Jesse looked up at Elizabeth, eyebrows furrowing in confusion as he watched her gather some papers. He could barely recognising her, it wasn’t very often he saw her, yet he know who she was. “Must’ve been a brutal job.” He said very seriously, folding his hands on his lap and leaning back in his chair.
The papers in her hands shuffled and she stopped, turning to face him as she tucked them away, she shook her head, “No, a brutal job is being raised by a Father who loved science more than me, not making coffee.” She did not know the boy well, and yet she did not care. She knew that he knew science, that he loved it, and all the sadness in her heart poured out like a waterfall but none of it reached her eyes, “He would of done anything for science, anything,” her words were strangely distant, memories striking fear into her heart, denial fading away, “Even destroy the people he said he loved.” She stepped forwards, and from her bag she dug a notebook, pushing it towards the boy in question, her eyes never meeting his, “You all thought my Father was a hero, that he came here to save you, but he didn’t. He came here to finish what he thought was started, he wanted to create someone strong enough to make up for his weakness, it was never Vince. Vince was crazy. He wanted money, he wanted power, he wanted what everyone wants, but he wasn’t the one who drugged you, he wasn’t smart enough,” and finally her eyes met his, dead and blue, innocence lost, “My father, wasn’t evil, he was mad. Just know that. He thought that he’d perfected it, Vince did too, but they were wrong. They can’t perfect it, it’s not right, it only makes people into monsters,” she pushed the notebook towards him, the look on her face strange for a girl of only thirteen years old, voice so composed, “Take it. Maybe you’ll find something in there that can help you fix this before it’s too late.”
Jesse held his head in his hands, panic rushing through his body. The crumbled note in his pocket felt like it burned through his pants and right into his skin, a constant reminder of the neat handwriting that held the most secretive information at Whittemore, and he just didn’t know how to take it. He had been stuffed in the lab for the last few days, slaving away with Texas and a couple others, but he needed some air and escaped to an empty classroom a few rooms down. At the sound of the door swinging open, Jesse looked up slowly and mumbled almost incoherently, “If you’re here to bring me coffee, just leave it in the lab.”
From where she was standing, eyes glazed over and hands carefully moving things around, she barely heard him. The grief of her Father’s death was still thick on her young shoulders but there was a greater grief, for she had lost him long before that day. Her fingers almost shook as she slid a block of notes towards her that she had left in the classroom earlier today, “Don’t worry,” she muttered, “I’m not here to be a coffee girl, I already did that job for a mad scientist for my whole life.”
I want you to know that I never meant to do it, dear future self whoever or whatever you are today. I’m scared. I’m worried. I’ve never felt so terribly riddled with a million feelings I thought I could escape. Things keep going wrong.
Charles, the love of your life was pushed from the third floor of a building precisely four days ago. She fell. I think you still know that now, but I don’t know if it still hurts quite so much to know that had you been three days earlier, maybe you could of saved her. Emily is ruined. Her brain isn’t what it once was and now it’s like you’re talking to a different person, a different person who you don’t even know and I want to stop loving her, I do, we do, I suppose, but we can’t. Even though she’s pregnant with your brothers child, even though we’ve fought with our best friend James over this girl for years. She’s younger than us, she had so much life ahead of her and because of your stupid Father she’s all screwed up.
Do you remember what happened three months ago? I was sitting on my bed and Thomas came running in and waving around a letter. You got accepted to travel abroad, to the beaches, to the world, taking pictures. It was always our dream. What’s your dream now? Has much changed in the past 19 years? Other than the fact we couldn’t go. It was three months ago, for you I guess it was 19 years and three months ago and yet I can’t let go. We were so close to the life we wanted, future self. It all just went very wrong, didn’t it?
I’d like to start by saying I don’t regret what we did. I hope you don’t. I don’t regret storming into the study as your brothers and sister crowded around arguing with your Father and I definitely don’t regret the axe that I found lodged in some wood that we were forced to carry to the fire for months before. I don’t regret chopping Orson’s head right off his shoulders. I think it ruined a lot of our chances of traveling and having fun and all the stupid things we were meant to do with James in July but I won’t feel sorry for myself. James is talking about joining some kind of hippy revolution, maybe our place was always behind the walls of dreaded old Whittemore. It’s pretty shit but you made your own bed. Or maybe I made it and the future me is pissed off because of that, if so, I’m sorry, but we probably would of got bored in Florida or Hawaii anyway. Maybe we should just be happy with the thought.
