Araceli

4- Erebus (edited)

-Joshua (third person)-

Joshua let out a sarcastic smirk, hidden behind his bland mask. Almost laughing at how the professor endlessly tried flattering him.

He still vividly remembered that lady, the lady who turned his life around. Everything that had happened that day, was something he could never forget. He set a hand silently over his thumping chest, the stone still buried deep within.

His memories about waking up, after the lady had vanished into mist, were still crystal clear. He had woken up with a strange, dreadful feeling. He felt his heart constricting and his brain expanding. Her words did not leave him alone even for a second.

This is your curse

Own it

Live it

Live it

Live it...

Arguments flooded his mind, but he felt more suffocated than he had ever felt. Joshua remembered waking up in an unusual, dark place, it wasn't the restaurant he had lost consciousness in, but a cold, closed space. He saw hundreds and thousands of stones dancing and shining with an enormous bewitching presence carved in the rocky walls, only their tips peeking out.

He stood up with unsteady steps, his senses were still fading in and out when right before his sight, appeared a golden scroll. Words started filling the void in it with red ink. It seemed like it was the blood from his veins pouring out and defiling the pure, golden sheet.

'Take what is now yours'

He was enchanted.

Was it really all his to possess? That lady wasn't spewing nonsense after all. But the credit was never his to take. Since that day, Joshua hadn't lived a single peaceful day. She had infiltrated his body, his senses and his vision. She was everywhere and yet; she was nowhere when he looked for. He could only find her in his memory.

The professor talking about some motivational speech he was supposed to give angered him further. Joshua never wanted to be there, all these eyes on him drove him crazy. He was moments away from becoming a deranged madman. The reason he had come was because he had no choice.

Joshua had established institutions for free education around the city anonymously. One of the most well-known educational institutes in Sky Lark City that made into the 'top 10 institutes' list around the globe belonged to him.

To him, doing this wasn't charity, it was his attempt at surviving. Despite him trying hard not to make his actions known, word spreads faster than a plaque in the world driven by selfish desires where people have no concept of personal space. He hated news reporters, journalists and TV anchors with every fibre in his body for this reason.

Joshua stood up behind the podium and said what he wasn't supposed to. He ended his curt speech with the name of his business, The Gemstone empire, which everyone already knew. He added nothing new and exciting to the existing information.

He only wanted things to end as his breathing became ragged. With a final bow to the audience and amid silent and utterly disgusting gazes, his eyes fell on a woman.

Joshua could only take solace behind his mask at that moment, so he pulled it up.

That one woman seemed more out of place than a kid, crying as his mother stroked his hair to calm him down, sitting somewhere in the front row.

Who even allows kids to enter such meetings? He thought.

And yet she was shining behind all those faces. Her eyes so blue, brimming with resolve met his cold pits. The moment she knew he was piercing her soul, she gasped and racked her eyes around before running out the door with her Auburn, wavy hair cascading down her back.