Blood Lines

Sandra sighed and closed shut her Business Analysis course book. It had been a gruesomely tiring day at work in addition to her exams that were just around the corner. She had not attended a single class that day, for every teacher had long since completed their course and were just running through the syllabus back again. She found it better to spend her time in the library than waste it in class where nothing new was being taught.

She thought back to how she had just barely coped with the stress of these exams in her first year. Why, even with the higher difficulty levels, no year was harder for Sandra than her very first.

She pushed aside her book, stood up from her place on the couch and stretched, cracking her fatigued bones. She groaned in relief.

Jenny looked up from her position on the lone couch. She had been surfing on her social media just to pass her time. “You done?” she asked, tilting her head.

Sandra yawned and looking at the clock, she nodded.

Jenny turned off her phone’s display and kept the device on the table. “How’s life, hon?” she asked randomly.

Sandra sighed in dismay. “Right now? Stressful.” She sat on the floor and let her head fall on the seat of the couch. She could spot her books in her peripheral.

Jenny chuckled. “I, for one, am glad I skipped college.”

It was silent for a while before Sandra raised her head from the couch. “Tell me something about modelling.”

Jenny smiled at her curiosity. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

Sandra shrugged. “A little more about your experience, maybe?”

Jenny breathed out her mouth as nostalgia hit her. She began: “My parents got me into modelling when I was very young. About 4 or 5 years of age. I enjoyed it in the starting—the attention and how my parents pestered me. But as I grew up, it all got set aside. The flashed of cameras annoyed me, really, and I couldn’t eat anything I wanted to. I had no friends and my family were deaf to how modelling was impacting my mental health.”

“They only saw the money factor,” Sandra said.

“Yes. And that was why they were furious at me when I decided to quit. Said that if I really cared for them, if I really loved them, I would’ve continued modelling no matter what. That was I should’ve done, as they said. What I was obliged to do after all they had done for me.”

Sandra held back a scoff and let Jenny continue. “Childhood modelling is nothing comparable to adult modelling. People expect you pose in such clothes that one move and you’re flashing someone. They expect you to willfully climb under their sheets just to get hold of a proper assignment. Using your sources was the best way to climb up. Many thought that’s what I did.”

“I was so depressed by it all,” Jenny sighed. “The non-stop pressure to look good, no freedom to do what you pleased, receiving dirty looks everywhere I went… it degraded my mental health a lot. Not a moment felt calm, peaceful with a moment to breathe.”

“But when I saw you, Sandra, it all settled down. There was this serenity in that smile of yours that made me realize I was in a race I was never meant to partake in. That I wasn’t in my element, I was letting others rule over what I personally wanted.”

She smiled softly. “I began looking at life in a different way since that moment. Rather than thinking of what would happen if I ever quit modelling, I acted on it. I began making my own decision and let myself be my own ruler.”

Sandra gazed at her mother through pursed lips. This was nothing she hadn’t heard before, nothing she had been unaware of, but her mother’s story always had such an impact on her. “And your element?” she asked. “Have you found it?”

Jenny shook her head. “Call it my parents’ influence on me, but I still don’t. At the age I was supposed to explore myself, I was standing in front of a camera getting myself clicked for various commercials.”

Sandra sighed and brought her braided hair over her hair. “I’m sure you’ll find it someday, Mum.” She smiled and marveled at the way the word ‘Mum’ still managed to lighten up Jenny’s eyes.

Enough of this melodrama.” Jennifer rolled her eyes. “C’mon, help me with a few things while you’re still free.”

Sandra raised a brow, propping her elbow on the couch behind her. “I never said yes.”

“Because I never asked.” Jenny shrugged and then laughed. “Oh, come on. Please?” She gave Sandra her puppy dog eyes.

Sandra breathed out her laughter. “Alright, fine. What are we doing?” She rose and brushed her pajama pants a little.

Jenny motioned towards the room next to the staircase. “The study is a disaster,” she explained. “The documents are not arranged properly.”

Sandra and Jenny walked into the study and the former feasted her eyes on the clean and tidy room. “I might be questioning your definition of ‘disaster’, mother,” she commented.

Jenny chuckled. “I couldn’t stand the sight of the docs all scattered around. There wasn’t enough time to properly arrange them, so every type of document is everywhere.” She pointed to the right side of the study, where cabinets were made to hold the files and documents. “You go there. I’ll take the desk.”

