TO LIE WITH MIDNIGHT ROSES

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RENESSA

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Days pass and it feels like weeks that I had been stuck in Xavier's room. I was given little to no instruction, just forced to stay in this dark and miserable room for days on end.

It, in fact, had only been four days if I remember correctly but within those four days, I had counted four spiralled wooden bedposts with two silk green sheets sprawled across a queen-sized mattress, one loose and one fitted.

Two pillowcases the same silky green as the sheets.

One single black comforter.

One large lonesome window with a small crack in the top left corner of the glass.

One crackling fireplace and a single wilting plant.

Fifty dark wooden floorboards and one vintage green velvet chair in the far right corner.

A million and one drops of rain.

I wondered if his favourite colour was green. I wondered many things about Xavier, and Ryker too. All of them really but Xavier just had this mysterious demeanour about him. He was so hot and cold too, nothing about the way he acted seemed to make sense to me.

When he did stop by, he never stayed long. He always lingered at the door, keeping a safe distance. His eyes were dark most of the time, much like the first night we had met.

Somehow, being stuck in here I had managed to learn more about the man who had saved me than I had in the few days I spent actually talking to him, well more like arguing if you could even call it that. Still, even locked away in the awful room I felt nothing more than a burden to him. To all of them, even Ryker.

My heart felt a little heavy at the thought.

Even so, whether I was a burden or not they brought me food every day and water. The food Xavier had brought was quite random, to say the least, but it was food and I was always starving.

Sometimes Jaxon would stop by, oftentimes Ryker but it was short hellos "Eat your food," and quick goodbyes and then a lock of the door followed by footsteps and hushed whispers they shared. Oftentimes there was nothing at all as if they were air just wisping away.

I wasn't told much else. I was told to "Stay here and rest," "Stay here and wait because Roman isn't happy." Roman this and Roman that. Something, something but always nothing.

The rain hadn't stopped either, though the howling wind and thunder subsided. The memories came every morning and every night with it. One after the other, but never in the correct order. Always tumbling into each other and then out, mixings of paint in muddy water. Swirling recollections of events merging together. Fairies — I just kept hearing him call her that... A dirty lying little fairy.

I could only assume that fairies existed too. Were all the fairytales and stories of monsters I was told as a child true?

I surely hope not.

That night in particular, when my parents died...It kept replaying in my mind, over and over. It came at night when it wasn't welcome, it came when I was fast asleep and was unable to wake.

A nightmare, yet a long-forgotten reality that I couldn't shake. I tried to stop sleeping altogether the first two nights, trying to stay up later and later but sleep always came, sucking me into its gentle embrace and it hugged me close and wouldn't let me wake.

I thought I heard his voice one night...Xaviers.

I thought I felt a cold hand brush across my cheek and then pull away much like the faint touch of cold fingertips across my back in Roman's study. Though I've convinced myself I imagined it. A false sense of comfort, a false sense of reassurance. Longing for touch, for warmth. A gentle caress of something. Anything. But it was normal to feel this way, to feel the nothingness.