the glass and wiped off the condensed fog from her breath. If she looked closely, what he said was true.
Whatever Tom had done, it stripped away the black melanin of her right eye and revealed muddy green.
Even though he suffered for it, after that day, Tom would gain Merope's attention whenever he asked for it. As much as she hated indirectly teaching him that violence would get results, she recognized a need to curb his crueler impulses.
She tried using the bible.
Half the stories they read and the writing they copied dealt in some way with christian teaching. Every dinner would only be after a prayer. He was already familiar with the subject and religion was a good way to teach laws to people who did not or could not learn empathy. Unfortunately, kindness was not preached in the orphanage as often as blind obedience to the norm.
When Tom was caught levitating books by caretaker Aston, they put him in isolation for 'playing tricks'. Thereafter, Aston refused to touch him and called him 'devilspawn' whenever he walked past. Religion, and sin, was dropped from Merope's plan.
Next, she took on caring for animals.
It was a risk, since psychopaths tended to start with small creatures. He wouldn't, thought Merope without any logical reasoning. He just wouldn't dare.
If he did though, wasn't that the point of no return?
Sneaking lunch food until outdoors time was easy. Avoiding the attention of the overseeing teacher so they could tempt wild animals with bread was too easy. The eye incident was still recent, but no one cared if she was back to being alone with Tom.
Negligence shouldn't have surprised her. After the teacher first spoke with her in the medical room about the incident, he appeared more than satisfied with her suspicious answers.
"If you're patient, and hold no ill intent, it might decide to come closer," Merope said, and threw a small piece of her sandwich towards the squirrel.
Tom was thoroughly scandalized, "Why would I ever want it to come closer?"
"...It's cute."
He threw his bread at the animal. It dodged the piece and inquisitively returned when it saw the item was food. Merope pressed herself down to the ground and met the squirrel's eye as it ate.
Come here, come closer. I won't hurt you at all, so stay by me.
Incredibly, the creature inched near her outstretched hand. Merope didn't dare to breath as it allowed her to touch its head.
She gave Tom the honour of naming it.
He called it Jerome.
Jerome was an odd name, however it wasn't as boring as Snowball, Billy Stubbs' rabbit.
There was some pity for the animal, which, ever since entering the orphanage, was constantly besieged with children, who had never felt such soft fur in their lives. Merope didn't hold the same sentiment for Billy himself, though she knew she should.
His story was perhaps sadder than her own. Having had a loving mother was a blessing. Discovering her hanging body would be a curse he carried for his life. For the first few nights, he disturbed the younger children's sleep with his night terrors. While they abided, his bed wetting didn't. However, that wasn't unusual for an orphan.
Friends from the rabbit won him popularity and power. In his peerage, he was safe from bullying and the older, teen boys didn't bother with him as long as he let them play with Snowball.
Billy wasn't content with safety.
He and his clique took to harassing the 'permanent victims' of their age group: Laverne Collins, Landon Stewart, and Edda Taylor. Edda was usually only a target for the girls, but Billy made enough female friends that the mob considered her a possibility. Then, they set their sights on Merope.
It was only a question.
"May I pet your rabbit?"
Billy was half-way to assenting when Eric Whalley interrupted.
"You? Eww, no way!"
Merope glanced at him. Had they ever had a conversation together? In the social food-chain of the younger school, compromising five to ten year olds, she was an unmoving fawn in the foliage. No one noticed her and no one had much thought about her.
Eric pointed at her brother, "You're Riddle's hysterical little sister. You'll get looney all over Snowball."
"What," said Tom, voice clear and angry.
"Little?" Merope asked at the same time. She wasn't the youngest. No one knew, anyways, since they were orphans, but she wasn't the little sibling.
"Riddle's also bad. He's creepy, a freak."
At Eric's accusations the other children voiced their agreement and the past ills he cast upon them.
"He beat me up just because I looked at him!"
"He stole a book from me."
"He called me ugly!"
