Her

[2]

Oddly, it was the dress that caught her by surprise, not the sudden change of setting.

 Gone was what she wore before, replaced by a soft black material made of innocence, disguised as guilt. Lace cut along her collarbone and dipped behind, scandalously revealing her slender shoulders and bony back. Long black sleeves decorated her arms, intentionally matching the gentle flowers embroidered onto the dainty material of the dress's top half which soon fell into thick layers of waves that dragged along the floor as she moved.

 The dress wasn't the only change. Her hair now dangled in dark, loose, luscious ringlets over her exposed skin. She surveyed her surroundings, to her left and right where two proud staircases leading towards a sea of strangers numbingly dancing to the tune of ignorance. 

She was in a ballroom. 

Her hands slid over the railing of one of the staircases and she stumbled down them without a care for matching the grace the room bestowed. She was too distracted by wherever she was. 'Why aren't you running little girl?' The voice in her head maliciously muttered. 'Run!'  So she did. From her thoughts, the voices, the truth. From them and most importantly from herself. Until her feet bleed until her mind bleeds and it's drowned by a different pain: a better pain. A pain so powerful it can erase the vigorous incantations they've tried to fill her with. She had to get out of there...but how? 

She was too distracted and as the music started to play sounding a torturous new melody she was oblivious to the looming figure lurking in the shadows behind. His trembling fingers snaked around her wrist as he forced her towards him, dragging her into the dance floor, holding onto her like she was his only hope. Just like she had been his last. And as they began to dance, she couldn't help but stare, first into Winston's hollows eyes, coated in a numbness she knew too well and then she was drawn to an oozing bullet wound situated on his left temple. The realisation that she did that felt like a knife through the heart. What was going on? Was she dead? After everything she'd been through...more than anything...she hoped so. Dancing with a dead boy or more precisely, a boy you killed was not a situation she was familiar with. They danced and danced and danced till inevitably the music stopped. That's when Winston shattered the deafening silence. 

"It's your fault, you know" His words poured like venom from putrid lips. 

"You killed me. Just like you'll kill them. You will kill everyone. They don't see you as anything more than the murderer you are. Every time they look at you they can only see the little girl who put a gun against my head, their friends head, and pulled the trigger with next to no remorse." 

His deep voice echoed her cruellest thoughts, he almost growled the vile words. Then a glimmer of light reflected in his eyes, filling her instantaneously with false hope. Another mistake. Another regret. 

"And there is nothing," he laughed "you can do to change that." 

And just like that he was gone, leaving her and her monster out of mind to spin into the arms of her next captor. His dark hair hid his superficial whiskey eyes. Good, she thought, she couldn't look into another pair of empty eyes that reminded her too much of her own. Similar to Winston (not that she had perceived) and everyone else, he was dressed in a black suit with the cream collar of his dress shirt turned up, peeking over the collar of his blazer. And they continued to dance. Dance away the weight of Winston's words until the melancholy manipulator returned to her mind, 'faster, little girl. Run faster.' 

And she should of, she couldn't let the truth beat her in her own race. As Thomas slowly smiled, she felt whatever colour she had left, drain from her face. She didn't think she could survive any more harsh words.

 "Please Thomas please." She whimpered, though deep down she knew the friend she once had was gone - along with the rest. 

He ignored her pleads. "P-P-Please what?" he gleefully mocked. 

"You want me to help you? Who wants to save a murderer? We don't care about you, nobody does. You've killed everyone who does, idiot. We never trusted you and we definitely never liked you. How could anyone love a freak like you?" He whispered, his breath hot against her ear as he leaned closer, causing a violent shiver to crawl down her spine. 

It was either that or the brutal truth in what he claimed starting to take effect. "No one cares." He's lying. He's lying. He's lying. "Y-you're lying," she stuttered, he has to be. 

He leaned away from her, his cruel grin only getting wider. "If I was lying...then why are you still here? Why has no one come to rescue the pathetic damsel in distress?" And just like that, he was gone. Replaced by a beautiful blonde. His presence made her breath catch in her throat and she stood silently gaping at him. Newt.