A Tragedy: The Revenge of Zephyrus

A Tragedy: The Revenge of Zephyrus - a short story

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“Some traditions relate that [Hyacinthus] was beloved also by Boreas or Zephyrus, who, from jealousy of Apollo, drove the discus of the god against the head of the youth, and thus killed him.”

– Theoi Greek Mythology

There are identical twins, then there are fraternal twins, then there are twins who share nothing in common, not even a last name. Such is the case with Donna Zephyr and Isobel Jane Hyacinth. They are spitting images of each other, with their warm strawberry-blonde curls. Sharply hazel eyes, like Earth-coloured marbles, adorn their faces. Once upon a time my mother would have mused about the Greek legends, that seemed to dictate our fate.

How was I to know what would become of the two of them – the three of us? Our fates were handwritten in the three stars of Orion’s belt, which tightened like a noose around our stiff necks. As I stand here on the precipice, I feel myself get swept up in the fatal zephyr, and realise that was what had been missing all along. Is it me who pulls us both down? Or is it she, the girl who looks at me with that look haunting her hazel eyes? Either way, side by side, hand in hand, we pull ourselves into the vortex, fall in headfirst, drowning our drumming heartbeats in the rushing wind.

***

I first met Isobel Jane Hyacinth outside my dorm room. She was sliding flyers into a mailbox. I was delivering the post. (A little background context – coming from a lower-income family, I was on a fully paid scholarship to the U, where I was to do some part-time work as a sort of remuneration. So I stopped by the post office to pick up the mail at five forty-five every morning.) For some reason she was up too at that ungodly hour that day, and I approached the full length of her 170-odd centimetres, padded slightly by high-cut Converse, and gently touched her shoulder. She started and turned around, strawberry curls tousled, and fixed me with her piercing hazel gaze.

“Hold up. I’ll make your job a lot easier,” I said, not quite looking her in the eye. I drew the jangling keys from my belt and unlocked the front of the mailbox, revealing open cubby units. “There you go.”

Isobel Jane – I didn’t know her name back then – smiled, a luscious pink crescent in the indigo dark of pre-dawn. “Thanks, Mr Postman,” she mused, and turned her attention back to slotting flyers into the mailbox cubbies, humming the familiar tune.

“Hey, you listen to The Carpenters,” I commented, her magnetic presence so alluring my lips couldn’t help but curve upwards as well. “I see your Mr Postman, and raise you a ‘Close To You’.”

“Which one is –? Oh, ‘They Long To Be Close To You’. Good choice there,” she smiled. “But I’m afraid nothing can top ‘This Masquerade’. That’s my sister’s favourite.”

“No, you’re right,” I agreed. I decided that mutual affinity for The Carpenters is enough to take us out of the area of strangers and put out a hand. “My name is Ollie Jones.”

“All right, Oliver. Why don’t you go by Oliver instead? It sounds a lot better. I’m Isobel Jane Hyacinth,” she teased, beaming, as she took my hand in her smooth one and clasped it.

“My name isn’t Oliver,” I said, and flushed crimson red. Great. I’m flustered already. “It’s… well, ridiculous. Just call me Ollie.”

“What is it, then? Tell me your name; friends need to know each other’s names.”

For some reason, I decided to tell one of my greatest insecurities to a complete stranger. I pursed my lips and hoped she wouldn't notice my apprehension. “It’s, well. My parents are Greek mythology people, that’s the first hint.” I chickened out at the last minute and hope she didn’t notice. She did.

“Well, enlighten me.” She shoved a flyer into the last empty cubby and folded her arms, raising her slender eyebrows expectantly. “I’m a total noob when it comes to mythology and such. Probably not a good fit for a Lit student, but one tries.” She mumbled the last part under her breath, but I caught it with bright eyes.

“Lit, huh?” I chuckled. “Well, I can’t go telling my full name to a complete stranger. What say you we go get a coffee? Who knows what you’re doing up at 5.45 in the morning.”

