The rest of the festive season bled into a strange fog for Angie. Laughter echoed around her as the village kids ran wild with holiday cheer, their feet dusting the red sand and their joy rising like smoke into the blistering sky. But Angie, Angie was elsewhere. She played with them, smiled when they looked, but inside, her thoughts twisted and tangled like vines wrapping around her mind. Her small heart, already frayed, was now burdened by a fear she couldn't explain, a shame she couldn't name. The memory of that night clung to her like wet clothes in winter, cold, invasive, and unshakable.
Angie had always been fragile, a child born with a whisper of strength in her veins. Her immune system, the nurses had said, was weaker than most, though no one could quite figure out what was wrong with her. Her body never quite kept up, but after Christmas, it began to fail her in strange and terrifying ways. One moment, she'd be running, giggling, pretending, really, and the next, her body would collapse beneath her like a puppet with cut strings. Sharp pain would crawl through her joints, and her limbs would go limp, refusing to respond. Her skin turned pale. Her fingers trembled constantly.
Her grandmother, with her aged eyes and calloused hands, began to notice. She watched the brightness dim in Angie's eyes, the sharpness with which her body moved dulling into something sluggish and defeated. She started praying more, started whispering to herself in corners, eyes tracking Angie with growing worry. But even then, she never asked. And Angie never told. Not about the pain. Not about the voices. Not about Ian. Because her body was failing, but her mind… her mind was being devoured. The voices that had always whispered in her ears now screamed. They weren't always scary sometimes, they were curious, even kind. But they were always loud. Questions pounded at her skull in the quiet of the night, theories looped endlessly in her brain. Her mind was becoming a maze with no exit, and the more she tried to make sense of it, the more lost she became.
Her birthday came like a flicker of light before the school gates reopened. It had always been her one bright day. George, her older brother studying overseas, had never once forgotten it. Every year, no matter how far away he was, he'd send something: money, a gift, a message. This time, he'd bought her a doll with golden-blonde hair and sent extra for a birthday cake. A whole cake. In their village, a cake was like gold.
Of course, Catherine pocketed half the money, buying the cheapest, driest sponge cake she could find. But Angie didn't care. That cheap cake was still more than she'd ever dreamed of. None of the other kids, Hope, Pearl, or any cousin in the yard, had ever gotten a cake on their birthdays. But she did. Every year. That was the only thing she held onto with pride: George never forgot her. Not once.
She was smiling, truly smiling, as the other children gathered around. Some came to celebrate. Most came for the cake. But Angie didn't care, eyes on the flickering candles, tiny fingers twitching with excitement. She was about to make a wish when a familiar stench curled into her nostrils, sickening and thick. Her breath caught.
Ian.
He walked through the gate like he belonged there, like the dust of the yard was his home. He didn't knock. He didn't pause. He simply strode in, his eyes scanning the crowd until they found her. Angie froze. Her smile shattered. The scent of him, rotten eggs and moldy sweat, washed over her like a wave of filth. She could barely breathe.
He moved toward them. Toward her grandmother. His arm stretched out to greet her with a handshake, but Angie flinched. Her chest tightened, her heart climbed into her throat. She thought he was reaching for her. For one horrific second, she thought he would grab her again. Hurt her again. But his hand simply met her grandmother's, and Angie exhaled in silence.
Still, the panic didn't leave. His presence contaminated everything. He sat down near them like he belonged, like he was part of the family, and Angie wanted to scream. This was their house. Her safe place. She didn't mind seeing him from afar, at Catherine's. But here? So, close she could smell his skin and feel the vibrations of his voice when he laughed?
She wanted to tell someone, her grandmother maybe. She stared at her for a while, wondering if she'd believe her. But fear silenced her. Catherine would find out. Trouble would come. And Angie wasn't ready for that battle.
She turned to Pearl instead, the one person she might trust. But Pearl was happy. She was giggling with other kids, licking icing from her fingers. She looked so free, so unbroken. Angie swallowed her confession. She didn't want to break her sister's joy. At least one of them deserved to laugh. Hope wasn't an option. She was the biggest snitch in the yard.
School reopened a few days later, and Angie felt like she'd been handed an escape rope. She ran into its arms like a prisoner craving sunlight. There, in the chalk-dusted classrooms, she found space to breathe. She began bringing her doll with her, her precious birthday gift. She would braid its hair during break, twisting the soft blond strands into intricate patterns. It soothed her, calmed her mind.
Until one day, it didn't.
One afternoon, overwhelmed by a sudden rush of Ian's memory, the pressure of his grip, the way his hand had smacked her behind, Angie's fingers tightened around a pair of scissors she'd quietly stolen from Mrs. David's desk. Her hand moved before her brain did, and she stabbed the doll's leg. Once. Then again. And again. She kept stabbing, harder, deeper, until a voice broke through. "You know," said Walker—Johnny Walker, as he liked to call himself, "if you want to kill it, the head would be a better shot." She looked up, startled. Walker was a distant cousin of hers, in the same class as Lira and Lina. Mischievous, nosy, always watching everything and everyone. But in that moment, his voice wasn't mocking. It was curious. Understanding.
That was the start of their strange friendship.
Walker didn't ask too many questions. He didn't tease. He just watched. Sometimes, he made jokes. Other times, he just sat beside her while she did what she did. Angie grew darker, quieter, stranger. She began listening to the voices more. When they grew curious, she obeyed.
