Ficlets

A Girl Called Jack

This much I know: I was six years old the day I murdered my infant brother. Most of the rest is a haze of smeared memories; disconnected thoughts. Bits and pieces of a history I cannot stitch together into a whole. I don’t even know for sure which parts are real and which ones aren’t.

But I know that I murdered him. I know this because my mother spent the rest of her life making sure I never forgot it. Never made the mistake of thinking that maybe it was just a simple accident. And I know that I was six years old because on his headstone, on that part where it says when you were born and when you died, it says that he died in 1981.

Dad calls it the incident. That is, if he ever talks about it at all, which he almost never does. Mom, she chipped her elbow in the incident, when she fell down with David.

For a long time, I thought Mom’s chipped elbow was why she wouldn’t pick me up and hold me anymore.

My name is Jessica. But you can call me Jack. Everyone else does.

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