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Sometimes, Helena forgets that she was once, technically, a child.
Almost always, she forgets that she was once, technically, a child
with something tied
around her neck,
ready to die.
The why has faded. It always does. Mistakes. Atonement. Breath on a mirror, there and gone, until all that’s left is her.
She’d done it out of order, at least the first time. Standing there with the bed sheet tight around her throat, looking for something to fix it to. The bar in her closet, she’d thought. Maybe.
Instead, what she’d found was a fish bowl glowing in the corner of her room.
Helena stood there for a moment, crying soundless tears as the sheet dangled to the floor, watching her fish flutter up and down the water in endless lines. She’d only been allowed to keep it because she’d assumed all responsibility for its care. And if she left, who would feed it?
Without her, that tiny creature was going to starve. That, or her father might make sure it didn’t live long enough to starve.
She couldn’t decide which was worse, so she untied the sheet and sprinkled dry flakes into the water and watched it swim up and down, and she stayed. Helena had to stay, because her fish was alive, and it needed her. And nothing in this world had ever needed her before.
Her fish, of course, had died the next week anyway.
“Tank too small,” one of the housekeepers told her. “Too trapped. Needs room.”
This, she realized, was the only reason her father let her keep it at all. Helena had cared for that creature more than her own life, and he knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Her little fish needed room.
Somehow, it had never occurred to her that living things might need room to live.
Staff were given special orders to let her sort the clean up on her own. Helena was responsible for it in both life and death, after all. And so she watched her precious fish rot slowly in the sinking water, because she was a child,
and she didn’t know
how to touch
dead things.
One night, once the remaining water was smelly and cloudy and her fish stopped looking like something that had ever been alive, she’d snuck out to the garden. And there, wedged between the prickly shrubs and cold siding of her house, she poured everything out to be swallowed by the earth. Then, she trekked over to the garbage can in her fuzzy blue slippers and buried the tank and food beneath a thick blanket of Lumon landfill. And by the end, she’d nearly forgotten what it meant to have a fish.
So she closed the lid and tip-toed through the dark and crawled back into bed, curling up under the sheet that should have killed her. If she’d been brave enough to let it.
But the bar in her closet, Helena later realized, wouldn’t have held her anyway. She’d loosened it when she was even younger, back when she still held her pencil with all her fingers and curled every Y she wrote.
She’d been playing alone, wild and reckless, pretending to be a monkey swinging on a branch. Just like the ones she’d seen inside a shop window television screen once. The bar was weak, and Helena, despite her tiny size, was heavy. She’d weakened it with her heavy monkey body, and now she couldn’t even die right.
Because she was a child,
and she wasn’t
supposed to know
how to die.
//
Someone is waiting for her when the elevator doors open.
“Helena.” Seth smiles. “Please, follow me.”
He leads her to a small conference room. And there, on the table, lies a single sheet of paper.
“We’ll shred it immediately, of course,” he says. “But we anticipate Helly won’t believe we showed it to you. Better for you to see it yourself.”
The request feels like a live grenade in her hand.
“Is this typical?” Helena asks. “Are they usually this resistant?”
“Resignation requests are common among severed new hires,” he reassures. “That’s why we have them. Offering Innies an avenue to communicate their needs to their Outies provides them with a sense of control. Most tend to acclimate while the requests process, and the denials provide necessary closure for the rest. But we’ve expedited Helly’s for obvious reasons.”
Helena gives a terse nod, then studies the form, eyes tracing the contours of Helly’s signature.
She curls her Ys just as Helena used to, back when she did wild and reckless things like swing from pretend branches in her room. And Helena realizes with equal parts horror and relief that this thin sheet of paper might be the closest she’ll ever get to meeting Helly. The closest she’ll ever get to looking in her eyes,
and seeing that
part of her alive.
“Thank you, Seth,” Helena says, small and quiet.
Then, she runs Helly’s request through the shredder herself, watching her old handwriting shatter into a mountain of trash.
//
Someone is waiting for her when the elevator doors open.
A dull burn throbs in her arm. Helena looks down and finds blood smeared across the sleeve of her wrinkled white shirt. Red blooms through a bandage she was not wearing when she clocked in.
“Helena.” Harmony does not smile at her. “Follow me, please.”
Harmony leads her to the same small conference room, this time equipped with a television on a rolling cart. Helena settles into a stiff chair and watches the device flick on.
Without a word, Harmony presses play.
