Forgiveness was weakness.
Only God could forgive them, they thought, only her.
Every move they took, they took for her. Only mother, mother was the all knowing, the one who created them to bring her back. Made of her calm mind, made by her rationality, made to save her from her own reign.
They walked down over the dilapidated mounds of earth that the farmland was based upon, swinging a lump of something warm and wet in their hand. It dragged behind them like dead weight, bouncing inconsistently over the pebbles and gravel. In their other hand rested a splintering stick, driving wooden splits into their hand as it padded along the ground. Three red cardinals sat on the fenced off gates of the farmland as they pressed open the freezing metal. One hopped around to their feet, interested in finding food for itself, or smelling this new person out.
Two cardinals flew away not long after, and they kept walking. The town was all sleeping, right about now. The only ones awake would be too tired or drunk to get in their way.r
They would be forgiven, they thought, she would be appreciative of the chance to start again.
Their eyes searched the skies before dawn drowned out its beauty with those disgusting oranges they had always hated. Stars blinked back, and they wondered what stars were made from. Something cooling and congealing on their hand dripped onto the ground, and they shifted the weight between their fingers to prevent ache in their hand and shoulder.
They wondered what they were made of. Who they were made of. Whether mother had, in all her wisdom and power, made them from herself. Maybe they were her, in a way.
They should give that part of her back, one day. When she was back, and would forgive them, and take it with a warm smile and a 'thank you.'
Movement captured their vision as they paused along the path behind the house's fences. The soft melody of the wind whistled through nearby reeds, and they assumed it was simply a rat, or some small squirrel, following them.
Their eyes trailed the branches, and they found themself wishing they could bring this kind of peace down underground with them. Bare feet slapped against concrete on the main street, a soft 'pat pat pat' with such rhythmic timing they decided to hum a tune they remembered from the day they were born.
The melody jumped from place to place, up and down, to the side and incoherent and oh so lovely. Mother had sung it much better then they could, but they supposed that if she had made them from her rationality, then they needn't be good at singing the song she once calmed her heart with. They took in a deep breath, the smell of dandelions and roses filling their nose as they passed a few bushes planted outside someone's home.
The burial grounds came into view as they pushed through brambles just outside the edge of the connecting village. The deadweight they dragged with them bumped and got caught on a thorn, tearing something with a noisy splatter, spraying the surrounding trees in deep reds and browns. They didn't care all that much- the forest cleaned itself up nicely, and the foxes deserved a treat with what was to come.
Their skin felt wrong today. It slipped from where it was supposed to be, they thought, making their hands wrinkly and their scalp itch with the pull. Their free hand moved up to pull on their hair, dragging skin over muscle and fat and bone, until the bags around their eyes set back into place. A few strands of hair stayed in their palm, and they sighed at the sight, wondering if that meant they would need a hood until it grew back. Fingers, now youthful with stretch and feigned hydration, they dumped the dead weight randomly on their way to a dusted old shed. Mother left the key in, they thought, because she wanted them to do these things.
They ruffled through their pocket, and briefly panicked when they didn't feel the cold metal immediately, only for it to click against their fingernail uncomfortably. Their face lit up with a smile that ate into their pale cheeks, pressing the key into place in the shed's half-mauled lock and twisting it a few times. Unsuccessful at first. They tried it again, grunting after a second before hitting the damn door into splinters because the lock wouldn't goddamn open-
It flung wide, lock mechanism flying off into the darkness somewhere, and they stomped into the shed with a bang and a clatter, fumbling in annoyance for the shovel. Once the metal found skin, they relaxed into themself again.
Mother would forgive their outburst, they thought, she would understand their frustration. They were getting her something to eat, after all.
They picked a plot, after a while of wandering. One that was in view of the crypt so mother could see what they were doing so kindly for her. The first time they had done this, they had twisted their arm the wrong way a few times in a row. That was back when they were learning how to use their body right. When they were still new to being human. That was a few years ago now, they realised as they dug out a hard square of earth and shoved it aside to dig out the ground beneath. This was their least favourite bit, because it got them dirty, and they had to focus on all of their joints to stop them from cracking and making extra work for them. The grime caked under their fingernails every time, and was hell to get out even on good days.
Once a few feet had been dug down, they walked over to the weight they had dropped and dragged it into the new pit. Its skin peeled off onto their own like paint, and was taken in by theirs as if it belonged there. Some colour raised to their face, and their skin stopped feeling so wrong. They did love it when Mother gave back to them. They piled a thin layer of dirt back over the pit, then placed the square of hard earth over it to cover the moved grass from view.
