It’s as though Neva is calling her and they are playing once again that silly game of hide and seek that Neva always won. Neva always knew where to find Jewel. Now that same sixth sense pulls Jewel down the corridor, passing the numerous closed doors on the way, until she reaches the room at the end. Fae’s room. Mother had locked the door the day she left.
Jewel had believed that no one came in here. And then, years later, she’d seen Mother entering the room, locking the door behind her.
Jewel had crept to the door and listened. All was silent within. She thought perhaps this room was used for some secret only Mother knew. A secret she wanted to share.
When Mother had retired for the night, Jewel came back. She’d picked the lock and gone inside. That was when she learned how Mother really felt about her other daughter. That was when she knew that she had lost her Mother forever and it was all Fae’s – no, Neva’s – fault.
The whole room was a shrine given over to that lost child at first. Then it became a place where Mother celebrated Neva’s many successes, even as she left the rest of the room to rot. Jewel had never earned that same love and respect, no matter how hard she tried. Sometimes she felt she was a painful reminder of the favoured child, a runner-up prize. Second best. Though Jewel had pined for Fae at first, she’d grown to resent, and then hate, her missing sibling. Her departure had somehow stopped Mother from loving Jewel.
Jewel’s bitterness increased with time, spurred on from the moment when Mother had pitted them both against each other. Jewel had revisited the room often. She studied Neva’s many achievements as Mother had displayed them on the wall. The deaths were always so simple and clean, yet never rushed. Jewel took up the knife as her favoured weapon. She honed her use of it. Killed with it, emulating Neva to perfection.
Mother didn’t notice. Jewel’s fury grew.
Now, the moment of her ultimate retribution has arrived.
Neva is unconscious when Jewel enters the room. Jewel turns her over, sees the carpet-burn smudge on Neva’s cheek, signposting the suddenness of her collapse.
It is a dream come true that she is here, vulnerable, right in the place where Jewel can stage her perfectly. A present for Mother that she’ll have to accept.
Taking her by the wrists, Jewel pulls Neva towards the small bed. Then she goes to the door and closes it.
She pulls the rotting cotton sheet from the bed then rips it into strips. She ties Neva’s wrists to the footboard. Neva doesn’t wake as Jewel stretches her body along the floor. Her arms are pulled up and over her head in an uncomfortable position.
Jewel steps back. She tries to visualize what she wants to show Mother but the inspiration she’s had with previous kills evades her. She turns around in the room looking for the props. Her eyes fall on the teddy bear, a one-time favourite of Fae’s. Jewel blinks as she’s plummeted back again into childhood.
‘Your sister won’t be back,’ Mother had said.
‘But why? Where is she?’ Fleur had asked.
‘She doesn’t belong to us anymore.’
From the day she left everything changed.
Mother was cold to Fleur’s tears. If she ever cried over the loss of her daughter, Fleur never saw it. But sometimes she’d find Mother alone, a faraway look in her eyes that confirmed that Fleur had lost both sibling and parent on that one day.
Now Jewel looks at her sister and sees the entity that took away her mother’s love and turned Fleur into the killer that is Jewel.
She doesn’t regret who she’s become, for now it will give her the ultimate ascension.
She will prove she’s better than Neva.
‘Fleur?’
Jewel turns to look at Neva.
She observes the confused expression on Neva’s face and recognizes that she has yet to fully understand her plight.
‘Good. You’re awake.’