Merope glanced at Tom. What they said was probably true, albeit twisted. She wasn't conscious most of the time and even she knew everyone fought with everyone. There was no one, except for herself and maybe Laverne, who hadn't started a fight and hadn't defended themselves against somebody else.
Tom's expression grew furious. "We don't want your stupid rabbit anyways. I bet it has a disease."
"Then go away," came Billy's indigent reply, "We don't want you!"
It seemed like Tom was more likely to jump into the crowd and start biting than flee. Merope tugged at his sleeve. "I want to leave."
Tom met the gaze of Billy Stubbs and allowed himself to be dragged away.
"Jerome is better than a bunny anyways."
"You mean uglier."
"I do not," Merope said, although she admitted to herself that a rabbit was much cuter. She handed Jerome the last of her bread.
Realistically, the squirrel had rabies. That would explain why it was so docile around humans. Upon the first meeting, it warmed up to Merope. Tom, after some frustrated eye contact, managed to tame it as well. Logically, if there was logic in the unrealistic, it was psychic powers.
Tom announced just the other day he had mastered telekinesis. By that, he meant he could get an object to come to him up to a meter away. Levitation, which he couldn't do reliably, didn't count.
"Do you hear someone?"
Merope looked around. They sat in the small copse of trees near the west wall. Tom said older kids used it to sneak out at night, but it was mid-day now. The nearest children were by the front gates a few ways off.
"The wind?"
"No," Tom said, "It's a person. You can sense them."
Leaves rustled, people laughed, softly, Merope knew someone else was with them. There was no distinct voice. Rather, a strange intent slipped through her perception of the space they sat. Hunger. Starvation and anticipation. It couldn't be anything but a ghost.
Tom's eyes widened as he spotted something to the left of Merope. She took a chance and looked over her shoulder. Oh.
"A snake," whispered Tom, voice in awe.
The snake, which was eyeing Jerome, shifted its head towards Tom.
A human, it seemed to say, in mocking return. Of course, a silly thought. Snakes didn't speak.
"She wants the squirrel," Tom continued.
"She can't have it."
Why can't she have it?, the snake in question seemed to ask with a human-like tilt of its head.
Well, stranger things have happened in Merope's life. A distorted rendition of original sin wasn't the worst thing. "Because we'll be single- alone. Who will stay with us, when the squirrel disappears?"
This one will stay… for the price of a squirrel!
The thought barely registered in Merope's head before the snake seized Jerome. Merope scrambled away towards Tom.
The next few minutes consisted of morbidly watching Jerome be consumed.
"She's beautiful…"
Tom wanted to call her Serpens.
Merope revoked his naming privileges and named her Ceras.
OThe beach is just a creative way to punish us
Late summer wasn't the worst of the season. If the minders cared about cooling children off with the seaside, they would have brought them when heatstroke caught four of them last month. It could have to do with how the heat killed one of the infants last week. The dining hall was abuzz with noise when the news broke. Perhaps they wanted to cover up negligence by pretending to give the poor orphans a holiday.
Instead, Merope had spent half the day burning under the shade.
Tom approached her. The seawater went unnoticed in his hands until he threw it at her. She gave him a flat, wet look. Every ten minutes or so, he would come out from the sea and return to her, like an anxious puppy, scolding her for the audacity of being separated from him.
"You wouldn't look so miserable if you swam. That's what the beach is for."
"I wouldn't look miserable because I'd be drowning, Tom."
"I would save you, Merry."
She sighed. "You might try to, but that ends up making me drown faster." She already experienced a water death. If Merope had to pick, she'd choose something more… shotgun-like.
"When did you get so… melancholic?"
"Maybe when you started stealing the older kids' vocabulary books."
From the corner of her eye, she could see him scrunch up his nose at the allegation. It was his own fault, in an indirect way. Ever since Billy Stubbs and his group saw her as a weak point, she had to be 'present' and witness to Tom's actions whenever she was awake. Unless she wanted rocks thrown at her. An invisible force stopped them from hitting their target, but it was the thought which counted.
