A polite but firm knock echoed down the hall. Sym hadn’t left her bed for several days. Nothing mattered. Everything worthwhile in the world was gone. Nothing was left.
A key turned in the lock. No one but Iseult had a key to the house, and she definitely wouldn’t knock before letting herself in. Sym was instantly wary. ‘Sym, darling, are you here?’ A voice she had only heard on occasion called. What was Veridia doing in her house? She could hear the polished click of Veridia’s steps as she strode into the apartment, quickly scanning it for Sym. ‘Ah! There you are!’ she exclaimed, finding Sym, tightly wrapped in her blanket cocoon, wallowing in her den of depression. ‘Hm. We’re going to need to get you cleaned up before the production crew gets here.’ She didn’t wrinkle her nose, but it was a near thing. Sym felt her disgust as she gathered Sym’s toiletries and towel, pushing them into her arms and shooing her into the shower. ‘I’ll make you something to eat, you look like you haven’t eaten for days.’ She laughed a little to herself. Sym narrowed her eyes, silently seething.
The production crew arrived while Sym was still in the shower, though for what they were producing, Sym hadn’t the faintest idea. She didn’t find herself overly curious. Nothing mattered. Nothing would ever change that.
‘Look darling, this dress is just perfect for you!’ Veridia held up a white lace dress on a hanger in front of Sym, admiring how it looked against her long dark hair, then turning to comment to the production crew, ‘and I think leaving it down will be good - give her a younger feel, she’s still a child and she needs the care of a mother.’ Sym was shocked into a reaction with that, how could she say something like that, knowing what she did! It was practically her fault and here she was making jokes about Sym needing a mother. She felt nausea spin in her stomach. She didn’t have enough energy to be angry. Nothing mattered, she repeated to herself, tears forming. What did it matter if a psycho wanted to dress her up like a doll in nicer clothes than she had ever even looked at. Her body was nothing. Nothing mattered.
A stylist came and began patting Sym’s face with makeup, ‘none of that now, don’t want to ruin all my work,’ she teased, drying up Sym’s tears with a corner of a tissue. Sym clenched her jaw, keeping the rage locked tight inside her. Rage was bad, it filled her with fire, made her feel too much. She wanted that nothingness again. That perfect empty numb nothingness. Just like her Grandmother used to seek in the Casinos.
‘A dedicated employee unfortunately perished in the accident, leaving behind her young daughter, Sym. Who will now be joining my family. I’ve always wanted a daughter, though it's unfortunate it had to happen under these circumstances.’ Veridia was a skilled public speaker, Sym noted, with a detached interest. ‘Smile darling,’ Veridia whispered from the side of her mouth, just a little one for the camera.’ She wrapped an arm around Sym, pulling her closer with a maneuver that portrayed her profile in just the way it did in every other photograph she had ever taken. ‘Perfect, thank you, that will be all.’ Veridia dismissed the production team, the holoscreen crew heading out with them. ‘Now, it’s just you and me darling. We’re going to be such good friends.’
It had been a week since Veridia had swung into her life like a wrecking ball. She had her own wing now, rather than just a tiny room. And a private bath with enough room to have a party with her entire classroom. And yet. She knew which home she preferred.
Iseult had visited, bringing fruit and flowers, clearly uncertain what one brought for the bereaved, it was a kind, if ineffective gesture and Sym did her best to thank her, trying to summon some emotion for her oldest friend, the only one left that really cared for her. She regretted her jealousy now, would trade all the money in the world for her family back. But they were gone, and they would never never be back again. It still surprised her some mornings, she’d wake up forgetting they were dead, and then it would hit her all over again, a shock so great if took her breath away. She hated those mornings, the false hope hurt too much, even if for a moment she could believe Mother and Grandmother were still alive.
