Malice in Neverland (Dark Fairytale)

Alice

"Full Moon" by The Black Ghosts
***


If I have learned anything during my twenty-five years of living, death is the one thing that holds not an ounce of prejudice regardless of gender, race, or station. It comes for everyone on a pale horse whether you are an aristocratic diplomat or out of luck and homeless. When it comes down to it, death is the only thing that gives us perspective on the value of our lives. Maybe it's morbid, but those are the thoughts that have been plaguing me as of late. Life versus death. The loss of my parents a few months ago have left me in a constant state of looking at both, given it was my only real experience with losing people I cared about. However, my parents passing did not put me in a sense of despair. Perhaps it was because we weren't what you could consider close; or maybe it was simply because in the back of my mind I always knew that death is inevitable no matter who was on the receiving end of it.

It was living in a big city that once again got me to thinking of life and death. Living and then simply pretending to. I couldn't decide which I was currently doing. It felt as though most of my life I had been merely sleeping; void of anything. Watching life slowly pass me by under the gaze of a comatose person too fearful to attempt living.
Yet here I was now experiencing something completely out of my comfort zone.

I was never naïve enough to believe living in a big city would be safe. I didn't believe for a second that a city would be safer than the suburbs. When I left Iowa, I knew I was venturing into unknown territory. I knew this would be similar to walking into a brand-new life unlike my own.
The loud traffic of Chicago and the busy streets of the city were nothing like my home state. I come from Pella; practically nowhere. It's a small town named by Dutch immigrants back in the nineteenth century. Just as it has always been, the town is quaint, the biggest restaurant in town is a dilapidated Applebees, Going there was saved for special occasions by my farmer parents. Birthdays or good grades meant a cheeseburger and an ice-cream sundae from our favorite place in town. A few pop-up restaurants came up during my two and a half decades in Pella, but not too much else. It was a modest place to grow up. The crime rate in town was relatively low, the only real thing to fear was possible car theft if you were naive enough to leave your car unlocked in a seedy part of town. Even then, no one actually broke into your car. Even our criminals were too polite for that. They simply opened the door to steal your belongings.

As comfortable as Pella was to live, it was too small of a place to be for an adventurous spirit. That was why my sister Wendy left the second she turned eighteen. Growing up, she always craved more than what our small town had to offer.
Once upon a time we were closer than any two people could be. Some could blame that on our being identical twins. Split from the same egg in utero and then formed into identical everything. Same height of five foot six. Same pale blonde hair always cut slightly longer than shoulder length. Big, blue eyes with long and lovely lashes. Freckles gently splattered on our shoulders gifted to us by our father. Wendy and I were relatively the same although somewhat different. While she was loud and opinionated, I tended to be quiet and observing of my surroundings, always willing to follow my two-minutes younger twin instead of lead. We were best friends all our lives. We shared everything after our mother's womb. Bedrooms, clothes, toys, makeup, homework if one of us was ever confused by an equation or a project.

Wendy took me by surprise one day. The sister who shared the same bedroom with me since we were born had a bag packed on the eve of our eighteenth birthday. She begged me to go with her, to travel the world and see what outside Pella had to offer. I declined. While I was bound for a local college that fall, Wendy had bigger dreams than our small-town life. I proceeded to go to Iowa State and pursue a Bachelor of Science degree. She left town as planned, and I hadn't seen her since.
I paced around the very large two-bedroom apartment that was now mine. It was bigger than I originally anticipated Chicago apartments being, but it wasn't anything special. Maybe that was because I hated confined spaces. Everything here felt too close together, too pinched in. I've always enjoyed a large area to walk around. Houses provided that, which was why I was currently renting one back in Pella instead of an apartment. An apartment only provided a small area to pace. The kitchen and living room in this place were connected, my bedroom peeled down the hallway and into a comfy room. It held a walk-in closet. It wasn't a teeny tiny apartment, but I still felt claustrophobic. The closet was unneeded given I only moved to Chicago with one suitcase. I left everything I owned behind in Pella. This wasn't meant to be a long-term stay. But the more time I spent in Chicago, the less I wanted to leave. Not for a love for the city or the tiny apartment.
I needed to find Wendy.

My cell phone ringing broke me from my trance. I snatched it from my coffee table at once. Thank you, IKEA. A soft mahogany colored table for no more than a hundred and fifty. Capable of holding my outdated Motorola while I spent my days pacing the too small of living room. "Anything?"

I was eager to hear from my private investigator; we hadn't spoken in days. My anticipation to hear some sort of new information caused it so I didn't bother with pleasantries.
"Hello to you to. Mr. Barrie laughed. I had never been able to put a face to the name. His voice was rich like cream. Mr. Barrie doesn't meet with his clients until he has more information available for them. I found his number on a card that was left in Wendy's apartment. It was just the number, nothing else. To my surprise it was for a private detective.

Mr. Barrie has been secretive since we first started communicating. He said doesn't provide his full name to clients. Mr. Barrie required a down payment for finding Wendy. I was only to give him the other half of his payment after he found her. Twenty-five thousand down with the other twenty-five given after he found me Wendy. Maybe that was too steep of a price, maybe not. I didn't care. Money was no longer an issue for me. My farmer parents had sold their dairy farm prior to their car accident. That provided them with a lot of money that would no doubt leave me living snugly for the rest of my life. My inheritance from their deaths now had me set for life. Set to blow a ridiculous amount of money on finding my missing twin.

