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“You were an awful child.”Helga G. Pataki couldn’t bother looking her mother in the eyes. She was too worried that instead of the sleepy glaze that commonly laid over them, she would find something worse, something like hate, in those dark pools. “You cried all the time—whenever we put you down, whenever we picked you up. When you were hungry, when you were sad.”It’s normal for babies to cry, she thought bitterly, but her throat had closed up. She couldn’t say the words. There was another whisper in her head, one that said that maybe, just maybe, it was different for her. That she had been a destructive monster, a happiness-stealer shaped like a newborn. One that had gotten left within a normal family and slowly ruined it from the inside.Helga picked at a scab on her knee, a scrap from baseball—her team had won, 3-5, because she had stopped three runners. Winning had been fun, thrilling, and even though he had been on the opposite team, Arnold had still smiled at her and congratulated her efforts with a soft timbre.“Sometimes, I thought about just leaving you at the fire station,” Miriam chuckled, a slow sound that reminded Helga of molasses. The corner of her scab lifted, revealing the pale pink of new flesh. “Or covering your little mouth until you just... stopped.”From the corner of Helga’s eye, she could see her mother’s hand go up. The delicate appendage was varnished in plum bruises. Her mother pressed her straw against gnawed lips. The languish pursing and sip made her go crazy—Miriam acting as if she didn’t destroy Helga’s life, like she didn’t just drop an atomic bomb on everything and ruin it yet again.I hate you, Helga seethed, sharp teeth biting into her lips until she swore she tasted copper. I hate you so much. Can’t you just finally roll over and die?Fire ants crawled along Helga’s skin, and in their trail, they left behind burning hot vitriol. It would be so easy to just lash out—throw something, yell something, hit something. Her mother would finally show something more than cold detachment, a fortitude of impassivity. Her swollen mouth would drop, nose pale pink, tears welling up in dead eyes, just like a baby left hungry, crying for attention.Helga knew it would work too. The only time her mother ever reacted nowadays was when her father was calling her some form of worthless, throwing a fit and smashing her liquor on the floor. That infantile expression was always there—when Miriam knelt to pick up the mess, carefully gathering shards so that she didn’t cut herself. She treated Bob like he was a god.An ocean roared in Helga’s ears, a crowd of heedlessness that begged for more from her. Her face felt like it was melting right off. Whatever ugly thing lived inside her had its mask ripped away. There was pressure building up in her body. She was shaking, scratching, and her heart was stuttering in her chest. Her nails dug deeper into the scab, tearing.Once again, she ended up drawing blood.
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“Can I tell you a secret, baby sister?”Olga’s eyes were like a doll’s, unflinching. The silver moonlight peaked through the frills of the younger girl’s pink curtains and made her gaze glimmer when she looked around. Those needle eyes pinned Helga down. Mercifully, the rest of her sister’s face remained covered, including her rogue, tearful cheeks.Something apprehensive gnawed at Helga’s ribs. “What?”Her sister’s eyes swam, fluttering. Her lashes were stuck together in clumps by salt water. “Promise not to laugh?” Olga asked. Helga felt like she had aged ten years in that moment. She was stuck in a body larger than herself, towering over her sister. Helga shoved the image out, before pouting.“I won’t.”“I mean it!”“I said I won’t!”Olga went silent for a moment before inhaling. Once, twice, and then a third time. Each breath sounded sharp, like scissors slashing through paper. “Okay...” The older Pataki said. Her next words were a yowl. Helga imagined a cat that had gotten its tail stepped on. “I hate it here.”“Here”, Helga knew, was more than just the house they lived in. It was the rough voices at night. The vacant stares at noon. The new carpet smelling pungent in the summer afternoons. It was dishes left for days at a time, sometimes even weeks. The empty cabinets with a singular jar of peanut butter. There were flies in the kitchen, roaches in the bathroom. It was disarray, it was living in disaster.It was a child’s hand incessantly tugging at the clothing of an adult, never receiving a glance in return.“It makes me sick. I hate it all.” Olga spit out. The truth was a disgusting medicine on her tongue that she could no longer keep down. There was that rhythmic sniffing again, but faster. Helga counted with her—one, two, and then three. “My head races and my stomach hurts. My heart doesn’t want to work anymore. I’m scared that it'll give out while I’m watching cable or when I come home. Even during dinner! It’ll stop and I’ll be dead! Right there at the table!”A spark lit up the youngest Pataki’s mind—a shared connection between the bodies of the sisters, the twin pause of a beating heart. It was a skip heart that even Arnold couldn’t bring out of her. One of fear, or possibly out of animosity. Either way, it was something she shared with Olga, a bond built with blood that she would keep close to that stuttering heart.“I’m so awful for thinking like this.” The fire had left Olga, and those doll-like eyes slid close. The shell of blankets that was holding her face back broke, leaving Helga exposed to the quivering lips painted onto her pale composition. “And I hate it all so much that I just want it to be over. Should I just kill myself?”Something cracked in Helga, porcelain hitting the floor.Her mouth worked faster than her brain. “What the hell are you talking about?”Olga whimpered, sea foam eyes darkening at her sister’s tone. She stuffed her blanched face in her hands like a mourning mother. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have—!” She let out a heaving cry, but tears had never stopped Helga before, and they wouldn’t do so now.Dread was making Helga blind, wrapping blood-red silk against her eyes. She was desperate to sink her maw into anything that would get close to her. Her hands ached to hurt. “No, you shouldn’t have!” She hollered back, not caring if the King heard them or not, “Don’t you ever think anything that stupid again!”The ants were back again, and Helga resisted the urge to scratch. Instead, she watched as Olga looked up at her with glass eyes. “Baby sister,” the teen pleaded, looking absolutely broken down. She was the shattered pieces of the impassioned girl from before. "Please, I didn’t mean it. Don’t be mad. I’m sorry.”The beg connected slowly through the fog in Helga’s mind. Mad—what an interesting word to use. Helga looked down at her sister and wondered if she saw their father in her face, in her tone. After all, when she looked down at Olga, all Helga could see was their mother. All the unspoken melancholy and the dead ambition carving out a face that was smoothed over by the acrid drop of liquor.Helga licked her teeth and fancied the taste of copper on her tongue. Mad was the King’s emotion—he owned it and wore it like a badge. It was his claim to fame, the honor reserved only for himself in his castle. Sadness, the girl knew, was entirely Miriam’s—a feeling that slowly seeped into everything. It was a carnivorous emotion that devoured everything it could. Now, Helga was feeling the rush of power while Olga was feeble—the two gifts their parents had passed down with blood.The thought practically made Helga giggle.