“But, Mom, how am I supposed to know which the right place for a document is?” Sandra asked dubiously. There were three cabinets in total.

Jenny pointed to the left most cabinet. “That is where all my files are kept. Anything under my name is there.” The middle one. “This is Fi’s. And the this one—” she pointed at the right most cabinet “—is dedicated for you. Enjoy.”

Sandra groaned. “Ma, I have to get back to studying in two hours!”

“Excellent!” Jenny exclaimed, and she quickly checked her watch. “Fiona will be back in about an hour, so she can take over.”

“Fine. But I’m agreeing only because I don’t have anything better to do.”

Sandra went over and opened the first cabinet. Pages, files and executive diaries were all arranged neatly in there. She pulled the first laminated A4 page. It was a certificate of participation under Fiona’s name.

She finally understood what Jenny had meant. This page was supposed to be in a file in Fiona’s allotted cabinet, not carefreely lying around.

She first started with emptying all the cabinets, a task that took her almost half an hour. It was after that she separated the docs, piling them up as her own, Jenny’s and Fiona’s.

She picked up a file and began browsing through it. It held the government docs, all under the name of Fiona.

Her brows rose at the birth certificate she came across. The mother’s name was Jenny, and father’s… some Maxwell Samedi dude. So that’s Fi’s dad, she thought.

“Mum?” she called. Jenny, who had been doing the same thing as Sandra, but for the docs in the desk, looked up from her work, a freelanced page still in hand. “Does this Maxwell guy know that Fi’s his daughter?”

Jenny smiled somewhat bittersweetly. But beyond that bitter sweetness, Sandra felt her pain, sorrow and grief. Her mother placed the page in her hand in one of the piles she had stocked and grabbed another. “Yeah,” she said dismissively. Sandra didn’t press. It was obvious Jennifer didn’t want to talk about it.

She returned to her own work and flipped to the next page, wondering her own father’s name in her birth certificate.

During her work, Sandra stumbled upon multiple things that made her smile. A picture of Fiona as a new born. The words, ‘Fiona’s first picture’ was scribbled behind. She failed at recognizing whose, though. A seemingly random picture of Sandra a little older than just a new born in the arms of Jenny as she walked through the doors. ‘Sandra’s first time in the house!’ She even found a picture of her and Fi’s apparently first day of school. A photograph of her graduation. She made a mental note to add Fiona’s own graduation picture from not too long ago.

It was strange seeing her with her emerald green eyes in them all, knowing very well that she carried a different shade until a year ago.

But then she found a page that had her taking a double take.

It was the photostat of an adoption paper.

The thought of either her or Fiona being adopted panicked her. Part of her told her that Fiona’s adoption wasn’t possible. She, after all, was a carbon copy of Jenny. Nonetheless, hadn’t she just found her birth certificate?

Pulse ringing in her eardrums, she looked at the name of the parent first. Jennifer Rockwell and Maxwell Samedi. Her eyes then scanned the adopted child’s name and her heart sunk. Sandra Borrad.

Sandra couldn’t get a comprehendible thought through her head. In her shock, she only gulped and stared wide-eyed the photostat of the original document.

“Sandra?” Jenny asked only a few moments later. To Sandra though, it seemed like an eternity. Perhaps she had finally noticed Sandra’s pale and shaky form.

She felt Jenny’s hand on her shoulder, but it didn’t have the same warmth as before. Maybe it was only her shock. She slowly and numbly stood up, not shaking off Jenny’s hand, but not taking her eyes off the paper either. She could only the words, ‘Name of Child: Sandra Borrad’, ‘Father: Maxwell Samedi,’ and, ‘Mother: Jennifer Rockwell’ and nothing else.

“What is it, Sandra?” She heard the voice of her mother, distant and distorted.

She said nothing. She couldn’t. She could only think of how there was no photograph of herself in a hospital bib, skin all red and funny. Why the first picture was of her in Jenny’s arms, walking through the doors of this house. Not as a newborn, but as a much older infant. Why she looked so different from Jenny and Fiona. Why… Why she was an Axŭl in a household of Normphs.

“You aren’t adopted, Sandra.”

How naïve she’d been! To think that an Axŭl, a Mythic could be blood-related to a Normph. A human.

“You aren’t adopted.”

And from this dazed state of her mind, one thought emerged. Cecily lied to her…

She felt Jenny’s hand on her shoulder stiffen. Now back to her senses, she noticed Jenny to have looked over her shoulder at what was in her hands.

