Andrei and Rhian


    A baby’s cry’ll cut you deeper than any knife. Day in, day out. Day in, and day bloody out. At first, Lidia felt sorry for the wee lass, doing everything she could to set it right. She remembered her brother when he was a baby, but he wasn’t so goddess-be-damned fussy. All she wanted was sleep. All she wanted was death.


    The girl still bled from the womb, her temperature rising higher by the day. The brown-eyed boy only added to her stress, until each hour melted into the other. Days? Weeks? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept or held down a meal, and through it all, the cries never stopped. She’d do anything to make it stop, and one terrible day it did. She shook and shook until the baby went still. She was horrified once for what she’d done, and she was horrified twice for being relieved. She brought the child to the river where she planned to drown herself in her sorrow. “A sad, sad accident,” they’d say, if only it had happened that way.


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    That’s how it might have looked if he hadn’t come for her first. The one who understood the love for a sibling, the loss of a child, and the push and pull of death. Lidia Ruza was already dying. She knew it, the man in the emerald suit with the amethyst cane knew it. Hells, now even we all know it. He promised she could die at home in her pretty bed in the room with the butter-yellow drapes instead of out in the cold. He promised it wouldn’t hurt, if only she’d let him help her. It’d be over, but then it would be new again. He should know, he’d done it once already.