Monsters Lullaby

Content Warning: This short story contains mentions of child abuse and sexual assault.

She sighed as he rolled off of her, relishing in the last moments of ecstasy before the dull burning pain at her neck would wash that all away. He laid down next to her, wiping the trickle of her blood from his lips and licking them before he intertwined their hands.

“I can’t believe you criticized me for trusting you,” she joked. Just hours earlier, in the midst of the roses that were his passionate confession of feelings for her, he had included that thorn. It was so like him. Beautiful and dangerous, unless you knew how to handle them. She was usually able to handle him safely. Still, that particular thorn had pricked her.

“Rightfully so.” His whispered tone nuzzled her ear as he turned on his side to face her. The hand not currently holding her’s found its way to her exposed breast, caressing it lightly. “You knew I was a monster. One you had not known for more than a tenday before you so freely offered yourself up to me.”

He leaned in and kissed her, the copper taste of her blood still on his lips. “I could have sucked you dry, you know. Hells know I wanted to devour you that night.”

“I know.” She smiled at the memory, his cold lips on her neck, the almost unnoticeable prick of teeth before ice filled her. A mere moment of excruciating pain that she thought would kill her before heat flowed into every part of her. Heat that burned her with desire for more, desire for him.

She wondered if he knew that her trust that night had only extended so far. There was a dagger in her hand ready to pierce that unbeating heart of his. Oh, but she had not needed it.

No, all it took for him to stop was his name escaping as a moan from her lips. His name, exhaled to the heavens as his heat offered her release. That knowing glance he gave her as he slowly pushed himself off of her was seared into her memory.

“Even the thought of it still brings a flush to your face,” he said with a proud laugh. “Still, I look around at the friends you have gathered and can’t help but notice you have a soft spot for monsters. It’s very unhuman of you.”

“In my experience being human isn’t necessarily something to strive for,” she said. Her hand reflexively reached up to grab the black metal vial around her neck. He watched her fingers caressing it. His eyes were still as inquisitive about it as the first time he asked her what was inside. No one knew its contents other than her. She certainly had not known him well enough to offer up that secret when he asked. Not then anyway.

Now, they share a bond few would know in their lifetimes. It went beyond lust, beyond love. She spent her life spinning tales with flourishing words, and she had to admit, mere words could not truly capture the essence of the two of them.

She stopped stroking the pendant on her neck and sat up. Her eyes locked onto his and she tried, and failed, to control the half smile that would sometimes creep onto her face with the sheer joy of looking at him. If she could not tell him this story, then no one would ever hear it. “It’s my turn to show you something tonight.”

They dressed and she led him to the top of the inn. They sat on a bench in the rooftop garden overlooking the city. “You know I am from here,” she said. “I still call this place my home, but in reality, this is the first time I’ve set foot within the city walls in 18 years.”

“Why so long?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “Patience, love. My tale will make that clear.”

“Then do go on.”

“My father died when I was little, maybe three or four. I don’t remember much about him other than the scent of the tobacco he smoked. It was sweet, with a hint of woodiness to it and just the faintest trace of vanilla. Sometimes, I’ll be walking down the street and catch a whiff, and suddenly I’m a child again, nostalgic for a man I never knew.”

She conjured the memory of the man in her mind, but it was blurry with the passage of time. If only she could focus she might be able to sharpen up the edges. He squeezed her hand gently, bringing her back to the present.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m getting off track. My mom caught the plague and died when I was six. We didn’t have any other family, so my older sister, she was ten, and I were on our own.”

“You little urchin you,” he sang to her.

“For a while at least,” she said. “My sister disappeared. You know all too well this city isn’t kind to kids without a home. A city guard scooped me up and took me to an orphanage not long after that. At the time I thought I was so lucky to be taken from the streets like that. I wouldn’t say the same now.”

As she was telling her story visions and images flooded into her mind. Memories of those first few years. Moderately well fed, looked after, a bit of schooling now and again. It was a type of happiness. Maybe the first happiness she had known. The first she could recall at least.

