✷
TEN YEARS AGO.
TRINITY CITY
FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE, Sloane would have to carry the weight of the ugly truth that every misfortune that'd ever befallen them had been her own fault.
In her fever dreams, it haunts her: the coffin marked with her older brother's name, the ashes of her father's restaurant the day they lost everything, the blood on the bathroom floor, the brains in the sink, the shards of bone she'd stepped on when she'd found the body in the bathtub with the barrel of the gun still jammed in his mouth, her mother's scream a canned echo in her head, the cruel hands, every bruise blooming like crushed violets on her skin from her mother's wrath. Your fault, your fault, your fault—an echoing mantra plaguing the inside the chapel of her skull. Everything she touches turns to rot and dies. How could anything bear to remain good in her hands? Her hands, that were made to ravage, to rip and rend the world to pieces the way it had ruined her. How could anyone bear to stay?
In the ides of the summer this wound would've been unimaginable, a landmine lying quietly in wait.
Sloane sat tucked up in the furthest corner of her father's restaurant, scratching absently at a scab on her knee. Crayons and paper were splayed before her on the round table pressed up against the blue wall, right before the plastic sheets separating the doorway to the steaming kitchen, where Sloane and her siblings, Phoenix and Silene, helped Auntie Lin peel long beans.
In the background haze, their father pin-balled between the front reception and the kitchen. Sweat stuck strands of her ink-dark hair to her gleaming forehead, plastering her blue singlet to her back. It was a new shirt, the first item of clothing that wasn't a hand-me-down that Phoenix had outgrown or something that their father had dug out of another family's recycling bin, and new possessions came rare as gold.
Phoenix was older, albeit, he would not grow much older. In the back of her mind now, Phoenix is a fossilised image, forever thirteen, this tawny-limbed boy with a gap-toothed grin and black hair shaven close to his scalp like a bitter gourd, a memory immortalised in crystallised amber growing cloudier and cloudier each year. Some day, his face will dissolve into a smudge, and that is Sloane's first fear.
Silene was younger, albeit, she would not stay much younger, and Sloane hates this. Back then, she wouldn't care. Silene was always the pretty one, the girl all the aunties crooned and fussed over, and Sloane was the ugly one. Pretty girls were obedient and docile and demure. Ugly girls were loudmouthed and cutting and explosive. Sloane wasn't so cynical back then, but she had her own way of twisting the world around like flesh pinched and bruised between two unforgiving fingers.
At the time, Sloane created things rather than destroyed them, and Auntie Lin still called Sloane 心肝—the heart, the core of the human body, the centre of feeling, and the liver, another essential organ one couldn't live without—as if she were the personification of her own vitals, grown and cut from her body. In the eyes of another, this relation was strange. Auntie Lin was their neighbour who came down to help out at their father's restaurant for something to do other than watching the same relentless cycle of TV dramas. She didn't have living relatives of her own, but she never denied any questions on whether Sloane, Phoenix and Silene were her grandchildren.
It didn't matter that Auntie Lin pitied their father, who had to juggle running a semi-successful restaurant on the corner of Chinatown, while caring for a sick wife and raising three equally demanding children with little time for anything else. Auntie Lin had one of those hearts you felt outside of her skin. To be a part of her was to be so loved you didn't need to question your place in the world.
Sloane's father—known to the rest of Trinity City, who couldn't pronounce his name without butchering it in their terrible tongue, as Liu—was an industrious man fresh off the boat with his pregnant wife. Though Trinity had been particularly cruel and unwelcoming to a foreigner like him who barely spoke enough English to ask directions to the nearest public toilet, he'd managed to establish a life out of nothing but the clothes on his back and the unyielding determination to build a solid foundation for his budding family. His first child was a boy born in the bathtub of the ramshackle apartment above the restaurant he'd been scrubbing dishes for, pink-faced and screaming down the walls.
Before Phoenix was Phoenix, he was Liu Hai Rong until their mother tried to enrol him in elementary school, and couldn't get the receptionist to understand her thickly accented words. It was Auntie Lin who picked the name Phoenix, believing that the brave little boy, who laughed each time the gas on the stove hiccupped and sent a blast of fire fanning up the sides of the charred wok and demanded in his delight—Again! Again!—would come crawling out of the flames of any adversity he might face in his lifetime.