She started catching insects. Crickets with legs like violin strings, butterflies like fragile painted prayers, dragonflies with glassy wings that trembled like frightened truths. She brought them to school, hidden in matchboxes and pencil cases. Not to kill them. Not really. That wasn't the point. She didn't "want" them dead. She just needed to know them. She didn't even know when it started. It was like her hands had decided before her mind caught up. During break times, or in the lull of quiet lessons, Angie would sit at her desk, the world around her a muffled blur, and gently release her tiny captives. One by one. She handled them delicately, reverently, like sacred things. She'd whisper to them, sometimes. Prayers and promises.
Then she'd begin.
Using the tiny blade from a broken sharpener, she sliced them open with terrifying care. Their shells split like secrets, insides pale and wet and glistening under classroom light. There was no malice in her eyes, no giggling curiosity like the other children had when stepping on ants. Angie wasn't like them. Her movements were slow, precise, almost holy. Like she was performing rites. She drained their bodies gently onto tissues she folded like altar cloths. Then, using ink drained from her pens, she filled them back up, blue, black, sometimes red if she borrowed from a teacher's desk. She'd squint, watching the ink spread beneath their papery skin, blooming like bruises in reverse. They didn't bleed. Not anymore. They "glowed". Then came the sewing.
She would visit the crafts bin when no one was looking, her small hands carefully choosing threads like a child picking flowers. Red, yellow, green, baby blue. She liked the soft ones. The kind that didn't tug too hard at the skin. She used staples first. One. Two. Three. Piercing the flesh like a zipper, just enough to hold the thread in place. The thread slid through with a whisper. She tied tiny knots with trembling fingers, her mouth slightly open in quiet concentration, like a surgeon learning from muscle memory she shouldn't have.
Her desk smelled of ink and insect blood and the faint copper scent of something wrong. A rot so quiet it crept instead of announced itself. Her books were pushed aside. Her worksheets stained. Once, a dragonfly's wing fluttered long after its belly had been sewn shut, like the trauma inside refused to die just yet. Nobody asked. Or maybe they did, and she didn't hear. Her mind was elsewhere, inside thoraxes and cracked shells, crawling through gooey veins. She didn't do it to be mean. She wasn't being cruel.
To her, it was beauty. She called it "fixing them." Healing. Putting them back together after the world had opened them up without warning. She didn't know why her fingers itched to open things that were whole, only to try to make them whole again. She didn't understand that she was recreating something. Reliving something. Her trauma had no name yet, only instinct. Her grief wore wings. Once, she tried to bring one back. A butterfly. It had stopped moving too early. She opened it, drained it, painted its insides with a swirl of violet and black, then carefully stitched it shut. She pressed it gently between the pages of her math book, leaving a halo of ink around its body.
Her classmates started to notice. Whispers grew around her like mildew. "She talks to bugs." "She keeps dead things in her bag." "She stapled a butterfly's face shut." But Angie didn't hear them. She was listening to other things—the ticking of beetle legs against plastic, the wet heartbeat of a fresh dissection, the sound of stitches pulling skin into silence. She kept them all, stored in her desk drawer like relics. Some pinned to index cards, labelled in her childish handwriting. "Fixed." "Better now." "Happy." Some she tucked in her pockets, like lucky charms. Sometimes she forgot they were there, and their broken bodies stained her uniform in dark blotches no washing could remove.
Angie didn't smile much anymore. But when she sewed, when she inked, her lips twitched slightly at the corners, like someone who'd remembered something that didn't hurt anymore. Or maybe something that *still* hurt, but in a quieter way now. There was no laughter. No cruelty. Just silence. Innocent, eerie silence.
And inside that silence, things bled quietly, and were sewn back together, never quite the same. Sometimes they died. Sometimes they crawled away, leaking ink from their wounds. Walker found it fascinating. "Are you sure you're okay?" he'd ask, leaning on the edge of her desk. "You're not scared you'll create an alien?" His jokes made her smile, just a little. But she never answered. She didn't know the answer herself. Other students started whispering. She heard them. "She's sick," they said. "There's something wrong with that girl." They gossiped behind her back, stared when they thought she wouldn't notice. But Angie didn't care. She knew she was different. And for once, she didn't mind. Because Walker didn't flinch. He stayed. Catherine, however, noticed. One evening, she found Angie with a small box filled with insect corpses and thread. She beat her senseless. Slapped the doll out of her hands, crushed her tools beneath her shoes, and screamed about "witchcraft" and "evil games." She threw everything away. Angie didn't cry. She just went back to doing it at school.
Her obsession returned to the doll's hair. She started weaving patterns into it, cornrows, braids, little twists that wrapped perfectly around the plastic scalp. She never thought much of it. Until one evening, Catherine called her over. Held out a comb. Sat on a chair. "Sit," she said, pointing in front of her. Angie obeyed, stiff with confusion. Catherine leaned forward, gesturing to her own hair. "Do the same thing you did on that doll."
Angie's fingers trembled as she worked, pulling and weaving Catherine's hair into something neat, something new. It took an hour, but she did it. And when she finished, Catherine stood up, turned to the mirror, and said, "Not bad." Then she looked down at Angie. "How did you know how to do this?" "I don't know," Angie replied, a shy smile blooming. "I was just playing with the doll." For once, Catherine didn't shout. Didn't hit. She gave Angie a slow nod, something that felt like pride. And for that fleeting moment, Angie forgot everything else. She hated Catherine, but this… this was something. This was a win. One of the rarest feelings of her life.
But how long would the feeling last?