The Undoing of Regent House

Part 2: Chapter 5

Ryan was thirteen years old when Medea ran out of their lives. From what Bella said, she had been in love with a farmer and decided that scooping manure out of the stables was where she thought she belonged. His mother gave something along the lines of the same answer, but less polite. Aunt Lavina, Medea's mother, always offered him strawberry shortcakes whenever he asked so his mouth would be too full to reiterate. Celia had a tendency of suddenly turning mute.

"I'm really excited about Pamela Lorcan's debutante ball, but I'm still not sure if I should go with this light blue dress that I wore last year, but adored, or this new white dress that I bought last week but don't really like-"

"Where's Medea?" said Ryan pointedly. "How did she run away?"

Celia suddenly paled. Ryan almost laughed. Celia gathered herself in the most dignified way that she could and tautly left the room. Dylan threw him a scathing glare.

"That's not funny, Ryan," he said and went after her.

"At least it shut her up," said Ryan.

"You shut up!"

Ryan rolled his eyes. When it came to Celia, Dylan was boring. The Regent countryside manor, in its entirety, bored him. Their city house on Grittard Avenue, London, bored him. He needed entertainment. He needed adventure. He needed to breathe.

His mother walked into the room.

"Shoes off the table!" she hissed. "You are not a hooligan."

He shot her a glare. "Maybe I want to be."

His mother scared him, but he didn't dare show it. Her anger was like an ill-timed explosive. For a minute, she could be quietly sipping her tea and, within seconds, she could be flinging the china against the wall. She was as vicious as she was violent, and Ryan could never love her for it.

She stormed towards him, grabbed his ankles and pushed them off the side of the table. Her face was twisted into an ugly portrait of rage. His face matched.

He stood up to face her. She was a tall woman, though; at least a foot taller than him.

"You can't tell me what to do."

"Oh yes I can!" she grabbed him by the scuff of his shirt and pulled him to her. The scent of her cigarette-tainted breath and her sharp perfume stung his eyes. "As long as you are a Regent, living in my house, you will do exactly as I say." She shoved him back before he could retort. "I won't have you be as useless as your brother!"

Dylan heard her, as he always did. He had been on the other side of the hallway. Had he been six years old, he would have cried. But now, at twelve, he was well used to it.

*

Ryan generally had a good relationship with his brother. They were only a year apart, spent most of the time together and understood each other in a way that siblings with careless parents could. But their mother turned twisted and their father appeared only once in a blue moon.

A poisoned snake nestled itself in the chambers of her heart. At night, glass of wine in one hand a cigarette in the other, she'd mutter to herself and chortle to the fireplace. Sometimes, during dinner, her eyes would go out of focus. She was transforming into a wretched version of herself, fed by hate and watered by spite. Her handsomeness as a woman was a shell that concealed the rot that ate her skin.

Though Ryan took the brunt of her rage, it was Dylan that took the brunt of her hate.

"Be more like your brother," she said sharply, whapping his shoulder at dinner. "Sit straight."

And, always, Dylan would give him a scornful look. Ryan would only look apologetic. When they were younger, offerings of stolen chocolates and sugary sweets eased Dylan back into a likeable mood. Now, there was little else Ryan could do but mutter an apology that was soon rejected.

"You make her hate me!" Dylan would cry.

"I don't!" Ryan insisted. "I swear! She's just crazy!"

"You're crazy!" And Dylan would slam his bedroom door and lock it.

"Fine!" Ryan would slam his fists against Dylan's door and yell into the keyhole. "Be an idiot!"

"Shut up!"

And Ryan would promptly storm into his own room, slam the door, lock it shut, and cry.

*

There was a little playground by Grittard Avenue that no children liked to play in. The swings were rusty and it rained almost every other day, so the playsets were wet. But Ryan didn't mind the cold, the wet and the dark. He slipped out of the living room window when the house was asleep, ran down the black avenue- listening to the echoes of his own footsteps in the big and empty world- and sat on one of the creaking swings to think.

What was it to be a Regent, he wondered? What was it that his mother kept on rambling about? What was it that she wanted?

He had to sit straight. He had to tip his nose in the air. He had to bow low enough that it was respectful, but high enough that he was above everyone else. They were nobility. They were royalty. They were Gods gift to the earth. They were this, they were that and they were everything he just couldn't understand.

They were a secret, Bella had told him, that was too sick to show itself yet too savage to be let loose. Though she was crazy enough as it is, he was sure she had a point; Bella was a monster that never lied.

And then Medea ran away, opening that big, red door, and Ryan wondered just what it was she had found.

That is, if there had been a big, red door to run out of in the first place.

In his dignified opinion, he was far too old for stories.