ruth stauss. two.

They called me Ruthless, an awfully strange name for anywhere but Two. A place for 'almost's and 'has-been's, clinging on to days of glory that have long since passed. Names are supposed to be powerful, but if anything mine made me weaker - crushed underneath the weight of what it meant and how I could never become what my parents wanted me to be.

I fit in just fine here, abandoned little girl with rebel parents now dead in a ditch somewhere. I fit right in with the almost, the has-been, the lust for something I once had in the past. Plucked up by the Strauss parents because they smirked at my name - it's the only time it ever did me any good. Ruthless, I was supposed to be. What a phony name. What a disappointment I am. A decent enough fighter, like all the kids in Two, but nothing special. Nothing terrifying. Just another skinny girl with something to prove, constantly worried about how long I'll survive underneath this roof.

It's who I've become, the paranoia. So I cling to it, so certain of my uncertainties. Always questioning everything around me, second-guessing who I am, it's the only thing I'm sure of. I don't know who gave me curly hair, I don't know why my eyes are green-brown and my ears abnormally large. I don't know why when I eat eggs a hot pink rash spreads across my tanned skin and threatens to close my throat up. I don't know who my real parents are and why they left me alone. I never will. I don't know if my birthday is my birthday and I don't know if my death-day will be tomorrow or next year or next century. Question marks hook themselves underneath my eyelids and force me to stay awake night after night after night. 

"You're in your head too much," they tell me, "concentrate on the now". I'm trying. I'm slowly getting better. But the lingering thoughts always seep in. What's the point? Will I die? When? How? Will I go like Anabelle, at the hands of the kids I've grown up with? They think I'm insufferable, I wouldn't blame them. Everyone in this house has someone except me. All I've got are my wits and my thoughts and my reflection.

Doesn't help they got me in later, after everyone had already made friends and alliances and bonds. I came in all scraggly at nine years old, matted hair and looking feral - and nobody said anything to me. Straight out of the orphanage, I stank of failure. The way they all looked at me is something I will never forget. Now they laugh at me brushing my hair over and over, making my bed every day, scrubbing my skin red and raw, and I can't win. If I'm unkempt, I'm disgusting and rabid. If I'm meticulous, I'm obsessive and neurotic.

At least they don't push me down the stairs, idiots Tobias and Callum always breaking shit and hurting each-other and look how that turned out for Callum. Tragic, but it won't be me. If someone comes looking for a fight I'll fight back, but I don't let their words get to me that easily. I get it, I'm a black sheep neurotic little orphan girl without a chance in hell of surviving this house - they don't need to tell me twice.

"You're no fun Ruth," they moan. I simply shrug and dust down my coat. I'm no fun, they're correct, but I am smart. I know where to place my efforts, when to give away my fighting style, what weaknesses I can and cannot show. They can mime sleeping when I roll off of the fighting mat but in the end it's my will to survive that will keep out of the graves in the woods.

Doesn't stop me dreaming about them. I'll admit I'm a little scared to even go near the woods. They haunt me, the children that passed. Jason and Callum and Rowan and Sarah and Theon and Carmen and Anabelle - I know their names by heart so I will never become them. But they linger, threatening to drag me down with them and I wake up screaming, choking on earth and grass as I dig myself up out of my nightmares.

So I will myself to stay awake, taking cold showers and grinding up coffee beans in the kitchen and living forever with terrible skin and purple crescents underneath my eyes. I'll sit up straight when I want to slouch, use far too many eyedrops when they're begging to be closed, fight my own subconscious until I pass out on the floor. Being exhausted is just a part of who I am, like being terrified and being anxious and being meticulous and being alone. I was born like this, and I'll die like this, but I'll die on my own terms - because they way I die is all I have left that's mine to control.