"If you won't swim, then let's explore."
"We could run away together, and no one would even notice."
"We would be dead within a week."
Tom stopped holding Merope's hand to poke her right cheek, "I think I liked it better when you didn't speak. It wasn't so morbid."
She gave a wane smile, Whose fault do you think it is, that I came out of my shell?
Merope continued walking towards their destination: a cave embedded in the nearby cliffside. The caretakers specifically said not to go spelunking, but it was only a problem if they got caught. No one cared about the children who didn't make a fuss, and recently Tom hadn't been in any fights to attract fresh ire from adults.
The large, jagged entrance revealed a smaller interior. Light weakly reached a couple metres within before stopping at the edge of a stagnant sea-blue pool.
Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop looked up when they entered.
"You! Are you stalking us? Bugger off," Dennis said.
Tom's sneer was already on his face, "You aren't interesting enough for even a glance. Leave."
Ignoring Dennis' shout of 'We were here first', Merope tugged Tom's hand, "The cave is boring anyways. We can go."
Irritation twisted his features, "Why can't you fight, Merry? Why do you always have to be weak?"
Amy cackled, "Aww, is even the half-wit's brother tired of her?"
"Benson, kindly shut up," Merope met her eyes. "No matter what you say, everyone knows you're nothing but a vulture."
A shocked scoff escaped the redhead's mouth. Nothing else followed.
Merope shifted her glance to Dennis and that was when he threw the sand.
The eyes? Again?
She closed them, but couldn't get them to open without pinpricks of pain. The splashing of water told her Tom had pushed Dennis in the pool. Someone, it had to be Amy, pushed her down. Of course she was the type to kick someone while they were down, or blinded.
More yelling ensued. Dennis shouted at Amy to grab Tom's arms. When Merope got half her vision back, the other half still clouded, she heard the semi-rhythmic slap of repeated hitting.
She pushed herself off the ground and gripped Dennis' shirt, "Get off him!"
He wildly back-kicked to get her away, and Merope hugged his hitting arm, jolting each time it moved.
Why did Tom have to make enemies with an older boy!?
If only she could make him stop hitting Tom. The weight and strength of her body did nothing but get dragged back and forth each time he hit. Digging her nails into the flesh of his arm did nothing. If only Amy could stop screaming that Tom was a 'wanker', however the only time she paused was to spit in his drenched face.
Even in the dimness and tears, she could see the water discolour with blood.
Merope screamed.
She didn't hear Dennis' humerus break, she just felt it. He pulled back and shoved her with his other arm; Amy stopped yelling.
"What did you do? You broke it!"
"You broke my brother!"
The look in his eyes clearly said he planned to do something more than break Merope's arm in return.
The sound of a shriek made them turn their attention to Amy. She was on top of Tom, scrabbling to get off him. Something jerked her back further into the pool. She wildly met Dennis' gaze, brown eyes bulging out like a fish. Then, the thing pulled her down deeper.
Amy's screaming did nothing but make Merope's ears ring.
Dennis managed to grab hold of Amy's right arm before her head was swallowed up by the water. It was clearly an endeavor, his working arm bulged with the strain and his face reddened with effort. The water splashed and collapsed against itself from Amy's underwater struggles. Or from the movement of the creature attached to her.
"Help her!" came Dennis' command plea.
It wasn't necessarily from the combined effort of Merope and Dennis that Amy survived. Rather, there was the impression that the thing which wanted her gave up at encountering some small resistance. When Amy crawled out of the water, bite marks and scratches ruined her legs. If the creature were some type of fish, then it would have been the size of an infant.
They ignored Tom sitting at the entrance as they fled the cave.
Merope remained at the edge of the pool. From the ripples of the water, she found something resurfacing to meet air. A squid-like head broke the surface tension and in a split-second she met slitted eyes.
It disappeared back underneath.
