"What is deservedly suffered must be borne with calmness, but when the pain is unmerited, the grief is resistless." - Publius Ovidius Naso, Roman poet.
Dead dead dead.
Maggie's dead.
She's dead, my own sister is dead. She's gone and she shouldn't be, she's too young, she has too much potential, her whole life is ahead of her!
She was too young.
She had too much potential.
Her whole life was ahead of her.
Fuck, I can't think straight. I can't think of anything right now. I'm high off my fucking tree and my mom who recently abandoned me is standing in the middle of the room having just told me that her youngest daughter died.
Her adoptive daughter. Her adoptive daughter who was never told about being adopted, who never spent any time with her parents because her dad was in an asylum and her mom ignored her for no valid reason, and who felt like her mom didn't love her. She left this world being bullied, neglected, and friendless, and her own mother doesn't even seem to care.
My sister, the kindest and smartest person I knew, died and for what? What was the reason? I'm trying to think of a logical explanation as to why she was targeted, why she was stabbed, but I have nothing.
Nothing but the fact that this world was cruel to her.
It didn't deserve her.
She didn't deserve any of this.
"Did you hear me?" Mom asks. Mom. I should start calling her Kate. I may have been produced from one of her eggs but I do not consider her to be my mother after leaving. Sure, she was never really there but that doesn't mean I wanted her to leave.
Maggie and I would try and talk to her, offer her food, and we'd go with her every week to see dad. We had an affection for her, but I wouldn't go as far as to say love. She had the audacity to leave us, though, and all because she "didn't care anymore." I don't believe her... the word 'anymore' implies that she ever cared at all.
"I did hear you," I confirm, nodding my head, my voice void of emotion. "Maggie's dead."
Dead dead dead.
Dead and I wasn't there. Dead and Kate wasn't there. She died alone.
"I tried calling you," she sighed. "You never answered. Your dad had to be sedated so I figured I'd call someone if you went off the rails - you know, seeing as you clearly don't know how to use the phone."
"You were planning on calling me to tell me that my own sister is dead?" I scoff. "That's a terrible way to break the news."
I'm trying to imagine how that phone call would have gone if I hadn't broken my cell.
"Apparently you didn't visit her often," she went on. "Doctor Lewis told me."
Aren't doctors supposed to have some kind of confidentiality when it comes to who visits their patients?
"Seeing as you didn't know that before then I'm assuming you didn't visit her at all," I tell her.
"You're right," she confirmed. "I never wanted to see her out of the hospital, no point in seeing her in it."
I went the day she was stabbed. She went into a coma afterwards. and I didn't see much of a point in going again because all it would do was make me sad. She wouldn't know I was there... maybe she would have, I don't know. I should have been there. It was selfish of me not to be and now I'll never see her again.
I'll never see her again because she's dead.
A swarm of black enters my vision and I know what's happening. The houseflies - they've come for me again.
I have to get out of this house. I don't want to be with Kate, she's a disrespectful, idiotic, horrible mother who abandoned me and his dead daughter and doesn't even care. She doesn't deserve my presence, and I'm no winner. I'm a lonely, depressed drug addict who hears voices.
Voices. They're everywhere and I have to get out. I begin to run, run fast out the door and slam it behind me. I don't know what to do, but thankfully Kate didn't come after me. I don't know why a part of me expected she would - she's only here in case I needed to be sedated like dad.
They're everywhere. I don't understand why they're here - I took the drugs so the hallucinations of evil houseflies should be temporarily nonexistent.
This time is different, though. This time I seem to be mobile. It doesn't seem to change the fact that they continually torment me wherever I end up moving, but this time is different.
Perhaps it's the fact that I did cocaine. Maybe the drugs don't block out the bugs, maybe they just give me the ability to control myself more.
I press my head against the door and try to focus on what the bugs are saying. Focus. I need to know because their voices are real.
They have to be real. Everything they've said to me so far has turned out to be true. They said that Dallas didn't like the school library and he didn't, they said that he loved me and he claims he does, and they told me that I should have to gone to Maggie because she was going to die... she did.
