Chapter 2 - My New Life

June 29 - 30

My fingernails had long ago turned soft from the hours of scrubbing and re-scrubbing dishes. I thoroughly inspected the plate I was working on for even the tiniest speck of leftover food. I knew that if it wasn’t perfect I would have to wash every single dish again.

This is rough. I miss my old home.

After I had passed out from naming Filomena, we had been brought to a police station for questioning. I had spent hours in interrogation, the detectives certain that I had summoned Filomena and murdered my own parents. Without the body of the hollow that had actually done it, the only evidence to the contrary was the lack of blood anywhere on me.

Filomena was exempt from questioning by the police until a representative from the Hollow Lands arrived. So, they had taken their frustrations out on me. It had been horrible. There were constant accusations, I was handcuffed to a table and made to look at photographs of my parents’ bodies again and again. They asked all kinds of trick questions, at one point they said they had conclusive DNA evidence that it was me, and that I could get a lighter sentence if I just came clean. Eventually, the representative arrived, and Filomena’s testimony cleared us both of wrongdoing. It came in handy that hollows are incapable of lying.

Unfortunately, my ordeal was far from over. We had to wait for child services to collect me, so I had to sit on an uncomfortable metal bench for a further three hours. Periodically, one of the detectives that had been questioning me would look up and glare at me. After my legs had become so numb that I was sure I would never be able to walk again, we were packed into a car by a woman who never stopped talking on her phone, and taken to a drab facility on the edge of town. I wasn’t terribly concerned when they separated me from Filomena, in all honesty she kind of freaked me out.

After a night of barely sleeping on a rock hard cot in a room full of quietly sobbing children, I was summoned to the caseworker’s office and given the good news - they had located my next of kin. I apparently had an aunt and uncle that I had never heard about who were willing to take me in.

I was shuffled into a car with Filomena, who grabbed my hand with her own freezing cold one, and I felt a slow draining of some sort of energy. When she was finished, she let go and simply watched the scenery pass by. For the entire drive to the train station and the ride to the new city, she barely acknowledged my presence. I was surprised and also grateful for the indifference, but she still followed along.

What is her deal? She follows me around like a puppy but also refuses to say anything. What does she want?

I will also say that through all of this, I had not been able to bring myself to cry. I knew it was wrong, and I definitely felt horrible but I just couldn’t cry. Maybe I just hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Or maybe I was an unfeeling monster, like Filomena.

My Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Derek met us on the train platform. They were hardly what I had expected. My uncle was a balding man with long platinum blonde hair, and he wore an all black suit with a red satin tie. My aunt had long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was by contrast dressed very sloppily, with paint covering her light gray tank top and sweatpants.

“Ah, you must be my sister’s child,” Uncle Derek said with a warm smile, “I hope your journey wasn’t unpleasant.”

Sure, I just spent the entire time doing and looking at nothing.

Philomena had immediately taken the window seat, and the case worker took the other. Leaving me by the aisle. My elbows were constantly getting bumped by passers by.

“It was fine,” I said as much to the ground as him.

“Don’t be rude,” the case worker scolded, “You must look at the person you are addressing, Max.”

I looked up and repeated myself.

“You have been through much,” my uncle said, “I understand, but your attitude leaves much to be desired. I’m afraid I don’t know much about raising a child, but we shall do our best won’t we?”

I nodded.

The adults began talking about something boring like paperwork. I looked at Filomena who was standing beside me. She surveyed the platform dispassionately. I immediately looked elsewhere when she caught me watching her. She said nothing.

“Now,” my uncle announced, after we arrived at their home, “I am not one of those people that believes in coddling children. I expect you to earn your keep around the house. Starting tomorrow, I will show you the chores you will be expected to do, making sure you know them well. I will not tolerate laziness.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat.

Filomena simply watched.

“As for your familiar,” Uncle Derek continued, “I will have the head maid teach her her duties. I expect you to have a firm hand in her training. She is your responsibility.”

I nodded.

Afterwards, we ate a light dinner, and I was shown to a room where I would be staying. They said it was mine, but it didn’t have my things in it, and so it didn’t feel like mine.

The next morning, before the sun was up, I was woken by a loud pounding on the door. I groggily opened it, and my uncle handed me clothes to change into so that I could begin working. I closed the door and changed quickly. They were loose fitting and covered in paint and grass stains that had managed to survive the wash.

After that, I worked in the yard until noon, pulling weeds from my aunt’s garden, and the sizable lawn.

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“I expect you to pick twice as many weeds tomorrow, Max,” my uncle said, examining the wheelbarrow through narrowed eyes, “or you’ll get no lunch.”

I devoured the aforementioned lunch, it being the only thing I’d eaten so far today. I had not seen Filomena since she took her ration of my magic for the day. I idly wondered what she was doing.

