sanctuary | on hold indefinitely

thirteen | nightmare

Rope is curled in Devan's hands, but she doesn't remember how she came to be holding it. In front of her, a man and a woman sit on the cracked, charred concrete of the ruined warehouse, whimpering. Their teary eyes are an electric shade of blue that stare unsettlingly out of pale, white sockets. They share the same strawberry blonde hair. Brother and sister, Devan thinks.

Filix stands beside her, looking at his victims with a smug smile. A lighter is poised in his hands. Behind him, the full moon is low, bathing everything in silver. "What are you waiting for, love?" he asks, crossing his wiry arms over his chest. "Tie them up."

Devan obeys, kneeling to their level and forcing the Healers backward until they hit the wooden stakes that are sunken into the ground with the rest of the ruins. "Keep still," she orders in a cold, detached voice. Behind the stakes, Farah watches, grinning lazily with a bottle of beer in her hand.

"Please," the woman pleads. Close up, it is clear she is not much older than Devan, her features the type that are usually seen on children—milky, smooth skin; thin, pink lips; eyelashes and eyebrows so fair that it seems as though she has none at all. Like a child, she is shivering. "Please let us go. Please don't hurt us."

"Quiet," Devan responds, tightening the rope first around her waist so that her spine presses into the wood and then binding her hands together.

"Why are you doing this?" she sobs, her face reddening, swelling, with tears. "Do you even know why you're doing this?"

Her voice changes on the second question. It is no longer weak. It is no longer hers at all. It is someone else's, but Devan can't put her finger on whose. She stops, still gripping the knotted rope, and looks down at the woman. "What did you say?"

"You'll never be one of us," the Healer whispers, her voice still deep and distorted. "You'll never be a Healer."

"I don't want to be a Healer." Devan's voice is a snarl. She pulls the rope tighter, leaving burns across the woman's wrist. The woman barely winces.

"No?" she asks, tilting her head. "Then why are you always running away?"

"Who's running?" Devan pulls the man to his feet, her eyes still narrowed on the woman as she pushes him to the stake and ties him to it.

"And why," the woman continues as though she hadn't spoken, "did you try to heal that deer in the woods?"

"How did you know about that?" She glances over at Filix cautiously, her heart pounding in her chest. He is watching with a grin, unfazed by the woman's questions. Farah is pacing behind him, a snake sizing up her prey.

"How it must feel to never belong anywhere." It is the man talking now, his voice trembling despite his words. "To have your soul contradict itself always. To feel uneasy with the blood on your hands, to feel unworthy when you try to fix it. You should not have been born, Devanshi. You don't make sense."

Anger is beginning to rise in her. She steps away from the stakes, scowling at the man. The cool night air bites her cheeks and her breath is visible as she asks,"Excuse me?"

"He's right, love," Filix chimes in from behind her, flicking his lighter so that his face is illuminated by the wavering flame. His eyes are black holes, two pathways both leading to oblivion. "Wouldn't it be easier to let the darkness take you? To be like us?"

He tosses her the lighter. She catches it effortlessly, the metal cold in her palm.

"You're an abomination." The woman is sobbing, her voice thick with hatred. "You should be the one tied to this stake."

Devan grits her teeth, her knuckles turning white as she clutches the lighter. "You don't know anything about me."

"Let's not drag this out, Devan," Farah sighs, pouring a bottle of gasoline over the Healers as calmly as though it is water. "Kill them."

"Killing us won't make you belong." The man is spluttering against the liquid pouring onto him, but still his words are crystal clear. "You'll always be empty."

"You'll always be dead." Devan waits until her sister has taken a step back, and then she throws the lit lighter onto the man. In an instant, the flames consume him, the heat tickling her face as they spread across the weeds that grow between the cracked stone until they find the woman, too. Their screams are loud, guttural. They pierce through the night like a blade through flesh.

Devan doesn't flinch, not when the rancid smell of burning corpses hits her, not when she hears them beg in mangled shrieks for it to stop, not when the sparks flicker and jolt too close for comfort, threatening to pull her into the fire. She stands still as stone, watching while Filix and Farah begin to dance.

"Doesn't it feel good to be home?" Filix laughs, his hands tangled in Farah's hair. He kisses her neck sloppily, but his eyes are still on Devan.

Devan's voice is emotionless, her expression blank, as she replies, "Yes. Yes, it does."

* * *

Devan awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright as though she was a marionette being pulled up by its string. Her skin prickled with the memory of the hot flames, her jaw throbbing where she had been clenching it. Beside her on the old floorboards, the candle she had lit and forgotten to snuff out before falling asleep had burnt through the majority of its wick. The wax had melted onto the floor, seeping through the dark cracks in the wooden slabs. She let out a breath she had been holding as she adjusted to reality again, finding a comfort she hadn't been expecting in the weight of the sleeping bag against her legs and the four walls that kept her locked away from the outside world.

She went to blow out what remained of the candle but stopped when she saw something: a piece of paper rolled up and tied with brown string. It had not been there when she had fallen asleep.

With a frown, she took it, untying the string and trying to ignore the slight tremor in her fingers. She recognised the looping, scrawled handwriting almost immediately from the letters she had found in her mother's old drawer. It belonged to her father.

She held the paper up to the candle to see better, her eyes straining against the dim light.

Devanshi,

I hope you found the cabin well enough. I am sorry it is so small and damp, but hopefully it will do for now. I wanted you to know how pleased I was to see you after so many years, Lur. I only wish it had been under better circumstances. Still, I hope you know that I am here should you need anything. Perhaps when this is over you may even come for dinner and we can catch up properly. I think of all I have missed in your life with deep regret—but now I am rambling like an old man and I am sure you have no interest in such things at present.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that I wish you to stay in touch. I worry about you. I'd like to know you are safe (not that I have earned that right, I know). You have my address. Should you wish to, I would appreciate hearing back from you, if only to give me some peace of mind. Despite what you must think, I never stopped being your father.

Be safe, Devanshi.

Yours,

Abū.

For a while she could do nothing but stare down at the letter and imagine the words being read aloud with her father's soft, lilting voice. It was a comfort to hold this small piece of paper and know that he was thinking of her. Then, catching her off guard, came anger that bubbled first in the pit of her stomach and spread through her bones like ice. How dare he care after all of this time? After he had ran away to hide, leaving his daughters in the dark?

She crumpled the letter and without thinking anymore about it, held it over the small flame. With a tired, trance-like fascination, she watched the paper blacken and disintegrate. The flames crept up the letter quickly, wild and liberated in their quest to destroy. She dropped it after a moment of eerie detachedness, where she was not quite sure if she could feel the pain on her thumb, for it began as a distant, unrecognisable tingle. The flames licked the letter up hungrily, reminding her of her dream. Only when there was nothing left of it but ash did she extinguish the candle and let herself be pulled back into the darkness.