She died and I didn't listen to them because I was so hell bent on convincing myself that I was just mentally ill - that the voices I heard were just a figment of my imagination and that they were only there due because my dad passed on his schizophrenia to me.
I know the truth now.
The voices are real. My dad doesn't belong in a mental institution because he's not crazy - he just verbally announced that he could hear voices when others couldn't. There's nothing wrong with him - he should be here with me, outside the house trying to listen to a bunch of houseflies, grieving over the loss of his daughter with his family. Not alone in an asylum, thinking he's crazy, and maybe never finding out his child has died.
I try to focus on the flies around me. They swarm me, attacking and hurting me, but I don't mind. I deserve this. I've killed hundreds of heir brothers and sisters and this is my revenge.
Maybe if they end up killing me I'll be with Maggie. We'd be together... dead but together. It wouldn't be so bad-
No.
It would be bad.
That's suicide. I can't imagine what it would feel like if Maggie had committed such an act, but she didn't. Neither will I. I would want Maggie to be alive just as she would want for me.
Dying isn't an option. Not for me, not for anybody. I need to fight for my life, everybody does and nobody should purposefully end it. I need to tell my brain to shut the fuck up and stay alive because living is a hell of a lot braver than dying.
I tried so hard to concentrate and hear what the flies were saying but it all seems impossible. I'm on the ground now, cradling my legs in my arms, screaming. I'm screaming as loud as I possibly can just to hear something other than the whispers that I can't make out - I don't hear myself, though.
I stop when I can finally understand a few of the murmurs.
"Norton would be disappointed in her."
"She should have been the one to die - she killed our families."
"Poor poor pitiful, Rose, always alone."
"Her mother did right by leaving such a mongrel."
"Having a breakdown in public and not one of her neighbors are trying to hep her."
"Who would want to help her? Look at her."
They hated me. Of course they hated me - I'm a serial killer who has done nothing but wrong by them. Everything they said was true - I'm all alone. My mother did right by leaving me. I'm a mongrel - a bitch that nobody recognizes.
Why didn't I listen to them? All of my problems in life would have been avoided if I had just listened. No lack of friends, no drugs, and no dead sister.
"Rose?" I don't care about whoever it talking. They should just leave me hear to rot beside my door. "Are you alright?"
I open my eyes and the flies are gone. Completely out of sight as if they were never there... I know better, though. They were here, just as they always have been, and they left me just like they always do. They make a fool out of me just as they should.
Dallas is standing in front of me, a worried expression on his face, and his car running behind him.
"People just keep showing up today," I comment. I squint at I look up at him - I can't see due to the sun but I should just let it blind me. I deserve to be blinded and much worse. Maybe not seeing the bugs will make it easier because I won't know if it's them talking or an actual person. It's probably better that way.
"What?" He asks crouching next to me. I sit up and glare at him.
"Why are you here?" I ask. Did Kate show up at his place, too, and tell him that Maggie died?
"A few days ago," he says, "Harper came back and told me that you wouldn't accept help. He said that I should check on you. Apparently he left you in a bad state."
"I think the state I'm in now is worse," I admit.
"And what is that?" His eyes soften.
"High off cocaine with my egg donor sitting in my house having just told me that Maggie's dead," I say in one quick breath. We're silent for a few seconds.
"Mags is dead?" His voice cracks. I can see the tears pooling in his eyes as he steps away from me to regain his balance. He's affected by her death, or at least he's pretending to be.
"I should have known," I say more to myself than him. "Insects told me she would die soon but I didn't believe them. It turns out they were right about everything."
"Insects?" Dallas asks.
"Yeah," I nod my head. "You remember when we got in a fight over keeping things from each other? I was keeping that I can hear voices. Bugs. I'm not crazy, though, I realize that now."
"You hear bugs like your dad?" He sounds shocked, like he's never thought that things could turn out that way. Maybe he's faking it.
"Yeah," I nod. "They're real, it was always real."
"Rose," he goes back to crouching next to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. I flinch. "Why don't we go for a drive? Clear our heads."