Suddenly, Merope had the impression they should have actually listened to the minders' warnings about going off to strange places.
Turning to Tom, she asked, "Why did you fight?"
His face started to twist until he winced. The nose was definitely broken, the lip split, the rest of his face would likely show deep bruising.
"How can you ask me that when they threw sand at you?"
"We could have left after that. We could have had two less people wanting our heads on a pike."
"They won't retort. They're afraid of us now," Tom tried to hide his smile by covering his mouth.
Walking up to him, Merope bent down, "If they fear you, then they'll jump at any chance to take you down. You don't have to antagonize them more."
"Like you don't respond to them? They tried to stone you and you acted like you didn't care even when you came back," Tom glared and pulled away his hand to reveal healed, grimacing lips. "Merry, you don't understand people. If they aren't afraid, then they'll play with you until you die."
She didn't have a reply. They both didn't know if Dennis would have stopped hitting before Tom stopped breathing. All she could do was help him off the ground.
Philosophical differences notwithstanding, for a while, Merope and Tom acted like family.
It was always known they were twins, yet Tom had always treated Merope like a shadow, a doll, a blanket carried around by a nervous child. She wasn't a separate person until he found out she could fight.
During the honeymoon period of their new relationship dynamic, Tom let her pick the places they would go. In the autumn, they spent time outside with Ceras. The snake was a weak conversation partner: she didn't know human terms for the machines and persons she saw outside, and her snake life mainly concentrated around finding food and shelter.
Tom was nonetheless enamoured with her. Merope felt rather bored with her. In most storybooks, snakes held deep wisdom clothed in cunning words. Ceras didn't know how to count. She was tolerated because Tom liked her. The more beings he held empathy for, the less of a chance he would take out someone else's eye.
During the winter they spent time with the small collection of books which was generously given the title of 'library'. Those days were hidden secrets. People rarely bothered to read and the world shrunk so it only contained them in the room. The silence would break from the turning of pages and Merope's whim to read the more complicated texts out loud to Tom.
She didn't think she had the mind of an adult, nor one of a child. It's just- she knew things she didn't remember being taught, didn't remember experiencing. She had been inside the minds of so many people; was it possible those people had been inside her mind as well? Had they left drips of their knowledge before leaving? Or did she accidentally catch passing information of theirs when she was dying with them?
The line between Merope (living) and the others (dying) had thickened in the post-eye incident years. Every death was categorized and stored away in the catacombs of her mind. A compartmentalized method of loci. Her vocabulary was decent, her expectations were adjusted every once in a while. She couldn't use a computer to look up any thought in her head; women's rights were just far enough there was no worry about being married off at fourteen.
Winter receded gradually, thawing out old grudges. And so when spring came, so did Ceras out of her hibernation.
OOne day, the other children found Ceras before Merope and Tom arrived.
"I thought the caretakers were exaggerating when they called you devilspawn, but I guess it's true when your only friend is a snake," Eric had a demented, proud look on his face as he presented the trophy of a head-bashed Ceras to Tom. "Was a snake."
He threw it at him. Tom didn't bother to catch the body and it fell to the ground. The look on his face ripped through Merope's heart. He always seemed to give off an invulnerable air. Even half-drowned with blood down his face, Tom had only anger in his eyes. Now, he was struck dumb. For all his bravado, he didn't actually know how the world, how people, worked. Thought people were always cruel, but didn't know the many ways they could be.
"You're all alone, Tom," Billy said evenly, rehearsed. "Remember when you asked me how it felt when I saw mom die? Well, how does it feel now?" He clutched Snowball against him so tightly, the animal started to squirm. "My mom left me because she died. Your mom left you because she hated you."
"You're a disgusting little boy," Merope's voice cracked against the weight of her shock. "What's in you that's lovable? Do you think your mother knew the answer or is that why she died?"
