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...

With my hood pulled high and my mask around my nose, I pass the gang men who guard the lobby of Castle House, which is the community housing estate Michigan Duncan installed as part of his contribution to the city. But the Ghouls own it, and anyone with an unfamiliar face is asking for a beating.

With my face concealed, they get on the staunch, but then I catch eyes with a ganger named Saxon and he recognises me. He nods, I ignore it, and duck into the fire door.

I climb the rubbish-strewn fire stairs quickly, the thump of my boots making an increasingly more irritating echo down the stairwell, before I finally arrive at my family's floor.

I sorted out a solid alibi for the robbery. How do I quiz my father about the hospital without letting on that I wasn't where I was supposed to be?

I wrestle with the swollen door, slipping into the apartment, "rotten, good for nothing piece of Manic-." Shut up, Vi. I wrench it so hard that it unleashes a mighty squeal as it grates a deeper hole into the crumbling floor.

The apartment always stinks of mould, smoke and must. The ground is a mixture of shattered tiles and old concrete because we ripped the carpet out years ago to get rid of the mould that was poisoning us. Michigan Duncan's estates are state of the art.

All the windows are jammed shut except for the one by the fire that helps filter the smoke out. A pot of violet flowers bloom on the kitchen windowsill. My mum used to pick all the violet heads and crush them when she was angry with me... They would shrivel in the sun for days. I was young then, so it hurt me worse than it should've.

Mum opens Tokyo's bedroom door, but she drifts right past me with distant eyes. She's on another planet.

Cigarette lips, dull blue eyes, wiry blonde hair, pale skin, she looks the same. She used to be so tan, so bright and golden.

I glance away bitterly, kicking the door frame to get the gunk out of my boots. I had silently hoped for half a smile given this is the last time I'll see her. I would've settled on a flicker of warmth or recognition in those glass eyes.

I untie my mask, marching into the kitchen.

"Where's dad?" I murmur, tucking my jacket under my arm.

No response. She sways slightly as she thinks, her face going mean all of a sudden.

"You missed Cola, she came to help me cook this afternoon." Her tone is anything but sweet as she leans on the island table, not bothered in the least by the zit puckered skin of the foul old counter. Mum blinks at me expectantly, looking at the swell in my hoodie pocket.

"I'm sorry I missed her." Fuck Cola, she can rot all I care.

"Give me my rent, Violet."

I grind my teeth before reluctantly drawing the food and tossing it on the rotten counter, sniffing sharply. I already paid her my whole wage from the factory. Good thing I got a side hustle, right? I can't spend any of it though because it will flag the algorithm. Not because of the amount, but because of where I made the money. Holders Bay money can't be spent in Lake Darling.

She won't have a scrap by next week. I chew my lip, casting my eyes down. Why do I feel guilty?

"That's all? Nothing I can use to pay the girls?" She arches a greying eyebrow, her gaze flickering to my new jacket.

"Use dad's account money. I already transferred a thousand in." I got six-hundred thousand in my CITE.K account. Guilt buries its needle in my stomach.

"The soldiers are starting to realise that I don't work, and given you never show up to your labour all of Dad's money is going to the estate bill." Her paranoia is worse than normal. The soldiers don't care that she doesn't work but she seems to think they'll force her outside.

"Why can't dad help?" How can the king of the city be too poor to make rent?

"He has!" She snaps, and I flinch.

Composing myself, I curl my lip, "Ma I pulled fourty hours this week. An' worked nights for dad."

Since her... episode, she doesn't leave the house. Not even for the gardens anymore, now she pays her little slaves to bring her fabric and the finest trinkets she can conjure up. What was the last thing she sent Cola hunting for... Opals set in gold?

To be honest, since her episode, she doesn't leave la-la-land.

"Not enough." She snaps, "You need to pull your weight."

"I need to eat too, mum."

"You look better thin."

That pricks me. I'm less than thin, lately. But mum doesn't realise how razored her comment was. She curls her gangly fingers around the jacket tucked under my arm, "Give me this, Cola would love that-."

I try to pull it back. "No, I need a new coat. I-."

"You, are being selfish Violet. I." Her eyes bulge passionately, "I need to make a new coat for your father and if I can't buy the gold embroidery thread for his emblem then you know how that will turn out."

When I pull back, she grabs my arm and digs her nails in. I gape at her, my fist clenched around the fur jacket, "Mum it's mine-."

She sneers at me, jerking it out of my grip, "Violet! Don't you dare use that tone with me. If you don't recall, you can leave the house whenever you like. You— you don't understand the pressure I'm under. I'm trapped in here."

Her eyes are quick now. I panic, "I— fine." I raise my arms in the air, preparing to retreat from the kitchen.

"Don'— don' act like I'm being mean! Don' pretend I'm the one bullying you. Sometimes, it's hard to even tell!" Her voice heightens.

