The Girl With Metal Claws

Where It Starts

ELLIOTT

"She wasn't a normal child," Meredith started. Her voice felt shaky and reluctant but she was determined to let it out. Elliott could read what was going through her head when she started. She was deflected from the reality or the fact that she was saying it out loud.

"She is the daughter of a woman who was rumoured to be indulged in witchcraft," Meredith let out. Glimpses of the dreams Elliott saw every night after Gabrielle's death came floating across his mind.

"How did the woman look?" He asked, taking Meredith aback.

"Emilia.. had long black hair. She was tall with a bony structure and an appearance that made people shudder. She was the mysterious kind. It was said that after an year of her marriage, her husband was never seen again. Every time someone dared to ask her where her husband was, she used to say he was sick and preferred to stay in. Years passed, no one ever saw him," Meredith said. It all sounded like a folktale to Elliott. But he knew that woman existed.

The woman who used to carve the mark in Asami's forearm, was she herself. The woman, Emilia, Asami's mother.

"What else do you know about her?"

"People used to say she was practicing witchcraft to turn herself into a witch. She wanted power, dark energies and destruction. But it didn't stay a secret from the other people of the town. They suspected her and slowly, their fear towards her turned into anger and then hatred. She was evil and it wasn't a secret," she said.

"But Asami..."

"Emilia had 13 kids but they were the farthest thing from being children. They were mechanical robots. Stiff, emotionless and hypnotised to such an extent that a blank stare was fixed on their faces. They bled all the time. They were always sick. Abandoned and isolated from the whole world, they never saw a thing outside. They were all oblivious to human feelings, domesticated to their mothers.. except one. The abnormal," Meredith had a stare that said how uncomfortable she felt.

She took a deep breath.

"The.. abnormal?" Elliott murmured, quietly.

"A.. Asami, the witch's thirteenth born child. The abnormal," Meredith got up of her seat and carefully took out a book from the shelf that was once Gabrielle's. She opened the book and placed it in front of Elliott. He looked down at the page and read the heading out loud.

"Hades," Elliott read out. Under the title, various symbols and writing in a language he had no idea of were written. He tried to wrap his head around them but he had no clue. He looked up at Meredith.

"Emilia preached hell on earth. A world without denial or the power to fight. A world were no one was unbound. To make that happen, she called out to the dark side. She believed in the world beyond the good side," Meredith tapped on some specific lines of each of the symbols while she spoke.

Elliott quickly noted down the lines that Meredith tapped on and tried forming it in one symbol.

"But Asami wasn't the same. Among the 12 obedient children, she was heinous. She started terrorising the children and then the adults of the town at a young age. On one hand, where the heartless kids of Emilia were infamous, on the other hand, Asami was known as the abnormal. The violent and sadist child," Meredith spoke. Her voice turning louder and louder in Elliott's head.

She was an abnormal, yet the most brutally honest one Elliott had ever met. He looked down at the symbol he had been trying to create with Meredith's instruction.

"She was considered the devil herself. The thirteenth 'unlucky' child," she concluded.

Elliott and Meredith both looked down at his sheet of paper. The symbol had been made from the Hades symbols. And it looked bitterly familiar. It looked just like the symbol traces Asami left behind after her assaults.

~

Elliott walked to his house from the basement.

Even if they never said it out loud, secretly they were keeping an eye on Meredith.

It was hard to trust her, harder to accept the fact that she had decided to co-operate.

He sat on his bed, the night had already dawned. The darkness in the room even with the faint light of the lamp made him feel suffocated. He walked over to his window and pushed it open. Immediately, a gush of warm wind greeted him. But it felt relieving.

He thought of Asami and her supposed mother Emilia. A broken family in all the wrongly affecting ways. But, out of nowhere, he drifted to the thoughts of his family. The family which was lost the day of the incident. The robbery, the deaths, the bullet shots.

The room he lived in was connected to the attic of the building. He had owned access to that attic for years and he started storing at his belongings there. They included photos, clothes, things owned by Elliott and his parents. It had been stored in boxes and settled up on the attic.

He didn't want to see them in front of him. He was running away from the memories of the past he had left behind. The past of constant loneliness, missing and pain.

But that night was the day he wanted to feel those in his bones. He wanted to be reminded of what he was and what he is.

He found himself pulling down the ladder from the ceiling and carefully climbing up the attic. He hadn't been there for ages.