Does it still bother you, future self, like it bothers me, that you were the one who sliced Orson’s head off and let it roll off? He was so unkind to your Mother he was so very strange, but that’s the thing future Charles French of Whittemore, he wasn’t your Father. She wasn’t your Mother. That’s why you don’t care. Somehow your other brothers and sisters seem oblivious to this fact now, like they’ve been brainwashed to accept you as the favoured son, at least some of them are still young and innocent and the few that are not, they were good now, are they still good? I think, maybe they don’t remember, they honestly don’t know, that you are not their brother, but of course, adoption is legal, but this blood doesn’t pulse through your veins, or at least it didn’t. It’s all very complicated now. Complicated and corrupted, do you think they wanted you to ruin their plans? Or were we meant to be a carefully placed pawn? Either way it didn’t work. And now you’re stuck. The French fortune is all ours, future self, but what is there to do with it?
I hated Orson French my entire life. I didn’t hate his children, they were my siblings. Except they weren’t at all. I was an invention of his mind and he made me real, as if he could create a real boy from the dreams he had for his eldest son. I wonder if he dreamed that I would brutally murder him. I suppose not, nobody dreams of much for a boy who they pick up on the streets of London late at night, it’s the kind of thing that nightmares are made of. I made my own nightmare, now I am trapped. I know I cannot leave, I swore to my siblings. Oldest French child, the one who keeps watch, the one who must run Whittemore.
It all seems quite unfair in the end, future self. I’m only 23 and now my life has been decided by a maniac. Favoured son, it wasn’t such a compliment, neither was it a curse. It just was. I wonder what my life had been if I hadn’t been picked up. It all seems quite unfair, that this hand was dealt to me when my dreams were only of ocean and sand and a simple life. I’m sure you know life is unfair though, don’t you future self? If you’re reaing this then you never left Whittemore. You probably never saw James again. You probably never saw a beach in your life, and now you’re forty something and this is all still going on and that’s just that. We always were a sticker.
I’m sorry for ruining our dreams, truly, but at least we still had some. An original thought. It’s more than I can say for some of our “siblings,” I do agree though, with the mutual decision, if you chop your Father’s head off, you should probably be the one to pay for it. So here we stay, forever I assume. Forever and a day.
Is this worse than hell?
Dear Past Self, 2015.
Do not not worry about the severing of our Father’s head, you could not have known that twenty almost years later we would also impale two of our most trying brothers with a metal rod. Some call it a taste for blood, I call it tiresome. It’s a strange thing to be so irritated by your family that you are no longer concerned with how they die. I know you would be upset about our brother Thomas though, don’t worry, I lit a candle for him in hope. There’s still some of that left. There’s no point in all these worries now, I am a fool and so were you. The French name sticks. They fall. I wonder if that was our use, dear idiotic past self, perhaps we were never meant to be a true French. For, all French’s seem to die.
By the way,
I did see James again. After he grew tired of his hippy days I employed him as a teacher, it’s a strange arrangement. He found love again in the form of a woman that works here, he is ignorant to our past, as I assume he will be to our future.
I also saw Hawaii.
It wasn’t as great as we always thought. Far too much sand.
Although, past self, I assume that brutally murdering your younger brother does put a dampener on the mood.
Perhaps-- I think, you were right about one thing. We’re already in hell.
His fingers on the flask as he sat at his desk, disheveled and smelling like rum, papers descended at his feet, he barely looked at his daughter, instead letting out a low groan, a strange sound coming from the mouth of a man who was constantly happy, forever drowning in his own thoughts. He had known that coming here would end badly, more, he knew that it would put everything he knew in danger, the peaceful life he had built, but had it ever been peaceful? His wife had been murdered and his daughter had became a machine that he had engineered to be everything he could not, and although he adored her, he only now saw that it could be the most dangerous thing of all-- she was only a child, dragged into this mess by his will and what she thought she wanted, but how could she want this if she did not even know what it was? His eyes misted over, a slow gulp as he listened to ehr speaking but heard nothing, as if he was underwater, as if everything was wasted and falling from him as soon as it was spoken. Her voice was not comfort because now he remembered the small child she had once been, blonde curls and big green eyes, a child that had grown up far too fast under the pressure of a life he should never have gave her. A blessing and a curse, “No, love,” he spoke gently when he finally did, blinking a few times to stop himself from giving too much away “No, I don’t think that will happen, just remember what I told you. Just remember that,” he reached out, grabbing her hand and staring at her fingers as if they would slip away, never to be seen again, worry creasing his forehead, tasting alcohol on his own breath, what a mess he had became, “I need you to remember. All the details. Everything. You have to do what I said, even if things go wrong. Promise me, Beth.”
