The life Taylor Hebert has known collapses in an instant.
When she loses everything, the only choice she has is to run. Abandon her parents, her friends, and the world she was growing up in, because the thought alone of hurting anyone else destroys her.
But Taylor can't leave everything behind, because no matter how fast she runs she can't escape her memories, and good people - people that aren't like her - are after her.
She doesn't want them to find her. She knows what will happen, what she'll do to them. Because her second shadow, a woman that never speaks, hides inside her soul, and it terrifies her.
She keeps squeezing her arms together around her knees, trying to make herself smaller and smaller. She's put her head between her legs because she can't look anywhere else—it would be too terrible, too horrific.
Her shoes slip on the slickened floor when she loses concentration for too long. Her socks squelch, damp against her feet, when she squeezes her toes to bring back feeling to them.
The light of the morning sun through the open window is cooking her and everything around her. It's like she's steaming, the warmth coming off of her in visible waves, turning the blood on her hands and arms sticky and rough. Flies are coming through the window, too. The buzzing grows stronger by the second. The light sensations of the insects landing on her and quenching themselves—it's a buffet. But they're not landing on her alone. There's so much food for them all.
She can't look. She won't look.
The stench is the worst part: rotting meat basking in sunlight. It reminds her of the roadkill she'd seen years ago on the interstate, right next to a gas station her family had stopped at. The smell had made her throw up in the restroom.
Bile was beginning to slither its way up her oesophagus. Her mouth was being drenched with saliva in preparation. But she couldn't vomit now. That meant getting up, running over the bodies to the sink, and seeing it all.
She takes a deep breath and that heavy, acrid scent becomes her world for a single moment. The wet coughs come of their own accord, and the viscous liquid that spills from her lips mixes into her red-soaked jeans.
She can't throw up. Please, no, don't let her throw up.
Tick tock.
Seconds blur into minutes. Why isn't anyone coming? A neighbour has to have heard. They live in the middle of the suburbs. The buzzing grows. The smell worsens.
Tick tock.
Taylor starts chanting a mantra under her breath. It's simple. Clear. Desperate.
"Someone help me."
The sun soars higher and higher until it stops cooking her bare arms and hair.
Tick tock.
Restlessness. She begins to rock back and forth in her little spot in the corner. She taps her shoes against the floor, and each time there's the sticky rip of dried blood strings stretching between sole and floorboard. Sitting still isn't an option anymore. Physiology outweighing trauma if only for the briefest of moments. It hurts to swallow—when was the last time she had water? The growing pit of hunger in her stomach eggs her on to eat. Replenish. Refuel.
But she can't. Because then she'll have to look. She'll have to see it all. See what she did to them.
It's not possible. It can't be.
But the more she rocks in place the worse the restlessness gets. Energy is being pumped into her like a spring. She's always been hyperactive. A chatterbox. So many other kids in elementary school had shied away from her because she couldn't stop herself from talking for ten seconds. She squeezes her fists together and her knees begin to tremble. Spittle steadily drools from her mouth. She spits out and doesn't notice where it lands.
She shakes her head. No, no, no.
Please, no.
Don't make her look.
Not again.
"Anyone home?"
Taylor freezes, stuck on the precipice.
How many hours has she been huddled in her corner soaked in a sticky film of blood?
Her breathing starts to quicken.
She wants to—needs to—get up, run for the front door, scream and wail and cry for help. It's an adult, they'll know what to do. They'll get more help.
But she can't because she's done this. They're dead because of her.
What was it called? The fast breathing and the lack of air. The thing that came before a panic attack. It's happening to her. The rock and the hard place are squishing her to death.
The front door rattles with hard knocks. "We received reports of a potential domestic disturbance. Anyone in there?"
Police. Police helped, right? They're supposed to, right? She can get up and walk to the front door with her eyes shut. But what if she trips over one of them? What if she trips over one of them and collapses in between them all? Taylor moans and it's shaky and broken.
"Help me," she says to herself, wishing for the words to be heard by the police officer at the front door.
"Oh my God."
Through the window.
Before she can think she looks. In terror. In shame. In weakness and hope.
It's blurry. She has to blink the world back into existence.
A man in dark blue, framed by the waning light of the afternoon sun peering through the now closed kitchen window. Who had done that? His eyes are wide, but a hand is covering his nose and mouth.
They're in her periphery where everything is out of focus and chopped.
The dark red.
The ripped flesh.
The vacant eyes.
"Help," Taylor croaks. He doesn't notice through the glass, so she screams it.
He flicks to her and reels backwards, like the weight of it all is truly hitting him for the first time. He says words into the radio on his shoulder and runs from the window.
Help. Finally, help.
But won't they figure it out?