The lordly smile on Billy's face faded and he turned red. Water glistened in his eyes and Merope immediately regretted it. She shouldn't have said that. The hurt from other people and so she hurt them back. Didn't that make her the same as her cruel little brother in that regard?
Guilt and obligation pulled at Merope. On one hand, Billy was a child. One the other hand, so was Tom. An immature part of her despaired at seeing all the effort of teaching Tom kindness go to waste. Ceras was just a stupid snake. Why did they have to kill something so unrelated?
With tears streaming freely down his face, Billy threw down his rabbit and went for Merope's neck. She met him halfway. At some point, Tom must have joined in, because it was no longer six people pulling at her hair and scratching her skin, only three. It was a quiet sort of fight, no other children formed a ring and jeered. Grunts of pain didn't travel the distance. Without fanfare, everyone tried to murder each other.
The teachers didn't notice it when Merope gave a hard kick at a boy's groin. They did intervene when the others tried to suffocate her with dirt. She took one look at the teachers' furious expressions and thought:
No, I'm done with this.
There was a seventy-five percent chance Tom wouldn't rip out a body part of Merope's when he discovered she had retreated inside herself again with the intention of staying for a long while. The other twenty-five percent? He would come to know how trustworthy she was with her promises.
At the heart of the catacomb maze in her mind, stood a skyscraper which felt like the heavens. Its glass covering reflected a blue sky that wasn't there. The place was secret and would only rise from the dirt if she wanted it. Even if all the skeletons in her head renewed their vigor and tried to dig it up, her memories wouldn't be touched.
That building held every experience as Merope and all the unharmful knowledge she gained from dying other lives. She floated to the very top where her warmest memories were. Most of them did not involve death.
One was of Rebecca. It didn't deal with Merope specifically, rather a witnessed interaction between her and Tom. Rebecca gently held him in the middle of the room, lulling him to sleep with a folk song. That scene was no different from any other mother and son, save her small size. It was a good illusion to trick Merope into thinking she was like any other child. Here was her brother, there was her living parent. Zhuangzi's butterfly was just a dream and her life as an orphan was one as well.
Another involved herself alone. In her younger years, Merope surfaced up for consciousness and found herself in a tiny closet. It was probably a trick of the kids, the isolation rooms the adults used had a bed and a window. The cupboard had linens next to a mop. Instead of panicking, she relaxed. The quietness and darkness gave her time to think. To ask: who was she? What was she doing here? Merope was tired; she didn't see an end to the hassles of life and the disturbances of her mind. In the closet she thought: This is what death might be like, after going through the gate. She would like to finally enter the land of the dead, instead of continuously being ferried across one place to the other. Consistently being pulled back to life, but the will of the gods had always intended for her to die.
The memory Merope went to was a tender and fragile heart-beat in time. Tom was sleeping in her bed. He was always sleeping in her bed, despite the caretaker's ire. The only times he didn't was when he was in isolation or the medical room. The night held nothing but soft breathing and rustles of sheets. This was the room they slept in before being transferred to the larger one for younger school-age kids. Tom was already asleep, pressed up against her for body heat. This was when she hoped he would be innocent. Troubled, yes, but innocent. She fancied a thought that even though he was family, and it was always family which killed her in the end, surely it wouldn't be this member. Surely there was something between them, which would prevent them from hurting each other.
Merope played that scene on loop until she was ready to think.
You are innocent. I am ignorant. When we get out of this orphanage, we'll build a happy life together. You will be innocent. I will be ignorant. There's no curse that will kill me.
I don't want to be dying, I want to be dead. I want to be dead and I want to be the lord of my own death.
Ceras was dead. Tom was traumatized. During the encounter she dragged herself down to the level of a needy girl and dug into the fears of a hurting child. In the sea cave she could have handled things differently. She should have halted every moment Tom traded insults and blows with the kids. If she had been more present, things would have been different.
Perhaps Tom had the right to kill her, with the neglect she'd done to him.
And yet..