"Sorry," I said, my manners getting the better of me. "It's just been a long time since I've seen or spoken to Wendy." Part of me wondered if she was still alive. It had been six months since I last received a letter from her. That was how Wendy wished to communicate the last few years. She stopped calling, texting, and emailing the year we turned twenty-one. She was going free of technology is what her letter wrote, saying she didn't care to use phones or computers anymore. The only known address we had for her was this one in Chicago.
My mother was irate when we got the first letter stating that she was discontinuing contact. It was then that she decided she was disowning Wendy. My father didn't agree, but it was always hard to go against my mom when she dug her heels into something. Wendy was dead to mom that afternoon she no longer wanted to speak to any of us. That was a year after she turned twenty-one.

"Ahh, yes, the prodigal child."
My nose wrinkled in distaste. During one of our previous phone calls, the investigator had originally told me to tell him everything about Wendy so he could get an impression of her as a person. Although we were identical, Wendy was preferred by our parents growing up. She was the lively vivacious child who had my parents eating out of the palm of her hand from a young age. The all-star swimmer and singer, the popular cheerleader who was able to play the violin with perfection. What Wendy wanted; Wendy got. My parents loved me too, of course, but there was something so lovable about my twin that she always managed to gravitate everyone's attention to revolve around her, including my own at times. Although my mother 'disowned' Wendy, she never stopped loving her. She was simply heartbroken and missing her. Whenever the phone would ring my mom would hurry over to answer, always overeager to hear Wendy's breezy wind-chime voice. She jumped at every text message, always hoping it was her. But it never was.

I took a slow breath. Thinking about Wendy brought a pang in my chest; I missed her more than words could say. I missed my parents, too. I couldn't recall talking to Mr. Barrie about Wendy in a way that signaled I didn't love her. Guilt stabbed me for obviously having given him that impression. My silence hung heavily in the air.
"How has it been living in her apartment?" said Mr. Barrie, changing topics probably due to my heavy silence.

This is what I detested about hiring him. He always seemed to ask a lot of irrelevant personal questions. This one irked me just as much. How does it feel living in the dinky apartment of your missing sister you haven't seen in seven years? "It's okay," I lied with an even voice, glancing around the apartment. For the last month I've been living in Wendy's apartment.

 I was shocked to find my sister lived here for more reasons than one. Although it wasn't an ugly place, it was in a relatively seedy part of town. Loud neighbors, doors constantly slamming, and the occasional gun shot was heard every now and then down the street. That last one terrified me the first night I heard it. But the weirdest part about moving into this apartment wasn't the seediness or shady neighbors that came and went. It was discovering that Wendy didn't own any furniture minus a bed. She had a queen-sized one that was pressed against the far wall of her bedroom. A not appealing black comforter and sheets covered it. It was standard; ordinary. There was nothing indicating someone actually lived here minus the bed and few pieces of furniture. A far cry from the girl I shared a bedroom with back in Pella. That girl had a neon green and pink bed set and bright blue walls. She had boyband and celebrity posters, pictures of her with friends, a lava lamp. She was as bright and lively as her bedroom with its outrageous mismatched colors. It was ultimately the perfect bedroom for a teenage girl.

Wendy's limited pieces of clothing in this apartment were neatly hung up inside the walk-in closet. Three pairs of dress pants. Three long-sleeved shirts. Each were black. A winter jacket, and two pairs of standard pajamas were there as well. There weren't any shoes or socks in the closest either, no underwear as well, making me wonder if Wendy had packed her entire closet before she left this place.
Besides that, there was nothing. No TV, no pots and pans, no pictures of family or friends back from Pella, and to my shock, nothing inside of the fridge besides beer and an open bottle of Pinot Grigio. It didn't look like anyone lived here at all let alone a twenty-six-year-old woman. It was hard to tell when the last time she had been to this apartment. The beer expired around the same time that I had gotten my last letter from Wendy.
"It's weird. I just can't imagine my sister living here," I admitted into the receiver.
"I don't think she was the same Wendy you remember," said Mr. Barrie mildly. "The information I have is a far cry from the pristine cheerleader you've described to me."
Hearing that caused a cold shiver to tickle my spine. "What does that mean??"
"It means, Miss Carroll, that the things I'm discovering show me that your sister was in trouble." I could feel my face paling.
"What kind of trouble??" My mind started to panic. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn't expecting him to say that.
"Perhaps this would be better to explain in person."
"Perhaps you can just tell me what you know since I'm paying you an outrageous amount of money to find my missing sister." My voice was unintentionally cutting.
My lack of sleep lately had made it so me temper was wearing thin. Typically, I'm unnaturally polite; the annoying type of person who apologizes profusely for things that are not my fault and are completely out of my control. Someone cuts me off in line at a grocery store? I'll apologize to them. Someone irrationally flips me off in a random act of road rage? I'll actually feel bad for the rest of my day.

My therapist once told me that this is because I possess what is clinically known as 'sorry syndrome'. I always want to please or appease people based on my compassion for others. It's a trait that's haunted me for years. I partially figure that was Sherry's nice way of saying I'm a wimp.
"I'm sorry for my rudeness," I sighed into the receiver, rubbing my eyes wearily.
As I walked into the bathroom to check my appearance, I noted the sloppy ponytail and the heavy circles under my green eyes. Stress induced weight loss easily brought me down two dress sizes the last two months.
"I'm going to send you an address," said Mr. Barrie professionally. "We'll meet in one hour."
***