james hayes / d12. ( fin )

Your story begins much the way that someone once said the world would end: not with a bang, but a whimper. That was the thing about soft beginnings, they didn’t always come from tales that would end gently.

And the Hayes daughter is anything but gentle.

Not anymore.

The first thing you remember from childhood is strawberries.

Your father used to buy them from one of those in the Seam brave enough, or rather desperate enough, to venture beyond the walls and pick them from their home connected to the earth. You come from old money; well, as old as money can be in a nation that's not even a century old just yet. Your father was a peacekeeper once upon a time, so you come the kind of money with an origin story most people don't like to talk about, where humans could be less than and the only kind of work that mattered was the kind a man could do with his hands. Your mother wasn't the mayor's daughter, nothing quite so high profile, but there wasn't a soul on the merchant's side of town that didn't know who she was. It wasn't a surprise to anyone when your daddy retired his gun in favor of a wife, wasn't a surprise when he gave up his government job and turned himself into a good ole family man.

Your mother, with her crack of fire red hair that you'll spend your entire life being jealous of, turns herself into a trophy of a woman, collecting pretty things around her in the way only the wealthy can in Twelve. A rare vase that she never bothers to put real flowers in, a delicate hairbrush that she refuses to let you touch for fear you'll pull free the bristles, and her prized possession that crystal set that she loves use to serve her guests sweet tea in the summertime humidity.

The one that always mattered most to you though, sometimes least precious of them all in your mother's eyes, a daughter she could parade around with like one of her childhood stuffed dolls come to life.

Twelve was kind enough to you, kind in the ways that it only ever is to the fair haired and light hearted, for girls forced into being soft-hearted, into being pliable, a thing to be held in someone's palm, devoured whole by a man who could control you the same way your parents must. This is the lesson that your mother teaches you day in and day out.

Your beauty is your greatest strength, James.

It makes you want to vomit.

You learn the lessons all the same.

You are to be beautiful, but there can be nothing savage about your beauty. You are to grow like the flowers in your mother's garden, carefully planted and tended for, never straying beyond the lines of their confinement–beautiful, but trapped, safely tucked away from any amount of freedom. You're a diamond of a girl, trapped in a display case, a merchant princess without a crown or kingdom to truly call her own, only a window to dangle her feet from while the moon shines at midnight. Your mother primes you perfectly, knows exactly all the ways to train a daughter into becoming a woman.

After all, everything you do reflects back on her.

You get taught everything she can think of, from the way you ought to hold your shoulders to the way you should press your tongue to the roof of your mouth whenever something bothers you instead of clenching your jaw–less noticeable, darling. She shapes and molds you in her perfect image, transforming you from girl to doll more and more with every passing year. She teaches you how to dress, how to frame your mouth just right so that it rounds itself out, alluring but not overtly so. She teaches you that soft colors, whites and blues and other soft hues suit you best, about how the little dresses she loves to dress you up in are just pretty enough to get you noticed by all the right boys.

They make your eyes look brighter, she says.

It makes you want to rip hers out.

Instead you press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and smile.

She taught you well.

Wide-eyed and golden haired, you blossom into puberty late, but in the exact way your mother expects of one of her toys, the telltale marks of womanhood neglecting you until the summer you turn fifteen. At first, you think nothing of it, but then you walk into school for the first time after that summer and you feel like a girl changed, maybe even like a woman grown. The girl your mother always dreamed of, all rosy-cheeked and smiling, but there was an air about you that no one could deny, some kind of fire that hovered right there under the surface. You wore the pastels sweaters that your mother bought you and you kept your heart locked away in the glass display case she had so long ago created for you, but you can't deny the way your heart starts to tremble every time someone looks at your twice, can't deny that you get a thrill in your chest every time someone looked at you like some come again miracle. But your chest--for all the it beat, you still felt hollow, absent, empty what you could only assume was love. After all, how could you learn to love when your life has been so suspiciously absent of it?

It is one thing to be played with and dressed up, one thing for your mother to care for you and brush your hair tenderly.

It is another thing entirely to be loved.

Your mother whispers in your ear each evening our beauty is our most valuable currency, my darling–our prized possession, as she dragged a comb through wet golden hair, the flaxen locks dulled by the dampness, with a kind of care, a tenderness that looked like love, but you know never was.

Your mother loved her daughter for the pretty thing she had molded her into, loved her because she had successfully taught the young thing how to be a possession, not a girl, not a woman, but a display item, and for all that your mother praised you for this trait, for this fact of your dull and miserable life–it was still a dull, miserable, lonely life yougirl-turned-doll lead.

But like all dull, miserable, lonely things,

                                                             you dream.

You dream about the life you'll find beyond the four walls of your home, the life that you might be able to convince one of the boys in town to give you. You dream about going beyond the fence, becoming someone who lives beyond the reach of your mother, where you will be more woman than doll. You've spent too long being caged.

Still, though, you are a girl not yet grown, much as you convince yourself you are ready to be more than the fragile china your bones have been turned into. You were raised to be a pretty young lamb, and lambs do not have such dreams.

And like all pretty young lambs,
you will be led to the slaughter.




song: dark side by bishop briggs