The things I have learned since the world fell apart…

1.     Life will never be what it was back on the farm.
2.     Dead bodies, even walking ones, stink really bad.
3.     Most people are worse than the dead guy trying to eat your face off.

It seems like a lifetime ago that Amy/Sweets and I were fighting over who’s turn it was to milk Molly and clean out the horse stalls before Mama broke out the books for that days lessons.

Once a shy, seventeen year old farm girl, content with her lot in life. Then a cold blooded killer… Don’t get me wrong, those men deserved to die, here let me explain. It just so happened to be our eighteenth birthday, they lured us in with promise of food and safety but failed to tell us the price for it all was a life of forced servitude and being reduced to nothing but baby makers. I tricked them into taking me first, the youngest brother stayed with my sister while the other two led me into a tool shed. Two sick in the head brothers, one naked and terrified me. I felt a sick and twisted shift in myself that night. It started the moment my teeth pierced into the neck of the oldest brother, didn’t stop with the shard of glass I put in the middle brothers temple, nor did it go when the youngest that was watching my sister, begged for mercy as I drove a screwdriver into his chest over and over again. I limped off of that property with my sister by my side, my virginity intact, a wound on my leg that would always be a reminder, and a dark feeling… I liked to kill.

Things had been getting better since we showed up in Arklay. Every morning I would leave my sister in the big bed in our very own apartment to go down and sweep up the reception area, then I would make sure the stew Jet made every morning was ready to be served and that there was clean dishes to eat it with, then I would help anyone that showed up with either any info I could provide and/or giving them a much needed meal.

•     I had begun to get comfortable.

•     The nightmares had calmed down.

•     I was able to shake someones hand for the first time since the night with the brothers.

Started trusting.

•     Even started to have incredibly confusing feelings for a guy named Yama.

Then HE showed up… Jordan.

Warning bells went off immediately, I felt the urge that had been slowly slipping away since the day we had arrived, everything in me said to slide my knife across his neck and leave him for the hungry dead.

I didn’t.

So when my sister went missing the other morning, the morning after he had arrived, he should have been my first guess.  Again I was getting used to considering us in a safe place, and he had just carried me up to the apartment at my sisters request that morning since I had been stupid enough to go downstairs with a sprained ankle. So my first thought was that she was probably with Jet. Yama seemed instantly suspicious, telling me that he too felt something was off with our newest arrival, but it wasn’t until Jet showed up without my sister and swearing that she had not seen her at all that day that panic had set in.

I was sure this was my punishment. Punishment for the lives I had taken, for the things I had stolen, for picking up a smoking habit… everything. Jet went to talk to Jordan, using my sprained ankle as an excuse. It turned out he had been the last one to see her, the last one to talk to her, the last one with her…  I had walked him into the Eights, into her life, had practically told her to be his friend (because I couldn’t) and this happened.

He hurt my sister.

After what felt like an eternity of waiting, Jet found Amy/Sweets by the old bar. She was bleeding, her clothing torn to practically nothing, and as soon as she saw Jordan in that damn creepy mask he was wearing she started screaming! My sweet and innocent younger twin had been hurt by a man in that mask, and only Jordan had that mask on… He didn’t argue, he didn’t explain, all he did was call out to dead loved ones saying he was coming home.

Jet put an end to his miserable life on the walkway outside of my apartment. Wonderful Jet, she did what I couldn’t at the time because my sister was clinging to me for dear life and she even did it far kinder than I would have. That woman… I owe her so freaking much that my heart aches at the knowing that I can never pay her back. She took us in, found my sister, killed her abuser, and works so hard to protect The Eights… my home, and kept me from causing more death (even if I really wanted too). Love that woman.

Amy/Sweets is home and healing, I too am on the mend, and the world is a better place without people like the brothers and Jordan. I swear if one more sadistic prick walks into mine or my sisters lives I won’t wait until he is dead before I hang him up for the bitters.