SCRAPPED CHAPTER | Chapter One
I am being called, someone is calling my name. A voice I haven’t heard since I was a child. Or at least not properly. My eyelids sink down, shrouding me in periods of darkness that last longer every time. The gravel is cold under my cheek.
There has been a hissing sound in my head ever since my beginning. It started that day, quiet enough to have been mistaken for the rustling of leaves. Except it was the dead of winter, and there were no leaves to be seen. It’s grown over the years, consumed me in my waking hours and in my dreams. But it seems to recoil from the voice calling me. No, not exactly recoil… it dissipates. It weakens. The voice gently takes it away. You don’t have to worry anymore.
The hem of a skirt in front of me. Green, brown, and blue embroidery with red running through it. Soft leather shoes, worn in, holes about to form in the toe. Not fit for winter, not fit for the snow that comes with it. She reaches her hand down and strokes my hair from my face. Sits down in front of me. The glow of the flames looks like a halo around her.
“I don’t blame you, you know.”
Her expression is so soft, her voice so full of grace. Nobody on this planet could do her wrong. Not even the one responsible for her death.
She tilts her head to the side and smiles a little. “Let it go. It wasn’t your fault.”
Whose fault was it, then? How far back must I go? If not mine, then hers, for contracting the infection in the first place? Or was it her father’s, for entertaining our delusions that she could get better? Or her mother’s, for entertaining his delusions that he could help? The village’s, for entertaining theirs? Or maybe it was my parents, who set this all into motion in the very first place. My mother, whose face I will never know, who created me and then was punished for it. Right from birth I have been flung into a cycle I never asked for and never wanted. Feared because I am different and different because I am feared. Constantly at risk of being erased by those who do not want me to exist. Attempted to be erased by the very ones who gave me life, because that life was never meant to happen in the first place. I was never meant to happen. And now I’ve caused so much else to happen.
It’s funny though, because after all of this, a strange feeling of contentment washes over me. Although none of this was meant to happen, it has, and in a way it means I’ve made my mark on the world in doing so. I will not be erased after all.