The leftover dirt was thrown by hand into the forest's edge to be trampled away by animals.
They were a saint, they thought, because the earth and grass had been much greener since they were born.
_________
Early morning had Alcmene grouchy with sleep in her eyes and a bubble in her ear. She wiped it with her sleeve as she lazily crawled from the bed, partially disoriented by seeing the world from her own height again. All the tiles were chilly, and Alcmene got the lingering sensation of water dripping from her hands as she toddled over to her wardrobe and heaved open the doors. Father Arion had gone through the effort of getting her thinner, lighter doors so that they were easier for her to use, but it was still a strain for her, since she wasn't very strong.
All her clothes were clean, like they were every time she opened her wardrobe. Neatly folded too, which she didn't see a reason for, because she was just going to rumple it up when she wore it anyway. But besides that, she got dressed, shook off the dream that was still sending tremors through her body, and made another heaving attempt to pull her bedroom door open to get into the hallway. She then paused, and went back to her bed to grab the pouch and tie the strings to her belt. When she realised she couldn't actually tie a knot because no one had ever taught her to, she held it in her palm and went to get food.
She was rather hungry, she noticed as she walked. Her stomach rumbled like it always did when she smelled tarts for breakfast. Father Arion greeted her with a grin as she walked into the mess hall, and before she was able to protest any, he picked her up and sat her on the kitchen counter. He wordlessly tied the pouch to her belt-loop, before placing a large bowl in her lap.
The natural morning light was flooding in, giving the whole commune a cozy glow. Some kids passed by, throwing food around, only for one of the priests to catch one by the scruff of their robes and pick them up kicking and screaming. It did make them stop though.
Alcmene was pulled back to the bowl in her lap when it moved with a thump as flour was dumped rather unceremoniously into it. Some got into her nose. She almost sneezed, but Father Arion turned her face away so none of it got into the bowl before he chided, wiping her nose with a napkin that smelt weirdly of rosemary.
"Kid, you don't sneeze into the food. Now, we are making some bread today for Ms. Erin because she's feeling unwell. Would you like to choose what kind of herbs we add to the bread?"
Alcmene nodded excitedly- she'd never made bread before, so this would be fun. But then his words caught up to her, and she looked upset. 'Erin' had been nice to her so far. Had even snuck her a tart once after dark when she'd come across Alcmene wandering the commune after she'd had a nightmare. She hadn't even asked what Alcmene was doing up so late.
"She's ill? Why?" Alcmene asked, having been handed a spoon to mix the flour once father Arion added the water. The dough was hard to mix from the angle she was at, and the spoon kept almost slipping from her grasp.
Father Arion made a face- the one that Alcmene had come to know as his lying face, because Father Arion lied a lot for a man who said he only ever preached the truth.
"She just caught a cold last night, is all. Do you need a different spoon?"
"No," Alcmene said, even though she did.
The dough was starting to come together when Father Arion was starting to present Alcmene with different herbs to add to it, and asking strange questions about soup despite the fact that she knew absolutely nothing about soup except it was both hot and a liquid.
Alcmene thought, as she mixed the dough, that she must have been lucky to not get sick, because she could only remember being sick once, and that was when she was older.
Pastor Tyche popped in to help at some point, and gave Alcmene a smile as they spoke to Father Arion about something Alcmene could hardly make out. Even if she could, it's not as if she took any real notice. She was much more interested in the way the clumps of flour in the bowl yellowed with the eggs and combined into blobs around all the random herbs she'd said yes to.
Pastor Tyche, despite being there to help, wasn't actually being very helpful. Alcmene didn't quite know how to make bread and they were distracting Father Arion.
Luckily, the man seemed to notice after a while that the child was getting awfully close to over mixing the bread dough, and took the bowl from her to transfer the dough into a fat, tall tray.
As Father Arion popped the tray into one of the many ovens of the commune kitchens, Pastor Tyche stood beside where Alcmene was sitting on the counter. Her legs swung absently, and she looked at them with wide eyes, as children always look at people they find either pretty or interesting. Pastor Tyche produced, from thin air apparently, a tiny rounded and shaved stick, with a glob of something golden-brown at the top in the shape of a star. They handed it over to Alcmene with a kind smile, and spoke as she took it.
"That's a type of sweet- the gold stuff is melted sugar mixed with honey," they claimed. Alcmene looked at the small star on a stick in her palms and touched it with the tip of her finger- it was sticky, and flowed up attached to her like the water in her nightmare had. Only this time it slowly dripped down again after a few seconds of staring at it. When he licked it, the taste was so sweet it felt like it dried her tongue. She didn't want to appear unappreciative of something she'd been given for free, but if she was being honest, she would have preferred a tart without a little splintering stick in it.