That happiness lasted until her tenth year when a new caretaker stepped in. Mr. Hammond. A tall man, with shoulder-length hair like straw, and a smile that could make him seem fatherly. That was exactly how she saw him at first.

Her love of music was formed in those early years. When the sounds of the tavern songs would drift over the orphanage at night she would drum along on the dinner table, or make up her own words to the songs in bed. Mr. Hammond noticed her interest and gifted her with a small flute. How she had loved playing that thing.

Anyone and everyone was her audience. It didn’t matter if it was the other children, the cats in the alley that hung around waiting for scraps, or insects roaming around the grounds. There was no discrimination, for all she wanted was an excuse to lose herself in those pretty little notes.

On this particular afternoon, she found a little caterpillar scooting its way along the top of the short brick wall in their play yard. The poor thing moved so slowly, it was the perfect captive audience for her pre-dinner concert. As she played the strangest thing happened. The parts between its hard exterior began to light up, green and bright despite the sun. Soon the lights drifted up from the bug forming glowing orbs that danced in the air to the notes that she played.

In her excitement, she lost concentration on the tune and the lights blinked out as if they had never existed. The glowworm, now back to its distinctly non glowing self continued to crawl along the brick, unaware that anything had transpired. At least as unaware as it could be until the little girl snatched it up in her small hand, being oh so careful not to crush him. As quick as her feet could carry her she ran into the orphanage walls.

“Mr. Hammond! Mr. Hammond!” She continued calling out his name, hurdling up the stairs to his office. “Mr. Hammond!”

She pushed open the door to find him sitting behind his desk, forehead scowled in disapproval at the racket she was causing. Before he could start the lecture she knew he was preparing, she unceremoniously opened her fist over the papers he was reviewing and dropped the bug on top.

“What is the meaning of this?”

“Watch,” she said excitedly. Taking a deep breath and putting the flute to her lips she played the tune from outside. Just as before the bug became luminescent and orbs of light floated into the air. This time she kept her focus and the floating orbs danced around Mr. Hammond’s office.

“Who taught you to work the weave into your song?” He looked at her with one raised eyebrow, brown eyes narrowed waiting to see if she was being honest.

She stopped playing. Immediately she put her hands by her sides and looked straight at the man. “No one taught me, Mr. Hammond. It just happened this afternoon.”

“So you are a natural talent?” The tone of his question did not require an answer. “You know you should not be talking to other adults. Who taught you that?”

“I wouldn’t talk to strangers Mr. Hammond, it's against the rules. I swear to you it just happened.” Her little palms began to sweat hoping he believed her since there was no other answer she could possibly give.

He turned his glare off of her and opened a desk drawer. He pulled out some papers and quickly flipped through them until he found what he needed. “You are far too young to be sent off to one of the Bard Colleges, but perhaps someone could be brought in to tutor you. Would you like that?”

The excitement threatened to burst out of her, but she knew that would not do in front of the caretaker. She pressed it down and managed a somewhat meek response, “I would very much like that Mr. Hammond.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” He waved his hand to dismiss her and she turned, quickly, to run out the open door. “Octavia!”

She pivoted back to face him, shrinking from the force of his voice. “Take this worm with you.”

“Sorry sir,” she muttered, quickly grabbing the insect and returning to her room. Later that night she delighted all the children in the dormitory with her lights. She was eager to repeat her performance in the morning, but the glowworm had perished in the night. Only a tinge of sadness entered her mind, she was far too excited about being tutored by a real bard. There was no way for her to know the true cost of learning the weave. At least not yet.

“Octavia?” He dramatically brought his hand up to his heart, mocking hurt. “All this time and I’ve been calling you a nickname?”

“O. Tav. Tavia. Tay. Tavie,” she listed off. “I’ve gone by many names over the years. Except that one.”

She leaned in and kissed him. “Don’t start calling me that now, either” she whispered. “I’m perfectly happy hearing the one you use roll off that delicious tongue of yours.”