“You must be blind. What else could I be doing but putting out publicity for my project?” She waved her flyers at me and mock-rolled her eyes.”And you’re not exactly being subtle, you know. Womaniser.”

“Womaniser or Mr Postman, pick one. I can’t be both at the same time, it’s too tiring. And you’re not exactly being subtle about wanting to know my name, either,” I objected, still grinning like an idiot.

“Hah. I bet that’s a really bloody stupid name then. Can’t wait to find out about it during roll call,” she singsonged, flashing a wicked grin my way and wiggled her fingers goodbye as she turned and swept away. I watched her go with an incorrigible grin tattooed all over my dumbfounded features. Look alive, Jones, I told myself. One task down, one more to go – I needed to get to our lecturer, Zephaniah Brown, before he could reveal my name to the class and to her.

I pulled out a flyer from the open mailbox, some anti-bullying bullshit. The thought twinged my subconscious, and ants crawled into the crevices of my heart, looking for nests to lay their eggs.

I put the flyer back where it belonged. Should I have called myself a romantic for connecting this unease to a plucking at my heartstrings, rather than my conscience?

***

Later that day I dashed to the literature lecture – when I got there, Isobel Jane had beat me to it. But, as it turned out, I had no need to worry. I slipped into my seat. Zephaniah Brown called ‘Hyacinth’ before ‘Jones’, forgoing the first names, and I made a face aimed at her general direction. She flipped me off furtively. People streamed into the lecture theatre, gravitating towards her and away from me.

After class, I found myself gravitating to her, falling into her orbit. “Bastard,” she said as I fell into pace beside her. “You totally got to Brown when I wasn’t looking.”

“Good morning to you too,” I observed. “I didn’t get to Brown, you saw me come in later than you. And anyway does verbal abuse not constitute bullying, Miss Isobel Jane Anti-bullying Hyacinth?”

Isobel Jane rolled her eyes the same way her name rolled off my tongue; like a poem, a blessing, a curse. “Whatever.”

“Great vocabulary, lit student.” Normally, I would leave the matter be, but this time I uncharacteristically pushed further, waiting for her to reveal more of her true nature to me. She intrigued me – I wanted to see her being annoyed, being unapologetically herself. I wanted to know more about her, I thought, and the thought caught in my mind like a fish hook tangled in a net. “Sorry, I’m being annoying. You have the patience of a saint,” I chuckled.

“That’s not enough.” She stopped short, and I turned around, a few paces ahead of her. We were at the courtyard halfway across campus, crisp autumn leaves carpeting the floor. The distant sunrise effuses the courtyard in a gentle golden glow. “Come on, what are you, a faery? I don’t get full control of you once I know your name, do I? Is that so difficult? Spill it,” she complained. Despite the slightly whiny tone of her voice, I could tell her childishness was strategic, and decided to acquiesce.

“All right. Huddle up,” I ordered, and she padded over with the willowy grace of a gazelle. I bent down to whisper into her ear and sighed. My breath was like feathers in her ear, and she bit her lip to stifle a giggle. “The full name’s Apollo.”

A peal of laughter tore out of her like a shriek. “Apollo? Oh my days, no wonder you go by Ollie. That’s so bloody pretentious,” she chuckled.

I rolled my eyes, but I was grinning as I rebutted with a “Strike two, Miss Anti-bullying.”

“Whatever, Apollo Jones. I’m never going to let you off,” she teased. “You need to know the consequences of a stupid name.”

“Are you calling my parents stupid? Strike three. What a hypocrite,” I mused aloud, and shook my head mockingly.

“No, but it’s stupid that you choose to be so secretive about your name when you could just embrace it,” she said candidly, and the truth was as unnerving as plunging my hand into ice water. I was certain she didn't know about the rumours, because if she did she wouldn’t have talked to me, but all the same something gnawed at my stomach. She continued, “Promise me something. You need to be true to yourself. No matter what people say about you. I see you. The real you.” She fixed me with her granite gaze. It was hazel, an amalgamation of brown and green and blue. I was knocked back into a memory.