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Phoebe Heyerdahl was a small girl with a weak composition, all pale skin and skinny limbs. Her voice was quiet when she spoke, and she had a tendency to hide behind her bangs like they were blackout curtains between her and the world. She didn’t look people in the eye very much, but when she did, they were wide behind her glasses, like she was stuck looking permanently shocked at something that had happened around her.Helga hated her immediately.To be more accurate, Helga actually wanted to crush her beneath her heel. She wanted to grind Phoebe into nothing but fragile dust until there was nothing left of the tiny girl but minuscule particles. She wanted to beat her until she rolled over and showed her belly, nothing less than a subservient dog.Most of all, Helga wanted to pluck the girl’s big, bulging eyes out so that she wouldn’t have to be looked at with such pity anymore.“Your parents forgot to give you lunch money again?”Helga kept her eyes trained on the playground, watching as Harold pushed an older boy down the slide without warning, cackling all the while. The other boy landed in a heap at the entrance, cradling his elbow close. He must’ve hit it on the way down.“It’s not a big deal,” Helga grumbled back. “They’re having ham and cheese sandwiches. It’s gross.” She tried not to think about how the last thing she ate was a heavily bruised apple she found in the bottom of her backpack, remnants of a lunch she didn’t finish three days ago (when Miriam remembered to give her some money).“But you love ham though…”Helga cut her eyes to Phoebe, a nasty snarl on her face, but the other girl just had her head down, frowning at the bitten peanut butter and jelly sandwich in her hand. The girl in pink glanced down at it too, suddenly aware of the nutty smell of peanuts and the sweet tang of grape jelly, all between bread that sunk in Phoebe’s fingers.Helga’s stomach sounded like a motor starting up, growling for what felt like at least a minute. Her cheeks flustered, and she harshly shoved a fist into her stomach, like that would quiet it. “I’m going to the bathroom.”Helga felt like a robot as she stood from her seat, jerkily pulling herself along as she left from outdoors and headed into the airy school halls.Rather than turning toward the bathrooms, Helga walked to her locker, unevenly putting in her combination and yanking it open with more force than it required. The space was messy, shelves covered with scraps of paper that contained random notes and answers, or private thoughts that she would confine to herself. No money or food though, her stomach made known.Helga grabbed her pink bag, shaking it up and down, hoping to hear the clinking of coins. All she got in return was crumpling papers and rustling fabric. Her stomach roared again, and she sighed, leaning forward to press her forehead against the cool metal of her locker’s shelves. Just a moment of solitude.Then she pulled herself together. Helga put her bag back and went to shut her locker before she headed over to the bathrooms, stopping in front of the water fountain. It wasn’t food, she thought, but it was filling enough to stop the gargling sound that made her look soft. She drank until she felt like she was going to burst, putting her hand on her uncomfortably bloated stomach, before heading back outside. She felt full with every step.Phoebe was still where Helga left her, sitting at a wooden table in the shade. Though, Helga noticed, she looked pleased, sitting with her head tilted a little higher. Helga clenched her fist tighter against her gut.“What’s with that dumb look?” She said, scowling as she got closer. If the other girl’s harsh tone bothered her, Phoebe didn’t show it.“Here!”Phoebe thrusted a triangle of a peanut butter sandwich into Helga’s face, edges unevenly existing. It looked ripped apart. The soft bread showed indents of little fingers, holes that nearly ripped into food. “You can have half!”A flicker of sickness bloomed in Helga’s stomach, and she could feel the water she threatened to swallow come back up the wrong way, but she pushed it down with the clench of her teeth.The ailment lingered under her skin as she took half of it, taking a big bite. Not to be greedy, but to assertive. Helga didn’t want to let her have the chance to ask for the sandwich back.“I like blackberry jelly better.”