He kissed her back, flicking that tongue of his into her mouth devilishly, before quickly parting and putting distance between them. “What is lacking from your tongue this evening is the monsters in your story. Unless you are including yourself and that horrible treatment of that glow worm.”

She laughed at him lovingly. “You are one to talk. Should we compare animal kill sheets?”

“Oh, darling, I would certainly win that game, but then again I am the monster.”

“I’m getting there.” She flourished her hands like she would do during a performance, “I just had to set the scene. I promise the darkness is coming.”

Mr. Hammond called her into his office and she was nervous. It was after dinner and right before bedtime. Being called to see him at this hour usually meant a punishment of some sort was forthcoming. She wracked her brain but could not think of anything that would warrant such treatment.

“You asked to see me, sir?”

“Come in Octavia, and shut the door behind you.”

She did as she was asked and timidly approached his desk. “Are you enjoying your lessons with Elandra?”

“I am,” she replied happily. “We are working on creating illusions. Nothing fancy, just sounds and small objects. I made a school book today.” She was proud of her progress with her tutor and her tone spoke of it.

“That is good to hear,” he said. “She says your talents are very special, which is why you are getting special treatment you understand?”

Octavia nodded.

“None of the other kids are getting private tutoring you know. Since you are getting this special treatment, I am going to need you to do some special things for me.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she said. “The orphanage is doing something nice for me, I need to pay that back.”

“Good. That’s exactly right,” he said. He leaned back in his chair, looking over her, his fat tongue licking his lips. “I need an assistant to help with some tasks. You’ll be helping me with confidential things. You know what that word means?”

“It's like a secret, I think.”

He nodded. “Exactly. So you can’t tell anyone what we do.”

She was unsure of what he was suggesting. Meekly she managed a response. “Okay.”

“I mean it,” he said firmly. “If you tell anyone, your special lessons with Elandra will stop.”

Those lessons were the only way she was going to get better at playing the flute. She figured that was the only way she was going to be able to make a living for herself when she aged out of the orphanage. Octavia couldn’t risk that being pulled away from her. “I understand, Mr. Hammond. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Such a well-behaved girl you are. Now come over here and sit in my lap, we are going to look over the food expenses.”

Learning about the finances for the orphanage didn’t seem like a particularly secret or special task, but any crumb of knowledge might be useful later on so she happily climbed on Mr. Hammond’s thigh and looked at the ledger.

As they went down the lines for meat and bread and produce, one of his hands had found its way to her head and wrapped around her ponytail. The other started on her small thigh, then worked its way up until he was touching her in a place she was sure he shouldn’t be.

“Mr. Hammond?” she asked weakly, trying to squirm away from his touch.

He pulled back hard on her ponytail, wrenching her head back to look up at him. His hot breath smothered her face. “Be a good girl. This is all part of our special work.”

“Doesn’t that feel good?” he asked as he worked his fat fingers over her trousers.

Tears were starting to fall down her face. What he was doing did not feel good, but she was certain he didn’t want to hear that. All that escaped her was a whimper in response.

“Well, we will just have to keep at it until it does.”

Over the next few years, things escalated with Mr. Hammond. To survive she perfected her ability to lie. Their sessions would go much quicker if she could make him believe she was enjoying his attention. He was easy to fool because he needed to believe she wanted him. It eased his guilt. She didn’t though. All those sessions ever gave her, other than the ability to lie with ease, was shame and disgust.

For two years, she put up with it. She never uttered even a word of their secret because she needed to continue her studies with Elandra.

She was just a bit older than twelve when Mr. Hammond got a proposition. A way to decrease the expenses of the orphanage and increase the amount that went into his own pocket as he explained it. Of course, Mr. Hammond needed her help with it.

She would not have believed his face could have taken on a paler shade of white, had she not witnessed it then. His red eyes looked into hers, full of understanding. He knew what it was like to endure abuse in that way.

“Oh, love. He didn’t?”

“Didn’t what?” she asked.

