if you're alive today, that's enough.
stay.
FOURTY
DELUSION AND DESPERATION. The signs were right in front of me. I could taste it, smell it and feel it in the air. When I glanced at Mirabel, her eyes were wet with tears, with the pain that she had gripped onto like a life boat. She had never ever considered the possibility of living without this. Without this pain, this desperate need for revenge, her life was achingly empty.
"Is that your truth?" I managed to croak out.
Mirabel scowled, taken aback by my question. "I shame the Devil." She replied, playing on the tedious phrase that went 'say the truth and shame the devil'. "You left them. After all the things you did, you packed up your stuff, and left. You didn't even call the police."
No matter how much I would try, Mirabel would never understand the depravity of that moment in the life of Diana and I. We were only 16. There was little that we knew about life and death. Mirabel didn't take into account that just like her, we had witnessed the death of our entire family in the most horrifying way.
By our own hands.
I muttered. "I couldn't..."
"We couldn't." I heard Diana mutter. Up until that moment, she had remained silent and brooding. Even Hank had kept all his nasty remarks to himself.
I looked up at her and noticed she was watching me.
Looking at her now, I could only see the corpses of my parents and brother in her place. As vivid as day, I could see their blood, torn skin and the odd protruding bone. It was the most painful thing that a child could see; the visage was hell incarnate, handcrafted to deliver the maximum amount of agony that any human being was capable of processing.
Traitor.
I looked away. Diana didn't love me. My reality was a lie. I looked up at Mirabel but her image was blurred by my tears. "So, what do you want from me?"
Mirabel shook her head. "I didn't know until a few days ago. At first, I just wanted to see you — have some control over your life. Knowing that I could get you to confess was my first wish. I believed everything would fall into place afterwards."
There was a hidden but in her words.
"But I didn't know how. After you had..." She stopped, gagged by the grief. "...done what you did to my family. I called the police."
I felt something surge through me. "My family."
"What?"
"They're my family."
Her features turned fierce. "Fuck you. I waited a week, a goddamned week, until I heard any updates on the case. You took away my opportunity to say goodbye. To let them know how much I loved them." She moved to her desk and gripped its edge. "They told me they found you and Diana in a run-down motel on the outskirts of town. You were both minors so your story of self-defence was easy to believe."
I knew exactly what she was talking about.
Coupled with our mother's history of mental health issues and Hugh's record of violence, Diana had grabbed me by the ears and convinced me to say it was self-defence if we were ever caught. It's the only way we'd avoid jail, she'd insisted. Hugh committed a murder-suicide — became my truth. Diana and I were child prodigy's with stellar records so there was no reason to doubt us without substantial evidence. We had bruises and broken teeth as proof of Hugh's abuse. The letters that I had sent to my father detailing our suffering had also proven useful. With no signs of being threats to society, we were left alone after a year of invasive investigation.
Or so I had thought.
"I didn't believe the self-defence bullshit but I didn't want to tie myself to the case." Mirabel bluntly stated. "With nothing to hold onto and nowhere to go, I was left alone in a vicious circle of rage and hatred. I was forced to contend with the consequences of my actions. Day after day of running around helplessly, trying to put an end to my grief, trying to find closure, made me finally understand just how deep the rot was in my heart. I was hopeless."
She might as well have been speaking to a brick wall. I felt nothing for her. In fact, her pain had begun to sate me. I wanted her to hurt.
"I decided to kill myself. I tied the noose to the chandelier and teetered on the edge of my coffee table. You know what I said? I said — Tell you what, God, I'll give you until the end of my cigarette to show me a sign that you care. One day, you're going to take me anyway. I'm giving you a chance to show why I'm loved enough to delay the inevitable." She flicked away a tear. "I lit the cigarette, my hopes dashed. I told myself I didn't want a sign." Her laugh was humourless. She stared into nothingness, as though feeling her emotions as vividly as she did on the day. "I really did want a sign."
Hank cleared his throat. I noticed the discomfort in his eyes. As though the story was affecting him too. Vaguely, I wondered why.
"Almost immediately, there was a knock on my door and Fuck, I just dropped to the floor and sobbed. It was my sign. When I got to the door, there was a junior policeman handing out adverts for a beta Prisoner Project. He took one look at me, handed me the flier and sat down with me while I applied for it. He knew I needed this. To him, I needed the money and the escape. To me, I needed to find someone with less of a reason to live than I."
I gasped, realisation dawning on me. "The junior policeman." I glanced at Hank. His face remained stoic, unmoving from Mirabel. "Was that you?"
"I believe it was."
I felt a little sick realising that he had been playing a role all this while. He knew everything, and willfully watched me succumb to her manipulation. No wonder he hated me. I finally understood it.
In his eyes, I could see that the woman before us had consumed him completely. Was he in love with her? Had she transferred her pain to him? I would never know.
Mirabel continued. "Hank and I sort of clicked. He helped me get into the project and without asking, he assigned me to the most depraved man in the prison."
"Banshee." My voice was breathless.
