Of Sisters and Shadows – Chapter 11 – Rachel

“I am a shadow, the true self,” I say.

No. Not me.

Her.

She… She dresses like I do. Same black leather jacket. Same plastic dog mask.

Same ripped jeans, same torn off-white shirt, same black boots.

But…

“You are… direct,” she says. “You don’t hide too much, do you?” she asks as she takes off the cheap mask and throws it to the side, the mists lapping at her feet swallowing it without a sound.

And she looks at me, silent in the chill of this small night.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

Because I don’t.

Because I… I am feeling. Too much. Much more than in years. I remember feeling this much once, when Rollo… when my first dog cried and begged me to save him, and I couldn’t, and everything went dark and…

And then it wasn’t Rollo that screamed.

“Of course,” she nods, arms crossed over her black jacket, face frowning like I often do when… when I don’t understand. “You are direct, Rach. It’s just people who make no sense because they aren’t.”

I nod as well. She’s right.

But then she smiles, and I don’t like it.

“Still… There are things you hide, or I wouldn’t be here,” she says as I notice that her eyes are different. They glow amber, like Hookwolf’s, and… and they shift and narrow like I do, but a bit more…

Like Lisa’s, I think.

Or like Lisa when she talks to me.

She thinks I don’t notice. That I just accept how she treats me without seeing how differently she treats Brian or Alec. But I do. I see it, I hear it, I…

It angers me. Frustrates me. And makes me grateful.

The other me walks to her left, steps silent and muffled by mist as she slowly traces a circle around me.

I don’t let her out of my sight.

‘Never trust a thing wearing your face, Rach,’ Lisa sometimes joked.

‘Don’t come back! Leave and don’t come back! It’s not safe for you, Rach!’ she said. Without joking.

That’s when the mists took her.

Brutus, Judas, and Angelica couldn’t find her. There was no scent left, and Brian and Alec were hurrying me, forcing me to flee from our base with them.

I…

“You came back,” she says.

I clench my teeth and throw my mask off.

Then I meet her amber eyes and refuse to look away.

“I did,” I answer, my fists clenching.

“Do you know why?” she says, tilting her head to the right, her chin up, looking down at me.

“My dogs. I only took three of them. The shelter is—”

“Wrong,” she says.

And shoots forward.

She fights like me, all strength and brutality, so I step forward to meet her, blocking a clawing strike to my eyes with my left forearm and immediately shooting a rising knee to her gut.

She jumps back and then to my right, and I shift on my left foot to show her my raised right arm, to fend her off as the mists around us twist and turn, speeding up, spinning into a whirlwind that broadens and bares the ground beneath us, the fallen leaves and blades of grass undisturbed by a wind I hear but don’t feel as stars shine above us.

“I came back for them,” I growl as she lowers her stance, hands going from tight fists to clawed fingers.

“You did. But also not.”

She steps forward, faking a hook to my temple that I try to guard against right as she kicks the side of my left thigh hard enough to make it numb before the pain shoots through it.

I almost stumble.

And then I punch her liver.

It’s… I don’t have good footing. The ground is irregular, and my leg doesn’t work quite well, so I can’t put as much strength on the hit as I want to, but she still grimaces, still staggers for a moment.

And I claw at her neck.

Four lines of blood well up on the side of it, and she rushes back, covering the wound with her hand as she hisses. I try to pursue her, but I limp and almost fall forward, so I take the chance to recover. To get back into what Brian thinks is a good guard, my elbows tucked by my sides and my fists by the sides of my face.

She… smiles.

“So quick to anger. To murder,” she says, chin tilting down, eyes narrowing in…

In something.

Something I never saw on Lisa’s face.

“I am angry,” I tell her.

My voice is flat. Toneless.

My heart is racing.

“You always are,” she answers.

And then steps back into the mists.

“You are always angry, Rachel. Lost and frustrated. Alone in a group. You only have your dogs to love you. To care,” her voice echoes all around me, and I keep turning around, trying to see if she will appear from out of the white, yellowish wall of swirling fog around—

This is a forest.

I know this forest.

“Why did you come here, Rachel?” she asks.

I close my eyes, refusing to see what she’s showing me.

“I came for my dogs,” I answer despite myself. Because I need to.

I need to say something. Anything.

“Yes. And no,” she says.

And then I open my eyes again. Because it’s stupid to close them in the middle of a fight.

Even if I want to.

In front of me, Rollo, the scraggly puppy, is sitting on the forest’s ground, biting his rear paw with pitiful strength, trying to dislodge a twig trapped in his matted fur.

He also bit me. When I tried to help him.

I didn’t care.

“That was it, wasn’t it? You didn’t care. As long as you felt even a hint of love, you would stay. You would let yourself be hurt. Because you didn’t know what else to do,” she says from behind me.

And Rollo… shifts.

It’s slow. Far slower than it was when it happened, when I first used my power without knowing what—

It’s slow.

