The Varcolac's Child

“Don’t you see that I’m trying?”

“Yes, mother. But you’re asking entirely too much of me. How can I put together an entire banquet without your help? It was your idea in the first place!”

“Wren, mon cher, think of how great it will look on your college applications!”

“Mother, I do NOT want to go to medical school. I don’t want to be like you constantly flouncing around in the public eye.”

Well, if you didn’t have your accident, I wouldn’t have to be the face everyone knows.”

“Yes, mother. And the accident was my father's fault, I know. But you could never handle your liquor.”

Click.

Wren let out an exasperated sigh and shook her head to clear her thoughts. Also, to remove her mother’s overbearing energy from her senses. Dr. Corneanu always instructs her to control her anger or something tragic may happen.

“What does he know?” Wren said to herself, “He’s just a psychiatrist.”

A psychiatrist with three PHDs and a cumulative list of dissertation papers with his newest subject being Wren herself; her mother never fails to let her forget that, as well. As well as her “deformity”, a pale scar slicing vertically through her right eye and ending in a small pattern of tiny fragments that resemble a spider’s web. It is not even as apparent as her mother makes it out to be but to her mother’s pristine fantasy world it’s a stain that must be covered. Just like her father’s existence and his demise, too.

It was an eventful night for her parents who were both esteemed members of society and both medical royalty. Her father was a renowned orthopedic surgeon who spent most of his clinicals researching and perfecting regenerative medicine for the elderly. Her mother, who Wren believes should have died instead, was a measly general practitioner who can not even tell you the location of the pineal gland. However, Wren’s mother was quite the socialite; charming and timelessly beautiful with enough intelligence to make her coveted. Her father was a bona fide alpha male so he, of course, had to court her. Their love story ended in tragedy as do most. In society’s opinion, the death of the great Dr. Mitrea was the tragedy yet to Wren’s mother, it was the birth of Wren.

Wren’s father doted on her ever since her birth and her mother did not take kindly to her husband’s affection for her daughter. He even named her after the songbird that would nest in the oak tree outside of the hospital room when her mother was giving birth to her. His favorite story (after he had a few too many) was pantomiming his wife screaming in the throes of pain and the wren in the tree singing loudly enough to overpower her shrieks.

“Sabina was competing with the little wren, I kid you not!”

But his wife was not competing with the songbird but their daughter; especially the night of the accident. Wren was a precocious child, many would say, a perfect blend of her father’s intelligence and her mother’s beauty. She could recite sonnets by the age of four and discuss philosophical ideology by the age of six. The mysteries of the world were appealing to her but the atrocities were not fascinating like her parent’s overindulgence of liquor. Wren compared her father to an elephant when he drank: gentle but boisterous. Her mother was a hyena with her high pitched shrieks and grotesque smile that stretched her face into something that resembled a Halloween mask. Wren would observe their animalistic displays of drunkenness and sneer in disgust as they would drown their genius with ruby colored liquor. Sabina would always lick her lips in a revolting manner before creepily grinning at whomever her parents were conversing with; revealing her sharpened incisors that only came out when she drank.

Dr. Corneanu told Wren if her anger gets too bad hers will come out, too.