The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (48 page)

             
I could not breathe when that thought crossed my mind. It always crept up on me like a knife-wielding thief in the night. It
always gutted me and bled me dry.

             
“I couldn't love you after that. I tried. She did, too. But...” He leaned forward, his eyes begging me to understand, to see things as he saw them, which in his opinion, was the only way, “we wanted it to be
you
, not him.
That's terrible to say, I know. A small part of me is sorry for saying such a horrible thing. But we're being honest now, aren't we?”

             
“I have always known that.” I stared at him as he struggled with that “new,” honest revelation. They had said things lik
e that before. But through their actions even more than their words, I became aware that I was not wanted. They stopped buying me Christmas presents. They stopped celebrating my birthday. My father started to lose his temper, striking me when he found hims
elf too angry to use words. My mother pretended I did not exist, even going so far as to throw my baby book away. At the time that the world ended, it had been eight years since the event that had taken my innocence. It had been seven and a half since my b
rother's passing. In that time, she had spoken perhaps four words to me, and even that is a generous figure. I was well aware of their hatred and resentment.

             
I accepted it. I could understand it. My moment of weakness had killed my brother. The moment I a
llowed myself to lapse into a fit of silence and ignorance to escape my raging, terrified thoughts, my little brother had slipped and fell, hitting his head on the side of our pool.

             
I cannot imagine him drowning. My heart splits a little every time I see
it.

             
I had been so weak. I had been so irresponsible. That was why my brother died.

             
I had been too trusting. I had been too naïve. That was why my godfather was able to do what he did.

             
I had tried to apologize, only to find that my words were as useless
as the many baskets of fruit
and  flowers my parents' friends had sent the week after Lucien had died. I sat at the table, zoning off into a tormenting space of guilt, regret, disgust, fear, and loathing, staring at the fruit as it rotted and the flowers a
s they wilted away.

             
I expected Maura to apologize, too. I expected her to be on my side. What a little fool I was... She felt no anger over what her husband had done to me. She felt no pity for me. She felt only rage at what had happened to Lucien. She fe
lt only that I had
seduced
her husband.

             
That
I could not understand. I had been nine.

             
None of this is meant to make you see me positively. After all these years, I could not care less. Their faces fade from my mind with each day of my eternal life. I cannot remember my mother's face at all. It was
blocked out, erased completely from the portrait I had of her in my mind. Elijah, Violet and even Penny report the same blank spot in their memories where her face once blossomed in comforting familiarity. Perhaps I inadvertently erased her in my mind and
theirs, though this has caused more pain than it has remedied. My father's face has begun to drip, like when rain falls on a painted canvas. Maura's is clearest to me but then, I had been seeing it since the day I was born. It was branded into my memory qu
ite painfully.

             
I had faith that one day it would fade away, too.

             
All of those thoughts in that moment with my father were the direct result of the fact that I had fallen into the same kind of stupor that had indirectly claimed my brother's life. My fathe
r's shouting voice, his hands around my throat, the way he shook me... Those were my jolts back to reality.

             
“This is what it was! This is what killed him! You
bitch!
It should have been you!”
             
Seeing for the first time in eight years the exact state I had
been in while his youngest child was struggling for life was enough to tip him over the edge. He slapped me, backhanded me, slapped me, backhanded me. I refused to cry out, but I did spit my blood at him once enough had filled my mouth.

             
“STOP IT!”

             
Maura
's desperate scream, barely powerful enough to break through her sobs...

             
What in the world made her think that I needed her to save me?

             
“Go! Get out!” She found whatever small amount of strength she had in her to pull him away from me and push him toward
s the door.

             
“Don't you coddle her, Maura. If you do, we're done.” My father told her breathlessly before storming out of the room.

             
“Don't coddle me, Maura. If you do, you lose such a swell man.”

             
Even in such agony and through a swelling mouth, I could s
till find my inherent sarcasm. I would not succumb to vulnerability now.

             
“Darling... my darling...” Tears were running down her cheeks as she came around to my side of the table. She knelt in front of me, put her hands on my face and pulled me forward to
kiss my forehead.

             
I shook her off furiously. If my hands had been free, I would have slapped her. What made her think that I needed her? She had been kind to me in random spurts throughout the previous eight years. When she wasn't being kind, she was igno
ring me. It took several alcoholic beverages coursing through her system for her to find the courage to be out-and-out cruel.

             
“I'll help you, sweetheart. I will convince him that this is ridiculous. You're just sick. We'll find a way to make you better.”
             
For the first time, I realized that I did not want to be better. If the new being existing inside of me was an illness, then I didn't want to be cured. Part of that sudden acceptance was a realization that there was no stopping the change. But the larger
part was a thrilled acknowledgment of the fact that Maura, my father and so many others had not been “chosen”, we'll say, and as a result, were terrified of me. To put it in blunt, perhaps misleading words, I was suddenly gifted with a tremendous manipulat
ive power, not just an enhanced physical strength.