She's alive and they're not. They'll know it was her that did it, that hurt them and killed them. They'll take her away and put her in the Birdcage and everyone will know what she did but it was an accident.
The police officer starts breaking the door down. The guilt starts ripping her apart because she doesn't want to go to the Birdcage but she hurt them and she deserves it but she doesn't want to be taken away.
Then the woman is back.
The woman with monochrome skin and hair like a zebra's hide.
The woman that killed them all.
She hoists Taylor up like she's made of paper.
"No. No, let me go," Taylor says.
Pushing against the woman is like pushing against a brick wall. She carries Taylor like a baby towards the living room, but Taylor knows what's there so she buries her head in the crook of the woman's neck. The zebra haired woman's footsteps are silent but Taylor knows the house. They stride by the corpses and Taylor can't stop herself from sobbing with a renewed morbid vigor.
Banging at the front door. "This is the Brockton Bay PD!"
They'll take Taylor away but it was an accident but she deserves to be because she hurt them but she doesn't want to go away and none of it makes sense. Why did the Empire want to hurt Dad? Why did they want to hurt Mom? Why did they want to hurt her and why did the woman kill them all?
It's too much. Emma and her were supposed to go on a road trip for school. They were going to have sleepovers. Emma's mom was going to take them shopping on the boardwalk and everything was supposed to be normal.
The woman vanishes. Taylor crashes on her shoulder with a harsh snap. Pain. Throbbing, needling pain. More fuel for the fire of her unraveling.
Another slam against the front door. Sirens wail in the distance. Why is she so selfish? Why does she want to run and hide from the consequences? She deserves them, she'd always been taught that actions have consequences and bad actions have bad consequences but she doesn't want to face them.
She can't.
She sits up, and for the first time Taylor witnesses the full extent of what she has done.
"Mommy?"
Something breaks inside her.
Something foundational.
Something that should always be rock solid.
But in this moment it fractures. It shatters like a mirror and the girl she is growing up to be is no longer recognisable. An alien wearing her skin. A girl with a best friend going to school and having sleepovers doesn't do this. Who is she now?
Evil. A monster. Like the villains on the T.V. but so much worse.
The blood on her hands seems to embed itself into her skin like a tattoo.
Please be a nightmare. Please let her wake up and have bacon and eggs in the morning and help Dad cook dinner. Let her read the essays Mom marks for the college and laugh at the lack of effort. Let her lose herself in a book while Mom practices her flute.
But the world doesn't change. The painting in front of her has dried on the canvas.
Vacant eyes.
A severed hand outstretched.
Her pale grey face smeared with blood.
At the very least, Dad is face down.
The front door splinters. The police officer and his partner. Guns drawn.
Then the monochrome woman is back, her hands on Taylor's shoulders and it's like the grip of a vice. They stare into each other's eyes.
"Let her go."
Taylor deserves to be taken away and thrown in jail. Thrown in the Birdcage and left to rot.
She deserves the punishments they give her because she did this. She hurt them and killed them and everything is wrong.
Because the monochrome woman with the zebra hide hair has Taylor's face, and it shows no remorse.
"Let her go or we'll shoot."
And yet, despite it all, Taylor is desperate for her freedom.
Though, I know she's quite young in this and all... and it's probably fair that she's being so illogical what with the trauma and all - but I can't help but feel that growing up in Brockton Bay her parents would have made sure she knows that it's not wrong to defend herself?
Either way, you've got my attention so we'll see where this goes.
Though, I know she's quite young in this and all... and it's probably fair that she's being so illogical what with the trauma and all - but I can't help but feel that growing up in Brockton Bay her parents would have made sure she knows that it's not wrong to defend herself?
Depends on whether or not Taylor's parents were alive or dead before she triggered. If they were still alive when she triggered and The Siberian got carried away & tore them apart along with the assailants....
I think Taylor triggered with the Sibrian's Power. And the Projection took the form of her mother.
Taylor got traumatised and had little to no control over her power because she killed people accidentally.
She sits on the roof of an abandoned warehouse overlooking the bay. Her watch says it's 11:53 pm, the latest she's been up on any day that isn't New Years. It's a full moon tonight, and the clouds are shy. This far from the suburbs and downtown, where the only lights are flickering streetlights, the Moon seems brighter, more vivid.
Angrier, too.
Taylor doesn't remember getting clean, or finding new clothes. But she is, and she's warm enough under a hoodie, cargo pants, and boots. She doesn't really remember how she got here either, into the docks and away from the police. Trying to bring back the memories hurts, and she stopped after almost throwing up thanks to a migraine.
