Chapter 70

Melinda finally broke out of her shocked silence. "Heather, wh-what the fuck are you doing here?"

The image of Heather smirked and stepped between Melinda and the imprisoned Penny. She glanced over her shoulder before turning back to Melinda. "What am I doing here? Bugging you, of course."

"What the hell are you talking about? Can ... wait, did Diane free you already? Is that it? Are you here to help me?"

Heather laughed. "Help you? Why would I do that? You know I've never been helpful."

Melinda stared at her sister. "I don't understand."

"What's there to understand, midget?" Heather said, her smile fading. "God, you're so fucking annoying, you know that? Why don't you just go back to sucking your thumb and complaining to Mom about every little thing you don't like?"

Melinda's hands clenched into fists. Just those few sentences had whipped her memories into a frothy, boiling stew, memories of the old Heather who would tease Melinda relentlessly. "I don't know why you're doing this, but I can't be bothered about it now. I have to rescue Mom."

Heather laughed.

"What the fuck is so funny, bubblehead?!"

Heather grinned, but it was devoid of humor. "You. You're so funny when you get mad."

"Stop it! You know I used to hate that!"

"Oh? And you don't hate it now, is that it?"

Melinda hesitated. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Just what I said, runt. You said you used to hate it when I did that. You don't now?"

"I ... but ... of course I would hate it now, but you don't do that anymore!" Melinda piped. "That's why I don't understand! Why would you start doing this to me now?"

Heather's grin widened. "Yeah, I'll bet there's lots of stuff you still hate, huh? Remember when I used to tell Mom every time I heard you use a curse word?"

Melinda's hands clenched tighter until her arms trembled, but she forced herself not to react further.

"Remember when I told her how you went up to the abandoned railroad tracks when you were six?"

Melinda took a deep breath and let it go as a tense sigh.

"And then I teased you about being chicken because you really had only made it as far as the rickety old bridge before you ran back home with your tail between your legs?"

Melinda's nails bit into the palms of her hands.

"Oo, and remember how I used to call you the little wallflower? Wow, I could always set you off with that."

"Only because you used to be one yourself!" Melinda shrieked.

The image of Heather paused, and Melinda saw herself back at the House, being forced along with the others to decide on whether to take the power Mara had offered each in turn. She remembered hearing for the first time how Heather had once been the shy one to whom no one ever paid any attention.

Heather slowly smiled. "Oh, very good, Melinda. Just like old times. Sure, what else do you have to throw at me?"

Melinda could think of a dozen things she could hurtle in retaliation, and her lower lip trembled as if in eager anticipation of unloading a return volley of insult and accusation. She swallowed and said in a flat voice, "Nothing."

"Oh, what a little liar you are."

"Shut up! I don't have to do this!"

Heather laughed.

"Stop it! What the fuck is all this about?!"

"It's about exactly what you see, baby sis."

Melinda bit back the automatic rejoinder. "I don't have time for this, Heather," she said in a measured, if shaky, voice. "I have to free Mom."

Heather glanced at the prison behind her, then turned towards it. "Oh, yes, I suppose you have even more to say to her."

Melinda frowned. "What?"

"I guess I can't really hold a candle to her. You have so much hate for her."

Melinda shook her head. "No, I don't. I-I gave that up. I know the truth now."

Heather snorted and turned towards her sister. "The truth, huh? The truth shall set you free and all that bullshit?"

"It's not bullshit! Why are you doing this to me?!"

Heather smirked. "Because you're a whiny brat, that's why."

"I'm not--! I mean ... j-just stop it!" Melinda cried, her eyes glistening. "You haven't done this since the summer! You're not like this anymore!"

"Oh, really? Then why am I here? Why am I doing all the things you claim I stopped doing?"

"Because you're not fucking real!" Melinda screamed as tears trickled down her face. "You're some sort of stupid fucking figment of my own mind! You're just a memory, that's all!"

Heather laughed, and it was all Melinda could do not to pummel the vision with her fists. "I'm as real as you want me to be, you stupid brat. So yeah, you go on believing I'm just a figment. Just like you believe you can really free Mom."

"I can free her!" Melinda shrieked.

"And why do you think you can do that?"

"Because I don't hate her anymore! I can forgive her for ... for..."

Melinda trailed off, and she stared at the vision of her sister as understanding exploded in her head like a bomb.

Melinda swallowed, and her eyes misted. Her next breath was released as a small sob. She stared at her sister and tried to quell every last bad feeling which lingered in the recesses of her mind.