(Here's the irony: from his ashes, Phoenix did not rise, and the numbers on his grave marked a lifetime cut short by adversity.)
Adversity had a name, but they wouldn't know it for another month yet. Wouldn't know that she was sitting at the table in the back of her father's Cantonese restaurant peeling long beans with her brother and sister and Auntie Lin. At the time, superpowers were only a mythology of folktales and the answer to every question about the way the world worked that their father was too exhausted to answer, and the July humidity smothered Trinity in honey-thick heat waves that rippled up from the cobbled streets.
Sloane had begun working up a sweat, since Phoenix wouldn't share the little battery-operated fan that Auntie Lin had brought with her, and the longer she had to endure the relentless summer heat with Phoenix shoving her away each time she tried to lean closer to him to feel the breeze cool her blazing flesh, uncomfortably sticky with sweat, the more irritable she grew.
"Quit lying on me," Phoenix snapped, shoving Sloane so hard she nearly toppled out of her chair.
"Just share the fan, then, fatty," Sloane snarled, jamming her bony elbow into Phoenix's fleshy side.
"Don't hit me—"
"You hit me first!"
"I'll tell Papa."
"Xīn gān bǎo bèi, brother-sister not fight," Auntie Lin said, in her clipped English and tremorous voice that rattled like a weak exhaust pipe. She traded a knowing smile with Silene, who hid her face behind her hair like she always did whenever someone made eye-contact with her.
"But it's so hot, and he's such a selfish butthead and he won't share! And he keeps pushing me!" Sloane whined, slanting Phoenix an incendiary glare, resentment bubbling in her chest, sending tingles down her arms as she seethed.
Silene gasped softly as the stainless steel colander of long beans rocked like a boat on choppy waves in the middle of the table, and tipped over, spilling the long beans over the table. Silene's gummy arms shot out, saving the beans from rolling off the edge.
As Phoenix's smug smirk widened, Sloane felt her irritation mount, like static in a seashell, into a rage that cut through her so viciously, that, for a moment, she wanted to hurt him. How was it fair that she could never hurt Phoenix the way he hurt her? How come he seemed so unaffected by every one of her jabs they just bounced off him like a marble glancing off a brick wall? For a moment, she wanted so badly to put her fist through his ugly face just to smash that infuriating smirk into smithereens, she couldn't help the darkness that flashed across her features.
"I hope Papa beats you with the cane tonight until you die," she snarled, meaning it with every inch of her being.
Scoffing, Phoenix only rolled his eyes, and Sloane felt the undeniable urge to rip them out of his head with her bear hands tear through her like a white-hot sword running through her chest.
Auntie Lin gasped, horrified.
"You cannot say that! You are brother and sister. It's your duty to take care, look out for each other." And then, she said, in Cantonese, because she didn't know the words for them in English, "Blood is the only tie that is undeniable. In this place, only blood will look out for blood. You are yellow-skinned in a scene of white devils. You cannot fight each other, otherwise, they'll all take advantage of you."
A week ago, a gaggle of white boys with black jackets and cigarette-smoke breath passed by the restaurant. Before they stepped off the street, they'd pissed on the glass windows. When their father and the other cook who'd run out of the restaurant to chase them off, red-faced with rage and fists raised, the boys shouted: dog-eaters.
Auntie Lin had only shaken her head and sighed. Sloane neither understood what was so upsetting about it, nor why they called them dog-eaters even though they never once slaughtered a dog, but she'd known she hadn't liked it. Later, their father had explained that it was a bad thing, that they didn't eat dogs but everyone who called them dog-eaters just wanted to make them feel bad so they could feel better about themselves. To make someone else alien comes with the implication that you rightfully belong.
Those people were bastards, good-for-nothing, their father explained, livid, holding onto his children as though they could anchor him to the ground before he floated away in his fury. Their father despised the white-skinned folk of the city, blaming them with a unilateral ferocity for all mishaps within and without the restaurant.
Don't let anyone call you a dog-eater.
✷
TEN YEARS OLD WAS A TIME OF IMPOSSIBLE THINGS, and the impossible year where it all began to go downhill the first time Sloane would lose control.
