:: This Tangled Web :: The Ferde Family ::

With sharp gray eyes, Arden looks over the light yellow pages of the book, the tale that lay embedded in the words wrapping itself around her mind until she was completely submerged in the sharp letters. After a few minutes of reading of a man that quit smoking (with extremes consequences if he slipped up), the end of the book was drawing near, with the man who was helping him quit, joking that if he didn’t lose the weight he had gained from quitting, he would cut off his wife’s little finger. Then about fifteen minutes later, Arden laid eyes upon a dinner party between the quitting man and his wife and his friend and wife that suggested the place to him, the quitting man realizing that his friend’s wife’s litter finger was missing.

And that’s when Arden hears the dinner call.

Grumbling cuss words and swears you’ve never even heard of, the ghostly looking figure that was Arden removing herself from one of the seats in the show room where her family performed. The make-shift building, if you could call it that, was almost totally dark except for a few of the lights that had been dimmed down to Arden’s preference. As she walked in the cover of slight darkness, she walked onto the platform where the horses roamed and performed during a show, the floors marble white and scrubbed sparkly. Arden scoffed in disgust, the fleeting thought of can’t have little Friesia walking on a little bit of dust. Bet they got Shetty to do it, poor thing pacing through her mind as she cut behind the stage, grabbing her jacket and shoes. After putting the articles of clothing on, she stuffed the ridiculously aged copy of Night Shift under her jacket and launched herself out the door into the slightly bruise purple and cloudy gray sky, little water droplets coming down and hitting her jacket with pit pit pit sounds.

Legs the skinniness of a gazelle stomped on muddy ground and grass with honest to goodness circus boots. Arden, with hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets and hooded head looking down at the dirt and mud, could only think of the show tomorrow, and how father and mother were probably already fawning over her, telling her things like “I know you’ve done it a million times, but I have a feeling this will be the greatest show yet!” and things like “You are simply fabulous on stage, the crowd with simply love you!” Yeah, sure, the crowd might love her, but every other sibling in the family knew that Friesia was someone you couldn’t love if you knew her well enough. I guess those boys she fools around with don’t know what they’re getting into. Tragic, tragic.

As the most intelligent person in the family, Arden could easily see through Friesia and the act she performs in front of her parents. It wasn’t really even that hard to hear her giggling and laughing and trace her down to find her with a boy she had never even met before, and Arden could only think of how oblivious her parents must be (or so much in her favor they refuse to accept that their sweet little Barbie doll was such a walking contradiction) to not be able to catch her earlier. Words like blackmail and you better be nice or else I might let a couple of words slip drifted behind her eyelids, and as the cruel, cold person she was, the thoughts were almost tempting, enough to bring a thoughtful, yet holier-than-thou smile on her face.

To Arden, Friesia was a spider. She builds a huge spider web of lies and deceit, a perfect construction. Then, with words and expression and charm, she lures the poor, helpless, clueless flies into the damp strings around her, trapping them into an eternity of misery and sadness. But luckily enough, Arden had not been caught. The only thing keeping her safe from the vile creature that was her own flesh and blood was her intelligence, which told her deep inside her that she was a manipulative, unkind person. The evidence was all skin, heliotrope patches of flesh decorating the rest of her sibling’s bodies while Friesia was left totally clear. In her parent’s eyes, little Miss Friesia could do absolutely no wrong. But to Arden, Friesia was a walking contradiction.

When Arden finally landed in the kitchen, she carefully slid off her circus boots and threw the hood behind her long blonde hair (which she was ashamed to admit was actually quite similar to Friesias) and shook of her jacket, catching the Night Shift before it hit the already wet floor. She was just getting to The Ledge in the book and that was a story she didn’t want to miss.

With leather bound book in her claws, she gracefully pranced across the kitchen, looking in the big pot that sat on a stove, bubbling happily, while Arden looked on, a perfectly shaped eyebrow rising to the middle of her forehead. “For the love of Ripred what is that?” “Stew.” Arden rolled her eyes for a moment before smiling and sarcastically muttering ‘fabulous’ and sitting at the kitchen table, arms crossed on the tablecloth. “So, where are the plates? Like, are we just going to eat out of the pot? Should I grab one of the big spoons?” “No, ah, the twins are going to be setting the table.” Let me guess. Because Friesia said so.