Moirai

The Three Sisters of Fate, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, control every birth, life and death since the beginning of time. Everything from the very moment of a babe’s first breath is caused by their involvement. Every major life event, every new pathway someone might pick, is pre-allotted to them. There aren’t truly any choices in the matter; we are all simply puppets hanging from strings, being danced through life by the masters of our fate.

***

It all starts with Clotho. She is the beginning of each and every person you come into contact with, babies to old men to that weirdo online who won’t stop messaging you. Each of the sisters receive a lot of hatred from the world, and for some reason Clotho is especially targetted by the teenage community. While they are running through their phases of hating everything and everyone, she comes at the tippy-top of the list each and every time.

“If she hadn’t made me exist then I wouldn’t be here, and then I’d stop getting hurt all the time!” Says your little sister, at sixteen, suffering from her first heartbreak. She cries onto your shoulder, curled up on the couch late on a Sunday evening. “Why did I have to be born in the first place?” It takes the pressure off your parents, and they can put those comforting arms around her and reassure her in the best ways possible. Having a common enemy makes connection so much easier.

Clotho is also condemned by those sick and suffering. She has shown many times before how she has the power to heal. She shows her hand when someone’s heart stops and restarts, proving time and time again that she can choose to bring people back from death. However, it is entirely her choice, much to the distain of society.

You hear your mother’s voice cursing her name after your grandfather passes. “Damn you. Damn you, Clotho, for the pain you forced onto my family. He was fine. He was fine last week, smiling and walking and talking to me, and then you let him be snatched away. You could have- should have brought him back to us. Damn you!” You are seven, and you aren't supposed to be out of bed. You repeat the phrase at school the next day, and have to be collected early. Your parents get in so much trouble for allowing that sort of language to be spoken around you.

“The sisters created us, and can snatch us away just as quickly! You shouldn’t say such things out loud, lest they hear you!”

Statues of her young face cover the walls of the maternity ward, where you wait impatiently for news. The cold, hard chair beneath you is nothing compared to the steely eyes pinned to your place, staring you down from across the room. Your feet are too small to reach the floor, so you swing them about absent mindedly while a doctor speaks to your father.

“It’s a girl, congratulations!”

You can’t tear your eyes away from Her, holding the life thread in one hand and waving out to you with the other. Of course, you don’t know what a ‘life thread’ is. At three years old, you barely understand why you’re having to sit on this awful, icy chair in the first place.

“Did you hear that, darling?” Your father steps into your line of sight, and you blink away those eyes that bore into you. “You’ve got a little sister! Thank Clotho she’s here, we’ve waited years to give you a sibling.” He takes your tiny hands and helps you down from the chair. You follow him to the door of the empty waiting room, and feel her eyes watching you all the way down the corridor. You don’t sleep much for weeks after, though everyone else brushes it off - there’s a new baby in the house, of course no-one gets any rest.

***

Lachesis comes next. She creates the path, the destiny, of every life on the planet. She determines who someone will become, and how they will get there. Appearing with her sisters to meet newborns within days of their birth, she sets them up for the rest of their lives by measuring the thread of life and determining how long each lifespan will be. No-one can truly know how long they were given by her, so every new day they are allotted is precious and treasured. Well, it should be, according to Her.

When someone becomes successful, it is all down to her. Not their effort or work or skill developed. Not their wealth or family ties or connections to others. No, every success, every invention, every billionaire is because Lachesis decided their future, their destiny, when she touched that thread.

You see it on the nightly news all the time. ‘Lachesis treasured as Ellen Hansier becomes first teenager in space…’, ‘Prayers sent to Lachesis tonight after new invention could alter the future of international travel…’. No credit to the hard work of each and every individual involved, no recognition of their efforts or sleepless nights or harsh schedules. An unwritten rule of success is that Lachesis’ name must appear before anyone elses, as she pre-determined what we could do as individuals, so she should be thanked first and foremost.

Some say they don’t mind. The rest of us don’t lie.