In the monochrome footage, Helena watches some reckless creature run through blank halls and bash a fire extinguisher through the tiny window of the self-closing stairwell door in her memory. Helly’s arm reaches through the opening, digging into the jagged glass.
When the recording cuts off, the throbbing in Helena’s arm persists.
“She tried to break out?”
“Not quite,” Harmony says sharply, then slides a wrinkled blue note across the table. Another ghost with Helena’s old handwriting scrawled across it in big, bold letters.
NEVER
COME
BACK
HERE
“We’ll shred this and remove evidence of her non-compliance from the security archive,” Harmony explains. “Helly is receiving the appropriate disciplinary measures and will return to her work after she has adequately atoned.”
Helena blinks at her with swollen, stinging eyes. “What is the appropriate discipline in this situation?”
“For your safety, that information is restricted to the severed floor. As is the security footage, typically.”
Harmony clicks the television off and drops the blue note in the shredder herself. The paper convulses through the feed, revealing some sort of grid on the other side. Helena wills her hands to stay in her lap until the mechanical chewing has stopped. It hadn’t even occurred to her to check the back, and now whatever had been there is lost.
“Under normal circumstances, repeated infractions would warrant a different response. But Helly’s case is a special one.” Harmony’s eyes bore into her. “I feel you should know what your star child has been up to when she thinks no one is looking.”
Under the table, Helena squeezes the patch of gauze. And the tight, scorching pulse in her wound feels, strangely, like a voice.
//
Someone is waiting for her when the elevator doors open.
Slivers of daylight peek through the windows of the locker room. She looks down and finds no wounds or signs of struggle, only a small disc in one hand.
“Helena.” Seth frowns. “Follow me.”
Now armed with a camera and tripod, he leads her to the small conference room, still furnished with the television cart and Harmony’s dour gaze.
Helena settles into what feels like her new assigned seat and hands the disc over. The television flicks on to reveal her eyes looking directly at her. And she can only watch as words she did not speak spill past her lips.
Hey, I know I’m not supposed to
know you, but I kinda feel like I do.
Me and you are the same person, right?
I don’t want to be here, and I’m you.
So, that’s gotta mean some part of
you doesn’t want to be here, too.
She’s not sure how she’d imagined Helly’s voice, exactly, but definitely not strong enough to set her nerves on edge.
As if sensing this, Helly leans in toward her, softer.
Look, Helly, I don’t know why
you chose to get severed.
But I know it’s probably pretty
shitty for you up there if you did.
Whatever’s wrong, I promise
Lumon isn’t going to fix it.
Please don’t make me stay here.
You deserve better, and so do I.
“You’ll find it pertinent that, moments before this recording, Helly R. threatened to cut off your fingers with a paper cutter,” Harmony says.
The image is replaced by new security footage. Helly bursting through Harmony’s office door. Slamming a blade onto the desk. Hovering it over Helena’s hand like jaws ready to snap. Making demands in a voice that does not relent until she gets her way.
For a moment, Helena stays quiet, watching the Lumon screensaver wash out her reflection. Her fingers flex beneath the table, blinking until the gore Helly painted under her eyelids has melted away.
“I’ll speak to her,” Helena finally says, squeezing the healing spot on her arm that had, just yesterday, been an open wound.
Damaged nerves pinch like whispers under her unblemished skin. This, Helena knows, is not typical. Lumon medicine is supposed to rid her of such hindrances. But Helly persists. The pain persists. And, day after day, she finds herself trapped in this room of shattered glass and shredded paper and dissecting glares, cleaning up her star child’s messes like an exasperated parent to no end.
All this trouble, and Helena didn’t even get the indulgence of fucking someone to bring her into existence.
“Now, it’s important you start with addressing Helly by her severed name and acknowledging both resignation requests,” Seth tells her, setting up the camera. “Your purpose should be to emphasize the distinction between the two of you. Help her understand the circumstances of her existence.”
Helena squares her shoulders, pressing deep into the stabbing reminder of Helly one last time.
Then, like a tiny creature rotting in the earth, she lets her go.
//
No one is waiting for her when the elevator doors open.
Helena cannot step out. The security desk is empty. The slivers of sunlight peeking through the windows are all gone.
She is shackled by her throat, drowning in midair, every scream and breath choked out of her.
Helly’s voice burns through her veins as she kicks and climbs and swings and thrashes. Like a monkey on a branch, or a fish trapped in water.
But no one is waiting for her when the elevator doors open,
so the elevator
doors close.
