Prologue—Hell is for Children

She was young.

Maybe seven.

She looked seven.

But her eyes, her walk, her speech—they were older than that.

The girl walked along the main street of Seldom, her little pigtails bouncing in the mild Michigan breeze. Her skirt flapped against her legs like a soft, well-worn bird, gentle, old. The bits that had torn over the past year were patched up now; bits of calico and denim and silk that she’d traded for, back in the Habitat, were woven into the fabric. Her boots were thick and heavy and unrecognisable to the surface world, as was her sweatshirt. The boots were woven, hardened kelp-cloth with scale buttons, and they looked like they belonged on a G.I. mermaid. The hoodie was spider silk, patched occasionally with bits of denim and stained from that Main Dome break last year.

It was midnight. Maybe later.

She turned onto a street that marked the mini-suburbs of tiny Seldom, Michigan. The kelp-cloth boots clinked on the asphalt. It was a weird sound.

This was her first trip topside since running away.

It felt odd, coming back here.

She was a year older.

She was a lifetime smarter.

She was changed.

Which meant she wasn’t that quiet, submissive little girl anymore. She wasn’t so easily hit, or bruised, or—

(think it it happened so think it thats what shelli told us to do right because its bad to suppress those thoughts.)

Or raped.

She had a mission. Get Thomas, drop a careless match, and leave. Granted, she hadn’t been given topside permission for the middle bit, but Shelli would just have to deal with that. Her stepfather deserved it, anyways, and the law skipped people like him over. People who had money, or connections, or power; they never got what they deserved. And people like her stepfather, who had all three, slid the punishments away from themselves, and onto other people. Whenever something had been discovered, whenever she’d told someone—

Mr. Nichols, her favourite teacher, would never work in that profession again. His wife was perfectly happy as her stepfather’s maid, and, now that she thought of it, probably a bit more than that. Not that her mother knew.

The door was locked. This would present a minor irritation to any thieves who dared rob the Mayor. It presented even less to a former member of the household, who knew there was a key under a false rock.

She retrieved it, and entered the house. All was quiet. The clock ticked on the wall above the door, chiming twelve-fifteen softly in the dark. Her footsteps were loud.

There was the corner where he’d first struck her, and the closet where he’d left her for whole days at a time when she was too bad. There was the shelf where his brass knuckles were on display, right next to the whip and above the alcohol closet.

There was the bedroom.

She stuck her chin a little further in the air. It’d all be gone soon, but she’d be damned if she let herself revert back to a child.

(i may be a child but i'm older than most are and i know i can be more than some dumb girl some slut he should have should have should have known better.)

Thom’s room was on the second floor. These were the stairs she’d fallen down, tripped, a thousand times to hide the bruises—

An involuntary shiver trickled down her spine. If she was sane, she wouldn’t be back here. Only some kind of crazy person would come back to the place where she’d suffered so badly.

The girl paused.

Here was her old bedroom.

Perhaps… they didn’t know she was here yet. A quick detour.

The door creaked open.

Here was the bed that she’d hidden under whenever there was a knock on the door. Here was the closet where she’d close the door, sit in the corner, and cry her eyes out without really knowing why.

(shelli helped that she saved me she saved so many of us so why does she have to hide?)

There were the small books, thin accumulations of paper to her library in the Habitat. And she knew there was a satchel in the closet…

She’d never had time to pack, really.

And books were always welcome in the Habitat.

But there was no time. She slipped a thin copy of Ghrame Base’s The Sign of the Seahorse under her arm, and closed the door behind her quietly.

There was Thom’s room, right across the hall.

(please let him still be here what if hes not here what if dad killed him what if that rooms empty why was mine still full did they miss me what if hes sorry truly sorry but i somehow doubt that.)

He was asleep in his racing-car bed, a child of five with curling hair and a sweet face.

And a newly-healing cut on his forehead, and a black eye.

The girl crept closer.

“Tom?” she whispered. “Thomas? Wake up.”

His eyes opened. “Melina?”

“Shh. I’m busting you out of here.”

“Why’re you—“

“I found a safe place,” the girl said. “A real safe place. Where they teach you things, and they give you a safe home of your own, and, and. It’s ‘mazing, Tom. It’s real ‘mazing.”

“Dad’ll get mad,” he said softly, sleepily. “Where’d—where’d you go, Melina?”

“Home,” said the girl. “An’ I’m gonna take you back there with me. An’ you won’t fall down the stairs ever again, unless you trip.”

He smiled. “I don’ fall down th’—“

“Exactly.” She looked him in the eyes.

“You mean it,” said Thomas. “You’re takin’ me away?”

“Yeah,” said Melina. She held up a match. “An’ then I’m burnin’ this place down. Get packed.”

He stood up and shuffled through his closet, looking for something. Triumphant, he pulled a Spider-man backpack from the messy depths. “Like the fire in the grocery store last year?”

“Yeah. Like that. Take everything you don’t wanna lose forever.”

“We’re never coming back!” he said happily.

“No, never,” said Melina. She fingered the matchbox in her pocket. “I’ll be right back.”

“Why?”

“Dad still keeps the gas in the garage, right? For the lawnmower?”

“Dunno.”

“Of course.” She remembered standing in the garage, soaked and wet, with her stepfather hovering over her, a match in his hand…

She shivered again. He was terrible. Somehow, it hadn’t registered when she’d actually lived here. It had just been life.

She was not gonna let Thomas live that way.

When the downstairs was sufficiently doused, and she was sure she was clean, Melina tiptoed back upstairs to find Thomas ready to go. He had his backpack stuffed full, and his hands were full of books.

She was glad she’d brought the extra waterproof bags. They were gonna need them.

The two siblings scuttled down the stairs. There was a smell like grease and fresh-cut grass in the air.

Thom paused on the way out. “Aren’t we gonna get Mom and Dad?”

“No.”

“But you were gonna burn the house down.”

“Yeah.”

He paused. “But Mom and Dad—“

“Who hurt us. Who hurt you. Like you said, you never really fell down the stairs.”

“You’re gonna kill them?”

Melina took the matchbox from her pocket. “They deserve it.”

“But they’ll really die, Melina.”

She paused. “I know,” she said. “Come on, or we’ll die too, Tom.”

He hesitated, and took a look back at the bedroom door. “Mom never hurt us.”

“No, she just stood an’ watched.” Another trickle of cold slithered down her spine. Mom had never touched Thomas, but the slaps still stung on Melina’s face.

(don’t you say that she said don’t you talk bad about your daddy he just wants you to be a good girl he loves you melly he loves you and you make him sad when he hurts you he doesnt want to hurt you…)

They were outside the house. Melina took the matches from her pocket.

The first match didn’t catch. The second one did, and there was a sudden fireball inside the house. Melina and Thomas ran, fast as they could go without Thom dropping his books.

She looked back once, and saw the flames, and the image of her parents, trapped in that, snuck into her mind. For a moment, she felt sorry, and scared, and guilty, and horrified.

Thom tripped. She went to catch him.

And they ran off through the bright midnight of Seldom.

an: I reposted this with a better version. Yes, I'm still writing this story, dammit. I've been writing it for at least eight years, possibly ten, and I'm still of the prologue. Go figure.