Who Will Fall Far Behind - Ella

The last time I stood in this room, it was Fitz Ripley’s undeniable tremors that quaked the disintegrating grounds beneath the soles of our feet. Figures in white suits led me to the door of his mortuary, a stoke look on their face as the brass hinges creaked open and the clicking of a knob rattled - “You have three minutes.”

When we were children, I made deals with the Ripley boys at a cost and a price much higher than it’s ultimate value. Our deals were always a formula, an equation of “If I -” and “Then you -” Their loyal service and the debt they owed me fueled my sick vanity and esteem, and their ignorance to my genuine intentions blinded their actions. When I needed something, when I wanted something to be done, it was always “Oh Little Ripley, won’t you make a deal with Ursula today?” And it was always the nodding of their heads as guilt poured forth from their naïve mouths, “Ursula, won’t you help me -?” But, when our youth diminished and melted away into cruel veracity, the light poured in their eyes and shined upon my rounded faults, so when I needed to fulfill my aching wretches of desires they turned me away with a crooked finger, and it suddenly became, “No, Ursula, no more deals.” My most loyal customers turned into the queen pawn of my own game, and - checkmate - I had lost. The silly Ripley boys, though, underestimated the desperation confidence a Libertine can posses, so, instead I shhhhed their truthful critiques behind the cobwebbed counters of our pawnshop, when the fresh dirt splayed across the brazen knuckles of their hands clung to my dimming demur as they offered up the day’s catch. “Little Ripley, I know you’re a thief, and I know your secret. Won’t you make a deal with me today?”

But, the deal I had to make with Fitz Ripley that day was one constructed out of an altogether different kind of desperation, leeched off the glistens and gleams of Penelope’s stark tears as they dropped onto the bloodless flesh of my hands - “Fitz, let’s make one last deal.” The seconds in our clock of three minutes raced down the waist of an hour glass, and gravity pushed me forward to him as I crossed the silent space between us and tried to gnaw away the familiar trembling in my hands. “If I protect your brothers -” because, even if I cannot give myself for Penelope Libertine, someone must, and, you, Fitz Ripley, must bring her home to me “- then you will protect my sister.”

His eyes flickered back and forth between confusion and anger, anger at the fact I’m spending our last three minutes together by asking him to give up his life for a girl who will die with a spear planted in her skull. When he opens his mouth to speak, to counter my philosophy and ask what makes me think he’d freely die for a Libertine, I answer his unspoken question before it even passes his lips. “I know you’d already give it away for her, anyway.” That’s why you volunteered, silly Ripley boy, that’s why you’re here now, that’s why I’m here.

Silence stretches and our time falls out the window as he stares at me long and hard. “Then, why bother asking, Ursula?”

The guilt thickly weaved in my voice cemented itself into an unreachable place in my ribs as I spoke to Little Ripley for one last time, the hands of a man in white pulling me away. “Agree to the deal, Ripley!” I beg as the door begins to close in front of me, my voice high and frantic as I try to claw my way out of Fate’s grip. My eyes meet his stale ones as he steps away from the closing door.

“I’ll bring her home to you.”

Fitz Ripley, you are in my debt.





When her aerial name settles over the sea of crowds like a fog of dusts, the faces around me turn to meet mine, smirks on their relieved lips. “Can you save her, still, Ursula?” They taunt as I watch her pale corpse body approach the steps of the stage. “Can you save her like how you saved Penelope Libertine?” I wait for Learna’s cries to echo over the square, begging me to “Save her, save her, save her, save her -” and I tell myself - Yes, yes I can save her, I will save her, I won’t let another one of my sisters drown. And the words “I volunteer!” rise like bile in my throat as her sturdy gaze washes over the shores of blatant relief. IwillsaveherIwillsaveherIwillsaveher -

Soon, Penelope Learna Libertine is gone.

And I have yet again failed at saving the ones I love.




Fitz Ripley’s piercing and dead gaze fills me as I cross over the old threshold, the repetitively familiar words, “You have three minutes,” a ghost in my head (like how Penelope is now a ghost in Learna’s). My arms aren’t fast enough when I reach out for her - desperate to remember the texture of her dress or the smell of Mama’s perfume on her skin. When my eyes clench shut, my vision reels back to exactly one year ago, where the edge of a silver blade dug deep into the smooth crevices of my skin, and Learna’s quivering voice echoed in my ears - “You didn’t make a deal with her.” The words were sharp enough to slice through the steel coils in my heart, and, like today, I melt into my sister’s embrace as the gashes on my wrist bleed, once again.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her hair as the tears finally ebb away at the corners of my blank eyes. I want to say more, but the speech clogs in my throat just as how the words “I volunteer!” had this morning and last year’s morning, so I only let my tears fade away into her flesh as my prayers of a quick and merciful slaughter drift away to a Heaven I’ll never reach.

With trembling fingers, I reach to my neck and strip away the pearl dangling from it. I place it over hers, instead, and watch it fall right next to her heart.

“I’ll see you soon, okay?”