Part One
…
Long ago
…
“Mummah wub babbehs, babbeh wub mummah. Dwink wotsa miwkies, gwow big an’ stwong.” a vibrant purple mare murmured to her foals. She knew she shouldn’t, that noise would only attract predators, but she couldn’t resist, and deep down she knew that the foals needed it, that they craved more interaction than she could offer in silence. So she murmured, quietly as she could.
The family, what was left of it, sat huddled in one of the many ruined houses. The border town, unfortunately placed on one of the countless arbitrary battlegrounds in an escalating civil war, was a mere shadow of its formal self. Decades of work, love, and cooperation erased in a mere few weeks of barbarism.
To an external viewer, the conflict would seem utterly pointless. Two rival militarist factions, whose difference in goals and opinions simply boiled down to which set of totalitarian ideologues should have the power to ruin everything that generations had built. The same story that had been told so many times in the past two centuries, retold again in blood and ashes.
The one-time inhabitants of the town hadn’t been affiliated with either of the two factions, which in a rational world would have earned them, if not respect, at least neutrality as a third party uninvolved with the conflict. However, as is so often the case, instead they were viewed as enemies by both.
Not that any of this was something the mare could even begin to comprehend. Her understanding of the conflict was simply a few horrible days, pointless death and misery, followed by silence. All the humans she’d known, some as friends and some as threats, were long gone. So she lived as best she could in the ruins, clinging to good memories and too afraid of the animals that lurked in the trees to leave.
“It am otay, babbehs. Daddeh wiww fin’ nummies soon, den mummah wiww maek bestest miwkies fow babbehs,” she whispered, hoping to soothe the hungry foals. She knew it was a lie, that her special-friend was likely long gone, but she couldn’t bear to let the foals understand that reality. Sooner or later, they were going to have to leave the relative safety of the ruins and find food, find something to eat in this hellscape that even the ravens had abandoned.
“Psst!” a voice said, in a half-whisper, and the mare looked around wildly, heart leaping into her throat.
“It’s okay,” the voice said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Pwease, nu-see-munstah, nu huwt mummah ow babbehs!”
“Shhh! Don’t be so loud,” came the voice again, and a face peeked around a corner. The mare choked back a scream at the sight of the munstah.
“Huuhuuhuu! Munstah gon’ num mummah an’ babbehs!” she sobbed.
“I’m not a monster,” the munstah said, sounding agitated. “I promise I’m not, I’m a normal person. I just got hurt is all.”
“Munstah nu huwt mummah ow babbehs?”
“I already-no, I won’t hurt you. You seem hungry, do you need something to eat?”
“Mummah nee’ nummies, babbehs nee’ miwkies, bu’ mummah am scawed.”
“Yeah, I was scared too when I looked in the mirror after…never mind. Come on, I think I can spare some food for you.”
“Nice munstah gib mummah nummies?”
“Stop calling me that. My name is Lauren…no, call me Alice.”
“Mummah am sowwy, nu mean tu maek Wauwen hab heawt-owwies.”
“It’s fine, I know better than to expect much else from fluffies. Come on, I can’t stay out here much longer, they’re still looking for me. Follow me.”
The mare followed the munstah hesistantly, knowing that, for all her fear, this was probably her best opportunity to get something to eat. Out there was far too dangerous, and there was so little left. She couldn’t keep her babbehs safe and fight the rats for a scrap of moldy bread. Better to take a risk here and potentially save them all from starvation.
She was lead to another ruin, not much different from the others, then past it into a unkempt bit of land, overrun with thorny bushes. The munstah lead her on a careful path through these, and opened a trapdoor, painted to look like just another leaf-covered section of dirt. She hesitated at the darkness, but swallowed her fear and followed.
A door opened into warm light. A little room, with simple wood furniture, save for a large grandfather clock. The mare couldn’t begin to understand why, but the clock seemed off somehow, and made her a little uneasy. This, however, was secondary to the delicious smell of tomato sauce that permeated the room. On a small stove in one corner sat a pot, and she knew what that meant from times long lost.