He turned the yellow bulb on and walked to the stacked up boxes on the corner. Elliott knew he would be staying there longer than he assumed. Between the smell of old paper and dust, he sat down, laying the boxes out.

He opened the first box full of clothes that he wouldn't fit in anymore, things he wouldn't need, and people he wouldn't see again. Then he moved onto the other boxes, silently analysing them one by one.

"Martha and Jean's," was the title of the last box that he had been saving for later. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn't prick on his wounds by re-opening the box full of the things his parents left behind.

But it had been too long and Elliott wasn't the best person to keep his promises.

He ran his hand across the edge of the box and ripped off the tape. Just when he was about to explore through, he heard a small thud from behind him.

He turned behind and flinched.

Asami stood at the entrance of the attic, rubbing her palm on her forehead. She seemed to have hit her head on the steep ceiling.

"When will you stop stalking me?" Elliott sighed, still a little shaken.

"You left your window open," Asami said, her footsteps approaching him.

"It wasn't for you," Elliott reminded her but she didn't react to it. He couldn't even meet his eyes after everything he had heard.

Elliott looked beside him to see Asami had placed herself on the ground, sitting side by side with him. She was relentlessly staring at the old boxes with nothing to say.

While he shuffled through his parents' things, he realised how well he recognised them. His dad's favourite book, a coin collection, ID cards, stationary, knitting sets, envelopes with unsent letters and a journal.

"You miss them?" Asami asked, stating the obvious. He shook his head side by side.

"I miss how they felt," he said, running a hand through the journal to dust it off.

"Can they be replaced easily?" She asked, bounding him in his questions.

"Maybe.. the time we spent together as a family was too short." When he was a child, almost all the memories he had was him staying home alone. Even in his memories, the faces of his parents were always a little faded.

"Can.. I replace them too?" Asami spoke out, almost immediately. At first Elliott doubted she was joking but her eyes that were staring at him were cunningly serious.

"Why do you think you can?"

"Because..", Asami took a moment to think, "then you would go through my things with that expression on your face too."

Elliott stared at her speechlessly and she effortlessly stared back. She had a small smile in her face while Elliott tried to understand her motives.

"When did you get so informal?" Elliott asked. His face was warm and flustered for a reason he couldn't even explain to himself.

"It's a part of the game I'm playing with you," she said. Her face had viscosity but not seriousness.

"Oh, really?" Elliott slightly leaned into her.

"Really," she said and to his surprise, she leaned in too. He stared at her face, feeling himself putting aside everything he had known about her. He voluntarily let his eyes slide to look at her thin lips. That didn't seem to budge her.

What if.. he leaned in closer?

But Elliott felt Asami leaning closer, first. He could feel himself hesitating, his side of his mind yelling at him to stop and get away. Elliott abruptly moved away from the forbidden from happening.

"My parents.. used to keep this journal to keep track of their monthly expenses. But soon, it changed," Elliott spoke softly, diverting his mind and the conversation. "They were busy all the time. So much that they had no time for me. That's when it was decided they would write me diary entries everyday. No matter what, every morning, I always found the diary tucked under my pillow."

He opened the word out diary with pages that were once white. The ink and handwriting were still permanent and clear. Elliott murmured a few words from each of the paragraphs he saw.

"Read it out," Asami said, scooting away from Elliott and sitting with her back against a wall. She placed her hand beside her and tapped on the floor beside her, signalling Elliott to join her, "I'll listen."

He stared at her in surprise once again but he eventually did as she said.

~

"Finally, today is a bright day after three consecutive days of rain. Jean has left for fishing too early in the morning even if we have to go to work later. He babbled about some fishing competition with the people in the neighborhood. He's a weird man. He loves overworking himself and...", Elliott kept reading for a few minutes.

"Does it have anything written about you?" Asami asked, sounding bored. Elliott flipped pages till he reached the day.

"Today is Elliott's 5th birthday but he looks unhappy. I cannot cheer him up no matter whatever I do. So, I'm baking a cake for him. He loves cakes and surprises. He..", suddenly, Elliott felt something while he read.

He felt something on him. The weight of Asami's head fell on Elliott's shoulder, stiffening him. But he didn't stop reading neither look beside him to see her. He kept reading to not feel any of it.

He sat, reading out the hastily woven words together with an enemy's head on his shoulders.