“If you have time to space out, you have time to work. Follow me,” Uncle Derek said. I followed him into the kitchen, “I know that this may seem harsh. You’ve probably never done a decent day’s work in your life. I know how your generation is, but this really is for your own good. Now I will watch as you do the day's dishes to make sure they are done properly. If you make a mistake, I will make you start over from scratch.”

I began doing dishes.

“Wrong!” my aunt screeched, taking one of the plates and throwing it across the kitchen where it shattered.

I stared at the shattered dish in horror.

“Well, don’t just stand there, child! Go get the broom from the closet and sweep this mess up. Then begin doing all these dishes from scratch,” my uncle said angrily pointing to the nearby closet.

I did as he said, and began the dishes again, including the ones I had already done, regardless of if they were done right.

“What is this mess,” Aunt Rosemary said, showing me a slight discoloration on a plate that was definitely just a fault in the glaze. “Clearly you aren’t paying attention to what you are doing,” she said, dropping it into the soapy water I was elbow deep in.

“Sorry.”

“You’ll need to start over again,” my uncle said in a voice that made it seem like he was enjoying this for some reason. Maybe it was just my imagination.

And so the rest of my afternoon went, right up until I was putting a freshly washed bowl on the drying rack, and it slipped through my wet fingers. The whole world seemed to slow down and I watched with growing horror as the bowl grew closer to the gray-blue tile of the kitchen floor. There was nothing I could do, I simply wasn’t fast enough to catch it.

The bowl shattered into hundreds of pieces. The silence that followed was heavy and oppressive. I stared at the pieces, not even daring to breathe. I looked at my aunt and uncle who had practically turned purple.

“You ungrateful brat!” my aunt screamed.

“We took you in out of the kindness of our hearts and this is how you repay us,” my uncle roared, “You think you can just destroy our stuff and there won’t be consequences? Think again!”

“I’m sorry,” I cried, reaching for the nearby broom, something painfully crunching under my socked feet “It was an accident!”

Uncle Derek snatched the broom from my hand, “No, you will pick up every piece and say ‘I’m sorry’ for each one as you throw it in the trash.”

“I… wait, what?”

“Did… I… stutter,” my uncle spat each word dangerously.

“No, I’m sorry.”

I kneeled on the floor, and began picking up the pieces and collecting them in my cupped hand.

“One at a time! Are you dense?”

I dropped what I had gathered and picked up one piece of broken ceramic, dropping it into the nearby trash can.

“I’m sorry.”

I picked up another piece.

“I’m sorry.”

“This is important for your development,” my uncle said, “You must learn the value of hard work. Throwing a fit when you didn’t get your way may have worked with your parents…”

“I’m sorry,” I continued.

“... but here, you will behave. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, uncle. I’m sorry.”

“Your generation needs to learn to be responsible. I can’t believe that even my sister would be one of those mollycoddling parents.”

My face flushed with shame.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, pick up the pace. I don’t want to be here all night,” my aunt complained loudly.

I’m sorry!”

I worked faster, for each piece of broken bowl, no matter how small, I apologized. When it was done, there were lots of little cuts on my hands, nothing bleeding but little scrapes of skin missing from my fingers.

“The case worker warned us about this,” my uncle said after heaving a heavy sigh, “She said there would be an adjustment period. You might act out in bizarre ways. I don’t know what to do about this, so just go to bed. You’ll get no dinner tonight, and there will be even more chores tomorrow.”

“Yes, Uncle Derek,” I said, hanging my head. My eyes filled with tears at the injustice.

“Wait,” my aunt said, “drain the sink before you go. Do you not have common sense? I don’t want mold and rot in my beautiful kitchen.”

“Quite right, my dear, and make sure the sink is clean,” my uncle added.

I did as I was told in complete silence, before returning to the bedroom I had been assigned.

“I was told to report to your room. It seems you’ve been misbehaving. I seem to have misjudged you,” Filomena said coldly.

“I didn’t,” I said harshly.

“Oh?”

I explained what happened, and how my guardians had reacted.

“They did what?” she asked, staring at me with her blood red eyes, “that seems quite cruel even by human standards.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” I cried, “We’re in a new house, there’s going to be an adjustment period, that’s all.”

Filomena’s eyes narrowed, the pale white skin of her face scrunching. Her entire demeanor changed.

Oh, no. She’s going to hurt me.

I braced myself for the pain, but it didn’t come instead Filomena stomped away from me, her short silvery white hair bobbing with every step. Her shaking fists were clenched in a way that had to be painful. I jumped as my door slammed closed behind her with an echoing finality. Just what was she going to do? I had no idea.

I sat in the dim light cast by the bedside lamp, my mind coming up with more and more horrible scenarios.