The House of Atreus | ONC 2023 Shortlist

XXVI

Someone screams.

I stir awake and sit up, looking over at where Orestes is thrashing in his sleep. His features are contorted in anguish, his mouth gaping open like a wound. He whimpers softly. The sun hasn't quite risen yet and the hazy light paints the room in shades of black and white. I blink a few times, trying to clear my vision, to dispel the dryness that wants to keep my eyes shut. There's someone standing above him, looking down at him.

Three dark figures are bent over my brother, looming, whispering. They wear robes of midnight that flow around them like whisps of smoke, their hair is wrought through with snakes, floating around their heads, snapping and snarling as the women lean over Orestes, reaching out their clawed fingers but not touching him. I lift my own hands to rub my eyes, to see them more clearly. Their faces are unclear, blurry smudges of ink.

I shift in the bed as I lean forward and all three heads whip towards me. In a flash, the figures are at my side instead, leaving my brother to his fitful slumber. I draw back when the dark women descend upon me. They swarm around me and I can feel an icy cold radiating off of them, a wind that seems to sweep me up and chill me to the bone. I pull back, trying to bring as much space between them and me as I can but they come at me from all sides. I glance up and that's when I get a look at one of their faces.

It's deadly pale, empty black eyes stare back at me, devoid of any pupils or emotion. Wild hair swirls around their heads as the snakes writhe and move around their temples. They try to snap at me. The women open their mouths, wide and dark, lined with sharp incisors. I can only stare at them, paralysed. They point at me with their nails. The tips of their fingers are black as if they've been dipped in dye, stark against the whiteness of their skin.

Murderer, they whisper in unison, yet there's no sound coming out of their gaping mouths. M-M-Murderer. The word echoes in my head, bouncing around my mind, slithering into every crevice, interrupting every thought that forms behind my forehead.

She killed her. K-k-killed her own mother. Again they swarm me, taking turns spewing in my face. Their disembodied voices attack me, rippling the surface of my mind like a stone skipping over water. Until they fill me up entirely, until there's no escape. Their hands grab at me, pulling at my hair, my clothes and I shriek when their icy fingers close around my arm, squeezing my flesh so hard I can feel a bruise forming.

"Enough!" I find the strength to jerk back when one of them scrapes her nails across my skin and I tear my arm out of her grip. Rage races through me and I scream. They finally pull away and recoil from me, something like surprise flitting across their ghastly faces.

Orestes jolts awake, disturbed by my screaming. He groans and sits up, running his hands through his messy hair. "So you see them, too?"

His voice is brittle and when he looks at me, his eyes are bloodshot. Dark circles like bruises have formed under them. The light of the rising sun streams into the room now, pale and feeble still and it accentuates every line on his face. He looks like he's aged a decade in just one night.

I'm still breathing hard, rattled by the nightmarish figures, their words still reverberate in my mind. I'm not a villain, I tell myself. Gradually my pulse slows down and I push my shoulders back, letting air flow back into my lungs.

"We did what we had to," I say when I get up from the bed. Like Father had when he came back to Mycenae from his exile. Like Aegisthus claimed he did when he became king. Like Mother thought she did.

"For Father." Orestes turns his head towards me now and despite his words, I can see the haunted look on him. It clings onto him like a cloud. His gaze holds mine for a moment, searching for something, but I can't tell what he's hoping to find. Finally, he swallows hard and nods, uncertain.

I can feel he's not convinced and it makes me stop. Annoyance flares up inside me. He was the one who came to my house, claiming he'd been sent by the Oracle, by the Gods to avenge our father. He tried to provoke me when I wanted nothing to do with the palace. And it was me who saw this plan through. Who acted when he froze. And now he regards me like I'm one of the Furies myself.

Men are scared children, is what Mother used to say and maybe in this she was right.

"Where were they when they killed him? When we ran from our own home? No one came to help us then, to avenge us." My voice is hard, I shake my head. "We had to do it ourselves. You and I, Orestes. The Gods don't care about justice, they don't care about us."

He looks back at me silently. His eyes are wide, wild like his curls and I get the sudden urge to smooth them out like I did when he was still small. When he'd cling to my leg every time a guest came into the palace. We've always had each other. My face softens at the memory.

"You'll be King now," I tell him. "You'll continue the legacy of Atreus."

"I don't know if I can, sister." Orestes sighs, heavily and his whole body seems to tremble with his exhale. His brows knit together and then his face crumbles. He bows his head as a sob escapes him.

A sharp pain pierces my chest when I hear him cry and I think I might understand what my mother felt in her final moments. I want to reach out to touch him, to embrace him, but I feel so far away. Out of nowhere, a different memory rises, a more recent one. I look down at my hands and it's as if I can still see the blood smeared all over them.

I hesitate, unsure if Orestes would even let me touch him. If he'd ever allow me to wrap him in my arms again. He was so fierce when he came into my house, burning so brightly in his anger that I couldn't look away. He knew what we had to do. What we had to put ourselves through and he agreed. But now his guilt is almost palpable, hanging in the silence between us as dust dances in the sunlight.

Buckle up, the next chapter is going to be the end of this story.