A little boy sits in the middle of an empty room.

Seven years old.

He sits on the floor, knees pulled up to his chest, and waits for a mother who will never return.

For hours he stares at the doorknob with glassy eyes, somehow always expecting it to open soon –

It never does. It never will.

The door's hinges continue to collect dust at this very moment, and have begun to rust in places.

It is the seventh day and still, he waits so faithfully, despite his anguished, gnawing suspicions, as if all of his dreams are bound to show up one day, brilliant sparks of bliss floating among the dust, and he will be able to simply pluck them from the air and wield them, using them to fix every problem.

He waits for a distraction.

Morfin's sister is four years old last week, and he thinks with some exasperation that she should be able to button her own dress by now, but her fingers are too small and though he will never admit it he doesn't even know how to begin to go about it. Still, she shouldn't need help with anything – she's not the baby anymore.

Merope giggles in the sunshine, dancing half-naked over the mound behind their house, kicking fresh dirt and lavender petals into the air to mingle with her laughter.

He sees from the corner of his eye the way Father watches the girl, how he leans against the grime-covered windowpane and takes in the glimpses of ashen shoulders, sunken belly, and knobby ankles with a disquieting intensity that Morfin does not yet understand nor feel any semblance of within himself. He knows to be afraid for her, has tried to keep her out of Father's way when he'd had the presence of mind, but knows somewhere inside he will ultimately fail.

There has been no supper for seven nights. The snakes bring them half-eaten mice occasionally, but Morfin half-wishes Merope would realise that she is the mother now. Granted, Morfin doesn't know exactly what makes a mother, and she may be only a child but he is a child too. A squirming in his stomach tells him that he still needs a mother, and though he hates himself for it, he knows having a sister is the closest he will ever come to having a mother ever again.

Father squints and turns away from the window, stares down at him blearily, swirls the contents of the bottle towards him in offering.

Morfin looks away in declination, looks anywhere but at the old man, looks nervously to the still, incarnadine form lying on the kitchen table.

Mingled in amongst the blood-spattered sheets is a wraithlike knot of muscle and bone, a spine curved so that it pokes through skin like parchment. Frail limbs curled in on themselves, fingers untwitching – dead.

A fly lands on the infant's fixed eye, dark iris sightless and clouded.

The child had starved to death at least three days previous.

A little boy sits in the middle of an empty room. An empty heart dully thuds, with empty eyes to match. He is a tiny portrait of thorough despair, with suppressed secrets that can never be told and pain that he cannot yet put into words.

And slowly, as self-revelation sinks in, so does a hate so deep inside of him.

It is a seed of life-long misery set forward, a seed that can only grow and spread itself to everything he'll be.

Through the window he watches as Father pulls Merope's dress up so it sits properly on the child's shoulders, his hands resting a little too long on her waist.

Tears fall to the ground with shrivelled briar petals, with notes of glittering and youthful laughter, with clinking firewhiskey bottles, with metallic droplets of their fruitless legacy.

Morfin is empty, and he is alone.