“How do I put this delicately,” he said. “He didn’t, whore you out?”

“That was delicate?” She was mostly past feeling the pain of what she had endured, or at least could mask it with humor. “No, that actually would have made a lot more sense than what did happen.”

“I had learned to use my flute to put kids to sleep. Sometimes they just needed a little help, nightmares, and that type of thing. Sometimes I did it because they were being pricks and I was annoyed,” she said. “It was one of the more useful tricks Elandra taught me.”

“You’re telling me you could have just put those all those goblins to sleep?”

“And taken away your fun in killing them?” she said. “I would never.”

She winked at him and continued her story. “Mr. Hammond wanted me to be able to put the whole dormitory to sleep at once and keep them that way. Which is not a feat easily accomplished in one as young as I was. Elandra tried to convince him of that, and failed.”

Mr. Hammond increased the number and length of the lessons she was receiving, but that increase came with conditions. Elandra could not teach Octavia anything other than casting her sleep song over more children. After a couple of weeks, she could get four or five consistently, but she needed to triple that.

The lessons became a double-edged sword. Mr. Hammond was desperate for her to learn to keep all the kids in a dorm asleep at once. He needed her to focus to get that done. So she wouldn’t be distracted, their special sessions all but stopped. That would have been incentive enough to never learn what he asked, but each day he would grow angrier and angrier with Elandra. He would threaten to fire her, Elandra would threaten to quit, and Octavia would have to make pleading promises to try harder to keep the peace.

Another month went by, and one day, something just clicked. The weave was no longer a wave from her flute she was trying to push into the minds of her housemates but a blanket she could drop onto the whole of the dormitory.

Three nights in a row Mr. Hammond made her demonstrate her skills before he was satisfied.

On the fourth day, he called Elandra into the office with them and dismissed her from her tutoring duties. Octavia had learned all she needed to know. At first, she was stunned. She had done exactly what Mr. Hammond had wanted, learned what he wanted, and succeeded at a task that even Elandra thought was impossible at her age. Why would he take her studies away? She had so much more she needed to learn.

Shock faded and turned to fury. She needed to get Elandra back. That little waif of a girl somehow thought she could succeed at intimidating that wretched man. “If I don’t have lessons, then I have no reason to keep your secrets, Mr. Hammond.”

Her fury was nothing compared to the rage that coursed through him. He jumped up from his desk, eyes burning with hatred. She turned to run, but he snatched her by her ponytail as her hand touched the knob at the door. Swinging her by her hair he tossed her onto the floor. Before she could scream out, his large hand was covering her mouth, stopping any sound from escaping. His weight pressed her against the wood floor as he lifted her skirt and forced himself inside of her. Tears streamed down her face as he used her roughly. When he was finished he slumped against her. The stink of his sweat and the cedar-scented cologne he used seeped into her shirt like a putrid stain.

He got up, dragging her by her hair and forcing her into the chair at his desk. “Wipe your tears girl,” he scolded her as he sat down. “You aren’t going to tell anyone anything.”

He pulled his pants up and leaned against the desk in front of her. “Sometimes we have bad kids here at the orphanage. There are monsters out there who feed on children and I’ve found some who are interested in taking a bad apples off of my hands.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, trying to choke back more tears.

“Of course you don’t,” he said. “They can only come at night. It is in everyone’s interest if they didn’t experience a bunch of panicking children when they show up.”

He pointed his finger at her menacingly. “It is your job to make sure that doesn’t happen. When I tell you, you will play that song of yours all night, making sure every last one of your friends stays peacefully asleep. You will do this when I tell you and you will continue to keep our secrets. Otherwise, I might have to consider you a bad apple.”

She may not have understood how this would lead to Mr. Hammond having more money, but she didn’t need to understand how the deal worked. She understood the threat. That was enough.

“Go get cleaned up and ready for dinner. You’ll play your first performance tonight.”