             
“I'll make my own way from now on, thank you so much.” I replied as a grin spread across my puffy lips.

             
“I love you, Brynna.” She kissed my forehead again before pulling away to look at me. “I know thing
s have been difficult but I love you and I'm sorry. I can make it up to you right now. I can make things right. I'll talk to him. I'm so sorry, Brynna!” As another fit of tears took her, she threw her shaking arms around my neck. I grimaced in disgust.
             
I
knew things that were impossible to know. Still, I did not know if she was genuinely remorseful or if that was merely another moment of random, untrustworthy affection. Her mind yielded no clear answer. After she pulled away from me, I turned the blood ove
r in my mouth, narrowing my eyes as I studied her appearance for some hint of her true motive.

             
“Just let me help you, sweetheart. Let me talk to him for you.”

             
I turned my head and spit the blood onto the concrete floor.
             
“I do not need your help.” I told
her bluntly. “I do not want it, either. I would very much appreciate it if you would just leave the room. I ask for the kindness of your abandonment. That is all.”

             
“Please don't do that. Please don't start with that. You only do that when you're pushing
someone away. Please don't push me away, Brynna.”

             
Now that rage that made shocking, sudden appearances blasted towards her in a delightfully terrifying display.

             
“You think you can push
me
away for years and that I should not be allowed to do the same to
you!?” I bellowed as I lunged towards her. Even though I was handcuffed securely to the chair, she still jumped back. She had not been expecting the sudden change in my mood. “I do not want or need your help! I have never forgiven you! I have never forgott
en what you allowed your husband to do to me!”

             
Her role in what Michael had done to me had never been addressed openly, at least not by me. My words broke her. She buried her face in her hands, whispering something that even my newly heightened sense of h
earing could not decipher.

             
“Speak up, Maura, or I will just read your mind!” I ordered in a furious whisper.

             
Blood was dribbling out of my mouth and my cheek was swollen on one side. She pulled her hands away from her face, reached up, and tried to wipe
the blood away but I shook her off, lunging forward again, needing so desperately to hit her. She cried into her hands for another annoyingly over-emotional moment.

             
“I said that I was afraid!” She whispered tremulously. “I said that I'm sorry but I was so
afraid of him...”

             
I laughed somewhat maniacally, I'll admit.

             
“I didn't help you then but I can help you now, Brynna.” She implored me softly before reaching out to touch my face again.

             
“Stop trying to touch me!”

             
For a long moment, she stared at me,
awaiting an answer that I refused to give to a question that I barely realized she had posed. What she wanted from me was a chance to make up for her cowardice and ignorance that had allowed her husband to claim my innocence. I would never allow her to ach
ieve that peace of mind so easily. I would never allow her to believe that all was forgiven. In fact, I firmly believed that what had occurred would never be completely erased between us.

             
After that long, dreadful silence that stirred her very soul, she t
urned to leave the room.

             
“Maura...” My voice was back to its normal volume. She turned back to me, a look of pathetically desperate hope in her eyes.

             
I spat my blood at her. She covered her face and the wad of blood and saliva splashed onto the backs of
her hands before dripping down her arms. It was gloriously disgusting, I will admit.

             
“That is for covering your damn ears. Now get out.”

Quinn

             
The story of Brynna Olivier was twisted and contorted in a fashion that would rival the abilities
of the pres
s at home. Although, I sincerely doubted that even the most ridiculous of tabloids would believe that she was a Pangean spy placed on Earth to gather our secrets.

             
“It's ridiculous, Quinn! He's her father!” Alice told me in a rage that I couldn't quite mat
ch. “Do you know what I heard today?”

             
She didn't wait for me to ask what it was exactly that she had heard.

             
“I heard that he's going to turn her over to the natives as a peace offering. His own daughter!”

             
“Maybe it's just a rumor. I doubt anyone could d
o something like that to their own kid.”

             
By instinct, though, I knew that I was mistaken. If it meant that he and the people he wished to survive would see many days, he would sell his entire family. I knew that Daniel Olivier was that evil, but I didn't
want to scare Alice by relaying that belief to her.

             
“It isn't a rumor! We can't sit by and let that happen!”

             
“Whoa...” I held up my hands to stop her from continuing. “We can't get involved in this. The last thing we need is to get exiled and be on our
own.”
             
“We
are
on our own! He's starving people! Who is to say that tomorrow it's not our food that he's keeping!?”
             
“You are really upset about this.” I was staring at her in disbelief.

             
“And you're not? You're not upset that this man has pretty much appo
inted himself our leader and that he's cruel and evil? He's letting people die, Quinn, after we fought like hell to get here and live! She's not like him. She walked out of the ship first. She's brave.”