Summer was already a grey season, a new Armageddon, a time of viscous heat waves that made Sloane's tongue rot in the cradle of her teeth, while the rest of the patrons clucked with conversation over steamed meat and bowls of congee. Each time Phoenix yanked on her hair while they were sitting at the table in the back of the restaurant, Sloane had to keep digging her thumbs into the flesh of her index finger to keep from snapping. Already, the irritation blazed, an inferno lashing at her lungs, and she itched to reach out and rip a chunk of Phoenix's skin out with her bare hands.
The back of her throat felt gummy, and her head stuffed with cotton. Her movements were clumsy, her head unfocused and blotted through with the last remnants of the stubborn cold that'd ravaged her system just months ago. The fever that'd come with it had been particularly brutal, and nearly crippled her parents with the fear that she might die.
Though her nails were blunt, her rage was sharp, and she was walking the razor's edge by then, teetering on the verge of snapping. It was a particularly busy day today, and the afternoon hummed with heat and the cacophony of conversation, the clatter of steel and hissing steam emanating from the kitchen behind the plastic sheets. Outside the restaurant, a poodle was tied to the fire hydrant on the pavement beside a small queue, where a line of customers were awaiting their take-out, and the air surrounding them was perfumed with the aroma of sesame oil and chicken and steamed buns.
Pain staked into her scalp and Phoenix snickered as Sloane's head jerked back. Anger ripped into her veins, a sting poisoning her rationality. Sloane's arm snapped out, hoping to hit something. Anything. As long as it made Phoenix hurt. Apparently, she hadn't been subtle enough, and Auntie Lin looked up from her colander of peeled long beans, the stringy strips stuck to her thumbs and staining her brittle nails green. The old woman shot Sloane a disapproving look, and Sloane knew it was because she didn't want Silene—sweet, little Silene, who wanted to be everything her older siblings, the Titans of her childhood, were, simply because they were older and bigger and stronger—to learn from their example, but Sloane only glared at Phoenix, who affected a deceptively innocent smile.
It happened again. And again. And again. When Auntie Lin looked up to investigate the commotion, sucking on her teeth in rebuke, she would only see Sloane trying to harm her older brother. Phoenix was good at being subtle, only acting when their backs were turned, when the eyes weren't on his antagonising hands. When he tugged on her hair, he was quick about it, and Sloane—who was all burning flesh and clumsy rage, a myopic girl of tunnel vision and no tact—would retaliate with violence, a slap to the arm, but too slow to land a hit. For around twenty minutes, it was a ceaseless loop of hair-pulling, lashing out, Auntie Lin shooting the two of them suspicious looks, and repeat.
"Stop it," Sloane hissed, eyes brimming with a white-hot anger, and though she'd merely thrown the long beans she'd been snipping the ends off of onto the table, it trembled beneath her as if afraid of her wrath, and Silene and Auntie Lin glanced up, frowning. In a flash, Phoenix's hand retreated back to his side, and Sloane's grip tightened around the pair of scissors in her fingers, knuckles blanching.
"What's happening?" Auntie Lin asked in Mandarin, arching a ghostly thin brow, shaking out her damp fingers, the jade beads around her wrist chattering in protest.
"Dunno," Phoenix said, shrugging, his gap toothed grin slathered with a smugness that made Sloane's skin blaze with the itch to rip it off with her bare hands. Eyes widened, Phoenix affected his best deceptively innocent expression and cocked his head. "She's just crazy."
There was a sharp ringing in her ears, a ripple roiling over her body that sent a palpable shudder through the restaurant. Lights blinkered, cutlery bristled and the ground shook beneath her feet.
Like a crack that began deep inside a stone, the fissures had begun to spread. Crazy—the word bounded off the walls of her skull, echoing, mocking—crazy, crazy, crazy—a thousand voices all at once, gathering like a storm beneath her skin, bubbling, festering and boiling over into a crucifying rage. Their father always said that words couldn't hurt, that they were just words, but wasn't he the one who'd told them never to let anyone call them a dog-eater?
Something within her snapped.
Red slashed across her vision and Sloane slanted Phoenix an incendiary glare, the heat in her veins a blazing inferno turning her resistance to cinders, her temper a snake slithering in the burning grass, dripping venom, belly swollen, heaving death. Eyes flashing with a murderous glint, the serrated edge of a blade , Sloane felt the poisonous wrath stirring within her so intensely she could swear the entire restaurant trembled with her. Cutlery clattered against the tabletops, crockery trembled, the walls quivered under her rage. One tap, and all of her patience had fallen apart. Chest heaving, Sloane seethed through bared teeth, jaw hinged, ready to rip him to shreds.
