ridley mortuus | twelve | fin

ridley.

She was scraped knees and heavy breaths and running and hiding and being found with tears in her eyes. Because all of them were monsters... weren't they? Her mother and father were. Her siblings, (even she was.)

She was sure it had all started off innocent:

"I need help."

"We are here."

And look at what they had turned into: monsters of greed, creatures jaded from a world too cruel and a hand of fate too harsh.

They still tried to help, Ridley thought. They still saved as many as they couldn't. And maybe what they did after was... Maybe it really was as beneficial as they all told themselves. (But what if it wasn't?)

Hearts belong in chests, Ridley told herself, not in the hands that swore to keep them beating.

They had their jobs. They always had. Ridley's was to help take the organs themselves out after the patients stopped breathing. ("Why is there so much blood, Eirlys?" "Don't worry. They can't feel it.")

What if they can?

Ridley Mortuus was born a girl with stars in her eyes and promise at her finger tips. Now all she could see were the open bodies while her fingers gripped the handle of a knife. She felt unsafe, and perhaps rightly so. She was not meant for such cruel work, and even though Eirlys and the others put on brave faces, she liked to think that they weren't, either.

She hid behind her hair, long and raven-colored, as they tucked organ after organ into jars and placed the once pure glass into their father's capable hands.

("They can't feel it.") But she could. She felt every cut, every snip and stitch. They wouldn't have been missed, but Ridley wouldn't ever forget them. She kept their names in a journal under her bed: pages and pages of lost souls whose bodies were sold for profit. Each week brought new faces, new names, more money, and certainly more pain.

Eirlys thought Ridley was too young, both to keep the secret from the others, and to handle the work. She was never supposed to know, either, but once when the stars still burned in her eyes, they let her curiosity get the best of her and her feet got brave enough to march downstairs.

At the age of fourteen, Ridley traded in her paint brush and her pencils for a scalpel and a deep, deep secret. She'd tried to paint again as an outlet. She wanted to forget the faces and feel like herself, and when she painted line after line, the pictures all turned dark. Men in capes, women crying, entire families standing around tombstones. The Mortuus family was the reaper of souls. They decided who paid for life, and who was bought for death.

Eirlys was not an affectionate person, Ridley had realized, but she had also realized Eirlys had a soft spot for her, right in the nook of her shoulder. When it became too much, it was okay for Ridley to close her big brown eyes and bury her face into her shoulder. She loved all her siblings, but Eirlys was not just her sister: she was her protector, her adviser, and her best friend. She went to Eirlys for advice before any of the others, and did whatever Eirlys suggested.

("Don't cut too deep, Ridley." "I won't.")

("Be ready with the clamp, Ridley." "I am.")

("Take a break, Ridley. You're turning green." "Thank you.")

She was not meant to be a reaper of souls, but maybe the others were after all. None of them seemed quiet as fractured as she. They all still smiled with ease and made jokes of what they did, or talked about it like it was okay. At dinner, they would make veiled remarks about it so that the younger siblings wouldn't know. She wondered if they had done that before she knew, as well.

She wished it was still that easy: that she hadn't opened a door that was not meant for her to open. One choice, and her life had changed. She looked at her father through a black filter. He was no longer the man who gave her piggyback rides, or the man who helped her with math. He was a man who stole people's organs for a profit.

But the one thing that was worse than knowing what went on in that basement, and helping to get it done, was refusing to help. Her family was all she had left in the world. Her dreams, the stars, they were all gone. And she feared being alone more than anything else in the world. So she would simply hold her breath, pull out a knife, and cut. And she promised herself that, eventually, things would be okay again.

("I hope they will be, at least.")

{ @fabulousraven }