Authors: Cynthia Tottleben
This time our mother saw her favorite daughter. She reached up when Brandy neared her, but then her face showed shock and a profound terror.
My sister picked the ax up off the floor. Wedged her feet between the hens, scooting several aside. She wore boots and walked with the lumbering weight of a man. It didn’t faze her that the birds had pecked huge holes in Mom’s body. That blood was trickling down the hall, coating the hardwood floor.
“Guess what, Mom?” Brandy asked, calm as could be while the chickens devoured our mother. “Wrong daughter.”
The ax came down. As if Brandy had been practicing for this her entire life. I gasped in horror as Mom’s head rolled to the side and her empty eye sockets stared at me.
Somehow I was on two legs. Moving down the stairs. Propelled by terror.
But I was wobbly. Weak. Followed by a madwoman, my sister, the one I had loved so much.
“Is that any way to greet your sister?” Brandy chuckled behind me. What had happened to her while she was gone? Had it been so long and terrible that she had turned into a mother-killer? “Lucy? For real, I just saved your life.”
“The chickens—“
Shock struck full force. I made it to the living room, was desperately clinging to the back of the couch, fighting for balance. The door was not too far away. Had the snow melted? Could I get outside? How did Brandy make it here if it hadn’t?
“Came in handy. How else could I keep an eye on you?”
“What?” My lips were so dry that I could barely open my mouth.
“They make excellent cameras. Did you know that dog of yours likes to sniff your dirty underwear? How funny is that? Or Mom? She can’t pass up a Bloody Mary now and then. Good thing a little liquor puts her right to sleep. Who knows what she would do to you when she’s plastered if it didn’t? Whoops. I guess I should be using the past tense. When it comes to her, anyway.”
I inched my way toward the front door. But Brandy moved step for step with me.
“Why did you come back?” I had been content to die at the hands of Mother. She had always hated me. But Brandy?
“Oh, come on, little sister. You’re my back-up plan. Someone had to be around to take over for me in case I…failed…to take office. But in a few minutes, I’ll be crowned. No need for your services after that.”
The black birds flew down the stairs, swarmed the room. Were they a hallucination? For that matter, was Brandy?
She explained it to me in my brain. Our silent communication, which I had thought was because we were so close, such good sisters, was Brandy reading my ideas and placing her own back in my head.
Pictures of the women who shared my blood surged through my mind. The strange affliction in their eyes, like my sister’s, like mine, an image she flashed that I had never even seen in myself. Yet Brandy had it in both eyes.
Because she was Her. The one who would take over. The she-devil my family had killed each other over, trying to prevent her from rising to office.
Centuries preparing the perfect gene pool. Getting it just right. A master plan.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I promised to take care of you, and I did. But now it’s time for me to move on. I don’t really need you anymore.”
Because Brandy was ready to take over from the man with red hair. The one I had mistaken for God. The one who, like my sister did now, made my skin feel like it was full of flaming snakes.
Then Brandy showed me Mom. Her horrible life. How my sister, barely more than a toddler, had sat in the corner of the room while the devil took Mom and created me. Brandy lunching with the red-headed man while her grandmother watched, Mom passed out and the other woman screaming, her death imminent. She scrolled through our years together, Mom’s craziness propelled by the games Brandy played with her. Tormenting her. Keeping her cage rattled.
Keeping me in pain.
“Someone had to divert her attention away from me. You were the perfect scapegoat. She was too stupid to even consider the fact that I was Her. Talk about gullible.”
Brandy laughed, as maniacal as her father. As
our
father.
She raised the ax.
In that instant, three things happened. Tippy howled, the loudest and angriest cry I’d ever heard her make. For a split second, I thought that Brandy had killed my dog. I straightened, ready to fight back. Nobody fucked with Tippy. Not while my lungs still held air.
The weapon flew at me. Flinging blood off its blade.
And the windows burst.
With the shattering of glass, I heard thunder. Hooves. Dignity.
The buck jumped through the window, shards flying the length of the room, and right into my heart.
He entered me. His antlers slid through my back and out my chest, my arms raised from the force, my head swinging up so that I was eye to eye with my sister.
In an explosion of strength, we combined. Struck Brandy with our antlers, forcing her to release the ax. I dropped my head and we rammed her. Prongs straight through the gut. With so much strength that Brandy was impaled against the wall.