"I'm—" the air around her crackled, a thunderstorm brewing— "Not—" a prickling energy seared the air, and the lights overhead flickered and fizzled— "Crazy!" Sloane snarled, and slammed her fists against the table.
In a flash, all the metal cutlery shot through the air, slicing across the room in a nuclear explosion outwards. Tables crashed as they heaved and upturned, sending china crashing to the ground, splintering into a thousand pieces. Screams erupted from the patrons, scattering as knives and sharp objects pinwheeled, driving themselves into the walls with a solid thud, blood splattered the tables, dotting walls and skin.
Sloane couldn't process it until it'd been too late.
First there was the darkness engulfing her, an insidious smoke rolling over her head, swallowing the light, consuming her whole. And the blood—so much of it in the carnage, splashing up the white walls like marks of sin—and the eyes, white and writhing in the faces of everyone surrounding her in the aftermath, wide with fear and shock and horror, pinned on her—the diabolic, the devil, the monster.
As the darkness fell away from her, the world crackled back into view, like a camera shifting into focus, a jarring clarity overcoming her as she blinked at the catastrophic fallout, painting a morbid picturesque in flesh and blood shadowed by the dark wing of death. Damage had been done. Damage that couldn't be reversed.
There he was.
Pinned to the wall, crucified like a thirteen year old Jesus, unborn and shaven: Phoenix Liu, heaving his last gurgling breaths, a sheen of grey overcoming his pallid features, the blood—the only thing of him that was the right colour anymore—bubbling from his skewered throat, spilling down the front of his shirt, his hands splayed out on either side of him, forks gleaming, crimson dripping down the white plaster walls, his ribs studded with knives, his body twitching with little seismic convulsions. One of his slippers had fallen off, and his feet dangled three inches off the ground, the chair he'd been sitting on overturned on its side before Sloane.
When his pain-misted eyes met hers for the last time before the light faded from them, the full weight of what she'd done punched her in the chest, a blow that threatened to crumple her lungs and dust her bones. Every shard of anger that'd perforated her skin in that moment of truth dissipated into the slow poison of guilt snaking into her veins from the pit of her chest, and trickled down to her gut. All at once, every single terrible thought that'd crossed her mind whenever she fought with her older brother seemed to echo through the prison of her skull. I wish you were dead, I wish you could hurt, I wish Papa caned you until you died, I wish you were never born, Mama died because she hated your ugly face so much, I wish—
Where was Silene? Where had their father been? All Sloane remembered was Auntie Lin with a crumpled tissue pressed tight against her blanched mouth, the dark green veins of her wrinkled hands, the skin of her fingers peeling from the dry weather, eyes rolling and wild behind the thin veil of her wiry hair, escaped from her tight bun at the top of her head; Auntie Lin and the poodle outside the restaurant barking and barking and barking—and ringing from somewhere, everywhere, nowhere synchronously—and the rich, unearthly vibrato of a woman's screams.
You did this, an iron-thorned voice in the back of her mind growled, a malicious mockery stringing along the echoes, one after the other in quick succession, filling her with a waspish humming, a static prickling like the sound inside a seashell when you pressed an ear to its mouth, mounting until the screaming melded with the muted horror.
Numb. Unable to tear her eyes from Phoenix's body, in the haze of her numbness, Sloane only vaguely knew of the pressure of hands gripping her pullet-thin arms, fingers staking into her flesh, shaking, shaking, shaking her out of her reverie, but she was too deluged in the blood, the death, the darkness.
Later, much later, Sloane would learn that every action carried an echo that lasted for miles down the tunnel of consequence, a domino effect that she couldn't outrun. Like Atlas, her shoulders ached with the weight of the world of guilt slowly crushing her bones to dust, a heel hellbent on grinding her into the ground. But friction generates heat and sparks, and in the right environment every spark becomes a flame blazing mercilessly across the terrain, immolating every inch of living, all that pain and death coalescing into one hollow sound:
Monster.
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
ORIGIN STORY LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO
it's a little sad but yeah.