“Sketties!” she cried, tears of joy in her eyes. It brought back wonderful memories, memories of being loved, and pampered, before the world went mad. Bittersweet, now, recollection of a paradise lost.
“I don’t have much, but I’m happy to share with you and…oh, your foals aren’t big enough to eat solid food yet. Maybe we should save some until they’re bigger.”
“Mummah wan babbehs tu habe sketties tu. Wiww nu num much. Kibbwe am otay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It am ot-”
Crack!
The mare didn’t even have time to react as the broken chair leg crushed her skull and she fell into darkness. With a sigh, Lauren gathered up the foals, cleanly dispatching them with snapped necks. Fluffy stew again. It never sat quite right with her.
…
A few weeks later
…
“Christ!” Alexis said for the hundredth time, as they combed through rubble yet again. Another desolate ruin of a town, killed by another pointless war. Times like these made her wish she’d never volunteered to provide humanitarian aid, while at the same time making her feel vindicated in her decision to do so. Still, what was there to do here? Nothing lived here but animals and, she was convinced some nights, ghosts.
“Come check this out!” Felix called, and she made her way carefully to another burned-out building. This one was different, though. The other bodies were disposed of in a mass grave some hundred meters from the edge of the town, but the bodies in this building had been left.
It wasn’t a pretty sight, death by burning never was. She retched a little at the sight of the chains around the only door, at the bodies clustered around the exit. They must’ve desperately been trying to escape the fire.
“I don’t understand. How could anyone do this?”
“That’s the thing. I’ve checked, this building was the garrison left in the town after the massacre. Well, I say garrison, but they were mostly just conscripts, scared kids told to get shot by the enemy or get shot by their allies. Still…”
“Nobody deserves to die like this.”
They both spun at a sound, a choking noise. Immediately they both fell to the ground. In theory, they would be treated as neutral, but they both knew the reality of that. Neutral just meant wait until nobody’s looking before you put bullets in their heads.
Felix crept towards the sound, ignoring Alexis’ frantic gesturing. What was that idiot doing? Did he want to get them both killed? This wasn’t the time to be curious or put their noses where they didn’t belong!
But he kept moving, soundlessly. He crept around the ruined remnants of a wall, and dashed quickly out of sight. There was the sound of a scuffle, a shout of pain from Felix, and he emerged back in Alexis’ sight again, holding a early-teenage girl and cursing under his breath.
“Felix, are you okay?” Alexis asked when she saw the makeshift dagger sticking out of one of his shoulders.
“Been better. Stop it!” he shouted as the girl bit him again. “We’re not here to hurt you!”
She finally broke free of his grasp and darted away, stopping a short distance from the pair and looking at them suspiciously. They stopped for a minute, deliberating on what to do as Alexis patched up the wound in Felix’s shoulder and applied antiseptic to the several bites on his other arm. Finally they reached a decision.
“Listen,” Alexis said, adopting her most friendly and nonthreatening tone. “We’re here to help. You’re safe now.”
The girl spat in response. “That’s what they” gesturing towards the charred remains “said.”
“I’m not qualified for this,” Alexis hissed to Felix, drawing a shrug and a gasp of pain.
“I promise we won’t do anything to hurt you,” she continued. “We just want to help, make sure nothing like this happens again.”
“You’ve done a piss poor job so far.”
“I’m sorry, there was nothing we could do. All we can do is try to fix what we can.”
“Fix? FIX? You can’t fix any of this! Everyone’s dead! Where were you then? Why didn’t anyone help?”
“We couldn’t…”
“Fuck off. I heard you. ‘Nobody deserves to die like this’? You weren’t here! You didn’t see what they did! You don’t know anything!”
“I’m sorry, but-”
“SHUT UP! Shut up shut up shut up! Stop making excuses!”
“I-”
“No…” the girl’s mood changed like a switch had been flipped from furious to dejected. “I…know I shouldn’t be angry at you. But…why?” she began to sob. “Why weren’t you here? Why was I the only one left? Why couldn’t I die like everyone else?”
…
A few days later
…
“Lauren? Lauren!”