In my memory, I opened the bathroom vents to let out the smell of singed hair. I heard Donna Zephyr’s grunts as Wilkie pummeled her, first with fists, then feet, then detaching the mop from its stick and swinging. I heard the thwack, and a cry, and smelled the rusty tang of blood trickling down one hazel eye.

“I’ll try,” I said, knowing that trying would be surrendering to a demon within me.

***

These thoughts swirled in my head like the autumn leaves as Isobel Jane and I walked back to the dorm. I lagged a few paces behind, mind occupied.

“It’s a good thing they put our dorm rooms closer together,” Isobel Jane was saying. I shook myself out of my reverie.

“You and who again, sorry?” I babbled. “Sorry, I was totally spacing out there.”

“Me and my sister, idiot.” Her eyes crinkled – Strike four, I know, I’m counting. “I’m an extrovert – as you can tell – and she’s an introvert. We’re nothing alike. In fact, we don’t even see each other at home.” She lowered her voice marginally. “After our parents divorced twelve years ago, we separated and even went to different schools. She went with my mum. Because of that, we were never close. They say twins have a deep bond. But it’s never been like that with my sis, so I can’t say there’s much love lost there.” She shook her head, those strawberry curls tumbling as she did. “Hell, we don’t even have the same surname. Donna took my mum’s surname, Zephyr. Let me introduce you guys.”

I’d unwittingly walked Isobel back to her dorm room, and watched in a daze as she knocked the door beside hers and it opened. Donna, Donna from high school, Wilkie’s victim Donna, stood there, strawberry curls wild and tousled. Her shell-shocked hazel gaze met mine, and we were stuck in an apocalyptic moment that seemed to last an eternity.

For that moment, I hoped she’d forgotten my name. But I realised my folly. How could she forget me? I had been her last hope. I’d turned my back on her, literally and figuratively, stood by and enabled Wilkie’s abuse. I hadn’t done anything to help her, and that was a sin worse than what Wilkie himself did.

“Hello,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “I’m Ollie Jones.”

She looked at my hand like it was venom, but I didn’t withdraw my hand. “Hello,” she said experimentally. “I’m Donna.”

“Nice to meet you, Donna. Let’s start afresh.” I tried not to allude too much to the fact that Donna and I were in fact old acquaintances.

Donna nodded mutely, looking like all she wanted was for me to go away, and slinked behind her door, closing it softly. “Well, that went well,” I remarked wryly, letting my outstretched hand drop. Beside me, Isobel Jane’s brows were furrowed.

“I’m so sorry,” she muttered. “Donna is pretty introverted. She’s really socially awkward. It’s why I always find it so damn hard to talk to her. She just clams up, you know? Good grace, I’m so sorry. I don’t think she has anything against you, she just needs to get out more.” I reassured her that it’s fine, I didn’t take offense. Isobel Jane just smiled wanly. I watched her door swing shut and pad away.

Except I didn’t get to. As I pass Donna’s door – the little snake! She was watching the entire time – the door swung open.

“What are you doing here? Why do you have to come after my sister as well?”

I was shocked, caught defenseless. “What?”

Those uncanny hazel eyes shot daggers at me. “You son of a bitch. You don’t even remember what you did.”

Trying to keep my calm, I remarked, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure. You thought you could get to me by coming after my sister?” Donna’s eyes brimmed with hateful tears. “Watch and see.”

“Is that a threat?” I said – the nerve of her! “If you’re done, I have a life to get back to.” My attempts to play it cool were met by a vehement “Get lost” and a door slammed in my face. Bloody hell. I shook my head. What a temper.

***

After spending three nights – three whole nights! Tell me a worse way to waste your time – wracking my brain, I finally narrowed down the situation that could have caused Donna’s hostile behaviour.