It was a new moon. Only the dimmest of light filtered in through the windows on the south wall from lamps on the street. As the eleven other children tucked themselves into their beds, she played her flute. A blanket of the weave fell over them, tucking them into blissful sleep. They dreamed in their beds unaware that night that only ten of them would wake up. She played and played, not daring to lose focus on her tune. Focusing on playing was better than letting her mind drift to that afternoon in Mr. Hammond’s office. A thin silver lining to her duty that night.

The bells on the temple a few blocks away chimed out. Midnight was upon them. As if those bells had called forth the very monster she was playing for, a silhouette appeared in the middle of the dormitory. She could make out very little of the monster in the night. It was merely a form, slightly darker than the rest of the room, moving quietly towards the bed of an unruly girl named Beatrice. The shadow picked the sleeping child up and moved towards the window.

She kept playing, keeping the tune going through her fear-shaken breath. As the monster stepped out into the night, it shifted just slightly. She couldn’t see if it had turned to look at her, but she felt seen. Goose pimples prickled her arms as guilt washed over her. When she was certain the monster and Beatrice were gone, she stopped playing. She buried her head in her pillow and cried until morning.

Every couple of months that scene would repeat. Mr. Hammond would tell her when she needed to play. She would, and some shadow would appear in the night and scoop up one of the kids. Not the same shadow, mind you. Octavia noticed some slight differences between them. One was definitely a woman. Smaller and more slender than the others. That one would always sway to Octavia’s music a little bit before walking between the beds, looking for just the right child. Sometimes she would reach out and stroke the face of one of the kids before moving on.

Octavia feared her the most. She knew that woman did look at her, and though she never saw the shadow's eyes, she felt in her gut they held no good thoughts about her.

There were also at least two different men. One was tall and lean, the other also tall, but stockier. They were efficient when they arrived as if they knew exactly what bed to go to and did not want to waste a step to get there. They ignored her.

She wished all men would ignore her. Especially Mr. Hammond. As she got older, and her body started to move from girl to woman, he had more need for their special tasks. Mr. Hammond no longer cared if she feigned enjoyment or not. Her needs were no longer his. Without the fear of Elandra seeing any signs of his abuse, his violence grew with time.

Between the ages of 13 to 14 she spent more time with bruises and cuts on her body from him than she did without. Since Mr. Hammond called on her frequently, the other kids generally avoided her. That was probably for the best. She didn’t have to answer as many questions that way. Although she had a list of lies lined up for when an occasional one was thrown at her. The kids the monsters took were never seen again, and she did not want to go missing.

She only had to make it two more years. At 16 she would age out and be free to be on her own. Any meager living she could scrape out would be better than this nightmare. Sixteen children had been taken. Sixteen children for whom she played the soundtrack for their abduction. The seventeenth would be the worst.

There was one girl, just a year younger than her, and only at the orphanage for 4 months who didn’t avoid her. She was the closest thing to a friend Octavia had ever had. Sera. A red-headed spitfire of a girl who would make up raunchy lyrics to songs Octavia played and would braid her long black hair for her.

Sera saw the red rings of raw flesh around Octavia’s wrists from where Mr. Hammond had tied her to his bed and grabbed her hand to look more closely. “You have to tell Mr. Hammond about this. He wouldn’t just let someone do this to you.”

“It's okay.” Octavia pulled her hands back. She shrugged her shoulders into her shirt, trying to make her arms shorter so her long sleeves would cover her marks of shame.

“It’s not okay, Octavia,” Sera insisted. “You gotta learn to stand up for yourself. Whoever is doing this is going to stop. I’m going to tell Mr. Hammond.”

“Sera, please,” she begged. “Mr. Hammond knows. You don’t need to say anything to him. Just forget what you saw. I am okay.”

“You don’t lie as well as you think you do,” Sera said. “If Mr. Hammond knew, you wouldn’t care if I mentioned it to him.”

Sera stormed out of the room. If only she had known that Octavia was as good of a liar as she thought. She just hadn’t been lying to her friend. Not truly. Omitting, yes, but lying no. Octavia should have stopped her from leaving, but to do so she would have needed to make some explanation, and she didn’t want to incur Mr. Hammond’s wrath for it. It had only been two nights since he tied her up. She wasn’t looking forward to being in that position again any time soon.

