Helena Ovets // District 6

Helena’s fingers grip the blade, drawing it across the skin on her back, over old scars and new, drawing sharp trails of blood which trace down her back through the valleys of crisscrossing scars. A light, airy, sigh passes through her pale, chapped lips as the blade slices through the flesh. Her eyes, heavy and dark, bloodshot, flutter closed and the hint of a smile paints across her lips. She feels, forgiven. She feels, forgiveness from Ripred. She feels euphoric, she feels Holy. Then the feelings fade and she is left with the regret of the mistake so she drags the blade- digging deeper- through the flesh on her back.

The marks she leaves are a reminder of what she will become when her final call has been made. The lines, the grooves, the raised edges of the scars, curve across her back to form feathers; blood red, dark pinks and brown lines form intricate feathers, one on top of another. Feathery wings of that of an angel, a creature so pure that they fill Ripred garden, sing songs, be happy and love. Love.

Love is something that Helena can barely comprehend. A child of the convent, raised by nuns, mother lost to the world of sin and ruin, the young girl was locked away in darkness for being naughty. Being naughty was a sin, being naughty was an emotion Helena often felt. Stealing iced buns from the pantry, stealing sweeties from the head nuns sweetie jar, anything sweet, Helena loved. Had loved. The feel of dough between her fingers, the tacky feeling the sweeties left between her fingertips. Oh she loved the feeling, she had loved it so much that it had become a sin. A sin which the nuns punished her by locking her away.

So Helena learnt that she shouldn’t be naught, she shouldn’t love, she learnt to be emotionless; it didn’t stop the nuns treating her like a sin.

Then Tomas and Maggie had come to save her, raise her from perdition and take her away. They had saved her when she was 12, 5 years ago now, and she owed them her life. she doesn’t remember being smuggled from the convent, over those brick walls that kept her caged for so long, in the bottom of a burlap sack Tomas and Maggie had taught her the truth of this world, the truth of sin and the truth of good and they had shed light on how selfish the nuns were, how they believed she was a creature of sin.

See, Helena is not one. She is one of many. One of a few who are the same in their DNA but each different in their persona’s and traits; but all the others were traitors, sheep, imposters, sins according to Tomas. Helena was the first, the original, the shepherd and then science has taken her and copied her once, twice, three times, four times, five, six, seven… the list went on and on. They had copied her so many times, created the devils creatures by their hands and called it gods work.

Helena scoffed. She scoffed because the men who created those demons were oh so very wrong. They did not realise that they were creating things with a mask of god, but the devil beneath their skin. Creating the monsters in fire and brimstone, thinking it was heavens gates. Oh they were so very very wrong, they were misguided, as were the creatures they had created in her own image as if she were a god, a deity. And so she would smite them as if she were one. She would kill each and every single one.

Maggie and Tomas had taught her more than gods calling and the truth about her; they had taught her how to kill. How to slaughter a body with nothing more than a weapon made from a chair leg. They had not taught her how to draw the stick men on the walls, representing each clone of hers, they had not taught her to chop the head off a doll, its hair the colour of its idol, its model, and leave it behind at the scene of the crime. That was all her doing, her little spin. Perhaps that is why she had been caught, gutting that girl withher brown eyes, her round face, her pale skin with the dark hair.

She had been caught, taken away, returned. She’d survived the detention centre, by the will of Ripred no doubt, she had survived, only to return to learn of Maggie’s death. Killed by one of her own. “Sneaky Beth…” Helena muttered, her hand reaching across to a doll with brown eyes, brown hair, and a pretty little uniform to match. Her fingers brushed through the dolls locks, the sensation felt like water against her finger tips. “Sneaky Beth killed Maggie…” her lips parted and the words spilled out and there was a tinge of pain on those words.

No she thought…grabbing the blade again and running across her back. Emotions, emotions were a sin. She must not feel them. She must not. So she cuts, slices through the skin and draws more blood. It trickles down and she lets out another content sigh “I will kill you…” Helena’s eyes parted for just a second, glancing to the doll on the mantel piece “I will kill you sneaky Beth...and all your sisters too.”

YES SIR YES SIR THREE BAGS FULL