Upside down

Chapter 1 - Jennie

TW: Gore, Surgery, Abuse, Mutilation

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Not everyone gets their happy ending.

No matter how good a person was, no matter how kind, how helpful, it was useless.

You didn't become happy just because you did good deeds and lived morally. Quite the opposite. You had to be selfish and stubbornly fight for your happiness, no matter who or what you sacrificed for it.
Most people die unhappy anyway. You should at least try to make good use of your lifetime.

That was the first of three lessons Jennie learned as a child.

She learned it the hard way, by the age of five when she saw the dead man in her father's study.

Death had never been a reality for Jennie until then. She didn't really understand yet that dead people wouldn't wake up.
How could she?
No matter if a person died in a movie, all she had to do was restart the movie and the person was alive again, as if nothing had happened. When she watched other children from her neighborhood playing and a child dramatically fell to the ground and played dead, it also only took seconds for them to get back to life. And her absolutely non-living plushies didn't seem to mind being dead either.

Even then it was strange to see the motionless man in front of her. Almost instinctively, Jennie felt that something was wrong. Perhaps it was the pale skin covered in dark red blood. Or the fact that the person on the operating table was no longer breathing. Perhaps it was simply the expectant look on her father's face and his peculiar grin that made young Jennie shudder.

Jennie recognized the man, even though he looked a little strange, so lifeless. It was the nice postman who always looked at Jennie so gently and a little worried when she came to the door to get the mail. The one who brought her chocolate bars and made a funny face when Jennie told him the first time that she had never eaten chocolate. The man who had a few questions about Jennie's parents and had finally brought a young woman who had knelt down in front of Jennie with a smile and introduced herself. She had said she was from Child Protective Services. That she had a few questions. One of the questions was where her mother was.

Jennie couldn't answer.
She didn't even know what her mother looked like, how was she supposed to know where she was? Apart from the fact that she had only known that she must have had a mother since a conversation with her father a few weeks ago.

The nice postman with the chocolate was now lying motionless in front of Jennie, who didn't know how to react. Only when her father made an inviting gesture did she step closer and touch the man's arm.
The skin was unusually cold. It was eerie, and unnatural, but above all it was incredibly fascinating.

"Jennie."

"Yes, Father?"

Her father stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders.

"Do you think he was a good person?",

her father asked.
His cool voice sounded curious and expectant. Jennie realized from his tone that she should take the question seriously.
Good.
Good meant sharing things.
Helping those in need.
Not hurting anyone and not taking things away from anyone.
The postman shared his chocolate with her, asked if she was okay.

So he was probably good.
Jennie nodded.

"Yes? Very well, darling, you're right. And yet he's dead."

With those words, he pulled the white cloth from his body until he was only covered from his waist down.
Jennie saw the deep, gaping wound that ran in a perfect straight line from his chest down his stomach, and her eyes widened. She looked at her father open-mouthed, but she couldn't find the words for the question in her heart.
She liked the postman. Would he not wake up? Didn't the wound hurt?