Sera showed up a little later and apologized. Mr. Hammond admitted he did know, and assured Sera he was taking care of everything. Her friend apologized for not believing her, but it was anything but relief that she felt. A knot had formed in her stomach that would not go away.

The next new moon Mr. Hammond told her she needed to play that night as a friend would be arriving to take a tribute. It was the woman who showed up. Dancing to the monster's lullaby as she walked between the beds. She stopped at the one next to hers. The woman never turned to face her, but for the first time, she heard one of the creatures speak. “He’d like you more than this little redhead I think, but you aren’t on the menu just yet.”

Tears flowed down her face as the woman picked up Sera’s sleeping body, lifting the thirteen-year-old as if she weighed nothing more than a sack of flour. The two were no sooner gone than Octavia was running down the hall to Mr. Hammond’s room. Anger had overcome her. She had not thought this action through.

“You let them take Sera!” She rained her fists down on him with all of her might. “I didn’t tell her anything and you let them take her.”

Mr. Hammond awoke with fire in his veins at this young girl trying to fight him. He responded with a fist of his own, smashing it into her face. The ring on his middle finger split her lip wide open, adding to the blood flowing down her face from a broken nose.

“She made herself a bad apple by asking questions. I told her I would take care of it and I have.” His hand grabbed her neck and lifted her off of the floor where she had fallen. “You are quickly becoming a bad apple yourself. Remind me why I keep you around.”

She whimpered, her eyes puffy from her tears and his fist. He gripped the front of her nightgown, ripping the buttons at the top.

“Remind me why I keep you around.” It was a command, one she was too scared to disobey.

She slipped the torn nightgown off of her body. Her underwear followed and she climbed into the bed. He slapped her hard against her side and breasts. “That won’t do, I can’t look at that ugly face of yours tonight.

Unsure of what he wanted, she lay there unmoving, hoping for more direction. She got it. He punched her side, and pain radiated through her ribcage. “Turn the fuck over, bitch!”

Mr. Hammond flipped her over onto her stomach. She tried to regain the breath she lost as he was untying his bottoms. She lost it again the moment he forced himself inside her. Pulling back on her ponytail he demanded she stop crying out. She hadn’t even realized she was. Pain flowed over her body in a way she did not understand, and could barely recognize. She tried to control her tears, her breathing, her whimpers, but Mr. Hammond was slamming against her, slapping and hitting her. She hummed her monster’s lullaby to herself hoping against hope that she could make unconsciousness befall her.

That was in vain. By some grace, though she knew it had been excruciating to live through, the next few hours were little more than a blur in her mind. Blackness mostly, with small snips of brutal clarity in between.

When he was done he sent her back to her bed. She was bleeding and raw, barely able to walk. Every step was a new agonizing reminder of his brutality and it took her over an hour to get back to the dormitory. When she was there, sleep did not come easily, but it did come.

She had not even begun to recover when he told her two days later that their guests would be coming back.

“You better hope that lip is healed enough to play, or they may be taking you out of here tonight,” Mr. Hammond said to her sharply.

As she lay in bed, body aching in its healing, she realized that she would not survive another two years like this. She did not want to survive another two years like this. There was a way to end her suffering. Mr. Hammond had given her that knowledge.

The monsters would not take her if she played. She had always assumed that meant she would be their chosen victim if she didn’t. The woman shadow's voice echoed to her from her memory.

He’d like you more than this little redhead I think, but you aren’t on the menu just yet.

She hoped that maybe yet, was now. A little more suffering to end this hell she was in. One more night of suffering she could manage, two more years, no.

Fear built up as she was making her choice. Was she truly brave enough to choose this? Would she get too scared when the shadow appeared and start playing? She could not risk her own survival instinct kicking in. When the lights went out and she should have started playing, she snapped the flute in two, placed the broken halves on her pillow next to her, and waited.

