THE OMEN GIRL | Wattys 2020 Winner

𝟏𝟔

"I should have—told you everything. I should have—never been here. I, I can't run anymore, from the things that I've done, and I'm, I'm scared, Pea."

I'm so scared. I'm terrified. Why didn't I die instead of Lumi?

And then Pea opens her mouth.

She says, "Good."

She says, "You should be scared. It's what you deserve. But you talking about it? Thinking you deserve to be comforted? To be helped? It's sick."

Her voice is all coils, coiled, like a snake's.

"You've hurt so many people. Lied to so many. Staying scared is the only thing you deserve, nothing else. I don't know your real name; Frea is catatonic and won't speak. But your real name is a curse, and I came to say that we'll all be glad when you're gone."

She turns, and leaves, melds back into the night.

She's right.

Rama is right.

Of course. That's why it hurts.

It hurts because I keep thinking that maybe, maybe, it's not true – the things they call me, the things they hurl. Maybe Esp's words about me are not the etched laws of who I am. And maybe I can be saved. Somehow, someone will look at me and see me and choose to stay, choose to help, because maybe there is still something in me worth saving.

But that's a lie. Of course.

When my omen stain thickens over me, all of me – cracking and growing my bones and teeth and nails – I do not stop it.

I will give myself once and for all to what I was always meant to be, to what I always have been, and will be – a monster.

#

(I understand the world in clicks.

Click, click, again, again. I hear the whine of a pitch that holds. It keens higher, louder, like a kettle screaming, like something evil stepping close and closer.

I can't see, not really, though I understand shapes and colours. I don't know up from down from in and out, and it's like I'm seated in a storm, blown and tossed. A thunder like rage crashes over me.

This will be my life now, for the rest of forever. Forever, until someone puts me down.

I've broken out of the cell. The trench is caked white like a flour mill because I've blown through everything, and rubble tumbles over and around me. My hands and knees and feet are like that of an animal's, and I ravage through cell after cell, just because I can.

A bright light. I remember I used to know this light.

A large tree. I remember I used to know this tree.

Someone is shouting, or laughing, I don't know – but it's wet and wrong and broken. I hate the sound. I hate it.

So I turn on it and open my jagged maw, and then that someone raises their hands and smears out a smile and says, don't shoot.

Oh.

Oh.

Something is wrong. It hurts. Everything hurts. This someone has shot me. He must've. He's shot me clean through.

I never knew words could hurt like bullets.

A sense pops open between my brows, a sense like light dawning.

I feel the beats of a boy's heart inside my chest.

I feel the heat of his blood in my veins.

I hear the roar of a monster and see the diseased hide of one, and then I see that my hands – not my hands, the hands of that boy – are clutched on a star. Pain jars through me, through him. Heat like spikes pierces through the boy's body because of what he's doing with the star, but he does not let go. He reaches up and touches my not-face, my not-cheek, and is not afraid.

An image flickers behind my eyes: the boy knocking his fist against his chest and kissing it to his forehead.

Ya'tuv mi-eh.

I'm slipping. I'm falling.

My understanding saps from me.

The world gives way to dark.)

#

I come to by the tree, underneath the hole in the wall.

My robes are tatters. My omen falls from me like matted fur. I understand two things:

Yashi is here with her hand on her sling, and beside her is an anchor.

Naqi is here with his hand around a star, and he is lain on his back.

His head is in my lap. I don't know how it happened. All I know is that omen stains are creeping over his skin, over Naqi's skin.

His skin has been stained.

The black scabs crawl up his neck and over his mouth, and over his eyes and ears. He does not move.

What is this?

What have I done?

I snap my head up to Yashi.

"Yashi," I quake. "What is, what did I—?"

She holds up a hand: stop. She looks off into the brush and listens.

People are coming.

Rama went to get help, or people simply heard for themselves the roar and the rage of me, bulldozing through the cells and the trees and Naqi, Naqi. If people saw him now, like this, what would they do to him? Lock him up like me, or worse. Stars, stars. What do I do? What have I done?

Yashi is standing before me, now, and her movements are clipped, quick. She replaces the star in her sling with the star that Naqi is holding – it's Gaia. Why was he holding Gaia? Wasn't she locked away?

She winds Gaia up and slams her into the lock of the anchor, and then she takes me by my arm, and wrenches me to my feet.

She explains nothing, not with grunts, not with her hands. She lifts Naqi up and drapes him over my back, and places my hands beneath his thighs to support him. Then she hauls us up the tree, into the cradle of the tree, all with the anchor in tow.

Suns and guardians are breaking through the brush, now. They carry with them lanterns and torches and lit stars, the fires harsh and cackling. They know where we are. They've gathered around the roots of the tree.

Yashi thrusts me into the hole and toward the edge, and I don't understand. I don't understand anything. Why is Yashi doing this?

She guides the silver cord around my leg, and then kisses her forehead gently, gently, against the lock. She closes her eyes, and communes. She is speaking to Gaia. When her eyes open once more, she pushes at me and pushes at me, until I'm teetering by the edge.

"Yashi." My voice is a shattered thing. "I don't, what are you—"

She shakes her head at me: don't, don't ask.

She points at the horizon behind me: go, go now.

A Sun has climbed up the tree and is scrabbling at Yashi's heels, and she gives me no time to think, no choice to think – she shoves me and Naqi off the wall. We fall.

I don't let go of Naqi.

Ichor bleeds through me, and the anchor realigns with the soles of my feet, and then we are flying, I don't know where. Gaia is taking us somewhere, somewhere Yashi had disclosed to her.

The sky is thick and grey, and in the distance, thunder growls.

Hunched under the coming sheet of rain, I weep.