There was yet another period of silence. But at least—or rather tellingly—it was filled with the odd, exhausted panting of anger from both sides of the party.
“…Ya’ can actually talk whenever ya’ want ta’, Sally,” Bradley’s already deep voice somehow reached lower. Most likely from sheer mental/emotional exhaustion.
“Cool,” Sal simply replied. Still hurt.
Artemis simply sighed in response, Calypso hearing the various footfalls away from the dining room. “Yeah, just… You’re so much better than me, with this. I ruin everything every time I open my fucking mouth…”
There was a soft clap against flesh. Despite Calypso knowing better, she quickly looked up to check if the unthinkable happened—and Bradley struck at Artemis in some way.
She untensed. Bradley just did a facepalm, shaking his head as he massaged his forehead as he did.
The fact that Calypso remotely thought that was a possibility, was telling how dark the mood in this room. This house.
Calypso’s gaze resumed fixed on the table, but she had the courage to bring up her claws at least. Flexing them, watching how unique and odd it was for her to be halfway in such a localized area. Normal palms, but fingers slowly faded into the hot pink as they warped into the Consumed’s claws.
“I’ll start with the questions ya’ already asked…” Bradley freed himself from his own palm. “Simply put… Yeah. When Penny called, we… We had an inkin’, that this was happenin’. We wanted ta’ hope against hope, but it was pretty much clear. So she sent ya’ here, Cal—not just because she couldn’t handle it, because Mrs. Moses was here.”
“You said it yourself, Calypso…” Mrs. Moses chimed in. “While we just witnessed the Fates being active in shaping our paths… Running into a seasoned Consumed when this was meant to be ‘just’ moving away to a loving family, in the middle of nowhere Maine... Far too many coincidences lined up for that to be just a fluke.”
Calypso heard the professor adjust in her chair, before resuming, “But to clarify things on my end… I had no idea still, when you entered my class that faithful day. I only got the call from your aunt and uncle on the eve of when we truly met, informing me that you must’ve run off. The last piece of the puzzle that I was sure I had enough of to see the complete picture, but confirmation none the less.”
“…So. The idea of killing me. Was that on the table or not?”
Calypso let the question uncomfortably hang in the air. As it should.
“Well?” Sal backed up her cousin, at least verbally. “We’re waitin’.”
“… W-we didn’t want ta’ think about that,” Bradley admitted. “That phone call was nothin’ but pleadin’ an’ beggin’… If anyone could somehow produce some sort of miracle and know-how to avoid all that, it’d be Moses…”
Calypso could hear the gritting of his teeth, followed by a very dry gulp.
“…An’ worse come to worse… A-at least it ain’t some bastard wannabe huntsman takin’ ya’ out. But make no mistake, we ain’t some group of utilitarians that work ya’ off. We lived together once, Cal—w-you’re our other daughter, damn near. L-like Artemis said. We’re just victims that are burdened with the knowledge… just memories.”
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“…Y’all think yer in a good place to give us the short version?” Sal asked. “What happened to y’all?”
Artemis sighed, as she finally came back into the kitchen. “I’m gonna need that—”
Calypso heard the slushing of the bottle, and Artemis’ sounds of drinking a great deal of it. The monster girl heard the strains after, huffing through her nose.
“Long story short… Me, your father, Penny, and… Cal’s father,” Artemis tried to lessen the blow of the last mentioned. “We did the usual summer vacation during our college years. We invited a gal we then recently gotten to know better, let her tag along because she was pretty much a shut-in. A cabin in the woods.”
Artemis swirled the contents of the bottle. Gathering the strength to explain what happened next.
“This… Thing managed to get in. The new girl was gone—we had to assume the worse when it was just casually ripping us apart, with nowhere to fucking run or hide. Even when your fathers managed to break the door down in their shared sacrifice play—didn’t fucking matter. It was like it knew the woods, and we were just too injured to get that far. So we decided to go down swinging… And somehow. We made it.”
“…We could barely fight the one monster girl, and we had three of ‘em on our side,” Sal’s wonder seeped into her tone. “And y’all just… Beat yours?”
“Thought it was an act of God, basically. What’s more, when help came for us—managed to find the new girl too, but she was far worse for wear, barely hanging on. When I tell you that on the way to the hospital, we all made our respective speeches about ‘giving up this’ and ‘acting like that’ from now on—we were just… So happy to be alive.”
There was another swig of the bottle. Unexpected or lead up to.
Artemis didn’t even groan or make a sound, after finishing this time.
“Out come the cops, questioning every single breath we took—because suddenly we’re one of the main suspects in a town-wide mass murder case: the typical horror movie kids didn’t die this time, but the entire town they crashed at more or less died that night. Horrifying, right?”
Artemis slammed the bottle onto the table, “But no—because that psychotic, shut-in bitch and the monster were one and the same—and once we figured that out, she already left a trail of bodies from the town allll the way back home. She made our lives a living hell because sh-she liked us, and hated ‘them’—whatever the fuck that meant…”
Calypso became still. Her heart not only aching, but caught in her throat.
“But—but we managed to actually off her. It wasn’t just luck this time, that weird book came to us—we found a page or two on what to do… She… She was closest to your mother, Calypso. She was the only one that would let her guard down around. So Penny had to take matters into her own hands and… Well. Now you know she hasn’t been the same since.”
Now Calypso felt her blood run cold, yet her face flushed with intense heat.
“L-like look, I understand why you’re so pissed—” Artemis started to stutter from the high pressure of her emotions. “I get it! But how—how could we get around an-and tell you both all that? Without making you both crazy—paranoid like us? We tell you—sure, you’re ready—but now you’re looking over your shoulders until you die—we don’t tell you—hope th-that you grow up and—and don’t face any of this—now sure, normal life—but you’re just as fucked as we were! Either way—we were gonna lose this!”
“Okay, okay…” Sal urged, lowering her voice in empathy. “I-I’m sorry, Maw. It’s just… It’s a lot ta’ take in an’ y-ya’ never hid things from me before, an’—”
“Don’t worry,” Bradley assured. “First an’ hopefully only time…”
Artemis tried to gather herself, but exhaled multiple times in anger. Resentment. Fragility.
“There’s a lot more personal detail here and there… Details that your mother wants to talk to you about, one on one, Cal… She’s gonna be here in a couple of minutes. We were thinking of taking Sal out to the farmlands and having our one-to-one, but we can stay until she comes. If y’want.”
Calypso’s pouty lips wavered. She balled her claws up silently, knowing that she’ll cut her palms again.
“No, um… That’s okay,” Calypso didn’t look at her aunt. She definitely knew she was becoming compromised now. “I’ll wait here and decompress the best I can. It’s the least I can do. Now that I know she’s been through way too much, too soon.”