My sister clutched at the air. Slapped her hands against our forehead. Steam slipped between her lips, the stench of her breath like the rotten corpse of a cow festering in the smoldering sun for days on end.
The seconds flittered between us, flies darting between goodies at the picnic table, Brandy’s lungs somehow managing to pull in air despite the damage done to them.
I took my lesson from the drawings on the hallway wall. Spoke the names Tippy and I had given the headless children.
Callie. William. Fred.
The buck stepped back, but his strength remained in me.
I grabbed Mom’s weapon.
Wiped her blood away.
Went to my sister, transfixed on the wall. The deer surrounded us. I could hear their chanting, urging me to finish the job.
I remembered her loving me. Brandy, always my mother. My best friend.
“I love you.”
Tippy barked. She would never lead me astray. I thought of the times I’d not tried to escape, to get both of us to safety. How she’d smuggled me food. I would never do wrong by her again.
I swung the weapon. Watched the deer back off after we were all sprayed with blood.
Brandy’s eyes spread wide. Her mouth opened; she wailed and put Ms. Antoinette to shame. Was she calling for her father?
Our
father? Would he come to challenge me once he knew his replacement was dead?
The ax felt comfortable in my hand. No wonder I had never found a knife. I wouldn’t have known how to use it properly. But this handle fit perfectly in my grip, came up over my shoulder with the ease of a feather pillow, and landed time and time again on my sister’s face.
She was nothing when I finished. Not human. Not monster. Just a spray of blood, up the walls and across the ceiling, a clump of tissue that would never scream again.
I was horrified at my actions. When I realized what I had done, I dropped the ax and backed away from her body. Felt the vigor of the buck’s body leave my own. Watched as my sister’s blood dripped from my hair and over the carpet.
When I collapsed, the buck caught me. Let me lean against him. Lowered himself to the floor where I could be safe.
Tippy curled into my arms. We stared at my sister’s body, the blood-soaked wad of flesh that had once been her beautiful face, knowing what this meant. What she had explained, just moments before.
I was her backup.
The next in line.
I watched as the birds moved one by one toward her corpse. They were much larger than I first noticed. They ripped into her flesh. Devoured the sister I loved, leaving nothing in their wake.
Had she sent them here to take care of me?
Tippy touched noses with the deer. One by one, she spoke to all of them. The buck bent down and snorted next to my ear. I ran my hand over his muzzle. Thanked him. He had jumped inside my body, joined us. His courage and power. Life savers.
The others had been my friends, as well. Why had I ever worried that I was alone in the world, when my life was full of these magnificent animals?
I wanted to run off with them, but did not know where my new role should take me. From what Brandy had shown me, at midnight I would take over the dark side of the world. I would be Her, the one no one dared call by name. Would Tippy fear me then?
What would I ever do? I couldn’t live like Evelyn. Didn’t want to be heartless like my big sister. If they hadn’t been trying so hard to kill me, I would never have hurt anyone in my family.
But I wouldn’t have long to question things. I grabbed Tippy, pulled her close. Even though I had been infused with the deer’s strength, I could feel it waning. I wanted to be ready.
From the broken window, I could hear the wind. Calling my name.
Beckoning.
We rose, the two of us. Tippy and I were a team. Where I went, she would follow. No force on earth or otherwise could ever keep us apart again. I would make sure of it.
I opened the door. Walked onto the snowless porch, down the cement stairs. Didn’t even say goodbye to the house as we made our way through the side yard and out toward the field.
Wind whipped around me, wound itself in my hair, danced along my cheeks. I could hear it whispering to me, letting me know that it had missed me as well. That the Earth Herself had mourned while I had been locked away.
Behind me, the structure burst into flame. Fire licked up its sides, a giant campfire lighting up the winter landscape. The blaze reflected in Tippy’s eye, making it look like the deformity in my own.
We walked into the darkness. Through the graveyard of obliterated corn stalks. Past the stream, the safe spot where our friends, the deer hunkered down, and to Mr. Wyckoli’s house, his light still on, the cackle of his television set invading the silence of the night.
I paused. Wanted to say something to the poor guy, tell him why we had stopped coming over, why we had abandoned him.
Instead I watched his program through his dirty kitchen window. Saw the glittery ball as it dropped on its annual countdown. Listened as the crowd roared with excitement, welcoming the New Year. The new millennium.
The new me.
The End