Back in high school, I was one of two boys in a class of thirty-four girls. Wilkie and I gravitated towards each other naturally. His parents were rich and absent from his life, and he had a tendency to land himself in sticky situations. I thought by sticking by him I could keep an eye on him. Was it so wrong then, what I did? The circumstances were compelling. My mother had broken her ankle. I was underage but juggling two jobs. I needed the income, and when the opportunity from Wilkie’s father came, I snatched it up. As Wilkie Robertson Sr. had put it, I only needed ‘to watch him battle his own demons, fight his own fight; to be a guardian, but not meddle in his affairs’. In short, to ensure Wilkie got into no further disciplinary complications in his last years of high school, during which the school was clamping down on students’ conduct. Robertson’s & Co. was doing badly, and Robertson Sr. couldn’t afford the ‘bonuses’ he normally gave the disciplinary board. Could I then be held culpable for events that were all but a matter of circumstances?

Of course, the rest of the school didn’t view it that way. In their eyes, I was Wilkie’s lackey, a fellow delinquent who kept watch outside the bathroom while Wilkie dragged his favourite victim, Donna Zephyr, by the hair into the bathroom, making full use of the array of ‘torture instruments’ in there. Even with my back turned, I could hear the extremities of his abuse. He would goad her and mock her. He forced her to lick the toilet bowl and drink toilet water, and when she vomited or resisted he would beat her up with the mop stick. He would gag her with dirty rags and take a lighter to her hair, and when it burned her scalp he’d throw the mop bucket at her, drenching her in murky water. Everyone knew, but everyone was afraid of the Robertsons.

It was heinous, but it was just another job to me.

To me, Donna Zephyr was just another job.

I remembered Donna as a tall girl, of similar height to her sister. She had curly strawberry blonde hair and a hunchback, constantly shrinking herself, never meeting anyone’s eyes. The delicate features of Donna Zephyr were familiar yet evaded the grasp of my memory for years, until now.

Now they were the same features that greeted me with a smile every morning at five-thirty when I opened my door. I’d let Isobel Jane onto my Vespa and we’d trundle to the post office, her arms resting gently on my shoulders, talking all the way.

“You don’t have to come all the way here every single day,” I said one morning, pulling over to the pavement near the dormitory mailbox as she yawned. The dormitory for scholarship students was a short distance from the main dorm, which meant she woke up earlier than I did every day to meet me at my room. “Next time I’ll drive over to your dorm and pick you up before going to the post office. You need to get more sleep.”

“Says the guy who wakes up at five every day,” rebutted Isobel Jane.

“Touche,” I concurred. “Doesn’t discount my point, though.”

“All right, all right,” she grumbled, and clambered down the Vespa, rubbing her eyes. “It’s not like I want to be here anyway, wasting my time with the likes of you. Sayonara, loser. I’m going back to get some quality sleep.” Despite the banter, her tone was placid. Mildly I waved goodbye as she trudged back to the lift to her dorm room.

I continued putting the mail into the mailboxes until a movement caught my eye, a flash of strawberry hair. You’re insane and in love, my brain tells me. You’re seeing things now. You’re imagining her when she’s not around. You-are-so-in-love.

My eyes followed the movement to see Donna standing a few metres off, watching. She was flushed and breathless from a morning run, wearing her low-cut Converse, but I could tell by her set jaw she’d seen everything. She averted her hazel gaze and scampered off like an insect.

You thought you could get to me by coming after my sister?

Dear Diary,

I wanted to give him a chance. I really did. But when I saw my sister climbing off his bike,

I just…

You need to know, Diary, that I’ve been separated from my sister since I was six. Being the younger sibling, I’ve always yearned for the companionship and guidance I lacked from her absence in my life. I’ve always wanted my older sister back. I blamed my parents for it, but they just told me to grow up. I’ve looked forward to reconnecting with her for years. I thought when we both got into the same university this would be my chance. That for once in my life, I’d have a chance at being happy.