Kristal tried not to be unnerved by the way Lauren stared at her, and failed. She understood the kid had been through hell, but still…she was eerie. The girl refused to cooperate in any attempts to help her, beyond the basics like a place to stay and food. She seemed distant, cold, and impossible to reach.
Kristal sighed, and decided to indulge the child. “Alice?”
“Yes?”
Fuck. This wasn’t a great sign. Kristal just hoped it was an ordinary desire to be uncooperative and not something worse. “Why don’t you respond when I use your real name?”
Again, the girl clammed up and refused to speak. Kristal was at a loss. What was she supposed to do? She wasn’t trained for this! They needed a real psychologist, not a volunteer counselor! Why was she the one in this room?
“I’m sorry. If you don’t want to be called that I won’t use that name. Alice?”
For a moment she saw a smirk, but perhaps she’d just been imagining it. It was hard to read expressions under all the bandages covering the girl’s face, covering the horrible burns over the right side of her face and scalp. Kristal shuddered slightly, remembering what they looked like prior to being covered.
“Yes, Ms. Kristal?”
Kristal decided to just go with it. If it made things worse, then that was something for someone qualified to work out. For now, she needed to establish some rapport with the child. Try to get a bit of cooperation so they could help her.
“How are you feeling?”
The girl gave her a strange look. “Feeling about what?”
“About everything.”
Again, a calculating look, trying to decipher what Kristal wanted to hear. “I’m fine.”
“Alice, if you don’t talk to me I can’t help you.”
“What should I feel, then?”
“Sadness? Anger? Regret?”
That got a reaction, if only for a moment before icy calm dropped once more. “Regret? What would I regret?”
“The fire.”
“I only regret that the last three of those bastards weren’t inside. Don’t talk to me about regret.”
Okay, no more of that line of inquiry. Kristal really hoped she wasn’t just making things worse. Well, time to get to the hard part of the conversation.
“Listen, Alice. We’re taking you back with us to the States. There’s somewhere you can stay that can help you more than we can.”
Lauren…Alice smirked. “Shirking responsibility again? How original.”
Kristal gave up. “Look, we’re bringing you somewhere that can help you because frankly, I’m not even remotely qualified to handle this and the only way I can think of to help is to let someone who knows what they’re doing handle the situation.”
“You think I’m crazy.” It was neither a question nor an accusation, merely a statement.
“You haven’t done anything to convince me otherwise. No remorse over killing seventeen people, refusing to use your real name. I can’t even begin to unpack that.”
“When I was a kid…” Lauren began. "I hurt myself pretty badly once, got cut up on glass. My grandmother always used to read me Through the Looking Glass, and one day I tried to go through a mirror like Alice. As a kid, I always wished I could have adventures like Alice. Later, I realized how horrible the experience would have been for her, in a world where nothing is sane, nothing makes sense.
“Turns out that world wasn’t on the other side of a mirror.”
…
Present
…
“Am nice wady otay? Smawty-fwiend am scawed…”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the nice lady said, in a voice full of brittle cheerfulness. “I was just wondering if maybe your herd would like some sketties.”
“Um…dat am otay, hewd nu wan taek nice wady’s nummies. Hewd wiww be otay.”
The horrible grin widened. “Oh no, I insist.”
“Smawty-fwiend nu wan be buwden. It am otay, nice wady keep gud nummies.”
The smarty-friend’s eyes were so fixated on the terrifying lady that he didn’t even see the door behind her closing until it clicked shut. Instantly he knew that things weren’t okay at all, and he began backing away, trying to keep the munstah lady calm as he prepared to make a dash for it, prepared to warn the herd.
He knew he couldn’t outrun her, and that he wouldn’t survive, but maybe if he lead her on a wild chase he could buy enough time for the herd to escape through the tunnel they’d worked so hard to dig. Maybe his death could keep the foals alive. He twitched, bracing himself.
“Smawty-fwiend!” the tuffy gasped, rounding the corner as fast as he could. “Tunnew am gone!”
The smarty-friend’s heart dropped into his stomach. Hewd am twapped.
End