hey for the angst prompts, how about "are you leaving?"
it’s here… i had some fun with this one!
warnings: implied abuse, brief talk of death
“Dela,” Maitland whispers, voice barely audible over the storm. “What are you making?”
The just-turned-eight-year-old is wrapped in an old blanket just on the verge of being useless, eyes wide and hyperconscious of every creak of the old wood frame of the bed she’s sitting on.
Adela turns from her desk, where a jar of something is being heated over a candle, finger pressed to her lips. The candle is the only light source in the small room, casting flickering shadows across the walls and an eerie light across Adela’s face.
The candle-light reflects in Maitland’s wide eyes. “Can’t you tell me?”
Adela casts a glance back at the jar, before standing and sitting next to her two-year-younger sister on the ramshackle bed.
“I can’t, not now, but I promise I will soon as I can.”
A thin hand pokes it’s way out of the blanket. “Promise?”
Adela smiles, hooking her little finger with her sister’s. “Promise.”
The next night, Adela doesn’t even light a candle.
Once she’s certain Maitland is sound asleep next to her, she slips out from under the thin sheets as softly as possible.
She pads to the closet, willing the hinges not to squeak.
In the very back of the closet is a small rucksack, lightly used, stolen three months ago from a pawnshop late on their dues.
Adela glances back at her sister, curled in a small ball under the thin blankets. Every squeak of the floorboards and every raucous laugh from the other room makes Adela start. So long as the thin strip of yellow light spilling under the door isn’t interrupted, Adela doesn’t pause.
She hurriedly throws a few things into the bag. A shirt, a pair of trousers, a few jars of her poisons. Some bread, cheese, and an apple wrapped in a cloth stolen away at the last meal.
Fixing the rucksack closed, she pads over to the window. Fog and smoke curl over the city, and the lights glow eerily through the smoggy sky. The only traces of the rain from last night are puddles, dark and seemingly deep as the ocean in the night. The wind tosses stray mud-streaked newspapers down the street, throwing them against the curb and smacking them into the bricks of the buildings.
Adela shivers as she eases open the window, the wind curling around her like an embrace from a corpse. She hoists the bag through the window, carefully lowering it onto the rusted fire escape.
Perching on the window-ledge, she wraps her scarf around her neck.
Maitland would have remained asleep if Adela’s arm hadn’t hit the window, rattling the glass panes.
Adela freezes. If Maitland cries out, Adela will be caught and punished.
Maitland sits up, whimpering as she realizes her sister’s warmth is gone.
She doesn’t notice her sister until the yellow lights of a car bounce off the building, illuminating Adela’s silhouette in the window.
Maitland’s voice is small and scared.
“You said you’d take me. You said we’d go together!”
“I- I know- I… I figured, if I went out ahead, I could find some place that was safe. And then come back to get you.”
Maitland clutches at the blankets.
Adela smiles, even if her sister can’t see it.
Adela slips out the window into the night, scrambling down the fire escape and vanishing into the shadowed streets of London.
Mother is furious the next morning.
Maitland is sent to her room, cheek stinging for not saying something sooner, for wanting to leave.
That afternoon, Hunter comes, grin sly and eyes full of gleeful malice as he oh-so-causally announces he found Adela’s body while he was out. The police had taken it and she ought to be in the morgue by now. He shrugs his shoulders, saying something about her probably getting caught in the gang war that happened last night, oh, hadn’t anyone told Maitland and Adela? What a shame they didn’t know in time.
That night, Maitland sobs into her sheets, wishing she and Dela had hooked fingers because they always make promises like that and if they had this wouldn’t’ve happened.
She wishes, deep down, that Dela hadn’t left without her. They would have been safer together. They’re always safer together.
She wonders why Dela didn’t tell her.
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