Page 54 of Rot In Knotty Pieces

Father had become someone else in his rage. He’d turned scary. He’d lost his temper, and he hit her over and over. Until she was really badly hurt.

Until she couldn’t move, and she coughed up blood.

“Robin?” I whisper, desperate to fix what I already know I can’t change. She’s going where I can’t follow.

She turns her head towards me, just an inch. She doesn’t speak, but our eyes, our identical eyes, lock and hold.

I don’t think she can speak anymore.

“Don’t leave me,” I whisper.

But just a few hours later, she does. I stare into her gaunt face, and I cry, I beg, I scream. But I’m all alone in the dark with ghosts of my family, and nobody comes to save me.

And Robin doesn’t wake up.

Robin is gone, and I’m not allowed to say her name. Father is furious with me. He rants and raves for days, but I don’t speak. I remember it all being hazy and confused. Like I was in a fog, like I was numb but screaming on the inside.

Robin is gone, and I’m broken. In the days that followed, my mind shattered so that I could cope with the pain, so that I could survive.

Over the years, I realise I was broken into six parts that day. Merle, Kestrel, Raven, Raptor, Jay, and Dove. Robin and her memory just disappear from my mind. I stop remembering her, our parents, our past, everything just disappears. The pain gets less, and I don’t know anything but Father and my name, Merle.

I just forgot her? How could I do that? I squeeze my hand into a fist and hit my head. How could I just forget her? She was my sister! My twin!

What was her name? What was mine?

Why can’t I remember it?

King slams into me, pulling me against his chest, ignoring the way I fight him. He just hugs me as I cry, as I sob into his chest. He pulls back, grabbing my face and swiping my tears with his giant thumbs.

“What happened?”

I stare up at him as if he’s my salvation, as if he can fix this, as if he can make sense of it. I grip his shirt so hard my fingers hurt, dragging him closer to me. He scans my body and looks into my eyes again.

“Merle, my darling, I don’t know what to do,” he says helplessly.

I open my mouth, but the words, my words, my voice, it’s been stolen, and I can’t tell him about Robin. I can’t tell him how I watched her last breath rattle in her chest. About how I sat with her body for so long that everything broke into pieces.

I can’t tell him I don’t have a name. That I don’t have a birthday. That my identity and everything I am is just a creation of a monster.

He named me Blackbird. I was the one who was supposed to die, not her. Me!

King kisses my forehead, his arms wrapping around me.

“I love you. I don’t care about anything else, and you, you’re not allowed to care about anything else either. You love me, and I love you, and you cling to that, and you don’t let go, Merle. That’s all that matters. It’s all that’s important.”

I let out a high, keening sound. It startles the birds into flight, and I want to join them, flying away from here.

“Fuck, fuck!” King says, and tears, horrible, awful, huge tears, roll down his cheeks. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Tell me how to make this better?”

I stop trying to pull away, stop trying to look at the birds, and instead, I focus entirely on this alpha. My alpha. So big and strong, crying because I’m hurting, desperately trying to fix me, I reach out and wrap an arm around his neck.

Take me away. Make it stop.

Please help me.

“They remember,” Jay says through us sadly.

“Remember what?” King almost shouts.