Killers: A Watchers Novella

Winter

Edna holds onto what little she knows all autumn long - partly out of hope, and partly because it seems like these days, she knows less than she used to.

Her twisted words are normal.

She has a trau-ma-tic brain injury. (The longer words are hard now, and she has to take care to sound them out or they sound like gibberish.)

She'll probably regain normal speech in a few weeks.

But as the weeks stretch into months, she sees very little change. Her words don't come out twisted as often, but she still can't follow along with big words. They're still locked inside her head and she can get them as far as the tip of her tongue, and then something in her mind steals them back.

She can't go back to work, so she spends her days cleaning the apartment and watching TV so she can repeat what the people on the screen are saying and practice big words.

Her head feels fuzzy a lot of the time, but it's clearing by small pieces every day. The time doesn't move fast enough for Edna, or for Therese.

"I don't understand why you can't go back to work now," she says one January morning while she's frying eggs on the stove. Edna's not allowed to cook anymore because the dials on the front of the stove don't make sense to her anymore, and she's prone to forgetting. "You're just stabbing pigs - it's probably better if you're not aware of your surroundings."

"I want to work," Edna agrees. "We need money."

"I know," Therese says, shooting her a mean look. "The landlord has already called twice this week about our rent, and the pantry's almost empty. This is the last of the eggs."

"I'll call Dirk," Edna says. She has a sense that she's said this before and knows that she has when Therese rolls her eyes.

"He had to fire you last month, remember?" Therese says. "You've been out of work for three months and he couldn't hold your spot anymore."

"Oh," Edna says sadly as Therese plops down a plate of eggs in front of her.

"Eat up," she says. "I have to be at the Haven in thirty minutes."

* * *

Edna spends a lot of her days alone in the apartment. Therese is very busy with the Haven. Father Gary has been growing it quickly and he has a lot of mouths to feed.

Therese says Edna's lucky because Father Gary lets her bring leftover food home each night after the shelter's evening meal. Edna knows she's right - they can barely pay their bills on the meager savings Edna was able to stash before her accident. They have no spare money for food.

So Edna watches TV and cleans the apartment. She thinks about jobs she could do now, but she knows her speech isn't good enough to get her through an interview.

She just has to wait to get better.

Therese doesn't like taking care of Edna and the feeling goes both ways. Edna liked taking care of herself and her sister, and she wants Therese to not worry about her.

That's why she doesn't bring up her fears that she's not getting any better, and that she's made all the progress she will. Every morning when she opens her eyes, Edna hopes that her brain will unscramble itself and everything will be back to normal, but it never is.

She doesn't talk about how she might never be able to have another good job like sticking. And she doesn't tell Therese how weird it is that her taste buds have changed, too.

Everything Therese brings home from the shelter has a strange flavor that Edna can't place. But her taste buds are the least of their worries, after the bills and the empty pantry and the cold winter air waiting outside their windows for the day they can't pay to keep the heat on anymore.