And coincidence, coincidence. It was right that moment when her ears caught on the very faint sound of the main door opening and closing, followed by Fiona yelling, “I’m home!”

Neither Sandra nor Jenny bothered acknowledging her.

“Hello?” Fiona called. “Anybody home?” Footsteps. Footsteps upstairs, and a little while later, back downstairs. And then finally towards the study before Fiona finally appeared. “Oh, there you are—What happened? Why are you guys so pale?”

Sandra gulped and looked at Jenny from over her shoulder. “Mum?” she whispered, her voice small and broken. “Is this… real?”

Jenny’s enlarged eyes met hers. Sandra was too numb to subconsciously try and tune into her being to check her emotions. She didn’t bother trying to read them either.

Jenny’s eyes gradually swelled with tears as she stared at Sandra. None of them noticed Fiona’s cautious figure moving closer and peeling the damned paper from Sandra’s hands.

“Sandra,” Jenny whispered, her voice so like her own, but so different. “Please… I—” Her voice cracked, and a single tear slid down her earthly brown eye. “Please…” Her voice was chocked with her suppressed tears, but she continued speaking. Pleading. “Please don’t leave me.”

Sandra’s own green eyes flooded with tears and not being able to suppress it anymore, she flung her arms around Jenny’s frame. The two sobbed unconsolably and didn’t stop, even when they felt another pair of arms wraps around them both, occasional sobs coming from the other individual in the room.

The mother and daughters cried away their guilt, shock, heartbreak and everything else for the next half an hour. And even when their cries silenced, they continued to embrace each other for the lost connection they all once prided themselves over.

Nothing had changed, but really, everything had.

***

About an hour after the big reveal, the family found themselves on the floor. Jenny had her feet crisscrossed with each of her daughter snuggling themselves in her lap, just like they always did when they were upset as kids. Sandra’s previously braided hair were somehow got open and Jenny ran her hands seemingly absentmindedly through her and Fiona’s scalp.

Not a word was spoken. Everyone understood that each of them needed space. Ever so often, a stray tear or two ran down Sandra’s nose, but she didn’t bother wiping them.

“Modeling was never really my thing,” Jenny began in the eerie silence of the house. Neither Sandra nor Fiona gave a sound to tell her that they were listening. “I was miserable. I was always depressed and on my worst days, suicidal. I would try to find happiness in the happiness of others. Did charities in hospitals, home shelters, food NGOs…” She paused briefly, but Sandra caught it. Her fingers tightened from where they were holding on to Jenny’s lower leg. She was sure from how Jenny’s hands faltered only slightly that she knew Sandra knew it before she even said it. “…Orphanages.”

Sandra gulped, but otherwise said nothing. Jenny remained quiet for a moment, her hands resuming their work. The silence was occasionally broken by Fiona’s hushed sniffles.

“My manager pushed me to volunteer in such NGOs and be physically present in my charity events. Said it would increase my popularity. And being physically present might as well be the only thing she and I agreed upon.”

Jenny sniffed, and she stopped running her hands through Sandra and Fiona’s hair. “I was at this one orphanage… where I saw you, Sandra. I held you in my arms and you… and you smiled at me. That little smile of yours was enough for me to know that I couldn’t let you go. I had to adopt you, Sandy. I had to.”

Tears were steadily running down Sandra’s nose now. But she didn’t have it in her to interrupt Jenny. She just couldn’t. She had to know the truth. All of it.

“I adopted you, registering your father’s name as my 2-year boyfriend of the time. I loved him greatly and wanted a family with him. There was no other man I could think of as your father other than him.” Her voice took a bittersweet edge at the mention of Maxwell.

“When I saw you, Sandra, it was like a switch went off in my head. I always knew that I wasn’t doing what I enjoyed, but that was the first time I wanted to put an end to it. So, I resigned from all my impending projects.”

“I wasn’t by far the most popular model. But I certainly was smart enough to save what I earned in every project. Popularity was low, but the money was flowing in. I moved in here with my boyfriend—Maxwell is his name—and I couldn’t have envisioned my life better. Yes, Maxwell and I fought a lot more often, but we were together nonetheless.”

“Then, I was got pregnant with Fiona. My pregnancy would’ve been an overall delightful experience, had it not been for Maxwell and I breaking up. He had apparently been dating me because of my occupation, my money. Now that I had given up my job, he had no reason to stay. Not even his unborn child.”