Pastor Tyche didn't stick around long, instead walking out a side door to swap places with the priest on the stage of the cathedral's main prayer room and restarting the constant thrum of sermon and religious nonsense Alcmene had decided to tune out weeks ago, only in a different voice.
Father Arion was watching the oven, with a face that he probably assumed Alcmene wouldn't understand or even really see.
His eyebrows were ever so slightly knit, his lips pursed, and his eyes scanning up and down like he was mentally reading a book or watching a very fast fly skitter up and down a wall after having its wings ripped off.
"Mister Father Arion?" Alcmene slid herself off the counter, wincing at a shooting pain on her foot that travelled up her leg when she landed, but ultimately deciding that wasn't important, "You look…" she couldn't find the word for it, "...sad?"
Father Arion rubbed his eyes over once, like wiping away at tiredness or the glazed look in them, and smiled, "It's just 'Father,' Alcmene. And I'm not sad, simply, ah- worried, after nice Ms. Erin. She is one of our newest followers, after all, and illness is uncommon here."
Alcmene knew for definite fact he was lying. A serpent wrapped his tongue, and she didn't have enough information to take it from him now. His face read like 'Erin' wasn't sick. Read that it was something else, maybe something he thought she was too young to understand.
She remembered, as he asked her to wash tomatoes and potatoes and carrots, when Mama had held that same face. Though the rest of the memory was fuzzy, she could feel the bile in her chest rise like she was about to cry. So she didn't correct him- no, no she just let him keep his worries to himself because she didn't understand. Not yet, she knew she would have when she was older, but she wasn't older right now. The veggies in her hands would be long rotten by then black with mould and gone with time.
The soup smelled good, with the way Father Arion had cut every piece to perfection and strained it and let Alcmene taste test it. She'd asked, quietly, where 'Erin' was if she was sick, and Father Arion had told her that 'Erin' was in her room, probably and preferably sleeping off the illness.
After what felt like an utter eternity, the bread was done and cooling, and the soup was being decanted into a small bowl portion to be taken to 'Erin's room.
Father Arion had sent Alcmene away instead of letting her come with him to see 'Erin', but the girl found it insulting that she wasn't allowed to see her.
So she wrapped a hand around the pouch on her belt and squeezed, so that way she didn't make any sound as she followed him.
Peaking into the doorway, she watched Father Arion set the bread and soup on 'Erin's nightstand beside the bed. The pair were speaking lowly, muffled by distance and the fact Alcmene was leant against the door listening through a sliver.
Father Arion sounded concerned- moreso then he had been since Alcmene had crawled out of the sewage into his toilet.
"Erin, don't tell me you're still-"
"Mn," 'Erin' cut him off, her hand cupping her nose before she grabbed the soup and took a deep breath of it. She coughed for a second- though not the kind of cough one did when sick. It was the type of hacking wretch that shook someone's chest to get a tickling out, or a sticky smell. The kind that absorbed into mucus and lingered for days past its time. She relaxed at the smell of the food, but as soon as it pulled away from her face, her nose wrinkled in disgust again.
She cleared her throat, "Smell's how that ghastly thing looked. Like pig shit mixed with fish guts."
"Language. And why? I've never met someone who can be this affected by a smell- no matter how bad," Father Arion commented, tearing a piece of bread and giving it to her as she arranged herself comfortably on the bed.
"I've always had sensitive senses. Born with it, my dad says," 'Erin' mused. She took the food and slowly ate- trying to take her time to mask the smell of whatever it was that was making her feel so sick.
Almene didn't think she was actually sick. There was no way. She sounded too awake, and too clear. She didn't sniffle like the kids did when they got sick.
'Erin' continued around a squelching mouthful of bread and soup, "Make's me sick if I get too close though. That thing was just… close."
Alcmene wondered what she was talking about. Her mind flashed through memories of when she was older, trying to find something that smelled of pig feces and fish insides. For the life of her, though, she just couldn't.
_________________
The blood in her veins ran cold. Every footstep she heard behind her could have been the wind, or a fox, or that thing, and she couldn't tell which without turning around.
All she could do was run. In the dark, through trees it was a miracle she hadn't hit yet, over gravel and twigs that burrowed into her feet as ants into an ant hill, over maggot-ridden animal bones that she threw back each time to try and slow it down. Even though she knew it made no difference.
