Initiate Her

Initiate her.

I watched as they brought the little girl home. She was about my age, maybe a few months younger than me. She wore a sweet ivory dress with lace at the hem that fell just below her hips, to cover the necessary. She was too much for the dress, and it seemed more of an obscene mockery of innocence than a show of her tender age. She was only six but already wore her colors very well. If it weren't for the red at her eyebrows and at the tips of her quills, no one could find her at night. I remember when she first sat in the living room, legs inappropriately open, nibbling at the edges of a piece of peanut brittle and staring at the opposite wall as if it owed her. She seemed to have an area of toxic air surrounding her, as if anyone who moved closer than a certain distance would be poisoned. She sat there for three hours and then walked into our room, slamming the door behind her. I left her in there for another few hours until well into the evening.

See, I didn't know the kind of people I called my family. I don't think I knew before she did, or for long after she figured it out herself. All I knew was that I was envious of how Lady Zaija doted on her. I wanted the attention. I wanted to achieve the leaps and bounds that little hybrid freak achieved in just short months from when she walked over the threshold of our large house. I thought that I could become brilliant, powerful, better. I only saw her become more toned, sharper, like a finely tuned instrument. I saw Lady Zaija pour herself into her, and I wanted what she had. I wanted it to stop badly. How could this girl just walk in and take everything she had never deserved?

If watching from the sides wasn't bad enough, she didn't even allow you to hate her. No-not like her, but she commanded respect. See, she wasn't normal. She was polite, honest, and smart. You couldn't argue with her. She didn't argue back. She simply responded and you were wrong. And she'd pour me cereal every morning before school as if we were friends. She made herself my sister before I invited her to-gently, coolly, abruptly. She had no friends the first year. Sure, some kids came over to play sometimes. When my big brothers would leave without explanations, I'd open my mouth to protest, and she'd simply put her paw on my arm and shake my head to stop me. She cried silently for months at night. I saw her. She was friendless, freaky, and dangerous. I needed it to end.

It went on for a few more years like that, although she started having friends and leaving me alone, which meant I could have my own set of friends to impress, without her showing me up, and I did. I was the better fighter, and prettier. But she was like strange fruit. In her morbidity she was intriguing, and many wanted a taste. I wished as hard as I ever could for anything to make her normal, boring. Anything at all to make it happen.

Of course, before long we were fifteen, and Victor chose her over me. I declared my complete and utter loathing of her from the moment she walked into my life, and she finally stopped being my problem. I was popular, wanted, even made some new friends in the house. She no longer cast her shadow over me, no longer intrigued anyone. She was taken, trapped by him, and all the other boys were mine for the picking.

I barely saw her in the house anymore, and she transferred schools. She was out of my life completely, save for the fact that we still shared the same home address, and room. I would soon learn that he was a small price to pay to relieve me of her encroaching presence.

***

As I hung pinned to the wall in her chokehold, I finally understood the extent to which Tarzhijana hated me when she said she did, those years ago. Perhaps I was even sorry for just how perfectionist I realized I was around her our entire childhood. Did she know then? I don't think so. I'm fading fast in her grasp, and it everything coming back to me again. I was so angry as a kid, I was nearly emotionless, except for the two months I spent crying myself to sleep after Lady Z brought me from the hospital. It was never home I realize; it had always been an orphanage and more than that, a brothel. If I could talk, if I had the chance I would tell Tazi that I would have traded places with her any day. Maybe I was also envious; I created a surreal world of my acquaintances, and was entirely too impenetrable as a child. She could have never understood. She had a brother and a sister. I had no one, only people lusting for me.

Lady Z was one of them. Oh, how the days when I believed in heroes seemed a million years away! It was wonderful, the attention. I won't lie. I was the main attraction, the little protégé, the strange flower from a sleepy town on the outskirts of Mobotropolis, one of the few proud survivors. It was perfect. I was hollow, and Lady Z and her partners filled me with the knowledge and skills I needed to be the ideal instrument. I was encouraged to be the best in school, to charm with my manners, to intimidate with my cool sophistication, and to keep people stringing along. Meanwhile I was taught to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, seduce, trap, swindle, mooch, ruin, intimidate, and kill. If she understood the price of all Lady Z's doting on me, would she have still wanted it? Even if I have yet to commit murder, I have already done enough to wound me, and I don't know if I have enough time left to atone.

It was morals, values, promises, and innocence stripped away from me, layer by painful layer. I could feel the deepest essences of my being tensing every time they went in for another attack on all that Nadine and Ferguson had tried to build. Yes, I had my room and board, but I had to work to keep it. So I did, to survive. If nothing else I'm a survivor, and I will overcome anything using all means necessary.

So why did she hate me? Imagine nine years of cold, controlled rage. That was Tarzhijana and she stood by my side, shared a room with me, and was, beyond the emotional gimmicks, my sister. Was she a masochist, or did she actually try? It had to be hard being with me so long. I don't even understand who I was back then. After Victor, everything changed. He taught me tenderness, sincerity, and genuine laughter. He was the source of my mirth, he repaired my values, and slowly, my soul came to show. We truly finally loved each other, and when we were fifteen, he forced me to acknowledge it.

To say he warmed my heart indefinitely is an understatement. Just to have known him made me a better Mobian. Surrounded by lust and greed, he secretly showed me love-to feel love, to give love, to want love, to make love. The strange thing was that he was just as devious and cold on the outside as I was. We had to be; it was the demand of our profession. It wasn't long before Lady Z sent us on small assignments. They got bigger and then we stopped going to school. I was going to be initiated into the 'inner circle.' Victor then saw fit to tell me exactly what it was to maim and murder a person. He succeeded in terrifying me, and we then realized we were trapped.

We soon decided we wanted out from all of it, and began to plan our escape. Eleven years of it all, and I finally accepted that Lady Zaija never truly cared about me. It was a harsh reality, and made everything in my world harsher…