Dweller

The hallway is made out of mangrove wood. Making the walls have an eerie red. The floor is a dark stone with a bright red rug with gold trimming. The rug runs through the house.

The hallways are spotted with pictures of the past generations, or have a table with some simple decorations to make the space seem more alive.

The hallways are littered with maids doing their chores, and the ever not so quiet whispering. I make my way down the grand staircase and turn to the left. Where I’m presented with a large light brown door.

Two guards stand on either side. I take a deep breath and nod. The two guards then open the door and present my arrival.

“Lady Quincy Jain La Demopolis, is now presenting for dinner.” One of the guards says. The door makes a loud creaking nosy as the sounds echo through the open hallway.

Once the door is fully open I walk through it. Having my head high I walk over to my designated chair. One of the maids that are standing behind it slowly pulls it out from the table and allows me to sit. Once I sit down she then pushes my chair in, bows then walks away to help bring out the food.

The room is one of the biggest rooms in the mansion. It has a long dinner table in the middle having bowls of decorative fruits. The chairs are tall with red padding and dark wood. The trend follows the table as well. Having the same dark wood. There are a total of 12 seats.

Across from me sits one of our other brothers, Johnny, he's 10 just like me. He’s on the louder side of the spectrum. Then to the left of me sits the youngest sister, she’s 6 but whatever you do never trust her. She looks like an angel -hence where her name Angle came from but she’s a real devil. Then to the right of me is my twin brother, his name is Quarry. He’s quite like me and doesn’t like to stand out, but when it comes to a competition he’s crazy.

The whole table is filled with my other siblings. Going from order of youngest to oldest we have Angel, Me, Quarry, Savanna, Johnny, Nathan, and finally Nervig. Leaving the head of the table empty and to the left and right of the head is all of our mothers.

We don’t aren’t allowed to say their name as it may come out impolite so the children usually use numbers to distinguish which mothers are which.

All of the children here have the same father but not the same mother. I only have my twin brother who had the same mother as me. The head of the table seat always goes to our father.

My step-mother is sitting right next to his seat. Proving that she is his wife, and the rest are all just concubine. There are 5 other women there.

As we wait for the rest of the children the room stays silent. No-one dares to make a noise, even the loudest and troublemaker children remain quiet.

Eventually all of the children have made it and the maids and butlers come out with the dishes of food. And as if we were robots when the last plate is put down we all start eating in silence. No-one talks. The only noise that can be heard is the crunching of the food and the forks and knives cutting into the steak.

Today, like every other day, we served steak with a side of mash potatoes and water for a beverage. While the mothers got wine instead.

Luckily today it doesn’t look like father will be joining. The atmosphere is already tense but when he’s here it makes it even worse. To the point you could cut it with chopsticks.

We all slowly finish our dinner, but no-one gets out of their chairs. We all wait in intense silence as we wait for our mothers to finish. It is customary that once your mother is finished eating and gets up to leave then you can leave.

The first concubine leaves making her children follow suit getting out of the uncomfortable and tense room. Like always our mother is the last to leave making it very awkward for me and my brother.

Do you see the trend? One thing I know about my real mother is that she was horribly at picking names.

Since me and Quarry’s mother have passed. That means that we both are the very last to leave no matter who is left. But once the mothers are done no matter if the children are done eating you leave.

Once our step-mother leaves we get up and follow suit, Quarry and I don’t exchange a single word as by now it has become routine that after dinner we go to one another’s room and talk about our day.

Since we don’t talk to any other children we depend on each other to socialize with each other. We’ve been together throughout everything. We’ve become a lot closer since the passing of our mother.