It made her feel human, to be so scared. Like she could die. Right here, right now, in this moment. And while Antigone had always wanted to 'feel human', this wasn't how she'd wanted it to happen.
But now Ismene's weight was on her back, heavy and unmoving and so so fucking cold, and Antigone could hardly see with every step leading deeper into the woods until road and gravel blended with shrubbery and foliage and claw mark and ll Antigone could think of was the fact she so desperately wanted a bed. Her bed. The one next to her sister's, the one that was warm and not stabbing into her with every move like the world was right now. The lumps and bumps because it needed changing, the soft duvet she always complained about her mother washing with too strong a soap that clogged her senses the first night after.
God, how she wished she was there.
Instead, her vision could make out the dull silhouette of a gate closed over a split off pathway she was headed rapidly towards. Her grip on her sister loosened slightly, so she could move her to the left and veer herself right and over the gate as fast as was humanly possible for a young woman carrying someone of their own weight.
It was still behind her, even then. Whatever that thing was that was following them- Antigone could feel it huffing breaths down the back of her neck. The gated off area was a yard- empty, except for the smallest entrance to some underground hideaway that Antigone had seen. Her fingers felt nimble, trembling as she slid Ismene off her back and into the cubby as fast and quietly as she could. She pushed her down as far as she could, climbing in after only to open her eyes upon hitting a solid tile as she landed.
Her eyes were blinded by something bright, hands coming up to cover her face as she adjusted. Flickering candles lined either side of the hallway, the crumpled and dirtied heap of Ismene crumpled before Antigone's feet illuminated by them. The girl had no time to think of what this place was, only that she could hear it scratching at the entrance to get in after them. Antigone still couldn't turn to see it- she could hardly breathe without feeling all the oxygen in her lungs expand and burn in her mouth as she heaved her sister up over her shoulders and struggled with her down the hallway.
The tunnels grew dimmer and dimmer, until Antigone couldn't remember the turns she'd taken, and couldn't smell or hear the thing, and couldn't stand the feeling of her sister's cold body on her skin anymore. She collapsed beside another turn, and stayed on the ground so long she could hardly think.
Her hands were laden with cuts and scratches, driving blisters into her palms and fingertips as she tried to push herself up. She had to move, she couldn't stay here, she should just take Ismene back home and pretend everything was fine.
But she could only hope. Her fingers too cold and blue to wrap anything now, the candles of the halls hardly denting the chill of the air. Her sister was dead by now. She was dead when Antigone grabbed her. She had been the whole time.
Antigone wept into her hands. Screamed at the darkness and thrashed and bit and clawed at anything within reach until she realised that she'd managed to force open a door in her haze. She'd broken the handle, and hit everything inside in sight before breathing heavily and sinking to her knees.
First it was the image of her sister's face- or current lack thereof- then it was the sound. The quiet but definite marching of that thing approaching. Then it was the smell- like the fish her dad always complained about coming up on his lines half-eaten by opportune predators. Like the pig sty she always hated cleaning out but would give her own life to go back to now.
It was the drag of her sister's corpse as Antigone found it and tried to get it to the room, to hide it, to protect what was left of Ismene from it before she died too, before she couldn't defend her sister anymore. This was Karma, she thought, claiming her now. Pulling her innocent sister into this had been a mistake. And that thing was getting louder, drumming constant, bone scraping wood and stone as it smelled them out.
Her fingernails ripped and tore, and she cried and screamed as she buried her little sister in the dust of the old place she'd gotten them both lost in. The dirt was dry, and covered an inch at best, but it was all Antigone could do. She then sat herself in the corner, and looked around the room she was about to die in.
Much less grand then she'd ever hoped. Filled with antiques her mother would have loved to talk all about the history of, because she always knew the history of everything. There was another body besides her and her sister, though. Resting delicately as if asleep on a short raised wooden ledge just beside her. It was mostly skeleton, and Antigone wondered just how long it had been down here. The robes and colour were vibrant, though- even in the flickering low candles. Antigone found herself staring.
If she was half as beautiful a corpse, maybe her parents would forgive her. She almost begged the empty air to tell her parents she was sorry. Sorry that they wouldn't come home to their babies anymore. Sorry for not saving Ismene in time, and not giving her the right burial.
Sorry for leading that thing to their home in the first place.
Her jealousy was about to kill her. Had killed her already, probably.
And she felt so scared, and so fucking sorry. She curled in on herself as she heard the door bang open, then she knew nothing of the world at all except pitch black, and the feeling of something wrapping her head with a warmth she leant herself into.