Outlier

The Beginning

She can still remember the day it all started: a sunny afternoon in the garden, a day when all seemed right in the world.

It was the last day that anything was right ever again.

"Put the tulips here, Venus," her mother had said, patting the flowerbed with a fair hand. "Next to the roses."

Venus ran dutifully to the flowerbed, sinking to her knees by her mother to plant the pretty tulips. Yellow, pink, white, with petals as soft as silk. She stroked one against her cheek.

Her mother turned a pair of bright blue eyes on her. "Are you going to plant them or not?"

"They feel nice," Venus remarked, watching a bee buzz by. "They smell good, too."

"They'll smell even better when they're planted. Then you'll be able to smell them no matter where you go in the garden." Her mother wiped a bit of sweat from her brow, smiling slightly at everything and nothing.

"When's daddy coming home?"

"Oh, he'll be back before Collection Day, darling. Not much longer now."

Venus took to planting the tulips, placing them gently in the holes already made for them. She turned to the watering can, rusted and old, her mother's favourite-

I didn't think she'd take to gardening this well.

"What?" Venus asked. She shook her head back and forth to clear it. "Did you talk, momma?"

"No, honey, I didn't."

"Huh. I really thought you did."

Maybe I should get her hearing checked.

"I don't wanna go to the doctor," Venus said petulantly, covering her ears. "I don't like hospitals."

Her mother stared oddly at her for a while, before laughing at her. "How did you know I wanted to take you?"

Venus huffed. "You just said so!"

Furrowed brows. "Venus...?"

She reached up to rub at her eyes. It felt as if something very small and fast was swimming over the surface of her irises. She felt her mother grab at her arms, pulling her fists away to look.

She can't be one of them.

Venus stared at her mother's lips. They weren't moving. She hadn't spoken- and yet she had. Nothing felt out of the ordinary save for an odd sensation that had come over her, as if she were aware of everything at once.

Anomaly. She heard her mother's voice stark and clear in her head, as loud as if she'd opened her mouth to speak. Even at six, Venus knew the word and what it meant.

"Momma?" She questioned. Her little breaths had run ragged.

"Can you shut it away?" Her mother whispered, her eyes wide with fear. "Can you try?"

"I-"

"Try, Venus!" Her mother grabbed her shoulders, shaking her back and forth. "You have to try. You can't let anyone know."

Venus began to cry. Thoughts echoed in her head, and her mother's panic was palpable. Discomfort crept up her spine like a nasty bug.

"Venus!"

She couldn't tell if mother had really yelled her name, or if it was just an anxious thought. When she closed her eyes, there were multicoloured swirls imprinted on her eyelids. She gulped down a sob and tried to force it down and never let it out again, but it was like a rabid animal that kept coming back no matter how many times she locked it away. It beat at the confines of her mind, that animal, and all the while her own name was screamed within her skull, over and over again until she knew nothing else.