A/N: This is not really meant to be a stand-alone short story. This is something that follows the ending of the short story I'm currently working on, just for me personally to see what happens to this character after the fact. I apologize if you get confused toward the end. There's a ridiculous amount of backstory here. But, I thought someone might enjoy it regardless, so take a look. :)
Jade Mandler, no matter when she's born or what name she's born with, has never quite been right after her tragic twenty-sixth life. In fact, she's always very, very wrong. But only for about two years.
March seventh. That's the day it always falls apart. A pretty female baby is born, and she doesn't cry. The doctors think she's dead. Turns out she's just oddly quiet. Sometimes, the parents don't realize anything is wrong. Sometimes, when they look into their baby's eyes, they do. They're not quite sure what is wrong—just a chill creeping up their spines, the strangest of looks in the baby's lovely blue eyes, as if she already knows—it's quickly dismissed, and the unsettled parents do their best to act like everything is normal.
March seventh, 2016. Gina and Alex Trebuchet. These particular parents know that what they've taken home from the hospital is not at all an ordinary baby, but since neither of them wants to discuss that suspicion with the other, this little family is working very hard to keep a pretty veneer of normality. This sweet, strange baby is currently named Brielle, though she's still Jade Mandler in a sense. At least, she carries the horrific memories of Jade Mandler. And the memories of every other lifetime she's been through. But Jade's are the ones that matter the most right now, because Jade is the one who lost her soul.
Two weeks after the birth. Gina is feeding Brielle—breastfeeding, since the very thought of giving formula to her little angel is repulsive. As Brielle drinks, Gina strokes her baby's fine hair and wonders why she keeps feeling like this—like there's another presence inside of the baby. She's never been religious, so she certainly doesn't believe in demonic possession, but that's what it feels like… She blinks rapidly, trying to fight the tears as she thinks about what a horrible mother she is. Why would anyone think her baby is possessed, just because she stares in such an odd way…?
Brielle pulls away and says in a small, clear voice, "I'm done, thank you."
Horror jolts through Gina and she nearly drops the baby. She runs over to the crib, holding Brielle out far away from her body as she does so, and quickly deposits her in it. There is pure fear in her eyes as she backs away, staring through the bars of the crib.
She hears Alex's voice and the closing of the front door. She pastes on a smile as she goes to greet her husband. The news of Brielle's first words do not pass her lips.
Brielle has been speaking fluently ever since that first day. Her tiny voice is eerie, with a dead sort of quality to it, as if she never experiences any real emotion and doesn't feel the need to pretend that she does. At least she waited until she was five months old to start walking—although Gina suspects that was only because of her physical limitations. Neither she nor Alex ever taught their daughter how to walk; she just pulled herself up on the edge of a table one morning, and toddled off into the next room.
The amount of knowledge in Brielle's little mind is probably the most terrifying thing for these poor young parents. Gina is in her second year of graduate school, and though she isn't much of a math person, she has to take an applied calculus course in order to get into one of the other classes she needs. As she's puzzling over one of the problems, six-month-old Brielle toddles over to her mother and looks at the paper.
"You have a mistake there," she says, clumsily pointing to one of the symbols. The child always seems frustrated with her lack of fine motor skills. While Gina has gotten somewhat accustomed to her baby speaking in long, fluent sentences, she always jumps slightly when she hears that little voice. "The interval should be from zero to four," Brielle continues. "You're measuring the wrong volume otherwise."
Gina swallows hard as she looks at her daughter. "How do you know that?"
Brielle tries to shrug, but it doesn't quite come off right. Frustration twists her expression and she says irritably, "I just do. Why do you always ask me that?"
Gina shakes her head and says faintly, "Nothing. I'm sorry."
"Are you afraid of me?" Brielle asks bluntly.
Gina freezes, uncertain of how to answer the question. Should she admit to being terrified by her own baby? Should she lie to the child who seems to know everything? Which answer is Brielle looking for?
Little Brielle studies her mother's face and says, "I can't really control it. It's very tedious to act like a normal baby, you know. Can you imagine being an adult in this body and trying to act like a real six-month-old?"
There is nothing Gina can say to that. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out except a small, wordless noise.
"I can tell you why if you really want to know," Brielle says.
Still, Gina cannot speak.
Brielle sighs in irritation. That seems to be the only emotion she can ever produce. "I'm human, like you, but I've been reincarnated thirty-nine times. This is my fortieth lifetime. My final lifetime. No one ever gets more than forty. I'll be glad to end it. I used to have a soul, you see, but when you're one of these humans who gets reincarnated—we call them repeaters—your soul doesn't exist inside your own body, it's tied into the body of another being. An Other. There are a lot of monsters that walk this earth, along with a lot of creatures who, superficially at least, appear more or less human, but they aren't really.
"My soul was tied into one of those creatures, a man named Tsela, a long time ago…but then he died. So my soul sought a home inside his daughter, Ma'iitsoh. Unfortunately for me, she also died, during my twenty-sixth life. Repeater souls can only be transferred among blood relatives, and Ma'iitsoh had no living family. When she died, she took my soul down with her, into whatever kind of hell Others go to in the end. My name was Jade Mandler, then… I'm left now with nothing. No feelings. No humanity. No future. I'm just a physical shell, and the pain…you can't imagine the pain, Gina. My soul has been ripped out of this world and sent to hell, while my body remains here. That split can never be repaired, and I suffer immensely every moment I breathe. I am made of pain."
Still, she speaks in a flat tone. It's as if she feels the agony that she is describing, but she understands that there is no point in physically expressing it. She continues, not seeming to notice that Gina is frozen to her seat, barely breathing.
"Normally, when repeaters are reborn, we don't regain our past memories until later in our lives. But that protective mechanism no longer exists for me. After Ma'iitsoh died, killed by the rebound of the spell that brought her boyfriend back to life, her boyfriend fled the wreckage of the war they'd both been fighting in, and took me with him. When he realized that Ma'iitsoh had taken my soul to hell with her, he killed me with a blow to the head. The next time I was born, I remembered absolutely everything. Everything I had experienced in the twenty-six lives prior. It's been that way ever since. That's how I know how to speak and walk, how to do your calculus homework for you. It's because I have no soul."
There is an eerie gleam in the baby's eyes as she says, "And I can't live like that, you know. Cabrakan was right to kill me when he realized what was going on. The only reason I'm still alive right now is because I don't have the fine motor skills that I need to commit suicide. In every lifetime after Ma'iitsoh's death, I've killed myself before the age of three. As soon as I'm able to climb up to a high enough ledge, or crawl into the refrigerator and secure it closed…you won't have to fear me anymore, Gina. Just give it another year and a half. I'll find a way. Maybe the bridge… I'm so close, Gina. Once I end this life, I'm free forever. My body and soul will either reunite in the afterlife, or vanish entirely. I don't even care. All I want is the sweet blackness of death…"
Brielle smiles for the first time. The sight of it creeps over Gina's skin like a cold syrup. She can't control her fear anymore. She flees the room, haunted by her baby's horrifying words.
True to her word, Brielle vanishes one day at the age of seventeen months. Gina finds her in the evening when she pries open the basement freezer, which has been rather creatively tied shut with the end of the rope hanging down inside. There's nothing she can do. There never was. Her baby's little face, though blue and cold, is smiling.