She hears complaints most often from the ‘failures’ of life. The ones on a path they didn’t want, one they tried so hard to avoid but were forced down anyway through Her choices for them. Homeless, addicts, dropouts, prisoners. The list goes on and on, millions of people who feel (rightly so) that she gave them the short straw, that she didn’t give them a chance to choose their own way.

You meet an old man at twenty-two, who lives on the street near a train station. You’re waiting for a friend to finish her job interview (she gets it, by the way) and give him all the spare change you have rattling away in the bottom of your purse. A grand total of £14.92. He is thankful for it and invites you to sit at his bench. A train pulls up, and alongside the adverts for toothpaste and a new movie in theatres soon, is a portrait of Lachesis, smirking down at you. In her hands is a long silver thread, looped over and over in her right palm.

The old man growls at her picture, and you shuffle slightly further away from him. He doesn’t speak until the train moves away, and then he apologises. “I can’t stand her face. Looking at her makes me so, so angry. I’m sorry if I scared you. That’s all I’m good at, any more. Scaring people away.” He tells you that after his house burned down last year, he had nowhere to go. “I lost everything because of that bitch. My home, my family, my job. I’m all that’s left now.”

You return there a week later and find his bench empty. A bag was handed in to the lost and found, containing a few sets of worn clothes, and £14.92 in change.

Every job someone gets rejected for, every family that breaks up, every child taken to hospital never to return home… You’re told to be thankful for each and every day given to you by Lachesis. You’re lucky to live here, lucky to have a home, lucky to be able to speak and hear and understand the world. And those of you that can’t do those, well, at least you’re still alive. Your thread is still going. Until it stops.

***

Atropos is the final sister. The eldest and most rigid in her manner, stubborn to a fault. She ends life by cutting the thread, and she chooses how each person will meet their end. This in itself makes her the biggest cause of pain and heartbreak, so she is the Fate that is cursed out the most.

Some people believe she is doing it for a just cause. Those people have seen their family and friends live long, happy lives, and pass to the next world surrounded by love and care at an old age. They thank Atropos for allowing them to say their goodbyes, and send her prayers of hope. They are in the minority of society, as death comes knocking on doors at all times in life.

In middle school you hear about a student getting hit by a car right outside. You're twelve. You don’t see anything, because the teachers are all told to keep everyone inside while the ambulance is on the road. You see the flashing lights through the window, but everything else is blocked by cars and bushes and those ugly grey school gates. Everyone starts whispering about the kid - Amy, in the year below you. Her mum works in the cafeteria, and one of the boys at the back of your class says they saw her rush outside when he went to use the bathroom. Your teacher tries to continue teaching, but even they are having a hard time focusing on Biology at the moment. You hear the siren sound go off and the ambulance pulls away.

The next day, Amy’s mum doesn’t come to school. Neither does Amy.

‘An accident’ it was called. She ran across the road, and the car just didn’t have time to stop. Not their fault.

Hers. Atropos.

You hear on the news that night about a rally. You’re not sure what it means, so you ask your parents. Your sister tries to interrupt with her barbies, but you push her away.

“Well darling, people are angry about what happened to that poor girl at school. They’re all getting together to talk about Atropos, and how she caused her family so much pain.” It wasn’t just her family. Amy herself suffered for hours before the thread was finally cut through. If only it had been quick, perhaps everyone wouldn’t have been so angry. An accident. That was all it was.

You see a video of this rally the next day. Someone burned a picture of Atropos, and soon enough everyone else followed along. They tore their faces out of textbooks, from posters on storefronts, even tearing down a statue built in her honour hundreds of years ago. It lands on Amy’s father, breaks his back, but he miraculously makes a full recovery.

They are told to be thankful for that.

***

The sisters have never been held accountable for their actions. They parade everyone around like a puppet on a string, controlling every action you take like their personal dollhouse. They are the cause of pain and suffering, but cannot be stopped, arrested, condemned for their crimes.

Wherever they are, wherever they are hiding, someone eventually will cut those puppet strings and they will control fate no longer. We will no longer suffer at their hands.

As one, we will take back what should have been ours in the first place. Choice over our own destiny.