Sister Zero (Scenes 9-13)
9
The next thing she knew, Celia found herself at the top landing of the double grand staircase, still underneath Auna’s full mount, her ears still ringing from the gunshot beside her head, and her mind still buzzing with static. Through it all, she kept Auna’s hands struggling for the gun and leveraging her weight against Celia’s grasp of it as Celia became aware of the proximity of the stairs nearby and the wall close to her head. Celia pushed through the buzzing in her head and noticed the strain of Auna’s body doubled over against Celia’s hands, struggling to maintain her leverage as she leaned her weight against Celia’s grasp of the gun with stiff arms, and struggling to maintain her leveraging effort on her knees.
So Celia planted her feet flat on the ground and bucked her hips and threw Auna head first into the wall, thumping her head with a crack against the paneling. Auna’s grip on the gun faltered, and her body collapsed over Celia’s, and she pried the gun from Auna’s fingers and threw it out of reach across the hall.
A wheezing Celia rolled Auna onto her back and was about to get off of her, yet her troubles continued. Before she knew it, Celia found herself caught in Auna’s full guard, her head and arm caught between her thighs in a triangle choke as Auna rained more blows on top of her head. Celia gritted her teeth and shut her eyes against the blows, seeing stars every time Auna hit her, pushing her legs with her free hand just enough to breathe and getting a mouth full of her thigh with every breath. She had to break Auna’s hold somehow, so she did the only thing she knew in this predicament.
She took a deep breath and bit down as hard as she could, biting like a pit bull on the soft inner flesh of Auna’s thigh.
Auna’s scream filled the foyer below her.
Auna’s hold on her gun faltered.
Auna screamed, “You fucking bitch!”
And Celia freed her gasping and wheezing self from her opponent’s legs long enough for her to realize her next mistake, staring at her in the face: Auna’s gun at point blank range.
Celia blinked out of sight—
As the gun went off and bit a chunk of paneling from the wall where Celia’s head had been.
She reappeared with a dive for the gun, this time with Celia on top of her and grabbing for the muzzle as Auna pulled her legs in and cupped her feet against Celia’s stomach. When the gun fired another round, biting a chunk from one of the mezzotints on the sidewall of the staircase, Celia yanked and pulled at Auna’s superhuman grip on the gun, saying, “Let go, you fuck!”
Then the gun disappeared in Celia’s grasp, and she found herself flying back against the wall, banging her head against the paneling, dazing her for just a moment.
Just long enough for Auna to grab Celia and yank her into a belly toss, and Celia found herself tumbling over the stairs, till she blinked out of sight—
And fell back on top of Auna and locked her arms around her opponent’s neck, yet Celia’s second wind had now blown itself out. By this time, Celia’s head pounded like a hammer striking an anvil, and her arms and legs burned like acid. She was now just a rag doll holding onto Auna’s neck like a cowboy riding bareback on a wild bronco.
And once again, Celia’s efforts blew up in her face, and she had nothing left when Auna hooked her arms under Celia’s knees. Celia found herself getting picked up piggyback and slammed against the wall, smacking her head against the paneling, closing her eyes and seeing stars, breaking her hold over her opponent’s neck.
And the next thing Celia knew, she found herself launched by Auna’s shoulder toss over the stairs, till she blinked out of sight—
And crashed into Auna’s back, sending herself and Auna past the edge of the landing and over the stairs. She tumbled with Auna down the stairs, rolling over and under her on the steps when something snapped and a blood-curdling scream filled Celia’s ears while coming to a stop at the bottom landing.
Celia wasn’t sure who had screamed or what had happened, sprawled as she was over Auna’s legs like a discarded doll, her limbs splayed over the landing like a butterfly’s wings, her face over Auna’s heaving and hitching stomach. Auna was crying, and when Celia propped herself on her elbows, she found Auna writhing beneath her in agony. When her vision refocused, Celia raised herself on hands and knees and saw Auna’s left leg dislocated at a horrific angle. Her face was a grimacing portrait of suffering, complete with tears running down a face that was wincing and grimacing at unimaginable pain.
Celia said, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my Goooood!” And she placed her palm over Auna’s injury.
“Don’t!” Auna yelled, wincing in agony, and manifested a gun in her hand and aimed it at Celia, yet the gun fell from her grasp, falling with a crack on the landing like the crack of a gun against the head of a lame horse. “Take the gun—”
So Celia grabbed the gun and was about to chuck it away.
“—and end it.”
Celia paused, still holding the gun by her side, and said, “What are you saying? Are you crazy?”
“End it,” she said, tears trailing her wincing face. “Please, let me die!”
“Don’t say that!” Celia yelled, tears now trailing down her cheeks as her opponent looked up at her with the first traces of her humanity emerging through her agony. “I don’t want you to die! Don’t you ever ever say that! Nobody deserves to die, not you or anyone!” She could’ve said more, but the ceiling lights blinked out, casting everything in darkness.
