Tweedledum and Tweedledee (23 page)

"What? Our daughter?" Marie snorted. She pointed at Ella. "That ... thing has never been my daughter." She turned around and walked towards the door. Then she stopped. "Besides you know beating her won't help one bit," she said before she left the room.

Ella's father sighed again then threw the belt away. He grabbed Ella by the shoulders then helped her get up. Their eyes locked for a second. Ella saw how he pulled backwards as if he was afraid of her. Then smiled and caressed her round cheek. "You know I have to punish you when you do not obey us, right?"

Ella didn't even blink. Her panties had fallen to the ground. Her dad stared at her privates. Then he reached over and cupped it with his hand. "You seem perfectly normal to me," he groaned. "Soon you'll grow taller and have breasts like any other girl," he said and lifted her shirt. He touched her chest and squeezed her nipples. Then he kissed them and licked her across the stomach down to her privates. Ella stared at him motionless while the wind picked up outside the windows. In the distance she could hear the waves as they hit the shore. They sounded angrier and more aggressive than ever.

"A storm is coming," Ella said.

Her father lifted his head and looked at her. She looked down and their eyes met once again. He pulled away with a gasp.

"It's going to be bad," she continued.

An anxiety grew in her father's eyes, and then he slapped her across the cheek. She hardly moved. "Go to your room," he said. "And put those pants on, you filthy monster."

But Ella didn't go to her room. Instead she ran to the end of the hallway, found the hatch to the attic and opened it by pulling the string. She pulled down the ladder and climbed it while fighting her tears. As soon as she was up, she pulled the hatch closed. The attic was her favorite place to hide from her mom and dad, since they never thought to look for her there. They would never admit to it, but they were both scared to death of the place. Her mom claimed she had once seen a black man standing in the attic wearing clothes from the eighteenth century and her dad couldn't go up there without feeling a strange, unbearable pressure in both his ears. 

Ella never saw or felt any of all that, on the contrary she quite enjoyed hanging out up there, isolated from the world. She went to an old red velvet chair that belonged to the previous owners of the house and sat down. From there she could look out the small window and still see the ocean and the beach. The waves were white with frothy foam. Ella sighed and wished she could bring Jacob with her up there, and then she would definitely live up here between the old paintings and furniture. Why the previous owner hadn't brought their stuff with them when they left the house, Ella didn't know, but she enjoyed going through all their strange things. She took special delight in rummaging through the wooden chest and looking at all the old pictures and clothes in it. It was cool the way a fog always overflowed out of it when she opened the lid and it sounded like it took in a deep sigh.

Ella got up from the chair and knelt beside the chest. Carefully she opened the lid. The fog came and went and afterwards she peeked inside. There seemed to be more stuff every time, she never got to the bottom of it. She picked up some pictures and looked through them. Pictures of a little girl about the same age as Ella. The picture was in black and white. Ella touched it gently. The girl looked back at her. Emma put it back in the chest, and then found a small jewelry box. She remembered having opened it once before. Now she did it again and stared at the pair of earrings on the bottom of it. Green beautiful stones in each of them. Ella picked them up and put them on. Then she went to the old body-sized mirror and looked at herself. But it wasn't her own reflection looking back. It was that of the little girl from the picture wearing the same earrings.

Ella smiled and waved. She had seen her in there before. The girl waved back. Then Ella put her hand on the mirror like she had done once before and as soon as she saw the girl do the same, she closed her eyes. Her body started shaking and she felt how she was slowly filled with something, she opened her eyes and looked at the white smoke oozing through into her hand and through her body. When it was over she lifted her eyes and stared in the mirror only to realize the little girl was gone.

4

T
HEY WERE DRINKING
heavily. Drinking, smoking pot and doing coke while yelling and screaming volatile words at each other. The music was hard-core rap. Lil Wayne sang:

We cop a whip and drop a brick - that's how we do it

Weed, liquor, money, and guns how we do it

Freak bitch to swallow cum like fluid

Then they pulled off their school uniforms and circled each other with naked torsos while grunting and growling.

Peter was the first to make a move. He stepped towards Michael and punched him in the face where he had hit him earlier. Michael was squirming in pain. More blood ran out of his nose. He wiped it off on his bare arm, then went towards Peter and punched his fist into his abdomen that despite of all of Peter's many hours in the boarding school's gym caved to the hit. He groaned and bent forward in pain. Then Michael lifted his leg and kicked him in the face, causing him to fall backwards.

Peter was in pain, but nevertheless quickly back on his legs, delivering a punch at one of the other boys, Ole, blowing the air out of him immediately. Once back up, Ole threw a punch at Ivan and Ivan threw one back at Michael. Soon they were all sweating, panting, catching their breath, and bleeding on the floor.

Peter raised his hand to stop them. Then he took the bottle of vodka from the table and passed it around. They all drank from it. Ivan panted and grinned. He enjoyed this immensely. It left him with a great feeling of being alive, finally for the first time since he had been sent to this school.

It had been hard on Ivan to leave his home and his old school. But since his parents had died in a helicopter crash his aunt who now had custody didn't know what else to do with him. Travelling was her life and she could hardly drag a seventeen-year-old boy with her. Besides he had to finish high-school. It wasn't that it was bad enough to have to leave the house he had grown up in and say goodbye to his old life, it was the fact that he had also lost his girlfriend. Not because he had to leave but right before the fatal crash that killed his parents, Amanda had been taken from him. Not by another boy from school that she had fallen in love with, no by Ivan's own big brother who was home on vacation from business school in Switzerland. Over dinner he flirted heavily with Amanda and later he had Ivan in a closet of his room, seduced Amanda and had sex with her against her will in his bed forcing Ivan to listen to them all night long, moaning and breathing and Amanda crying for help.