It is peaceful up here, sitting on hard, crumbling concrete, letting the midnight wind run through her hair and over her face, turning her nose red and runny. Even the smell was nice. The open air glides in fresh off the ocean, mixing with the heady perfume of petrol and gas into something both familiar and not wholly unpleasant.
She needs that familiarity. The mundane hustle of her life can't be gone for good. It just can't.
Taylor swipes a tear away from her eye before it has a chance to fall.
She focuses on what's above her instead of below, on the Moon in all its silver glory, on the faint prickle of stars fighting against all the other lights hoisting up the darkness, and the scant few seagulls soaring along the shoreline cawing for whatever reason Taylor can't name.
It's normal. It's what's supposed to be happening. It's easy for Taylor to keep staring up at the night sky because the night sky is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. Nothing's changed up there. Why should anything be changing down here?
The door to the roof lurches open.
Taylor stands with a whimper.
She's back.
The woman with Taylor's face, but impassive, silent, older. She's tall, a lot taller than Taylor, with hair not just black, but white too. Her face is striped like her hair, white on black on white on black. She's wearing the same clothes as Taylor but drained of all colour.
When Taylor got her first look at the woman she reminded her of a zebra, but a zebra didn't do what this woman did.
A wolf in sheep's clothing.
She drops a pile of chips, and sodas, and chocolates on the concrete.
"Did-" Taylor looks around, then whispers, "Did you steal this stuff?"
The woman only blinks at her.
Taylor never takes her eyes off the woman and kneels down before snatching up one of the packets of chips. The first bite makes her freeze—how long has it been since she's actually eaten? She finishes the packet in less than a minute, then moves onto the next one. It's agonising how good it tastes. She can't help but let her eyes close and revel in the salt and carbs and fats.
After her third packet she licks her fingers clean and neatly folds the empty bags in a new pile besides the rest of the food. Her mouth's dry now—she moves onto a soda.
All the while the woman stands behind Taylor, watching her with hands in pockets, hair an unflinching steel curtain. No smile, no frown. No crease of wrinkles in her forehead or around her eyes as she squinted or smirked. No small sway back and forth waiting to release the boundless energy of childhood, or tapping of the foot as she begins to lose patience. No steady rise and fall of her chest as she breathes.
Taylor frantically, deliriously eats and drinks as much as she can, kneeling on the roof, uncaring about what's happened for at least a few minutes, enjoying the unabashed treat of junk food at midnight. She smiles, cheeks ballooning, and gulps the chip-soda-chocolate concoction down in one go. An errant smear of chocolate on the edge of her lip is very quickly and greedily sucked in, too.
Taylor laughs, and it's a child's laugh. Giggly, high-pitched, with a grin full of young and healthy teeth.
But the woman's shadow reasserts itself in the moonlight, and Taylor can't stop the spreading chill in the middle of her chest. The chattering of her teeth, the sweat drenching her palms and the back of her neck, the wet squelching of home that never leaves her ears, like when Dad prepared beef mince for whatever dinner he was making that night.
Taylor enters the warehouse, the junk food now gurgling in her stomach. The woman follows.
The warehouse is dead. Probably has been for years. The walls have been stripped of their paint flake by flake, rotting drywall now the main decoration. The tiles on the top floor are cracked, white colour long turned grey or grotty brown. Some of them are so fragile Taylor breaks them apart when she steps on them, and the sound of their demise echoes for a few long seconds. The woman cracks no tiles behind her; she doesn't even make a noise.
It's too dark in this part of the hallway—she has to bring her hand up to her face to see it and her legs are little more than outlines as she walks. It's an alien sensation to feel disembodied, and it's something she's never felt before. It's like she's breaking apart at every joint but somehow not crumbling to the floor as a pile of separate body parts. It makes it hard to breathe—a question she doesn't have an answer for—and turns each step into an undertaking so titanic she crumples to her knees against a wall.
What's happening?
Where's Mom? She always helps when something like this happens, always knows exactly what to say. She's supposed to be here and hug Taylor and teach her how to make it better. She always does that because she's amazing and smart and proud of Taylor and where is Mom?
A soft hand touches her shoulder.
"Mom?"
But no, it isn't Mom, it's the woman.
Taylor screams and throws herself at the woman, fists flailing wildly and legs kicking as hard as they can. An unending scream bursting into the night.
And then Taylor collapses forward.
The woman is gone.
The rage leaves as fast as it came.
She's alone.
~
She still hasn't slept since the day started at home. This is the longest Taylor's ever been awake. She expected it to be more exhausting. Adrenaline? Did adrenaline last this long? Maybe she'd learn more about it in chemistry this year.
Or maybe she can't get to sleep because she's lying on concrete with her hood as a pillow? Both? Yes. No. Maybe.
She's getting sick of thinking.