When the lights came back on, a voice said, “It can’t be helped, darling,” and when Celia raised her gaze, she saw Rancaster standing on the steps above her and Auna. “Her part in this play is over, and she’s accepted her fate with grace and courage.”
“You’re wrong!” Celia yelled and struggled to her feet and raised the gun at Rancaster’s face with her finger on the trigger. “When my sister gets here, we’ll take her to the hospital and kick your ass later!”
“There is no ‘later,’” he said and raised his hand and fisted it in a tight grip, and all at once, Celia felt an invisible force take control of her hand with the gun, lowering it down Rancaster’s body and away from his feet.
“Stoooop!” Celia screamed, yet even as she yanked and wrenched on her grip of the gun, she felt her arms giving out against the strain of Rancaster’s invisible hold as her aim lowered down the steps towards Auna’s head. “Stop it, please! I don’t want to do this!”
“Oh, but you must, darling,” he said. “It was your decision to go after her in the first place, and—”
“Stoooooop!” she screamed, even as the gun shifted onto the center of Auna’s chest.
“—it was your decision to take her here,” he said, “where her role must come to an end. Look into her eyes, darling, and tell me what you see in her.”
So Celia looked at Auna’s tear-drenched eyes and saw mischief there, hinting at something coming to the surface from unfathomable depths. Something was stirring inside of Auna’s eyes, sending chills down Celia’s spine at the thought of what lurked there, yet just before Celia pulled the trigger, she saw Auna manifesting another gun and aiming at Rancaster.
And both girls pulled their triggers.
10
In the wreckage of both holes in the walls, where Madison and Blaze laid out the Red and White Queens amidst the rubble, blood spurted out from the bosoms of both queens, staining the bodices of their dresses with blood and pooling into the rubble. Then both queens’ astral bodies glowed white before dissipating into nothing like extinguished memories.
11
Meanwhile, Auna found herself falling for a time down through the rabbit hole of unconscious sleep, down through the slow-wave madness of repressed emotions flooding up her soul with sensations of horror dancing on the edges of her thoughts over the horrific injury she had sustained in her fight with Celia. Yet as the pain of her leg began to fade, she came to rest between the Red and White Queens telling her to wake up.
“Wake up, Auna,” the Red Queen said.
“Akami?” Auna said, rousing from her slow-wave slumber and looking on the blurry shape with the familiar voice.
“Please, open your eyes,” the White Queen said.
“Shiromi?” Auna said as her vision came into focus on the queen to her left. “Is that you?”
She felt her hands cupped inside the hands of both queens kneeling on either side of her, the Red Queen to her right and the White Queen to her left. She looked down on her legs and found her dislocated leg intact, feeling no pain there, and looked up at her childhood companions.
She raised her hands to the sides of their clammy cheeks, wet with tears, and Auna felt their warmth fading away as they themselves dissipated from view.
“Wait,” she said, “don’t go!”
“Remember our names, Auna,” the Red Queen said.
And the White Queen repeated, “Remember our . . .”
And their words and voices drifted away into the void of forgotten memories, forgotten to all except Auna and Celia and Madison and Blaze and God, the Keeper of dreams from now till the end of all dreams.
12
Celia’s hand shook at the recoil of the gun, and she dropped it to her feet with a thud like the thud of a casket lid over the dearly departed. She dropped to her knees before the girl and grasped onto her shoulders, trying to shake Auna back into opening her eyes, saying, “Wake up, wake up, I’m begging youuuu!” Yet try as she might, Celia’s efforts proved fruitless as more tears streamed down her face and soaked into Auna’s bloodstained school uniform, tears shed for the newly dead. Auna’s blood pooled over the bottom steps onto the landing, creating a spreading halo of blood there beneath her and Celia.
So Celia hugged Auna’s body close to herself, tight as death’s embrace, as memories of holding onto Colbie’s mortally wounded astral form flooded her mind like a rerun of last night’s nightmare.
“She’s gone, darling,” Rancaster said.
Celia glared at the man in the white suit, who had his hand pressed against the center of his chest, where dark blood had blossomed over his white vest and dripped down the sleeve of his jacket and down his trousers.
“How can you do this to her?” Celia yelled, fisting her hands till they were knuckle-white.
“Me?” he said, taking his hand away from his wound and manifesting a cane in his hand, and pointed it at her face. “You’re the one who pulled the trigger! And if I’m not mistaken, weren’t you the one who raised a gun at her in the first place?”
So Celia blinked out of sight—
And appeared in Rancaster’s face with a swing at his jaw, yet her reserves tanked as the man swept her legs with his cane and clamped it across Celia’s diaphragm, wedging it beneath her breasts and lifting her feet off the steps and squeezing the air out of her. She flailed her arms and legs, but her efforts were wasted against the man’s inhuman strength.
“Let go of me!” Celia said through gasping mouthfuls of air, trying to breath against Rancaster’s hold.
“She’s gone, darling,” the man continued, “but not for long. Look down and see for yourself.”