//
After her fish had disintegrated, there was no mouth left to feed except her own. So, of course, Helena tried to leave again.
There was always ground to stand on, though. Just within reach. And that had always been her problem. Helena would step off like a timid child dipping her toes into freezing water, then kick back to land the moment it left her gasping for air.
It was never the success that had scared her, not really. It was the chance she’d fail. The fear that she might wake to an unfixable mess and a fucked up body and the shouts of an angry man, preoccupied with everything that
was not her.
//
Someone is waiting for her when the elevator doors open.
Helena hadn’t expected it. Neither had he.
“Is she okay?” he cries out. “Helly. Helly? Helly?”
The Innie won’t shut up as she coughs and wheezes life back into her body. The life, she dazedly realizes, Helly had tried to drain.
He’s shoved back through the elevator in fragments, still echoing the name that is not hers. The doors swallow his form, leaving her alone with the blur of an angry man who shouts curses into a phone, scrambling to keep his job alive.
Helena does nothing except lie on the cold tile like an animal playing dead, in the spot where someone else should be,
feeling Helly’s name
bleed through her.
//
Fully conscious is how her next few days are spent. No elevator. No respite. Just Helena and the mess Helly’s made of her. Hidden away in a dim room inside the upper level of Branch 501. Surrounded by hollow eyes and gloved hands, peeking and prodding at the aching wound that refuses to cooperate with Lumon’s best efforts.
No one asks Helena what she’s thinking. No one asks her how she’s feeling. Questions could lead to answers, and answers could lead to headlines. Helena is not the liability, after all. Just the host of one.
This is a relief. It’s also a lot of other things she doesn’t know the words for.
It makes the twisted sense Helena had always imagined it would.
Even her own suicide
isn’t really about her.
//
She closes her eyes, rewinding the footage, letting it echo through the hallway in her mind.
5:13 p.m. had been the non-official, non-recorded time.
Unlike her, Helly had done everything right. She’d checked the sturdiness of the bar and secured the noose with the fingers Helena made her keep and kicked the trash can over so she couldn’t swim back when the gasping started.
And, if some random Innie hadn’t happened upon her, it would have worked.
Helena’s eyes sigh open, one hand on her neck, pressing into Helly’s ache.
She trudges over to her mirror, mustering the strength to take her reflection in full. Her fingers graze the failure branded across her throat. The evidence of Helly’s almost success. The dark line has been slow to yellow — demanding to fade on its own time, she supposes. Not Lumon’s.
The damage is far from ideal, but not as damning as she’d always feared. Still, the warm lamplight contouring her face only reminds her that a skeleton lies somewhere underneath.
It occurs to her that, if her flesh were to rot away right this second, the chip would remain. Someone could shake her bones and listen to Helly rattle inside her skull like a maraca, and that would be all Helena Eagan had left behind.
The trace fossil of Helly R.
forever inside her.
//
She wakes without an elevator this time.
The first moments scatter through her like broken glass. In the following hours, it becomes clear that every new step will puncture her. And the rest of Helena’s life will be spent digging these shards out of her skin, one by one by one.
She stands before the bathroom mirror, rubbing her neck as if there’s still a bruise to be felt. And there’s a strange part of her that longs for the ache to exist again. To gasp without land and sink down until the rumble of water drowns her out for good.
A smaller, quieter part of her dares to wonder what her father will say.
She is precious to him, if only for the body attached to her name. And Helly had tried to take Helena Eagan away from him.
But he approaches in measured paces, with a caution that whispers her worst fear made true.
This isn’t the first time he’s seen her since Helly tried to kill her.
“Fetid moppet.”
Well, this isn’t the first time he’s seen what he thought was her.
“Father,” Helena responds, like good children of Kier do.
Shock and betrayal flicker in his gaze regardless. He offers nothing more — just turns away from the person he’s now certain is his daughter, then drifts to a far off somewhere.
For all his faults, Helena’s father does, sometimes, speak in a voice nice enough to resemble soft. This had been the outlandish comfort that groped her amid the fear of him discovering what Helly had done. To think he might take pity on his daughter for bearing the brunt of her Innie’s torment. That he might praise how successfully Helena hid her from the world. That he might recognize to any extent the sacrifices she’d made for the Eagan name.
But, of course, even the softest voice her father could muster
had been wasted
on someone else.
//
A bigger mess calls for a bigger conference room, but the same television cart lurks across the table once more.