Who the hell can sleep without a blanket? Taylor had never understood camping before, but now she's confident she never wants to go camping, because this sucks.
Roll on one side. Roll to the other. Roll back. Lie on her back. Lie on her stomach. Squeeze her eyes shut against the concrete. Let her eyes unfocus, gazing at the ceiling.
"C'mon," she whispers to herself. "Just let it happen like Dad says."
One of the warehouse's old doors yawns open. "YO!"
The adrenaline comes rushing back.
"WE HEARD YOU!" Another voice.
The break room's a few doors removed from the main floor, and down a hallway littered by glass shards like a booby trap.
Another door bangs open, this time closer.
"HELLOOOO?"
Taylor isn't going to take any chances.
She finds her way to one of the bathrooms, lined with dead stalls and cracked mirrors. The first stall she tries the hinges are rusted shut, and the second the toilet is more brown-green than ceramic.
All the while more doors somewhere else in the warehouse are opened.
The last stall Taylor tries is stuck too, but budges when she pushes on it.
"Please open."
She pushes up against it shoulder first like she's moving one of those massive mahogany cabinets she'd seen in antique shows, and, to her surprise, she quickly catapults into the stall.
The door slams hard against the wall, and the sound rattles the restroom, an earthquake in the making.
"WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE NOW!"
Taylor freezes. More doors careen open, now progressively louder.
Her hands go clammy. It's so hot so quickly. How could it get so hot like this? She has to take her hoodie off or she'll burn up.
Another door. Right outside the restroom.
She has to stop panicking.
There's something important she has to do she hasn't done yet. She rubs the sweat off her hands on her pants. No, that isn't it.
The laughter of the two voices grows like the first roaring lashes of a bonfire. What hasn't she done yet?
Dad was always dealing with problems at work. How would he remember what he was forgetting?
God, she can hear her own blood pumping around her skull. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon."
Taylor watches the door to the bathroom kick open.
She hasn't closed the stall.
She catches a tattooed arm in the darkness before closing the stall. She'd broken the lock getting in, so the best she can do is leave it open a sliver.
She sits on the toilet with her knees up to her chin, like she's seen people do in movies when they're hiding. They don't get caught.
Usually.
One of the voices chuckles. Two pairs of footsteps sputter off the shattered glass and broken tiles.
"No way that bitch wasn't getting murdered, man. You hear that scream?"
"Look, just don't be surprised by anything that happens in these shithouses."
"If you're saying that to murder then I really don't wanna know what you're thinking."
"You'll know what I mean eventually."
Taylor squeezes her head between her knees and focuses on her breathing. They wouldn't find her. They couldn't. She just had to breathe.
Something metallic clangs on one of the stalls next to hers.
Then it clangs on the stall on the other side.
The footsteps stop in front of her stall.
Taylor shakes like a leaf.
And then her stall creaks open inch by inch.
There are two of them. Young, but older than her. One carries a metal baseball bat. He wears a frown that quickly becomes a scowl. He's covered in tattoos. The other has a blanker canvas, and is very much concerned. They're dressed in green, the letters 'ABB' on one of their jackets.
"Huh," the less tattooed one says.
"Wait," Taylor says, but the one with the bat grabs her by the collar and throws her onto the ground before she can start.
Lights out.
Or, it should be.
The world reforms, and Taylor's standing in the top floor hallway again. At first it seems like day, but the Moon still shines heavy in the sky. She can see in the dark?
A few moments tick by before she realises she isn't breathing. The telltale signs of a panic attack creep up but then, nothing. Nothing at all. No hot flash, no clammy hands, no brazed vision. Nothing.
Like she's inert.
She tries to say something to herself, but no words come. She has a tongue, and teeth, but when she rubs her throat she pushes the skin all the way through until there's the terribly odd sensation of the front of her throat touching the back of her throat. Was there anything in there?
Why isn't she panicking?
Her hands.
Her hands are different.
They have the monochrome colour of a zebra hide.
This isn't happening. It can't. It makes no sense. Mom, and Dad. Taylor can't be this thing, not after what it had done.
And yet she's calmer than, well, herself at any point in her life.
"What the fuck are you doing, man?"
There's a tug somewhere between her body and her mind luring her to the main floor.
A single thought kicks her into action: she has to go save herself.
Didn't expect to ever update this again but I was struck by sudden inspiration that quickly turned into an actual outlined plot. Funny how that works. Hope you enjoyed.
Weird. At first, Taylor's version of the Siberian seems independent, she doesn't show any sign of being aware of its actions. But then, when she's knocked out by the goon, she's fully in control. Does she only have full control when she's asleep, or does she have an extra instance of herself controlling it independently and the memories only integrate when her real body is asleep?