Iseult's gifts of Sym’s old belongings were more welcome, Veridia had left them all behind, like they were trash, to be cleared out by the next tenants presumably. She had cried again while unpacking her Mother’s clothes, sobbing over a dress that she had worn for one of the rare outings they had taken as a family. Grandmother’s belongings were of course missing, the only memento she had of hers was the Ketsuri statue from the entryway, and she loved it as much as she hated it.
‘Father took the skull.’ Iseult brought news of the skull as well, though Sym had a harder time caring. ‘He said it was just a strange rock formation in the bone, but that it might be an archeological find. He said he was going to donate it to the University.’ Sym nodded anyway, accepting the fate of the head, despite Iseult’s obvious disappointment.
‘I tried to have you stay with me,’ Iseult said, voice low, ‘but Veridia insisted.’ Sym grimaced, of course Veridia would, anything for her image. ‘It’s fine,’ Sym had replied. Veridia had the paperwork all worked out before she had even come to Sym’s door. Sym still wasn’t sure how she got a key, Iseult hadn’t been the one to give it to her.
Veridia mostly left her to her own devices after giving her a tour. Hiru had still not made an appearance, most likely still out with Ira Faye, the thought didn’t have the same bitterness it had before. She was a rock, granite like her Grandmother’s tomb. Immobile, numb and nothing to a world indifferent to her. Indifferent to her Mother. Indifferent to her Grandmother, who Veridia had informed had been found dead in the mining tunnels, apparently having been camped out there. She hadn’t left the cave after all, the painful thought crept into Sym’s numb heart causing her eyes to itch with tears she didn’t have left to shed.
She hated herself, she eventually realized, for living with this woman, taking what she had to give. Veridia was the closest to a villain in the story of her Mother’s death as she was to get. Grandmother may have blamed herself, but Sym blamed Veridia. Veridia and her secrets. She had discovered that Veridia had a great many secrets. Hushed, secret conversations with Iseult’s father Gual. Late night lights coming from her home lab in the back of the house. Veridia was a woman with drive, but towards what end, she was unsure.
On the night Hiru returned home Sym heard screams coming from Veridia’s lab. Twisted inhuman things, only with Veridia’s distinct timber. She couldn’t help her curiosity, sometimes it felt like the only emotion she had left. As she snuck down the hallway she encountered Hiru, who raised a finger to his lips, hushing her without a word. She nodded her assent, and together they crept forward.
Veridia was laying stomach down on a metal table, clutching thick leather strips, her back exposed to the air. And exposed in more than one way, Sym realized with horror and fascination. Hiru gasped quietly behind her. She would have shushed him, only there was no way they would have been heard over his mother’s groans through the thick leather she was clenching her teeth around.
‘Why doesn’t she use a painkiller’ she whispered to Hiru. He shrugged, his eyes still fastened to Veridia. Her back was flayed open like a dissectionist’s specimen, the flaps of skin held open and pinned down with slender spikes, fixing her in place like one of the beautiful butterflies she kept in her greenhouse. Snacks for the carnivorous doves she nurtured, giving more attention to them than her wayward son. A tattooist sat crouched over her, inking something on the inside of her skin.
Hiru gagged as Veridia gave another muffled scream, the tattooist's iron pen skating across her opened flesh. He backed away before racing back down the hall. Sym could understand the response. If she wasn’t numb, wasn’t full of nothing she might have had the same reaction.
Strange shadows formed underneath the table Veridia was held on, writhing and boiling until they took form. Long arms stretching out, reaching, stretching out all across the room as if to grasp hold. And they did. They grasped various equipment and reagents and whatever else they could, ripping it from where it lay and tearing apart. ‘...And alllright. That’s the last of it. It looks like they’re working properly, you have control of them, right?’ Veridia spit the saliva slick leather out with vehemence. Her voice was hoarse and cracked. ‘Yeah, that was all me.’ The glamor from her tone was gone, but her voice was the same. The tattooist began the arduous process of stitching her back up with quick but sure movement. The screams resumed. Sym backed away, unsure of what she had just witnessed.