So she looked down at Auna’s motionless astral body, her leg bent sideways along the tread of one of the stair steps, her blood turning dark over the center of her chest and on the bottom steps and into the spreading pool on the landing. She waited and waited, till a glowing circle of light emerged from the bottom landing and onto the steps, inscribing Auna’s body in its circumference like a hologram, now blinking to a peculiar rhythm that reminded Celia of heartbeats.
The whole space around her, from the stairs to the foyer, began to beat to the throbs of another heartbeat. Then the girl lying prone with her leg slanted askew at a horrible angle, she opened her eyes as Celia yelled, “Thank God, you’re alive!”
Yet the girl who looked back at Celia, the girl with a wound beating more blood out of her chest, was not Auna.
“Who are you?” this new girl said.
“Don’t mind this one, Bambina,” Rancaster said, letting Celia’s feet come to rest on the step, till she grasped onto the railing to keep her from falling. “She’s but a spectator on your debut,” he added, then to Celia: “You’re the first spectator to behold her, so count yourself lucky.”
Yet Celia blinked out of sight—
And appeared by the girl’s side, grasping her hand and hoisting her onto her good leg, saying, “Be careful! Don’t put any weight on your leg! Maddy and I will get you to the hospital and—”
“Hospital?” the girl said, raising her injured leg and shaking it like it was unbroken. “I’m good as new, love, but thank you for the concern. What’s your name?”
“Celia Hearn,” she said.
Yet the good cheer dropped from this girl’s face, and she leveled a basilisk glare at Celia and swung at her face as Celia blinked out of sight—
And appeared on the foyer at the entrance to the library, saying, “What’s going on?” Then someone else came from behind and wrapped arms around her, so she struggled with whatever strength she had left, saying, “Let go! LET GO OF ME!”
“Celia, control yourself!” Madison said in front of Cooley’s mirror on the back wall. And along with her came the dynamic duo of Blaze and Cooley, emerging from the mirror and getting in between the Hearn sisters and Rancaster and this new Auna look-alike that glared back at them.
Celia turned and hugged her older sister, burying her face into Madison’s bosom as she cried into her shirt, till she cried herself out of her tears and turned back on the girl wearing Auna’s face, but was someone else entirely. She saw Rancaster keeping this Auna look-alike still on the landing with an arm around her waist and holding the girl’s hand, now clutching a knife around her fingers. So Celia put her hand to her cheek and winced, feeling the burning sting of a cut there.
“If this is my debut,” the Auna look-alike said, “then why are you holding me back?”
“It’s best not to get carried away, Bambina,” he said, then looked up at the quartet of girls before him, eyeing Celia in particular. “You’ve played your part well, darling.”
Celia turned away, and Madison said, “Don’t talk to my sister!”
“If you touch her,” Blaze said, “I’ll fucking roast you!”
“Don’t provoke him!” Cooley said.
“Why not?” they said.
“Cool it, you two! Let’s get out of here before anything else happens,” she said and grabbed Madison and Blaze’s hands and pulled them away with her back through the reflection of her mirror, followed by Blaze and Celia in tow.
Yet Madison pulled away from the reflection and looked back at Rancaster, saying, “Was it true what you said?”
“About what, darling?” he said.
“What you said about our mom,” she said and squeezed her hands into fists. “Was it true? Did she . . . kill our Grandma?”
The man merely smiled and said, “It is, but why not ask your mother about it? She knows more than I do.”
Madison gritted her teeth and glared at the man in the white suit, then turned and passed through the mirror’s reflection—
13
And entered the hallway where Celia had her first tussle with Auna and found Cooley fussing over Celia’s cut on her cheek as if she were her mother treating her child. She looked around for Blaze close by in the hallway somewhere, but when she found her nowhere in sight, she said, “Where’s Blaze?”
“She went to check up on the two Queens,” Cooley said, then back to her patient: “This is gonna sting a bit,” and she applied an alcohol-soaked cotton swab over Celia’s cut.
“Ow!” Celia said, wincing every time she wiped the swab over the cut. “Cut it out! It’s nothing serious!”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Cooley said. “Now stay still,” and she applied ointment to her face.
Celia winced but bore with it as Cooley put a bandage over her cheek, covering the cut.
Then Blaze emerged from another of Cooley’s mirrors appearing beside the wall and said, “They’re gone!”
“Who’s gone?” Madison said.
“The two Queens,” Blaze said. “I checked in the rooms, but they’re not there.”
“You’re shitting me,” Madison said.
“I’m not,” Blaze said, “and I also found blood where we left them in the rubble. They must’ve disappeared when that ‘bambina’ chick got resurrected.”
“Damn it, I hate being right!” Madison said.
Celia looked at Madison and Blaze, saying, “You saw all that?”
“And Blaze and I had to restrain her from running in,” Cooley said, “and blowing up the whole foyer.”
“What about Kathy?” Celia said.
“Way ahead of you,” Cooley said and manifested another mirror. “Just stay calm.”
“Why?” she said. “Is she okay?”
“What happened to her?” Madison added.
“Follow me,” Cooley said, and both sisters followed her and Blaze through the reflection—