"I f-forgive you," Melinda said in a shaky voice.

Heather hesitated, some of her grin fading. "What was that, runt?"

"I said I forgive you!" Melinda shouted, wiping her eyes. "I don't hate you anymore for anything you've done!"

"And ... and you think that's enough?" Heather demanded, though in a less certain voice. "You think you can just shove aside years of hate like that?"

Melinda sniffled and struggled to hold back the tears. The force of the epiphany was like a constant ache in her gut. She had thought her biggest hurdle was her hatred of her mother. She had never stopped to think about the even bigger pile of resentments against her sister she had stockpiled over the years.

Now she saw the other piles which sat beside it. All the past transgressions from Diane, Richie, Jason, and even Cassie, Ned, and Debby. She had squirreled them away like a pack-rat, saving them for when she needed to hurtle something in someone's face.

"I don't know," Melinda said in a choked voice. "But I have to try. I have to try, dammit, so get the fuck out of my way!"

Melinda raised her fists above her head and plunged towards the glass prison. The image of Heather stepped in front of her, but Melinda gritted her teeth and repeated "I forgive you" over and over. She plunged though just as the image vanished.

Melinda pounded her fists against the glass, teeth clenched, her body shaking with both fear and rage. Again and again, striking the glass with such force that had this been her physical body, the skin of her hand would be a bruised mess.

CRACK!

Melinda was so startled by the noise that she staggered back. She had to wipe her eyes again in order to see. A single crack had appeared, spidering out about a foot from where her fists had stuck the glass.

Melinda let out a feral snarl and threw herself against the prison once more, beating her fists with almost inhuman effort. Several more small cracks appeared, but spread no further than the first had.

Her arms grew tired, and she did not understand why. This was not her physical body, so she should have all the energy she needed. That was when she understood. The pool of energy she had gained over the weekend was almost drained.

Melinda screamed her rage and desperation as she threw herself against the prison like a girl possessed.

Richie trembled as he looked up at the looming form of his father. "D-Dad, I..." he started to say until his throat tightened too much for him to speak.

"Yeah, that figures," the image of his father sneered. "That fucking figures. You'll shoot your goddamn mouth off at me or your mother whenever you're not getting your fucking way, but you can't give me a straight answer about anything else."

"I-I'm going to save Mom, that's where I'm going!" Richie managed to choke out.

"You're just going to make things worse!" Mike roared. "You already fucked things up, you little asshole! You think you can just slap a fucking band-aid on a gaping wound?"

Richie took a deep breath and wiped his eyes. "Dad, I-I'm doing this to make up for all that! Please, let me--"

"Griping and excuses! That's all I ever get from you! You don't know shit about how to take responsibility. Did I really believe your mother would be okay with just you around? What the fuck was I thinking?!"

The instinct to protest had not left Richie. He wanted to defend himself and plead his case as the victim, even as much as he knew it to be false. "I don't understand, Dad," Richie said in a shaky voice. "How are you getting through on the link? How're you getting past what the Dark bitch was--"

Suddenly Richie's head snapped to one side, his cheek burning. He stumbled and fell to the ground. He gave his father a horrified look as he raised a shaking hand to his stinging cheek where faint red traces of his father's fingers lingered.

"Stop changing the fucking subject!" Mike roared. "That's always it with you, isn't it? You never want to fucking see what the hell you're supposed to be doing!"

"I'm s-supposed to be rescuing my mother!" Richie cried.

"What the fuck gives you the right to do anything concerning her, you motherfucker?! Yeah, that's right, you are a motherfucker!" Mike swept his arm towards the struggling Sandra. "Yeah, that's what you really want to do here, isn't it? Fucking her body is not enough for you. You have to fuck her mind, too."

Richie struggled to his feet, his vision blurred by tears he refused to acknowledge. "I know wh-what I've done," Richie said in a choked voice. "I won't make any excuses for it, Dad."

"You're damn fucking straight you won't! You have no excuse, you worthless piece of shit!"

Richie's next breath came out as a sob. "I-I don't want to fuck her anymore, I--"

And again, Richie was on the floor, nursing another slap to his face.

"You fucking little liar!" Mike bellowed. "You want to fuck her. You know you want to!"

"Alright, I do!" Richie screamed. "I enjoyed it whenever I did it, alright?! I've already admitted that. What more do you fucking want from me?!"

With a snarl, Mike rushed forward. Richie cringed and tried to crawl away, but his father grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. "You stand and look me in the fucking eye when you talk to me, you little fuckwit."

