Life and Death {Enoch O'Connor}

11

Enoch stared down at the ground in dismay. Three squirrels lay dead on the ground in front of him - each of which he'd brought back to life with new hearts. But now, they were motionless, as if he'd never revived them at all.

It had been a few months since he first discovered the power he held. At first, he thought it was a fluke. Perhaps the cat wasn't dead in the first place. Perhaps he'd imagined it - his father always commented on his overactive imagination. Or perhaps it was a one-time occurrence. 

He decided to try again soon after he heard that the cat had died again. He ran off to the forest almost every day after school, building up his collection of dead animals. From his kitchen, he snuck out some of the knives his parents used to cut meat. Then he took a needle and spool of thread from his mother's sewing kit. With his supplies ready, he took a bird and began his surgery, placing a small heart inside and patching it up with a few loose and messy stitches. 

Sure enough, within a few seconds, the bird was on its feet again. 

And, sure enough, it was dead a few days later. 

Enoch tried and tried again. Each time the animal would come alive as soon as he was finished with the transplant.  It would obey his every command without hesitance. Then, it would die within a couple of days. He tried different types and sizes of hearts, different stitches, even putting multiple hearts in one animal, but nothing worked. They would always die again. 

Sure, Enoch could toy with death, but it always won over in the end. He could manipulate it, bringing back the dead for a brief period of time, but he couldn't overpower it.

Enoch realized his father had been right all along. No matter what, death was permanent.  While he could try to change things and resurrect them, death always claimed them back.

Life was brief and fragile. Death was forever.

-

Upon reaching the village, the peculiars were allowed to split up.

"It makes us less intimidating to the locals," Miss Peregrine had explained. 

Some of the younger children tagged along with the headmistress, while the older peculiars went their own way. Emma strode off with Abe, hand-in-hand, followed briefly by Miss Peregrine's watchful gaze. Fiona, Hugh, and Millard ran off towards the center of the village to peer into the shop windows. 

Gloria turned to Enoch, her hands on her hips, "Well, I'm going to take a stroll on the shore," She stated, scratching at the collar over her gills. "Care to join me?"

Enoch couldn't think of anything he'd rather do less than spend time with Gloria by the ocean. So he just shook his head in response, not even offering an excuse.

She let out a little "hmph" noise before turning on her heel and skipping off towards the coast. 

Starting off through the village, Enoch walked with his head bowed and hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat. Whenever the residents of the children's home visited the village, they were always met by the suspicious gazes of the locals. While many of the villagers came to accept the unusual children as a part of the town, many became unsettled in their presence - as if they knew there was something different about them but they couldn't figure out what. 

Enoch could feel the stares of the villagers on him as he passed. Conversations dulled as they watched him go by. Parents huddled their little ones close and hurried them past Enoch. He couldn't blame them. He had a dark sort of vibe to him, almost as if he radiated the sense of death that he had grown up surrounding him. It had been like this all his life, even before he found out he was peculiar - one of the many reasons he lacked friends growing up. Everyone wanted to protect their children from the undertaker's son.