But she’s with him.

Apollo Jones, who thinks he’s some sort of god. ‘Jonesy’, as Robertson calls him. People will never know what the two of them put me through. The name-calling, the verbal abuse, the hitting, the beating, the psychological torture. The pricks they are, Robertson being let off the hook because he’s rich, Jonesy because he’s smart. Isn’t life fair knowing they’ll never be caught?

Apollo Jones. You might remember, diary, once upon my middle school dreams, that I used to have a crush on him. An obsession, more like. I was attracted to his intelligence, his sparkling reputation. Until, of course, it became the sword he wielded against me. And it kills me that I can’t get rid of these leftover feelings. It kills me that I’ll never know why.

Diary, I have a secret. When I saw Apollo Jones again for the first time in years, I really wanted to kill him.

DZ

Then it hit me like a lightning strike to the head. What happened if Donna tells Isobel Jane everything that transpired in the past? Worse, what if Donna came after me? I couldn’t allow that to happen. Donna Zephyr held the only loose thread tethering me to her: if word got out about what I did in the past, I’d most likely lose my scholarship. My mother’s face flashes in my mind’s eye. I couldn’t afford that.

It looks like I’d have to strike first.

***

The first step I had to take, isolating Donna Zephyr from her sister, is the easy one. The feelings between me and her sister were there already. I wasn’t using Isobel Jane, I’m merely capitalising on this stroke of fate to further my agenda. And there’s nothing wrong with self-defense.

Dear Diary,

My sister knows something’s off. She came to me just the other day and asked me why I was so strange with Jonesy. I told her everything.

The good thing is, she empathised with me. She told me it wasn’t my fault, and I’m embarrassed to say I had a breakdown there and then and she had to hold me to calm me down. The bad thing is, as she put it, she’s in love with Jonesy. And that won’t work, will it? I told her I’d never forgive him. I didn’t tell her that I loved him too.

She goes over to his dorm often. For one night, I’ll switch places with my sister. I’ll slip her sleeping pills, and I’ll go to his room masquerading as her. I’ll have one night of bliss, to prise myself away from the hope of having a future with him That night will break off any lingering feelings I have for him. That one night will change everything. I’m certain of it.

DZ

I need to get closer to Isobel Jane. It comes naturally, unspoken, one night when she was at my dorm room, her low-cut Converse outside my door. It was 2am and we were on the floor sharing a bottle of cheap wine, sitting with her head in my lap. “I think I love you,” she said, and sat up with such a wondrous expression that I leaned in and closed the distance between her lips and mine. I kissed her, and relished the feeling of her thin pale lips against mine, her strawberry curls brushing my cheekbones.

I murdered Donna Zephyr that same night.

***

The morning after I murdered Donna, I resumed life as per normal. I drove her sister to the post office and we bantered like we hadn’t a care in the world. How did I kill her, you might ask? Well, it was easy. Isobel Jane gave me a spare key to her unit. She also made the mistake of telling me that Donna, like herself, slept like a log, and had given Donna’s spare key to Isobel Jane. So one evening, I slipped Isobel Jane some crushed sleeping pills in the cheap wine we shared, and stole Donna’s key from her purse. Isobel Jane would be too out of it to notice, and by the time she regained consciousness the deed would be done, the key returned.

I crept over to Donna’s flat, pushed away the high-cut Converse shoes at the doorstep, unlocked the door, and sure enough, she was there. She lay as if dead. I chloroformed her. Then I unearthed her diaries – a quick scan through the first few pages bitching about Wilkie and myself told me the diary had everything needed to make this suicide believable – left them open, and got to work. I tied her scarf to the ceiling fan. Little thing she was, she’d hang there eons before the fan gives out, I remember thinking. Then I strung her up. At the very last moment she opened her eyes and gave a silenced splutter through my cupped palm, and I watched as life drained from those woeful hazel eyes.

Things will be fine, I told myself. I made sure of it.