Richie wrenched his arm from his father's grip and leapt back, but dared not take his eyes from his father's face, even as twisted with rage as it was.

Mike shook a finger at Richie's face. "You think you can even begin to make up for all the shit you've pulled?! You could spend a lifetime doing good deeds and you won't atone for even a fucking fraction of a fraction of everything you've done!"

Richie could not hold back the tears any longer. He let them flow down his face, perhaps in the hope that his father would take pity on him. Instead, his father's face twisted into a disgusted scowl.

Richie tried to stop the torrent of emotion so he could think. Just what did his father want from him? He had thought his father would lay off when he showed that he really wanted to make up for what he had done.

He risked a glance at his mother. Maybe that was it. His father just wanted him to get on with it. His eyes flicked over the chains. He had to be his mother's Superman. He had to just pull them apart. It had to be that simple.

He looked back to his father and took a deep breath. "Fine. I can't atone for everything. But I can fix this one thing, Dad. I'm gonna save Mom."

Richie turned away from his father. He had taken only two steps towards the bed when his arm was seized. He tried to wrench it out of his father's grip, but his father had already pulled him back and sent him spinning. He tripped over his feet and fell to the floor. "What the fuck, Dad?! I'm trying to--!"

"You're not touching her, you perverted asshole!" Mike screamed, making Richie's ears hurt. "You're not going to make things worse!"

Diane staggered back from the white-clad image of the nurse, too stunned to respond. Nyssa smiled and stepped towards her, heels echoing into the void. Heather remained still, her eyes downcast, as if she had not even noticed Nyssa's presence. "Actually, now that I think about it," said Nyssa in a honey-sweet voice. "We didn't really get much time together when we last met."

Diane swallowed and forced her throat to work, her voice choked and raspy at first. "Y-You can't be here. We ... you left! You left town after--"

Nyssa giggled and stepped forward, forcing Diane to stumble back another half-step. "You silly thing. I was the one who gave my pet Laura her power. In that sense, I never truly left."

Diane's mind raced. If some form of Nyssa really still inhabited Laura's head, what hope did she have of freeing Heather? She had not bargained for this. She was supposed to confront her worst fear, and that was supposed to be Victor.

"Wh-what do you want with me?" Diane demanded in a shaky voice.

"Oh, but you're the one who decided to take a romp in Heather's consciousness, not me. I should be asking the same thing of you."

"I'm trying to free her!"

Nyssa giggled. "Just like you freed everyone from me?"

Diane shuddered as the memory burned in her mind. She had barely walked into the room after Cassie when she had been rendered helpless for the duration of the subsequent battle. When she had awakened, everything had been said and done, and she had realized she had been only so much dead weight, no different than if she had stayed away.

"I-I'm not here to fight you!" Diane cried.

"I might have something to say about that," said Nyssa in a silky voice as she took another step towards Diane.

Diane tried to back away, but her gaze was caught in Nyssa's ice-blue depths. She shuddered as she could not tear her eyes away, her senses already falling into the icy expanse.

The potion no longer mattered. Her will no longer mattered. She was back at school, entering the nurse's office, Nyssa catching her in seconds like a fly on flypaper, Diane helpless to defend herself.

Nyssa took another step. Diane's eyes glazed as the ice-blue pit yawned before her psyche. "I see you are no better than you were back then. I could have had you had I not been distracted. You would have made a wonderful pet."

Diane shivered and managed to pull herself back to the very edge of the chasm. More memories raced through her head. She remembered talking to Cassie after it was over, expressing her lament that she had done little to help. At the time, Diane had dismissed Cassie's response as the usual platitudes designed just to make her feel better.

"Diane, you did help, in a way," Cassie had said. "You gave her another distraction. She was forced to use more power to stop you, so she had less to use against me. I just barely held her off as it was. You might have made the difference between victory and defeat."

Now the words burned bright in her head, and she was not sure why. What would these words mean to her now? The situation was not the same. No one was waiting in the wings to save Heather if she fell. It was all riding on her.

"I don't want to be your pet," Diane said in a choked voice, robbing it of some of its conviction. "I don't want to be anyone's slave!"

Diane thought she had understood her greatest fear, but Nyssa had appeared in Victor's stead. She was not sure why, since Nyssa had never truly enslaved her.

Diane shuddered when Nyssa stepped forward, her bosom brushing Diane's chest. Diane's skin flushed hot, the sensation flowing over her like warm honey, thick and cloying. Her hands had been clenched into fists at her sides, but now they trembled and relaxed as they slipped from her control.