The experience had left Ivan numb, emotionless. He wanted to be angry; he wanted to at least feel furious, something, but there was nothing. Not even when the police came to his door one afternoon a few days later and told him that his parents had died, did he show any emotions. When his aunt sent him off to boarding school with the words:
at least you'll be someone else's problem
, he never even blinked.

But now. In this forum, his life suddenly had new meaning. For the first time he actually felt something. A thrill, an excitement, whatever. It felt good. He was exhilarated, almost electrified.

Peter handed him the bottle and Ivan drank greedily. He could feel the alcohol as it entered his body and dazed his sense of judgment. Then he roared with his new friends, like animals getting ready for their hunt, warning any prey out there, that they were coming.

"Are we ready?!" Peter shouted.

"We're ready!" they shouted back.

"What are we ready for?"

"Ready for the kill!" they answered.

"I can't hear you brothers!" Peter yelled.

"Kill, kill, kill, kill!" they chanted while hammering their fists into the table.

5

E
LLA FELT HAPPY,
happy and strong. It was the same thing every time she had been with the little girl from the picture. When they touched each other through the mirror it was like their strengths were gathered, like she gave her something, some kind of power that filled Ella with joy. What the girl did to her, she didn't know, but she liked it. She liked that the girl seemed to like her as well. Most people stayed away from Ella and she never had any friends except for Jacob. The little girl had been her only friend as long as Ella could remember.

She had seen her the first time when she was no more than about a year old and her mother had climbed to the attic (that was back when she wasn't afraid of going up there - before the man and strange footsteps she often claimed she heard) Ella had climbed after her up there without her knowing it and hid behind a big painting. Not knowing her baby was up there, her mother had left again once she found the box she was looking for and shut the hatch. Emma spent two nights in the attic before they finally found her. Her mother used to say that she hardly recognized Ella once she was brought down from there. Marie still claimed she was somehow exchanged with another baby while up there, that the child who came down wasn't the same as went up.

Now Ella heard her mother call for her and decided to come down. Carefully not to be seen she opened the hatch and climbed down the ladder. As soon as she was down, she pushed the hatch back in place and sprang for her room. She barely made it inside before her mother stood in the door.

"You need to take your bath. It's almost time for bed," she said her eyes avoiding Ella's. "I've filled the tub for you."

Ella tried to smile. "Thanks," she said searching for just a small glimpse of affection in her mother's eyes, something she hadn't seen since that day she was found in the attic. Why she hadn't cried or seemed dehydrated was a mystery to everybody in the house, but the doctor assured her mother that there was nothing wrong with her daughter and that she probably just enjoyed herself going through all the fun stuff up there.

"But the swelling?" her mother had asked. "She seems so bloated ever since she was up there."

"It's probably nothing," the doctor said. "Watch what she eats, maybe it'll disappear once she grows a little more. She'll be fine. Don't you worry Mrs. Lucas."

But Ella's mother worried, a lot. She worried that this baby wasn't her daughter that something terrible happened to her real daughter and they were left with this ... this monster. Most of all she worried about what this monster was about to do to them all.

Ella knew all that, she could see it in her mother's eyes. So many times she wanted to tell her that she was still her daughter, that there was nothing wrong with her, but she knew she couldn't convince her mother about something she had to feel in her heart. She couldn't force her to love her.

"You're welcome," her mother now said with a sigh. "Better hurry up, it's getting late."

"There is a storm coming," Ella said again.

Her mother nodded still without looking at her and then closed the door.

Ella undressed, and then ran towards the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel. Her big sister Louise was standing in front of the mirror plucking her eyebrows.

She stared at her little sister in the mirror, and then continued plucking. It looked painful, Ella thought.

"You should do something about yours as well," Louise said. "It would open up your eyes. Yours are so bushy they are almost grown together in a unibrow."

Ella looked at herself in the mirror. Her sister sized her. "Well you need a lot of work, don't you?" she said with a grin.

Ella stuck her tongue out, then turned and pulled the shower curtain revealing the filled bathtub behind it. Then she dropped the towel and put her foot inside of the water. Her sister made a grimace behind her naked body, she thought Ella didn't see. Ella pretended to not have and sunk her tired, heavy body into the warm water.

"Do you want me to set a timer for when you're boiled?" her sister said with a grin. Then she laughed as she returned to plucking. Emma looked at her while biting her lip. She felt her cheeks turn red.

Louise let out a scream as the mirror cracked in front of her.

6

P
ETER DROVE THE
BMW
.
Ivan sat in the backseat with Michael while Ole sat in the front. They had all put on blue blazer jackets and Freddy Krueger masks they bought online. Ivan's heart beat fast with adrenalin while singing along with
Tyler, The Creator's
lyrics:

"
This is what the devil plays before he goes to sleep ... Some food for thought some food for death, go 'head and fuckin' eat
," he sang while nodding along to the music.

The other guys sang along as well. Ivan felt the thrill of excitement as he uttered the words.
"I'm tall, dark, skinny; my ears are big as fuck ... Drunk white girls the only way I'll get my dick sucked."

Peter was speeding and ran a red light. He lifted his head and looked at Ivan in the rearview mirror. Ivan grinned. Peter could look like he was completely mad, a true maniac. Ivan loved that. In his hand Ivan was holding The Glove. He felt proud as he stared at it and turned it a couple of times to better study it. He touched the blades with his fingertips and made a small scratch that bled on his forefinger. He sucked the blood off still while staring in awe at The Glove. It had such a history. Ivan had been almost speechless when Peter had handed it to him and asked him to wear it tonight. It was almost too great an honor.

The Glove had been made by some students back in the eighties. They founded the order and came up with the entire idea. Since then it had been passed on from student to student. The glove with blades for fingers, just like the one Freddy Krueger wore in those scary, old movies.