Her eyes flashed, momentarily revealing the way Banshee affected her too. For a split second, I could see what Banshee had meant when he said he had never seen anyone with desperation like hers. I could understand why he had been so fascinated by her taste for vengeance.
She was a terribly disturbed woman.
Just like him.
"He helped me realise a lot of things. It was because of him that I knew what I wanted to do."
I looked down at my intertwined fingers. I was not quite sure why I felt so betrayed. Maybe it was because he had seemed so genuine with me. Maybe I had been utterly naive but I had genuinely trusted Banshee's words at some point.
My head snapped up. "Do you hear yourself? Banshee helped you? A man who, at the time, had only just been sentenced?"
She chose to ignore me.
"I kept my relations with Hank discreet, but open. He knew everything. At the time, our conversations were overtly recorded so I couldn't hide." She mocked me, noting that I was paling. "Unfortunately, the project was a failure and I was sent away. But before I left, I told Hank that I would be back. Somehow, I just knew I would be."
At this point, Diana audibly shifted in her seat. I didn't look up at her because it was too painful to do so. I didn't know what she was feeling and frankly, my heart was too broken to care. She cleared her throat. "I think that's enough for n—"
Like a blunt edge, Mirabel cut her off painfully. "Don't be a fucking coward. You wanted this too." Her unwavering gaze was directed at my mirror image. "Your letter was the first thing I saw when I returned home from the Project. I didn't need to search for you. You came to me. You brought the closure that we both needed."
Even though Diana remained silent, her silence was screaming loud enough to shake the room. The scream was so guttural, so cowardly and so base, that I winced at it.
Mirabel turned to me, eyes mischevious like a fox. "Once I realised what you had done and the lies you had told, it was final. We both decided that once you were older and legal, you'd pay for everything you'd done to us. You wouldn't get away this time because I knew exactly how to get you to confess."
My mouth remained agape at the absurdity of her words."What I'd done?" I sprung to my feet in self defence.
Hank stepped forward. "Sit the fuck down, Black."
I was no longer Miss Black or Aria, he had demoted me to plain ol' Black and he had said it as though it were bitter poison.
I lowered, realising I had no autonomy.
"You became an adult. Hank had just gotten himself promoted to a senior position and was able to hire me as an intern. He helped secure this little part of the prison for my pet project. I had to change my identity of course, since my name was already in the system."
"Rita Frankfurt." I remembered her pseudo name. I had thought Frank was being silly about the Mirabel and Rita mishap but I knew now that he had just been as clueless as I was. He didn't even realise that his job was fake. He was nothing in the grand scheme of thing.
I nearly gagged. My voice was shallow. "You told Frank you were Rita and that you ran the place. He has no idea who you really are. You're crazy. You're fucking crazy."
She smiled as though it were a compliment. "Aren't we all?"
Tiny pinpricks of agony licked at my heart. A panic attack lingered at the edges of my vision, smacking its lips at the prospect of devouring me whole. I rushed to my feet. "You've got it all wrong. You're the villain. You're the fucking villain!" I jabbed a finger Diana. "Both of you. You know it's fucking wrong what you're doing. Please—!"
"Well it's too late!" A frustrated screech pierced through the cramped office. When I found the source of the voice, I was blown away by the venom in Diana's eyes. Her voice simmered to a slow boil. "It's just too fucking late, Aria. It's time for reparations."
If I wasn't so terrified, I'd have scoffed. "Reparations..."
Diana glowered.
A sickening silence settled over the room.
"I did try to warn you away." Mirabel remarked.
"Jesus." My hands shook, remembering all the times Mirabel had told me to leave. She might've been second guessing herself then but I had only interpreted it as rudeness.
"What do you want from me?" I whispered to no one in particular.
"That, I know now." Mirabel responded. She signalled to Hank with a flick of her wrist and like a minion, he leaned up from a lone bookshelf he had been watching from.
Hank sauntered over to where I stood. He towered over me in many ways, physically and emotionally. Something mischevious glinted in his eyes. When he spoke, his smile seemed to frighten me more than Banshees. "What she wants?"
I gulped.
"A life for a life." He hissed.
I felt my heart sink into the pit of my stomach. Surely, they didn't mean what I thought they did. My glassy eyes moved to Diana and I saw that the same shock I felt was etched on her face like a stain.
"Why kill myself, when I could kill you?" Mirabel taunted, her words slithering over me like a cold wet rag.
"Mirabel." Diana said, her voice shook in a cautionary whimper. "What is he talking about?"
Mirabel was already up and heading towards her office door in finality. It seems Hank already knew the status quo. She turned to Diana. "You've played your part. Leave the rest to me."
I watched as the reality of the situation dawned on her. Her face went slack with horror. "We didn't agree on that. What the fuck. Mirabel...You...You can't do that...it's fucked up. I can't let you do this.."
"Now it's fucked up? What did you expect?" Mirabel shot back. "Jail time? A smack on the wrists? You asked for this."
Diana's voice was ghastly. "No..."
I watched my sister in a daze. My death sentence felt hollow. Part of me wondered if she knew how much she was hurting me; another part understood that she was well aware. "You're going to kill me?"