Her face was sad, blinking away tears that had never gotten a chance to fall. She had watched her Mother leave to escape death and fail all the same, she had watched her Father kill himself over science experiments, she had let herself become everything they had ever wanted from themselves and she still did not understand. What he was asking was too much. It should have been too much. For any other thirteen year old in the world, it would of sent their head spinning but as her hand was tugged towards him, she knew for sure that he was serious, that this was the only way and she tried not to let a tear escape, but still it fell down her cheek, “I’ll remember,” she nodded, forcing a smile onto her lips. Be strong, Beth, always be strong. She blinked away her tears, each time her eyes closed, a memory flooding back, a memory of her Father sitting her down, telling her that a time would come when the greatest sacrifice of all must be made. A memory of her Mother holding her face in her hands, telling her that she could not leave with her, that death would surely follow. How could it be that a child could be followed by death wherever she went? That she would have but one thing left in this world and now she may lose it? How could it be that all of this fell upon thirteen year old shoulders that could not handle any weight at all? She remembered the feeling of a knife in her hands, she remembered runs out in the dark and cold, where the only light she could imagine was finally, one day being free of this life. Her love for her Father compelled her to pretend she was a grown up, that she could understand, that she would be there, and slowly she pulled the flask from his hand, “I promise, Daddy,” she said gently, walking to the curtains and pulling them open, “Anything that you need, I can do it. You made me strong. I can do it,” but that was a lie, she was not strong, she was a child, a sad, confused child and slowly she reached up, tip-toeing to pull the dry cleaners bag from the top of the door, “Here,” she handed it to him, big, scared eyes, each moment only filled with dread, “You need to get ready, you need to shower, you have to walk Daisy down the aisle.”
She had almost forgotten that of course Elizabeth would have come with Thomas to Hawaii..but she’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to bring her. “You’re right. That’s a good point. I’m sorry I asked for Thomas, I honestly thought they wouldn’t be able to find him. I never imagined he would come here out of his own free will. I should have requested Marcus.” She let her arms drop and she nodded. “I will admit it is my fault that you’re here. But if you truly want to blame someone, go find Adam.”
Her tone changed, a sigh escaping her lips, she did not truly blame her cousin, she wouldn’t of ever, she had been taught better, "You should of, my Dad is a scientist, Daisy, he doesn’t know how to fight, he’s always been one of the weakest. He’s spent years trying to fix things but too much is broken. My mom’s dead, and I don’t want him to die too, I don’t want to be an orphan because if I am then Adam is going to take custody of me. At least you have one advantage, Charles is your legal guardian but I won’t even have that.”
Daisy stared at her, looking her over. The two stood there, looking like strange mirrored versions of each other. She didn’t want to get into this at all but she couldn’t help it, she was genuinely curious as to how Elizabeth thought this was Daisy’s doing. “What do you mean? I didn’t force you here.”
Elizabeth only pushed her brows together, looking at Daisy, not saying anything at first, “Because you asked for my Dad. And he had to come, because he’s too nice to just leave you all here with no hope. And now I’m here too.”
“Am I? I’ve never seen it but aren’t they usually being bitches about everything going perfectly? I couldn’t give a damn if it goes perfectly.” Daisy crossed her arms, flinching slightly when she pushed too hard on her arm. “I don’t feel the need to explain anything to you anymore. What do you want?”
"You haven’t seen it?” she seemed almost horrified, her mouth dropping open, “How can you not have seen it? It’s always on!” at the girls next words, she let out an annoyed huff, crossing hr arms, “Well, I’m just trying to help.It’s your fault I’m here.”
“What does it look like?” Daisy turned to see Elizabeth, narrowing her eyes at the girl. “I don’t give a damn about this wedding, I’d love to be in a cast, hell I’d prefer to be in a hospital.” She took a breath and stepped towards her. “Yes, everyone does know that which is why it should be obvious I’m not trying to break anything just yet. Going for bruises.”
"Jeesh,” she crossed her arms, “You are like Bridezilla, you should be on that show. I’ve never seen anyone get this crazy before. Does everyone get this grumpy when they turn 100?” she peered at Daisy before shrugging and pulling at a chain around her neck, “Huh. Well, why would you want bruises? There’s no one around here to see them.”