Merope wanted a quiet, non-violent life, where she didn't have to protect her bothersome brother or be protected by him. There were two ways to go about this: kill Tom or drag him kicking and screaming into peace.
Killing Tom left too many unpredictable variables with horrible results. Taming him was uncertain as well. However, there was a higher chance it would be a mercy killing.
A mercy kill was the greatest she could hope for.
Tom was a daring boy.
When Merope came to, he had already snuck them outside in the middle of the night. Resting on his knees, he searched around the trees, looking and feeling for something low to the ground. She watched him crawl around for upwards of fifteen minutes until he reached out to pull a white-furred creature out of a burrow.
"Hold it," Tom instructed, moving Merope's arms to support it fully.
He then pulled her back into the orphanage. At the entrance hall lay a rope ominously in the center. After watching Tom repeatedly tie the rope into knots and then untie it, she spoke up.
"What are you doing?"
Merope had never seen him startle so badly. It probably shaved a few months off his life. She couldn't keep the amused grin from her face. Didn't she have a goal to be nicer? Well...
"You're back," Tom breathed out.
He immediately stood up to examine her. Eyes roving around every inch of her face, he moved her head this way and that before stopping when he met her right eye. Briefly, his unsteady fingers brushed against her eyelid.
"I hate it when you leave. You never tell me."
After that, he pulled her down to the ground and said simply, "I'm making a noose."
"You're going to kill yourself? Or me?" Merope blurted out, she couldn't tell what sort of emotion her voice held. Besides, there were easier ways to go about suicide. The rafters were too high for this plan to work anyways. "Oh… Billy Stubbs."
"Close."
A glance at the rabbit made her draw away. She brought Snowball closer to her chest.
"Tom, that's vicious. You're hitting his heart twice."
"I know, it's doubly effective. Everyone will fear us."
"Snowball isn't involved in this."
"Ceras wasn't either!" Tom said harshly, voice disrupting the silence.
They waited a minute to confirm no one was coming to investigate.
Merope lowered her voice and moved close to his ear, "This won't work. You'll hurt Stubbs as much as he hurt you and then he will want revenge. You can't expect anyone else but yourself to end a cycle of abuse."
"Benson and Bishop haven't gone anywhere near us since the beach. That's ending the cycle."
"And the caretakers look at us with even more suspicion. Fear is a plague, Tom. Even if it hits your target, it will spread to others," she forcibly relaxed her fingers so Snowball would stop struggling. "Some of them won't back down. Some of them won't stop hitting back until either of you are dead, and you can't kill the whole world. You'll be lonely."
The scrape of his teeth made an audible sound as Tom unclenched his jaw, "I'm only lonely when you're gone, Merope." Softly, he added, "I had Ceras too, and you know what they did to her. Can you imagine being killed by such a- a brute?"
He had to cover her mouth with his hands to stop her laughter echoing off the walls. Snowball fled her lap. Odd, that a rabbit didn't like absurdity.
I imagine those deaths quite well.
Merope licked his palm to get him to stop muffling her words, "Sometimes, yes, you fight back when they intend to hurt. Sometimes, you don't. Defense is not always offense. Once we get out of this orphanage, little slights and smacks won't be so life or death."
"And when-," the words came out high and squeaky. Tom took a breath and tried again, voice shaking. "And. When. Do. You. Fight. Back? Could you fight and stop them? I bet Ceras tried to. You are my twin. Me. The only thing which loves me."
"...Tom," but Merope could not get a single word to follow.
Tom. Tom. You poor, unlovable, psychotic little boy.
"Everything," Tom whispered, "that you said to Stubbs and everything that Stubbs said to us was true. Everything. People only ever tell the truth when emotion gets the better of them."
The tension around them lessened in the sniffle-hiccup quietness of the room. When he slowly released her from his vice-grip hug, she spoke further, soothing.
"If I'm...present, I can take care of myself. I'll tell you when I leave, Tom. You don't have to fight without restraint anymore."
Snowball continued nibbling at the rope.