“That jerk,” Sandra muttered, her voice hoarse and heavy. Fiona hummed her agreement.

“Jerk he was,” Jenny reminisced. “I got full custody of Fiona when she was born, and I decided that while you were still too young, I would erase any sign of Maxwell from your lives.” Jenny fell silent next and Sandra used the time to recollect her thoughts.

“Why?” Sandra’s voice sounded chocked and high-pitched but heavy with emotion at the same time. “Why would you hide it from me?”

Jenny sighed and began moving her fingers through her daughters’ hair again. “I was insecure,” she admitted. “I was scared that you will feel like an outsider here. The orphanage had advised me to tell you when were around 6 or 7, but I guess I chickened out every time until it was already too late.”

Sandra squeezed her eyes shut, as if it would help her escape.

She couldn’t be here. Here, her head in Jenny’s lap, she couldn’t help but think back to her childhood, all those cherished memories she had, and how they were all stained with one harsh reality.

If only… If only Jenny hadn’t been too afraid to tell her that. If only she hadn’t found that paper today. If only she could live in the illusion she lived in until two hours ago.

Sandra found it hard to breathe. She couldn’t… She couldn’t stay here. She had to get out. Right here in the house that still ringed with her laughter sometimes… She couldn’t stay. She had to leave before she took a rash decision and regret it later. No, she had to clear her head, get her shit together and return to tell Jenny and Fiona that everything is okay. That things will get better and she’d never leave them.

In this moment, she only wanted to scream and yell and… run. She wanted to say all hurtful things she could muster, trying to reflect all her pain to Jenny and more. But hidden in this rash desire were her senses.

“I have to go,” she muttered, scrambling up from her position on the floor. Fiona and Jenny stood up too and gazed at her sad, pleading wide eyes.

“Please don’t go, Sandy,” Fiona sobbed, brushing her hand against Sandra’s upper arm. “Please.”

“No, Fiona,” Jenny intruded, sounding much stronger and firmer than she had minutes ago. “If… If Sandra wants to leave, she can. You cannot force her to stay.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Sandra said exasperated. She only wanted to be alone! “I just… I just need some time to myself. Some space.”

Jenny’s strong façade crumbled. “Promise you’ll return back,” she whispered, her voice small and feeble.

Sandra swallowed her own sob and pulled Jenny and Fiona to either side of her in a promising hug. “I promise, Mum,” she said. Funny how natural it felt for her to call her that just hours ago. A bad taste now remained in her mouth. It’ll get better with time though. When this all settled down.

“Say it.” Fiona sobbed in her shoulder.

“I promise to return back to you,” she kissed Jenny’s forehead. And then Fiona’s. “I promise that I will always be your sister.” She swallowed. “I promise I’ll be back.”

Jenny nodded in their hug. Sandra tightened her arms around for a moment before reluctantly pulling away. “Please…,” she whispered, her eyes downcast.

She felt hands cup her cheek and make her look up, meeting the gentle gaze of Jenny’s red and puffy eyes. “Take you all the time you need,” she said, “I don’t care as long as you return back to me, calling me mum.”

Sandra closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against Jenny’s own. “I love you, Mum,” she sobbed and somehow kept the rest in.

Jenny breathed out. One hand moving to Sandra’s shoulder and the other cupping the back of her neck affectionately, she said, “I love you too, my Sandy.”

Sandra was the one to pull away. “I- I’ll go,” she said awkwardly. Jenny’s gaze followed her as she shuffled out of the office, and then out the house. She first walked in a seemingly random direction, her eyes directed to her shoes as she moved across streets.

She broke out into a jog and then into a full-blown run. She didn’t care where she ran. Her tears, flowing rapidly down her cheeks blurred her vision. But she just ran and ran and ran, hoping to run away from all of this. From the reality. From this pain.

She wasn’t even surprised when her vision cleared to find her safe abode before her. Except… it no longer felt like her safe abode anymore.

The sight of this lake out here in the woods only brought back the memories, the flashes—everything from the past year. It was from this place that her life derailed; it was after all the place Cecily had chosen to talk to her about her abilities. How could she ever consider this place to be able to get her away? If anything, it only brought her back to what she was running from.

With rage she thought about the day she’d tap into her abilities, the night Cecily had given a proper explanation and lied to her about being Jenny’s biological daughter, the night when she had come to terms to the fact that she was a schomager, all the hours she’d spent at perfecting her art, the extensive training with Cecily, the journal she’d been given, the strange man from her dreams that she couldn’t forget—it was all too much. It was all too much.