Julian furrowed his eyebrows, a sarcastic smirk resting on his face. “You don’t look the kidnapping type, but thanks for the warning,” he said as he scooted slowly away from her.
“Well, duh, I’m a kid, I can’t kidnap you, you would have to be super lame to be kidnapped by a thirteen year old,” she laughed to herself, unwrapping a piece of gum and putting it in her mouth as she kicked a little water, “Gum?” she extended the pack to him.
“Isn’t it strange,” Clara spoke upon hearing footsteps, her eyes not lifting to meet those of the person who had entered the room. “Every single glass you ever hold has the ability to hurt you in a matter of seconds.” She spoke in a near whisper, sliding the upside down cup across the table, still not greeting the fellow student standing by her. “You hold one everyday, you bring it to your lips and you drink out of it. But all you have to do is knock it off the table or drop it to the floor and it will bust, it will slice you open.” She paused, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. “But who really loses? You bleed a little, and then you heal and you move on and you get another glass– while it shatters into a million pieces, and it gets swept up and thrown out for cutting you. Gone away, never to be whole again, no one caring enough to even attempt fix it.” Picking the glass up, peering at the inside, making out blurred shapes, she sighed deeply. “Is that really a fair punishment?”
He hesitated for a second, looking at the young blonde girl but not saying much. There was not much to be said, it wasn’t like he knew her. He had known her parents once but now even they seemed like strangers, but even with his hesitance for introductions, he stepped into the room, composed despite the internal panic that often weighed him down and made him choose his words far too carefully, “Possibly not, but in life we must realise that sometimes instead of being helpful, we’ll only end up being hurt more ourselves if we try and put the pieces together, it’s an unfortunate fact I have battled with for many years, but for a mind as young as yours, it shouldn’t be a worry,” he stepped forwards finally then, sliding a sixpence across the table, “It’s tradition to put this in your shoe on your wedding day, it brings good fortune and prosperity. I have a feeling we’ll all be needing it.”
Julian sat at the end of the boardwalk, his feet dangling into the water and a near empty bottle of vodka in his hand. Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned his head slightly, his vision slightly blurred as he spoke slowly. “Real… real nice night, yeah? Warm and shit.”
She sat down beside him, staring at him for a wile, she eyed the bottle, “Obviously it’s warm, it’s Hawaii. You shouldn’t drink by the sea, you know, you might drown, and you probably shouldn’t talk to strangers either, they might kidnap you.”
"What are you doing?” she asked as she approached Daisy, lingering a small amount of space away, “If you want to hurt yourself then you should break our wrist, all you need is to slam it down on the back of a chair. Everybody knows that the toes and the wrist are the easiest bones to break. But that would be dumb anyway, you’d just be in a cast for your wedding.”
❝ — For every last bruise you gave me
For every time I sat in tears
For the million ways you hurt me
I just wanna tell you this
You broke my world, made me strong
Thank you
Sand descended over the floor at their feet as she threw her shoes on the ground, rousing the man from his study, her eyes blank but angry all at once, a frown on her face, “I think about drowning, Vince,” she told him quietly, “I think about walking into the ocean until I can’t breathe, and I think I would prefer that to being with you a second longer. I think I would much rather like to drown than be married to you. I’m leaving you.”
He stood quietly, replacing his newly blank notebook on the table, a look of disbelief on his face, a small chuckle leaving his lips, “And where will you go? Who will take care of you? What do you think you’re going to do without me?” he had said the words a million times, carefully placed, logically thought through, questions he had known she could never answer, known she would never try to-- not until today.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, but her voice grew gradual and firm, “I don’t know but anywhere will be better than here. I don’t understand you now, I don’t understand what you want, you have the school, you have Julian,” she frowned, “I can’t make you happy. I don’t love you.”
“You are not leaving me, neither are you to step foot outside this resort,” his voice was sharp, hitched in his throat like someone had stabbed him in the stomach, as if with each moment they were turning the knife, his eyes hard as he stared at her, reaching out and grabbing her wrist, yanking her towards him, his grip tightening without him even attempting to, an automatic action. Automated rage. Disappointment. Disgust. The mere thought that she would try and escape him taunted him like he greatest betrayal of all and in that moment he barely heard that she had given away the wedding ring, never mind cared. “Do you hear me?” his voice raised in rage, in annoyance as he yanked her again.