I'm paranoid that if I get in the car he'll rush me to the hospital. To mourn Maggie or to be committed, I don't know, but I'm too far gone to care.
"That would be nice," I agree. Sitting in a car doing absolutely nothing will somehow stop the ache in my chest. We can take a drive like we used to when we were friends and needed to get away from our home lives for a while. This time, though, Maggie wouldn't be with us because she's dead.
Dead dead dead.
I hobble to his car and get in the backseat, lying down. I don't have the energy to do anything else. Dallas gets in the front and starts the engine, driving away from the house.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you," I apologize. "Maggie really did love you, she thought of you like a brother."
"She did?" He asks like he doesn't believe me. "I'm so sorry. Rose, you have to believe me, I loved her. I loved her so much, she was like family. I'm sorry about not talking to you, I am, but I have to have you in my life. I can't lose you, too."
"I'm already lost, Dal," I say. "But I think that happened a long time ago when neither of us knew it."
We keep driving and we reach the city. The part we're in has houses crowded each other with no trees in sight. I know this place. This area. It's the way to St. Kerry's. The museum of nature is around here, too, but I've only been there once. I was with Dallas and Maggie, and afterwards Dallas forgot his hat at my place.
"Are you bringing me to a mental institution?" I ask.
"No," he answers quickly.
He's lying. He's lying and I hate that he is. I'm not crazy, I told him that. I told him!
"You're a liar!" I accuse. "You do think I'm crazy, and you're bringing me to an asylum!"
I should have expected this the second I got in his car - I blame the drugs, they're screwing with me and making me naïve. They do things to me that I don't like - they make me angry, stupid, and hallucinate things. I love them for so many things but in the end I really hate them.
"It's for your own good, Rose," he pleads with me. I can see from the back seat that his eyes are tearing. His voice broke. "I can't see you like this, you need help."
"I don't need help," I tell him, frantically trying to make him understand. "I don't. I promise I'm not crazy, the voices are real. They are, Dallas, they're always right! How can you argue with that logic?"
"What were they right about?" He spits. "Huh? What was it?"
"They were right about Maggie dying," I start. "They were right about me being alone and being pitiful and my dad being disappointed in me. And they were right that you don't like the school library."
"I've told you a thousand times before I hate that place!" He yells. "It's dirty and the librarian doesn't put books back where they're supposed to go! And I'm sorry to break it to you but anybody could have predicted Maggie dying after what happened - it's all in your head, Rose."
"It's not in my head!" I insist. "I don't need any professional help, Dallas, this is kidnapping. They told me that she would be hurt before it even happened!"
"She was being beaten by the guy for weeks!" He states. "You knew something was going to happen, whether it was the boy getting expelled or him doing something worse to her, this wasn't any bugs telling you this, this was your subconscious."
"It's not," I choke. Tears are streaming down my face fast and I can't breathe. Breathe. I have to remember to breathe.
"You're high," he says quietly. "You don't just need mental help, you need rehab. Harper said he got you hooked."
"Harper left me for days," I spit. "He's lucky he forgot a bag of coke or else I would have killed him for leaving."
I mean it, I would have killed him - I've killed hundreds if not thousands of bugs and they all had lives and voices of their own, so what's the different of killing one more being? This one would have deserved it more for taking away the box that I so heavily depended on.
I'm sure when I'm sober I'll regret wanting to hurt Harper... right now all it's all I can think about.
"You don't mean that," Dallas shakes his head. "You don't, you're so kind and caring - you're just upset."
"I'm not kind and caring, Dal," I explain. He has to know this. "I'm not whatever your mind has me made out as - I'm a cold hearted, crazy killer with no family."
"You have a family," he says. "You have me."
"I don't have you," I say. "I don't have anyone, and I never did except for Maggie but she's dead. She's gone and I'm all alone."
"Rose-" Dallas starts but I don't hear the rest of his words. I know this place - this is is near where we parked to go to the museum.
I see it. The house with blue roof.
"Dallas stop the car," I demand.