No one answered me but I knew the answer already.
I felt my knees buckle and I nearly toppled over. The only thing that held me up was Hank, his calloused hand gripped my arm and steadied me. "Don't die on me, Black. Not yet." His flippant mockery of my despair was like a stab wound. My agony was real. It stared at me hard in the face. The bleakness and melodrama of my life had reached a crescendo. I was never going to win.
Diana looked scared, realising the severity of her actions. Too little too late. I could see her shouting at Mirabel but I couldn't hear a word over the hum in my ears. Seeing her reaction was a hard-hitting image considering how she was the sole reason for this.
Diana didn't deserve to be upset at anyone. I was the one that was supposed to be upset. I was the one who was betrayed. I was the victim.
My brain felt fuzzy from the influx of emotions that headed in. It was only when I heard the door slam that I realised that Mirabel had left the office, leaving me, Hank, Diana alone. I was still in disbelief however.
Mirabel had dropped a bomb in front of me, let it fizzle and explode all around me. Then, she had walked out, leaving me to my fate.
I heard Diana's voice before I saw her sorrow. "Ari..."
Hank took a step back, kind enough to allow her to say what he probably thought was her final goodbye. I lifted a warning hand to her and shook my head. I didn't care what she was feeling. "Don't." My voice was cold, and way too small. "You fucking liar."
Undiluted fear of facing the reality was etched on her face. She shook her head fiercely. "I'm not a liar."
"You did this for what?" I hissed. My voice was a desperate hum. "You know what happened that night. Why are you lying? Why are you doing this to me?"
Her face turned fierce. The same heat that Mirabel carried was like a harsh bruise on her flesh. "No. You caused it. None of this would've happened if you'd just listened to me."
I could see in her eyes now that she was convinced. This was her truth. Her years of therapy had failed her.
Tears pricked my eyes. "So you think I deserve to die like them because of that?"
Her breath caught. "I..I didn't know this was going to happen." She was barely audible. Her manicured hand was on her heart, patting it. I could tell it was beating fast. She was so terrified. She looked like it.
It's what she deserved.
"I thought they were bad." I muttered. I suddenly felt so tired. Exhausted like I had ran a marathon. My tears were falling on its own accord. I hadn't even realised I was crying. I sagged against the arm of the chair. "I thought Hugh and Dad were bad. The physical torment, the mental abuse, all of it. I thought I'd seen it all." My eyes felt empty. "But you, Diana, you're the worst of them all."
Her eyes fell.
"At least, they didn't pretend." I muttered. I was now staring at my knotted fingers because she was beginning to sicken me.
Almost immediately, my anger came before my sorrow.
Before she had a chance to respond, I lunged at her. I couldn't help it. I wanted to hurt her in the same way she had hurt me. All the years of pain, grief and anger swelled up in my heart and it was bursting violently. I felt like I could kill. God, it was a depraved feeling.
She screeched and scurried away in surprise before I could lay a hand on her. Hank pulled me back to the chair, trapping me on it with brutal force. It felt like the air was knocked out of me. He didn't berate me or anything though, as though he understood what I felt.
He only looked down at me, brows slashed in frustration and growled. "Hurting her is not going to help you."
This time, it was not a threat. It felt like a piece of advice.
With that, I sobbed.
I sobbed like I was in an electric chair about to die, shaking like a dry leaf in a hot storm and begging for my life. My sobs were so painful and debauched that if I had heard them from anyone, my first instinct would be to kill the person that suffered badly enough to make that horrible noise.
My life was out of my hands.
Hank let me sob. He had released me from his grip and stepped away from me. I heard the door open and close and noticed that he had made Diana leave the office.
With great strength, I looked up at Hank and asked the one question that I believed mattered the most in this moment. "Did he know that this would happen?"
Hank quickly realised who I was referring to. It made him scowl at first but then he decided to answer truthfully because what did I have to lose anymore?
"No. I don't think so." Hank shook his head.
I nodded. "Can I see him then?"
"Black." He deadpanned, as though my request was idiotic.
"Take it as a dying wish." I wiped at my leaking eyes and nose, adamant. My sobs reduced to hiccups. "Please."
A few seconds passed. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Hank stood tall and gazed lazily at me. He watched me for a few more. I could tell that he was weighing his options first. Then Hank said the kindest thing that he had ever said to me since the project began.
He shrugged. "Sure. Say your last words. You'll both be dead soon anyway."
I felt light-headed. "Thank you."
Hank scoffed. "Don't do that."
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a single pair of handcuffs. The same kind that had restrained Banshee. It was such an ironic thing. It shocked me to my core.
In silence, I let him cuff my wrists together like a prisoner and lead me towards the office door. "I'll take you to the interview room." He shoved me out of what I had believed was Mirabel's office before locking it behind him. "You'll have 30 minutes."
I nodded sheepishly. I didn't know what was going to happen to me in the long run, but at least this was certain. A part of me was still processing the entire meeting. Another part had given up. My world had shifted on its axis after all.
"Prisoner 143 will meet you there." Hank leaned down for a wicked whisper. "And I'll make sure he won't be cuffed."