Her eyes were blank, “No.” The word was simple. As simple as any word could be. No misunderstandings, she yanked her arm but it did not come free, “I’m not afraid of you, Adam, not today. You can’t stop me.”
“How dare you!” his voice raised, manic eyes filled with rage, his pitch altering until he was almost smiling, madness swirling in his eyes as he grabbed her around the waist, picking her up off the ground, something that he had not done before, “After everything I did for you, after all the things I put myself through, after all the years I took care of you, Emily, and this is how you repay me, with idiocy!” he threw her down onto the armchair in the corner of the room, grabbing her face to redirect her gaze, “Do you plan to show me up? To make me look a fool to my friends? To our comrades? To everyone? This entire school!”
Clutching the top of the chair to try and pull herself up, she shook her head, eyes sparkling with tears, “I don’t think they’re your friends. They hate you. I hate you.”
“Do you think that I am afraid of being hated? They hate me because they don’t understand my genius, they don’t understand my brain, everything I am capable of, I thought you understood,” his hand dropped gently to her face for a second, “but you don’t. You never will. I should of just put you out of your misery like everyone else wanted to. You’re nothing but a child, Emily, that’s all you will ever be. You see, I’ve never told you this before, but,” he mocked a sigh, “I didn’t even want to give you this chance, but I felt like it was my responsibility, with Charles and all, with Bethany, no one else wanted to help, but I did, Emily. I stuck by you, when your brain malfunctioned, even when you became this terribly tragic little girl. You look like an adult, but you will always be a child.”
Her eyes were filled with tears still, her arm fell from where she gripped the chair, and for a second it seemed she was about to give up, but when she spoke, in a broken but angry voice, her words were cold, “--I’m the child that you married.”
He stepped back for a moment, watching her, and then he simply smiled, “You’re right, I suppose that if you wish to drown then I should let you have your chance, but I wouldn’t want to cause a disturbance,” his voice was quieter as he stepped forwards more, resting leaning in, his hands moving to her shoulders, “I really am sorry, Emily, I had such high hopes for your treatment,” and with that, his face fell and he wrapped his hands around her neck. He was doing her a favour, she had not the means to make it in such a cruel world. Her beauty had always astounded him, but that would not get her far. There were many more evils in this world that she would not be able to overcome, wasn’t it better to be destroyed by the one that she already knew? The one that was able to look her in the eye? He didn’t give her a chance to answer that question as his grip tightened and he ignored the feel of her hands slipping against his own.
Two hands, yanking. Not the ones around her throat, the ones around his waist. Her vision blurred as she watched him recline, for a second she had tasted darkness but now it was gone, and a little part of her was sad as she gasped for air, her hands on her throat and tears viciously spilling from her eyes, and it was when she fell from the chair to the ground in an attempt to reclaim oxygen that her gaze fell upon the same pair of brown shoes that she had known six years previously, “Thomas.”
Vincent stepped back, a strange look on his face, not defeat, something else. Something strange. He stared at his brother and a grin appeared on his face, ripping cruelly at the corners of his lips, “I see you never did outgrow your hero complex. I’ve been waiting for this moment, the return of the heroic, amazing Thomas French.”
“Well,” Thomas said, adjusting his collar with a puff, “I couldn’t turn down an invitation to walk my niece down the aisle,” his eyes flickered to Emily, a worry raking through his body that he was forced to ignore, instead his eyes remaining on the other man, “I believe you’re a man of your word, so I’ll be safe here.”
Vincent let out a bellowing deranged laugh, “Of course! I could never hurt you before the wedding, else we will never get Daisy down the aisle,” at once his rage disappeared, replaced by some kind of crazed look in his eyes as he walked back over to where he had been studying a notebook moments earlier and pouring himself a scotch, “I’m sure my wife can can show you to your room, little brother.”
As his brothers back turned he felt relief, even as he heard the strange suggestion in his words, he didn’t flinch, instead he bent down to pull Emily to her feet, carefully steadying her with concern in his eyes that didn’t reach his voice, “Show me the way, Emily,” he told her in a cool tone, his entire persona held together by what felt like failing sticky tape as he ried to contain himself, grabbing his suitcase.
As the door closed behind them, Emily turned to Thomas, her eyes wife and fearful, “Thomas, he’s going to kill you.”
“I know,” he said simply, finally letting out a shaky breath, but that was all. His hand moving to the small of her back to move her along, “But at least neither of us will die tonight.”