But it still happens. I still see him grow and shift, the fur tearing apart to show raw, skinless muscle, spikes of bone growing through it, jagged yet sharp. Spikes that could go through someone’s torso without any issues.

“You wanted so badly for the puppy to love you… Maybe it did. Maybe, in its own way, it learned to love the girl keeping it trapped, feeding him scraps, keeping it from the forest he had come from.”

Her hand rests on my shoulder, and she pulls.

I stumble back, and I fall against her body, the leather of my jacket screeching against hers as Rollo keeps growing and growing, his head now as tall as mine, his eyes locked on mine.

“Do you feel loved, Rachel?” she says, right in my ear, her breath hot and wet before she licks up my neck.

And Rollo leaps forward.

I snap out of it, throwing myself to the side and rolling on the forest’s floor, a sharp twig stabbing into my thigh as I scramble to get up as soon as I am out of the way of the giant dog.

But… Rollo was feral. Barely tame. And he has no reason to go after me and not the other one, the other Rachel—

Something hits my back and splashes me, and I turn to look at her, holding a water balloon, one like she must’ve just thrown at me.

But it’s not water that I’m soaked with.

It’s blood.

Rollo turns right toward me, sniffing the air, licking under his nose, thick drool spilling out the sides of his misshapen maw where he should have lips if my power didn’t turn them into monsters, if it didn’t show what I do to the dogs I try to care for, about—

“They call you a murderer. Because of what Rollo did. Tell me, Rachel, would you do things differently now?” she asks.

She asks a question that I never ask. That I never even approach.

So I turn around and run toward the trees, Rollo snapping out of it and chasing me as soon as I move, because that’s what dogs do, because it’s stupid to provoke them into chasing when they are faster, and stronger, and—

I reach the first tree and jump up, grabbing the branch closest to me, the stupid thing so thin that it arches back down until my feet almost touch the ground yet again even as the rough bark digs into my palms and I struggle to pull myself up, to climb before Rollo gets to me and my blood-soaked jacket that—

I look over my shoulder and see him right behind me.

I stop being an idiot and swing forward from the branch, leaving too much skin scrapped on it before I let go and painfully roll over the forest ground, leaves and twigs crackling as I crush them, not stopping at a single roll and going forward until I crash against another tree.

The whole world is spinning, the shadows of thin branches reaching at me over uneven ground, but I don’t have the time to wait for it to stop, so I throw off my jacket and ball it up before hurling it at Rollo’s nose, the puppy yipping at the unexpected hit before the lump of leather unfurls over his snout and drapes over it, Rollo immediately pushing it to the ground and nuzzling it, lapping the blood up.

I am shaking, shivering, and the forest is still swaying.

I still take my shirt off.

There are red splatters, but I don’t know how much it would… lure him. So I hurry to wipe my face and hair off with it, then my hands, being relieved that only a bit of brownish red gets added to the splatters when I’m done.

“People think you’re dumb. Because You don’t know how to talk to them. Because you lash out with fists and kicks. They think you’re stupid, Rachel,” she says from between the trees behind Rollo and to my right.

“They are wrong,” I say.

“Oh, I agree,” she answers.

And then she steps out of the thick tree she was hiding behind. The one I scrapped half my palms on.

They sting.

She holds the second balloon in her hand, and she looks from it to me.

But I learned from my mistake with Rollo and don’t run or jump.

I push my hands on my bare knees and ignore the flash of pain the rough touch of torn jeans sends through my open wounds as I slowly stand up, the world becoming steadier with every breath as I lock eyes with amber and refuse to look away.

“I am not dumb,” I say, my eyes narrowing.

“You aren’t. This isn’t about that,” she says, the balloon shifting between her fingers.

Rollo is still nuzzling the bloodied leather, chewing on a sleeve slowly and carefully, trying to decide why it smells so good despite it not tasting like the promised meat it should be.

None of us move.

I close my eyes.

“Then what is it about?” I ask. Weakly. Defeated.

Because I know.

“I am a shadow. The true self,” she says, smiling something between my smile and Lisa’s, her eyes narrow in cruel amusement.

I hate her.

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Doesn’t it? Weird. Because I think it means that I’m desperate to be loved. Accepted. That I feel guilty for a lot of things I never meant to happen. That I would give up anything to go back to the woman who took away my food, who punished me for meaningless rules, who almost killed Rollo, who meant to kill Rollo. That I would give up anything to go back and save her, and have her hug me and tell me she loved me.”

I drop to one knee, grab a stone I saw earlier, and throw it straight to the balloon in her hand.

I miss.

As I shake with rage, as my nails dig into raw flesh, as my breathing roughens and the edge of my vision goes red, she laughs.

“That’s it, isn’t it? The one thing you could never accept: that you feel guilty. That you want them to acknowledge you so much you would put up with anything. That you would let Brian hit you in sparring without ever complaining because you think that’s what he wants from you. That you would let Alec make fun of you and barely fight back because he doesn’t know how much it makes you bleed inside when he does. That you would let Lisa—”

“Enough!” I cry out.