I just watch her in mute dismay, waiting for her to clarify. But she spaces, gulping for words like her mind snapped its fingers in her face and she forgot what string of thoughts she was pulling. "Tell what?" I cringe. Fuck I should've left it, why did I even open my mouth?

"You don't even care about me, anymore." She makes a show of blinking away glassy eyes. "Did you ever? Lying eyes since you were born."

I drop my arms, trying to hide any hint of attitude as Mum sniffles, looking at me like the infectious Manics Scorpius and I trade with. God, I wish I was outside the city walls again.

Her nose flares and I nearly bury my head in my hands when I realise what's happening. Tokyo used to be the only one who could calm her down. My stomach twists with nausea. "I'm sorry that you feel that way, mum." Don' taunt her. Don' taunt her.

"No, Violet you aren't. Because if you were I wouldn't have to pay those girls to get the things I need. I-I wouldn't have to sit in this tower all on my own, worrying. Worrying about you, worrying about Tokyo!" She gestures at my chest, this time her eyes shimmering with tears. She doesn't worry about me, she worries if I'm a good daughter to her, if I'm paying the debt of love that she's owed. Her bottom lip wobbles, but she sniffs it away and tries to stand up straight. "You have no consideration for how I am! You have no consideration for my situation. Cola is a better daughter to me!"

I nearly laugh—Cola wiggled her way into my family, but it's the only thing that stopped me from cutting her out of my life. She single-handedly keeps mum off my back. Awkwardly, I scratch my arm, searching helplessly for a way to diffuse her growing angst. But then her eyes lock on my fingers.

"Sweetheart," she smiles, "yes, oh," she beams, taking my hand in hers, "honey, that's a perfect way to show her how special she is. You young things, always know what's in style, she'd love this gold one," She adjusts my hand so she can spin the ring on my forefinger to present the diamonds set into it, "would you-."

Shocked, I tug my hand free, "Ma!" I gulp, hating when the realisation strikes me, hating when my throat tightens with pain. "No. No, I'm not giving her my ring."

She blinks, but then in a flash of anger, she smacks my wrist, the sting enough to make a hiss of anger escape my lips, however I stifle it and spin around. When she sees me leaving, she starts laughing.

"Go! Violet, go! Go steal the gang, go and, go smile at your father and trick him into more lies."

Oh, here she goes. More lies? She makes shit up to position dad against me but I'm the liar? I press my eyes closed, exhaling deeply. I don' got no self control, how do I let her bait me into giving a shit when I know she's literally ma? Like, clinically. To be fair she always was, she was on medicine for bipolar before the war, "I'm tired-."

I realise she's pursuing me and I speed up. "Tokyo would never subject me to this!"

I freeze, a tile grinding under my boot. I quickly try to recover the catch in my act, but she grabs my shoulder.

"He would never, let me rot in here like you do! He would never subject me to this mistreatment!"

He did let you rot in here.

I pinch myself, mustering a smile, "I promise I'll-."

"When he comes back, he's going to have a fit at the state you've left me in! Left to wallow, alone! When he comes back!" She grips me too hard, the whites of her eyes getting so big that she looks like she doesn't have eyelids. It disturbs me. She looks like a Zero. "You mark my-."

"Get off me!" I shove her but my retaliation shrivels. I could never hit her, she can't help that she's like this, "Tokyo can do whatever he likes when he comes back. Until then, just-." She slaps me but before I can stop myself, I dart forward, grabbing a fistful of her hair, keeping her away from me, "Don' touch me," I order and she gasps, eyes flying wider with terror, "Because I will win that fight. I owe you nothing, I owe you nothing." My voice wobbles with hurt and I try to stifle the part of me that wants to beg her to leave me be. I'm so tired of fighting.

"You owe me everything. I'm your mother!" Her face twists, disgusted with me.

"Don't."

Mum screams like a banshee, grabbing the back of my jacket, halfway stripping it off me. With the collar halfway around my elbows I can't spread my arms to defend myself, and it takes me by surprise when she lashes out, clawing my face. Instantly pain throbs in my eye and cheek, but I glower at her, snarling out a noise of pain as I flinch back, grabbing my face.

I realise, mutely, that my other arm is stretched in feeble defence.

She blinks rapidly, but her enlarged eyes grow wider, looking at me like I'm some fishbowl reflection that she can't really make out. For some reason, my cheeks flush with the heat of tears, but then I shut the stupid rush of melodramatics down with a cold stare. Screw this.

I shrug my jacket back up over my hoodie with a feral sneer.

I walk back to the kitchen, leaving her floating in the foyer. I pull my hair away from my face and lean over the kitchen sink to examine my reflection in the window. The bathroom hasn't had a mirror for years. Tokyo broke it by mistake when he was fifteen.

