WHO IS LIKE GOD

3.

SMOKE AND NO MIRRORS.

IF SOMEONE looked at them from the outside, they'd appear like normal teenage girls— sitting around Florence's room, doing each other's hair, gossiping about everything and nothing. 

But she knew better than that. 

Florence sat on her bed with her head between her knees, biting back groans. Her head pounded with a migraine, throbbing like the beat of a drum. A piercing sound always came with it, shrill and focused and it drove her mad. On the carpet, Michelle sat behind Elphie and pulled hairpins from her braided crown until she collected a mountain of them.

Florence had it the worst out of all of them in the form of constant, terrible migraines. Afterwards, she was so out of it that she saw and heard things, she could hardly even stand straight. Though that wasn't to say the rest of them didn't suffer. Elphie was prone to fainting spells. She violently shook while unconscious and often woke with little to no recollection of where she was. Each and every time she awoke stuck in those final moments, Victoria unmoving and Florence clutching at her hair in panic. That was the most unsettling part of it, Delphine waking and staring blank-eyed forward at nothing, tears running rivers down her face, and whispering in a trembling voice: "Oh God."

Michelle seemed not to be affected though she'd experienced it the same as them. The proof was on her left inner wrist, the irremovable mark there, sharp as ram's horns, almost canine in nature. They'd tried scrubbing at them, bleaching them, considering peeling the skin until Michelle had declared the end and they'd fallen into line like wooden soldiers.

If anything, Michelle seemed better. Florence had never seen her so much as stumble when walking.

"Darcy looked unwell," she said, breaking the silence.

Florence startled. "Um, yeah, she did."

"Well, that's to be expected," Elphie remarked. She struggled to inflect the way Michelle did. It was painfully obvious, even more pathetic that she stubbornly refuted it whenever anyone brought it up. 

She adjusted in her position so that her back was straighter, her chin held high. As the youngest of them at fifteen, Elphie seemed naïve, always looking up to her more mature cousin, copycatting her at every chance. Florence hated to admit it, but she thought most times Michelle forgot she and Elphie were related at all.

Florence scratched at the mark. They'd considered brushing them off as tattoos if anyone ever asked but it was obvious they weren't. Hers followed the sprawl of her veins while also sticking out like a brand, felt like one too. They burned. She didn't know if it did for the others, she'd been too nervous to ask. Everything seemed to put her on edge these days. She didn't sleep, she didn't eat. Guilt ate at her but she couldn't remember a thing, even so she knew her guilt had grounded reason.

"Florence," Michelle said, knocking her out of her thoughts, "did you hear me?"

"What? Oh, no, sorry."

Michelle stopped unbraiding Elphie's hair to turn her body towards Florence. "I asked what you were thinking about."

"Oh." Florence absentmindedly rubbed at the mark. "Nothing, just... What do you think we should do about Darcy?"

"Nothing." Michelle shrugged and turned back.

"Nothing?" Even Elphie looked shaken. "But Michelle she's... you saw her. What if she—"

"She won't," Michelle cut her off harshly then masked it with a smile so fast Florence wasn't completely sure it had happened. "Don't worry. Darcy's not as dangerous as she likes to make herself out to be."