The chapel bells rang out the call of midnight and he appeared. The tall thinner one. A strange relief came over her when it wasn’t the woman that showed up. This one was efficient. She would be gone from this room soon. He turned to where the sound from her flute should have been coming from. His hooded face was hidden in all of the darkness, but she knew he was looking at her. Nine steps it took him to reach her bed. He extended his hand towards her and she held her breath, He did not scoop her up like he had some many other children. A gloved hand gently touched her bruised face and lifted her chin so he could look at her swollen, broken lips.

She had been lying on top of the covers in preparation for her journey. He looked over the rest of her body but didn’t touch her anywhere else. She could hear the inhale of air through his nose like he was sniffing for something. He never said a word, but he took the broken flute and left the room. Not through the window, but through the door, going further into the orphanage.

Her heart was pounding in her chest. The sharp beat rang in her ear while she waited as silently and still as she could. Long dark minutes passed before the shadow reappeared. He placed something on the pillow next to her head, walked three beds over to take the sleeping body of young Jamie, and left through the window.

Shaking from the adrenaline running through her body she sat up and looked at what he had left on her pillow. It was Mr. Hammond’s coin purse and a piece of parchment with two words written upon it.

His touch was always cold, but his hand felt even more so as it gripped her thigh. He was staring out into the night sky of the city. She knew they were facing the direction of Appleseed Orphanage. Its roof was just two over from where they were. Was it that he saw, or just the night air.

“Mr. Hammond was dead in his office” she explained. “My flute puncturing his throat. The adrenaline from the ordeal pushed the pain away enough that I made it out of the city walls, all the way to an empty barn outside of town before morning. I stayed close by there foraging for food and recovering for a whole week before I started my journey up the coast.”

“I’ve lived my whole life by those two words on that parchment. I was given life by those two words.” She grabbed his hand from off her thigh, holding it in hers, watching him as he watched the skyline stoically.

“In that one moment, that monster showed me more kindness than the humans responsible for taking care of me. I’ve seen it time and again, but he was the first. He was the one to show me that those that call themselves monsters are usually less dangerous than the ones who don’t admit it.”

She turned away from him to look out at the roof of the Appleseed Orphanage herself. “I’m sad I’ll never get to repay him for that. I’ll never get to thank him for ending that hell for me. Never get to show him that I’ve lived those words.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” he said, finally breaking his distant stare to turn to her. “Your deeds have more than repaid that.”

“I didn’t mean in the general sense of paying that back,” she said. “I meant repaying him, specifically.”

“So did I.”

Her breath caught in her throat. His red eyes looked into hers and she understood. But he could not actually be saying what she thought he was. He just couldn’t. Her hands shakily reached up to her necklace, and she started to untwist the cap. “Don’t you want to know what the parchment said? I still have it here, safe in this vial.”

He took her hands from the necklace. His cold fingers came up to brush her face. Lifting her chin to look at her lips, his thumb traced where the cut had been, faded to an almost unnoticeable scar.

“The ink well on his desk spilled when I pulled him out of his chair. It was his blood that wet the quill that scrawled those two words.” He whispered them like a prayer. Like she had done on so many nights. “Be free.”

Tears flowed from her face as the realization set in.

“You have more than paid him back, dear. You gave him the very thing he wanted but thought was unattainable.”

“Hells,” she whispered, looking up into the face of her monster savior-made flesh. The man she had fought for and alongside. She could think of no words to convey the overwhelming rush of feelings she was having, so she kissed him. She kissed him as if the world would end if she couldn’t feel him pressed against her. He kissed her back with the same urgency until she could finally breathe. Words finally returned to her. “What now? What do we do with that knowledge?”

“It’s simple, darling,” he said. “We turn those two words into three. Be free, together.”

She kissed him again. It wasn’t more words that she needed to describe what there was between them, it was just the right ones. Nothing would ever encapsulate their journeys and their life together more than three little words. She whispered them back to him like a poem, “Be free, together.”