The moonlight washes my face in a pale glow, however in the background of the reflection I see her skinny frame, plain as day. She presses her hand to her temple, like she's gripped by regret, bearing her teeth in an expression of remorse.

I flit my eyes back to my face. My skin is clammy, and the two claw marks are red-raw. I hope it doesn't scab. I take the hard bristled brush in the sink and scrub at the black soot staining my nails, rinsing my fingers quickly as I try to gain my composure.

She starts to moan like she's in agony, and I snap my eyes to the image of her, but then I notice, like a dull alarm of horror chiming from the other room, that she's digging her knuckle into her temple.

I spin around. She's closer than the foyer now. Close enough to spook me. This close I can see the purple veins webbed under her skin. They're dark. Like a Zero.

I watch with wide eyes, unable to breathe as her hand starts to shake from the pressure. She starts smacking the sharp point of her fore-knuckle into her skull, punching with growing intensity, "Mum! Stop, you're hurting yourself, please." My voice cracks and I curse myself for the sound of tears in my throat. Why did the last time I see her have to go like this? She's normally quiet, and scared of her own shadow. Usually wrapped up in a delusion, chasing ideas with quivering fingers.

A snake of despair crawls from my stomach, wriggling its way up my oesophagus like a gut full of puke. I've lived around Manics. It's a slow track, but when they get this erratic, chasing pain, delusional... she's got a few years left before she Zeroes.

If her sanity is daylight, then we're currently in the twilight stage.

Her white forearm is covered in burn marks, black soot staining her skin. Pustules' speckle her flesh. Dark, thick veins under that. She starts breathing irregularly, smacking hard. "Mama!" I cry, rushing forward and wrenching her wrist back. She slashes at me with her other hand, her blue eyes wide and glazed by possession. As though a darkness has consumed her, and she's not there.

"You told him not to come back!" She shouts, shoving me. I skitter around the kitchen island, "I know it! You told him, because you're jealous that I always loved him most!"

"Mama he is coming back, he's coming back." Lies. Bitter hollow lies.

I'm never gon' see her again.

"Tokyo is coming back! I know you're just waiting to lunge on his position-."

"Mum stop." Is this lighting distorting her, or does she look like a junkie? Under nourished, frantic eyes.

"Just waiting to take what's hi-."

"Mum." My voice wobbles and I cast my eyes at the grime-stained sink, unable to watch her deranged gestures. Will dad wake up to a zombied out version of his wife, trying to rip his throat out with her teeth? He's hidden her mania for years. Did Tokyo know? I only realised when I got back from Holders Bay, after I'd been around enough Manics to know the symptoms.

She had her moments when I was a child, but I thought it was normal to fear your mother. It is, right?

"But he'll be back and when he is-."

"Stop!" I plead.

"When he comes back you'll be sorry!"

I spin around, "He's not coming back! It's been four fuckin' years! He's not coming back! Why can't you fuckin' see that?" A tear tracks down my cheek but she doesn't notice, preparing to argue. "He's not here! But I am! I fucking am. I don't talk to you, and it's your fault! You don't know the first fucking thing about me, and it's on you-."

"Violet!" A deep voice announces itself and I jump.

"I-." I choke on my words when I sight my father standing at the apartment entrance holding a blood-soaked cloth. His huge frame dwarfs the doorway. He was genetically engineered during his army days.

Dad has a bloody gash on his cheek and a jagged wound protrudes from his collarbone to his sternum. He's going to need to burn that to disinfect it. His dark hair is slicked back with old car grease, and his cheeks are webbed with gaunt wrinkles. Silver stubble prickles through like sandpaper.

"Craig!" Mum yelps, "You come here and tell her! You tell her that she's a snake-."

"Honey," My father trudges at us, pulling something from his pocket and picking through a little plastic bag. He shimmies a little white pill around on his palm to inspect it under the moonlight, and then he uses his free hand to squeeze mum's shoulder, "How have you been, sweetheart?"

"Where were you?" Mum gulps, only just recognising his dishevelled appearance and the gaping wound on his chest.

"Oh, just out, baby. Now you tell me did you get a visit from Zina like we talked about?" His dwarfing frame leaves no room in the tiny space as he leans over me and gestures a joint at the fire barrel in the kitchen. Dad hands me the spliff, giving me a stern look as he keeps his hand wrapped around my mother's shoulder.

Zina is a drug dealer.

"You ain't been fighting again, have you?" She giggles at him, but I look down at the joint in my hand, then at the fire.

"Oh, this?" He gestures away from the huge gash on his chest, placing a bloody cloth on the counter, "No. Just got into trouble. Here, sweetheart, take this. Tokyo told me to give it to you."

The lie makes me sick, but if I was smart, I would've taken heed and told her all of the beautiful things I remember about Tokyo.

I just don't think I have another ghost story left in me.

...

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All my love!

CVILYN

CAILYN