the mother we {share} [karmichael twins]

Castor Karmichael

This is misery.

She had never been so sure of something. It was as certain as the sun’s cycle, rising in the east and setting in the west. Prison had sucked her sanity dry and pumped misery into her veins. She was a wilted flower of winter, beauty tarnished, hunched over as her petals faded to a grey. In spring, the flowers were expected to blossom once more from showers, but she was fed poison instead. Her roots shriveled and fragmented into ashy flakes. Physically, she was paler. Bags were etched like tattoos under her eye sockets, painting the gaze of a prisoner. It was half-blind.

Six months of one mundane routine nipped the edges of her sanity. Bit by bit, she grew weary. Every “morning” with no sunlight to regulate her circadian rhythm, she crawled out of bed and used the toilet. It hadn’t taken long to adjust to living with a cellmate of the opposite gender. Weeks of sharing everything reduced private events to simple, inevitable tasks. There was no reason to suffer and wait until the Peacekeepers removed him, and there was no need to ask him to look away. She didn’t care. He didn’t care.

Her weekly doctor’s appointments were the only events to anticipate with some enthusiasm. It was an opportunity to leave the barren environment and breathe the air of a new atmosphere. It wasn’t fresh nor inviting, but it was different. The odor of sterilization tickled her nostrils. When she walked through the corridors, the echoes of screams and cries were almost comforting. It reminded her that she wasn’t alone in her suffering. She wasn’t special. She was another face in the crowd, another insignificant prisoner, and she couldn’t compare her misery to anybody else’s. It was as if she could blend in with their background noise, yet she always remained silent. Only once had she screamed, and she desperately wanted to forget.

The nurses would prod at her atrophied eye muscles and search for signs of infection. Their fingers prying open the irritated skin made her wince. She had an iron grip on the metal table, gritting her teeth and bearing their toxic touches until they made their latest report. Still okay. Healing properly. Replace her old patch with a fresh one. No more spotting. The departure was the worst part because she never knew what would lie in store for her when she returned. Teddy was an absolute train wreck of agony. His torturers had beaten him to hell. The beds of his nails were raw and exposed, his skin stripped away by the cracks of a whip. Many nights had been spent cradling his head and stroking his hair, trying to soothe him to the best of her ability. His misery was nothing compared to hers.

For the longest time, her suffering was minimum.

She spent endless days thinking about Jano. Her interrogator had responded to her pleas with smug displeasure. ”For a murderer, you sure are asking for a lot,” he had said, ”You know it won’t come without a price,”

”I know.”

But he was innocent. Jano Karmichael should’ve never been a fugitive. All she wanted was to clear his name. If it was the last thing she ever did, so be it.

Several weeks later, they approved her request. Review of footage and files had been undertaken, and Jano Karmichael’s name was cleared. It was the most relieving moment of her sentence. Ridden with guilt, she had blurted the news to poor, tortured Teddy in a near hysteric excitement. Part of it was because she had not expected it to come true. Part of it was because there was a high chance she would lose her tongue for it. Avoxes were not myths, as some in Seven thought. The punishment was real and terrifying, and a possibility for her future.

Payment was delivered in a flash of blonde hair and nonchalance. As Castor traced circles into the puddle of orange juice she had spilled, her door had opened. A Peacekeeper marched in with no ounce of hesitation, and clasped her by her chin. She never saw what she had clutched in her opposite hand – she only felt it claw the underside of her eye until blood gushed out. Her screams were lost to the barren walls as the optic nerve snapped and the left side of her vision blacked out. The eye was scooped from her socket, pain poured like acid into the wound and she screamed even after the Peacekeeper dropped her onto her back. She clutched at her face and cried until her throat turned raw.

This was misery. She was certain of it.

They didn’t sleep. Teddy wore a shock collar, and pain erupted after every pathetic blink her instincts continued to manage. Every week they checked her eye socket for infections. Today, after hosing her down with ice cold water, they announced that she would be leaving. Not by execution, not by shipment to the Capitol without a tongue, but on a train back to District Seven. Freedom at her fingertips, yet all she could think about was the fatigue that gripped her bones.

They changed her into the clothes she had been arrested in. The fabric smelled of soap and wood, and she cherished its soft warmth against her skin as they ushered her into the train. Sunlight streaming through the windows was the first natural light she had seen in six months. It was blinding to her one intact eye, like a heavenly light paving her path to home. We don’t have to live in hiding anymore, she thought. Her suffering had been more than what she asked but it had also been inevitable. Did it matter why it happened? She had made accomplishments, she had saved him.

Did she still regret being arrested?

Yes.

Home was where the heart was, and she didn’t need two eyes to find it. Blind and deaf, she would end up there. The ladder to their treehouse was as rickety as ever. She wondered if Jano had bothered to stay, or if he had given up on her return and moved on. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Where would he go? This was home now, whether Castor was here or not. There was no changing that.

She found him when she opened the door. Nostalgia winded her. It was just like old times, yet it wasn’t. There were scars, there were nightmares. Nothing would ever be the same.

”I cleared our names,” she croaked.

The price was permanent.

Castor Karmichael

The aroma of aging wood wafted into her nostrils like a sweet perfume. It was intoxicating nostalgia, a craving now satisfied by her freedom. The staleness of her prison cell made her nose sensitive to the slightest alterations. Blood was tangy and bitter, toilets smelled of recycled ground water, and Seven was a mixture of oak wood, molasses, rainwater, and lumberjack sweat. If she walked up to her brother and hugged him, she knew he would smell like the forest - like pond water and plants. She wanted to. After six months apart she needed him more than ever, but she couldn’t break down in front of him. She would rather him believe that she was invincible despite her condition, that prison hadn’t terrorized her like a rat in a torture maze.

She wasn’t sure how to sell it. There was no way of remaining stoic without worrying him. Assuring him that she was “okay,” was foolish, her ruined body was proof of that. She hadn’t peered into a mirror in a long time, and could only imagine how sickly she looked. Stress and lack of proper nutrition had stripped her of body weight and bruised her beneath the eyes with purple bags. The patch over her left eye was an indication of an injury they would both have to come to terms with. She wasn’t sure if he could guess what had happened or not – it was unheard of to be ripping out eyes as payment for a favor, and she didn’t look forward to watching his cheeks turn a shade of green. If she could see it at all. Vision with one eye was extremely limited. It was like seeing only half of the world instead of the whole, and the missing half had been obliterated, replaced by nothing.

The reunion was calm and quiet, twins staring at each other in an odd anticipation. It was another reminder of how similar they were. There was no dramatic leap forward into each other’s arms; she was too fatigued, and Jano too hesitant. There were questions to be asked and explanations to be made. There was no room for happiness, only the relief that she could be home again. No more stale smells and barren walls, no more screaming. No more fear. No more witnessing the suffering of her cellmate Teddy – yet that also worried her. What if Teddy was still there with nobody to comfort him? What if he never went home? That boy deserved the world and more. She would never know what became of him.

She would miss him.

That was the sadder part. A piece of her heart would be in that prison and there was no way of retrieving it. She could not be whole anymore.

Her twin’s horrorstruck stare filled her with dread. She didn’t want him to know the cost of his liberty, but she couldn’t hide behind a patch forever. It hadn’t been her decision to make such a devastating payment. He had to know that. She never consented to having an organ torn from her body for his sake. Perhaps that wasn’t entirely true – she had always assumed she would be Avoxed. This was not a merciful alternative in comparison, but it was the better option. She wouldn’t be a slave for the rest of her life. She would be able to live with her brother in peace at last. They were long overdue.

Without a word, she slipped the patch from her empty socket and exposed her scar to the world.