Helena sits alone, with Harmony’s strange perfume still clinging to the edges of the air. Even in solitude, she sits tall and poised. It would be unwise to appear small and unguarded within these walls.
She presses play, braced for another reckless display. Some grand production on par with the globe-sized pigsty her star child has constructed around her.
Instead, she watches Helly stand side by side with her superior, speaking in soft smiles and dumb jokes and awkward silences before retreating into the elevator.
But the elevator
doors don’t close.
//
//
Helena loses count of how many times she presses rewind, examining the moment from every angle available. It’s the closest she’ll ever get to existing inside of it. This memory that should be precious and hers, stolen just hours before the demolition of her life.
Her lips, full and vibrant. Pressed to someone else where she’d laid pale and shriveled and dying.
Their hands, full and entwined. Lingering where hers laid hollow and an angry shouting man yanked her savior away.
Helena blinks at the reflection superimposed on the pixels, searching for any resemblance between them. But all she finds are two warring strangers confined to one darkness, disproportionately matched to an extent that can no longer be ignored.
Helly is braver than her.
Helly is better at dying than her.
What if she's better
at living, too?
//
Someone is waiting for her when the elevator doors open.
“Helly!” His arms snap like a bear trap around her. “Oh my god. Are you okay?”
Helena stiffens, then remembers whose face she’s wearing. She answers accordingly and moves on, trying to steer his focus away. For some reason that is beyond her, he swerves right back.
“Oh my god. I was so worried about you.”
He’s not looking at her when he says it, not really. He may not know this, but she always will. The only voice that’s ever held her gently, and it’s not even meant for her. The only questions that leave room for real answers, and she’ll never get to taste the truth on her tongue.
But, in the end, this fate isn’t any different from the last. She’s trapped in
someone else’s shadow
either way.
//
When her lips find their way to his, she molts. Tearing away at the layers, shedding until her bare skin is welded to him and tendrils of steam rise off their flesh in the raw and bitter night.
She needs more, if for no other reason than her Stranger cannot have it.
The first brush of his lips may belong to someone else, but the rest is hers. The curious fingertips mapping their way across her landscape. The hushed sighs and warm moans crackling in her ears. The first sweet burn and flutter of his eyelashes when he discovers what she feels like on the inside.
He asks before he does it, in a voice so gentle that her courage stutters in its wake. But when her muscles tense and a splintered voice betrays her, he just falls back and lifts her up and waits until she’s sure again.
Is this what it feels like? Willingly sharing this body with another? It’s hard to fathom that anyone in existence might give a damn about whether she wants to or not. That someone could function with no higher purpose than to make her feel good, in whatever way that means.
But here, crammed into a little blue tent, tucked away inside some fabricated reality, she has room.
Mark gives her room.
She’d ask him to kiss her neck, if she had any idea how to ask. He’s avoiding it for the same reason she craves it. Desperate to feel him kiss there and stay there until he’s buried that ghost under a new bruise. Until he’s pinned a painless flag on the icy summit declaring that she was here first.
Her star child could wake right now and rip it down and toss it to the wind in one of her wild fits, and it would change nothing. Her, here, with Mark is the only way it will ever have been.
It doesn’t even matter that he pants another name into her.
Is Helly really so bad,
if this is how he says it?
It doesn’t matter that he finds the universe in someone else’s eyes.
She could stand to be Helly,
if this is who Helly gets to be.
//
She kicks and gasps for the land that sits right under her. Each scream refracts and dulls, purged only by the shouts of yet another angry man.
“Helly was never cruel,” Irving had told Helly R.’s corporeal punching bag.
Helena wished she could string him up on one of the branches by his throat and tell him to say it again.
She’d meant it when she said Helly was right here — because where else would Helly live, if not in her cruelty? A star child’s star child. The animated residue of what already is.
She means it when she screams for Seth to switch her off, too.
Let them have their wild and reckless and precious Helly. Let her wake inside someone else’s mess and find stolen red between her burning legs and breathe in the wrath of another shouting man. Let them hold her and kiss her and fight for her the way no one ever would for their Stranger. Because that’s the truth. The truth that stabs a numb and icy black through Helena’s tongue.
No one in this world needs her.
No one in this world would turn away from the stairwell door for the sake of her.
No one in any world would ever risk their existence to bring Helena Eagan back.
Goddamnit, Seth. Do it.
Let Helly R. gulp this body’s next breath. Let the water drown Helena out of here for good. Maybe if she’s lucky, she won’t ever have to
wake up.