𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐀 𝐆𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐓 || lockwood & co.

ONE ; ARSON

Perhaps - under different circumstances- Matilda Lockwood might have been grateful for the silence that currently filled the kitchen. After all, it was hard to experience peace and quiet in a house occupied by a moody girl with a country drawl, a messy and insulting researcher, a younger brother always complaining or pretending to be professional, and an eighteen year old depressed woman who always had something nasty to say in response to something that annoyed her.

However, this silence that surrounded Matilda wasn't exactly peaceful. In fact, it was laced with tense anxiety and worry.

Matilda sat across the table from George Karim. They didn't speak - and that was the silence. The only actual noise in the room was George nervously flipping through the newspaper clippings he and Matilda gathered the night before on the case. The case that the other two had left for without them. There was also the sound of Matilda writing on the thinking cloth, her chin in her hand, her knuckles white from clutching her pen. She wrote a poem. They always helped to calm her when she was restless. Every once in a while, one of them would take a sip of tea, or sniff, clear their throat, but they didn't speak.

Matilda had only been living with her brother and his associates for three months - and by no means was she back on good terms with him - but when he didn't return the night before, and when the morning news came out, the young woman was immediately horrified for what could have happened.

Matilda told herself she wasn't worried. Why should she be? Her brother was a pain in the arse and had done nothing but piss her off for the past two years - so much so to the point where she left home. She shouldn't be worried.

But perhaps it was some evolutionary - sisterly - instinct that caused Matilda to stare at the television screen that morning next to George with wide eyes and an aghast expression.

Whatever it was, she knew she wasn't feeling it willingly.

As George sat at the kitchen table with Matilda at nine twenty-two that morning, he stared at what the older teenager was writing. A poem, so far consisting of four lines - written in dark ink messily. George suspected that he wouldn't be able to read the poem until later when Matolda walked away, as she tended to be a bit protective of her creations at first. There was several of her poems sprawled on the thinking cloth already, and George had read them all. His favorite was one Matilda named "Colbat".

Cobaltt

He has always had
cold fingers.
In the winter they
turn blue.
He is cobalt.
She used to have
shimmering eyes.
In the sunlight they
glowed sapphire.
She is cobalt.
I now always have
ghost-touched thoughts.
In the darkness they
poison my heart.
I am cobalt.

- M.L.

George didn't know the context behind this poem of Matilda's, but he could only guess it had something to due with her past. Most poems do. But it was also curious. George knew that Matilda's brother hated poetry, thought it was "a load of ninny and barmy." Maybe Matilda's interest in poetry came from her brother's dislike for it. Another way to annoy his arse.

The Lockwood siblings were a right foul mystery to George Karim. As far as he could tell, they were very well not found of one another. They constantly did or said things just to berate the other. On more than one occasion George and Lucy had stood outside the kitchen or the library with saddened expressions when a fight between the brother and sister broke out. They both would scream verbal abuse, throwing things, shove each other around. Once, Matilda had pushed her younger brother into the umbrella stand of rapiers in the hall, and the blade of one had cut through his shirt and sliced a thin line across his back. George was the one to clean the cut, and had listened to his friend's upset ramblings. That was the only time George had ever seen his employer - his best friend - cry. Matilda didn't speak a word to anyone for a week after that.