And I run.

She throws the balloon, but she’s far enough away that I can see it coming, wobbling through the air, distorted in its arc toward me, and I jump aside to dodge it—and crash against Rollo.

He yelps, startled, and lets go of the jacket to turn toward me, his maw still open, with scraps of black leather stuck between teeth as long as my hands.

My bleeding hands.

“Rollo,” I say, softening my voice like I did back then, when I brought him food, when I cared for him. “Rollo, it’s me. Rachel. I love you, Rollo. You are a good boy. I don’t mind if you nip at my fingers, you will learn, you are still a puppy, you are so young, and you will grow up to be a beautiful, big, strong dog that won’t be hurt by anyone else ever again, Rollo. Rollo, please, listen to me, listen to—”

He snarls.

I try not to cry.

Deliberate steps crash through dry leaves as she approaches me, still behind the giant dog her—ourpower has distorted.

She’s me.

The true me.

“I really thought you had a chance, you know?” she says, almost sadly. “You’ve been making so much progress since you met them, since Lisa took you in—”

“Stop saying her name,” I say, my voice so tiny it’s almost a whisper.

“Why, Rachel? Why is it that you shy away from thinking about her? Why don’t you accept why you came back here?”

Rollo is still baring his teeth at me, his face slowly coming closer to the human lying defenselessly on the ground, under him, but I can’t look away from amber, almost kind eyes set on my face.

And the answer pours out.

“She doesn’t need me. Never did. She’s fine. She’s all right. I don’t—I can’t help her. Don’t want to. She’s fine. She’s alive. She—”

There’s a loud crash, and Rollo flies away, his body shooting right over me.

“Sorry I took so long,” Glory Girl says, floating over me, almost glowing against the night. “It took some adjusting.”

I stop. Both of us.

And we just stare up at her.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” she says, scratching her cheek as she looks between us. “I didn’t… Look, Hellhound? I—”

“Not my name,” the me with amber eyes says.

“Shut up, Shadow, the real people are talking,” she says without even looking back.

And then a balloon of blood splashes over her.

Glory Girl shrieks, the red fluid almost black under the low light of shifting stars, and she flies up right as Rollo comes back, barking and growling before he jumps up toward the blonde girl, his jaws snapping at her, crashing and stopping against something invisible.

“God, you are a mess,” Panacea says, kneeling by my side, reaching toward me—

I slap her hand away.

“What the Hell are you—”

“Don’t,” I tell her, baring my teeth. “My head’s still… weird. I feel too much.”

She blinks.

And the other me laughs.

“She healed us, Rachel. Years of trauma injuring our brain, numbing our emotions, making us less, and she took it away with a touch.”

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

“What?” Panacea says. “You mean that was… that was normal for you? What the fuck have you been doing that—oh, for… Vicky! Stop playing around and finish off the monster!”

“I don’t want to kill him! He’s a dog!”

“No! He’s a shadow-created thing! These are dogs,” she says.

And…

And before I can even hear them, as the mists swirl, my power brushes against the shapes of Brutus, Judas, and Angelica.

The other me stiffens.

“I don’t think this is fair,” she says.

“Get bent, bitch,” Panacea answers.

“Yes. That is my name.”

Panacea blinks at her, then at me.

“Seriously?” she asks, blinking a lot.

“Female dog. Not Hellhound,” I say, shrugging without quite knowing why.

I also don’t know why she smacks her forehead.

“I give up. You are impossible. May as well be a blonde.”

“Hey!”

“Shut up and kill the mob monster, Vicky!”

“I think I should make things fairer,” the other me says.

And, suddenly, my power brushes against… A lot of bodies.

My dogs race toward me, barking and growling along the way as, out of the mists, step coyotes, wolves, and wild dogs, all of them already growing, already twisting in the grip of her power, and I force myself to stand up as I pump Brutus, Judas, and Angelica as full of my power as quickly as I can manage.

“Brutus, ride,” I say, and he lowers himself so I can step over his shoulders even as he keeps growing, the spikes behind his neck leaving a bare spot for me to sit on right before he stands and turns to face the approaching wall of flesh and bone.

A single wolf approaches, his torso more serpentine than anything else, undulating with every step.

And, right before I order my own dogs how to act, before I decide what to tell them, Rollo crashes against the wolf, the two shapes barreling back, uprooting a single tree in their way before they crash against the coyote behind it.

“Sorry, doggie! Two birds with one stone and all that” Glory Girl says as she flies in front of me, standing with her arms crossed and her feet pointed toward the ground below.

“He doesn’t understand you. Dogs don’t understand you. You are not a Disney Princess!” Panacea says, also standing up from where she had crouched beside me.

“Amy… Let it go,” the blonde says, shooting a smirk over her shoulder and making Panacea growl.

… I don’t get it.