Why? Why did Jenny not think of what will happen if Sandra were to ever know? Why did Cecily give her false hope by lying to her? Why had her parents abandoned her in the first place? Why did Jenny choose her of all the other orphans there? Why did she have to be an Axŭl!

Why couldn’t she just live under the lie of being Jenny’s biological child. Why couldn’t Cecily have told her the truth. Why hadn’t her parents not taken care of her like other parents do. Why hadn’t Jenny chosen another orphan in her place. Why hadn’t she been born a Normph.

Why…

“Orphan.” Sandra whipped around from where she’d heard that echo.

She turned again when she heard another whisper. “Abandoned.”

“Lost.”

She cupped her ears and scrunched her eyes. “Stop,” she whispered brokenly.

“Unloved.”

“Alone.”

“Shut up!” With a scream that echoed throughout the forest, Sandra exploded. She threw her hands to her side and let the rage, the pain, the sorrow, the betrayal—let her emotion rule her as her arms flayed around.

She didn’t cry.

She had run out of tears.

Her tears now burned in the form of searing hot anger and pushed her at doing whatever she was doing. They bled the ears of any being nearby through her screams.

She had no grief, no sorrow to shed.

It all burned under her skin through anger. It boiled, searing hot until Sandra could think of nothing more than just this grief, this sorrow, this… this anger.

When she came back to again, the forest around her was black and dark, void of all the life that had once been there. Sandra felt stronger and a lot more energetic than she had earlier.

Her jaw dropped in fear as the realization hit her.

She stared in awed-horror the dead forest. The lake was the only thing that was left unharmed, its water rippling. The thick-trunked trees around her were black. There were no leaves, not even on the ground. Carcasses of dead birds laid around her, all motionless. Their open eyes staring far past the sky haunted her.

It was silent. Too silent.

There was no life in the forest. And it was lifeless, for Sandra had sucked all their schomage and fed unto it.

She backed up several steps. It was a feeble attempt to scramble away from the dreadful and horrific scene before her.

She raised her hands and stared at the light emitting from the glowing veins.

The sight had once made her feel proud of her abilities.

Now… they mortified her.

She wanted it out of her vision.

Then, there was another whisper. “Monster.” Sandra didn’t stop staring at her palms.

No, she wanted to say. No, she wasn’t a monster. But was she not? Was she not responsible for the doom of this entire forest that was once so vibrant and lively? Yes, she was a monster. She deserved whatever her subconscious tossed at her; whatever others would say about it. She deserved only hatred.

“Killer.”

“Demon.”

“I am a monster.” Sandra’s whisper was lifeless as other beings’ schomage flowed through her. Schomage that she stole from them, at the cost of their lives. “I am a killer, a-a demon.” She scanned the forest. “O-Oh, God,” she heaved a dry sob. “What-what have I done?”

She felt dizzy and light-headed. Her knees buckled, and she crumbled to them. Her heart thudded in its cage. “What have I done?” she cried, cupping her mouth, her body trembling. She leaned forward and curled up on the dry forest surface. “What have I done. God, what the hell have I done?”

Her position made the Passage Pendant she had worn that day slip through her upper wear. She grasped it with dear life. The warmth of its metal was relieving against the chills she felt.

She couldn’t believe what she had done. How- How could have she killed all those innocent beings? She killed an entire forest. She sucked life out of these creatures. These innocent animals—full of life just moments ago. Now, dead. She killed them. Sucked their life away while they could do nothing about it.

Were these abilities truly a gift? Were they not a curse instead?

What was she? Was she truly Life or was she Death instead?

She scrunched her eyes shut in hopes that she’d escape from this place. This truth, this reality.

“I want to go home,” she cried, breaking down into sobs again. Her voice was so weak. So broken. “I just—I want to go home.” She looked up to the endless. “I want to go home!” Her cry dissolved into another series of sobs and intelligible mutterings.

But what was home?

The house which houses all the memories, that just hours earlier were delightful, and were now stained with the omitted truth and the lies? Was it the house which saw her live through the lies of her life? Was home the house that was once home, but no longer?

She curled herself up, hiccupping. She sewed her eyes even tighter and tried to ignore the green light that was coming from somewhere. “I just want to go home,” she whispered before the ground gave way under her and she began to fall.