Esther

Having to sign instructions to Max is a trial, especially in gloves, but I manage. It's a blessing, really that the Colemans have a little girl so desperate for a sister I can use the whining brat like a blunt object. She's annoying, but turning out to be a useful tool. Which reminds me, when we finish dragging the dead nun off the road, we'll need to hide the hammer. Details. Details. Maybe the playhouse? It's locked, we can find the key, John will have it in his office. And after I'll have to silence MAx. Ironic, since she can't talk, but that's not matter. It will be easy enough to keep the deaf brat in line. I just have to use the right story, convince her that this was the only way to keep the family together. And if that doesn't work, well, I'll threaten her, she'll go to jail to too. Devotion through fear. Devotion through love. Either will work now that the nun is out of the way.

And if Max still doesn't play along. Accidents happen every day.

I almost pull my back out, tugging the dead weight. Damn Sister Abigail and damn that bitch Kate. I like this place, I like my Daddy John. Kate thinks she's so special, with her dead-daughter roses and a husband that fucks her in the kitchen like a whore where everyone can see. But what does she know? Esther knows, Esther sees the way women throw themselves at John, like the oh-so-friendly neighbor with her talk of moving chairs and the way she practically stripped down in the snow for him. And the way he looked back at her. If he hasn’t fucked around on Kate already, he’s certainly thought about it. All those women he must know. But they don’t know, those women, any of them, that he's mine now. All mine, he just doesn’t know it yet. My Daddy, my beautiful Daddy John.

I almost panic when I hear the car, but we manage and I smile as Sister Abigail's body tumbles down the embankment. And when we go check her again, it appears she sin't quite dead yet. Easily fixed. Like the pigeon and a hammer's easier to manage than a rock. Barely worth mentioning, after all, skulls are such fragile things. With that done, I turn to Max, we need to get home before anyone misses us and I need to change from these clothes. But then everything lurches. There's a twist in my gut and and my vision blurs until I look up and see... a window? A window with water outside and it shouldn't be raining. If anything it should be snowing.

It isn't a window. The water is pressed against it, all the way to the ceiling and I stumble back.

I'm underwater. In some kind of (prison) aquarium. “Max!” I'm covered in blood in an aquarium and where is that brat?! What was this? Am I hallucinating, like when I was in chains and drugged until I couldn't see? Kate. Kate. Has she somehow... no. Kate's a dumb, alcoholic bitch who, holding onto the idea that she can still have a little girl to replace the one she killed in utero. She won't know about the Institute, about Leena, and Sister fucking Abigail doesn't know either, none of them do. They can’t. How can they?

I'm fighting to keep from banging my head against the window, from taking the hammer and smashing through it. I'm fighting the rising panic and fear. They don’t know, they can’t know, none of them ever have in the past. Stupid American women so desperate for children that they don’t look closely when one's available, too stupid to see that their husbands don’t love them anymore, they love me. They always love me.

“MAX!” I'm a fool, shouting for a deaf girl, but there's nothing but the echo of my voice and I have to stop. Whatever this is, I'm alone. I don't know how, I don't know why, but others will come soon. Always did. Men and women who will would try to make sense of it all. And I need to be calm for it. I need a story. A ruse. And some way to explain all this blood unless I can find other clothing. Wiping at my face, I head back to the wall of glass, stripping off my gloves so I can clean off my face. I'll would think of something, I always do and the “adults” always believed me. I'm just a little girl after all. They will take me in, take me back to my John or take me somewhere else. They will want to take care of little helpless me.

Maybe there will be a new Daddy to love me, a better Daddy. One who will love her back like John does. One without a bitch of a wife or more irritating children.

I actually like that thought and as I clean the nun’s blood off my face, I decide to sing a little in the strange silence around me:

“You’ve got to laugh a little, cry a little, let the clouds roll by a little. That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love....”