DEMENTED | Romance | Fantasy | Slight Thriller

Chapter Eighteen: In Waves

Please listen to the above music while reading. (BTW Beach House is AMAZING so if you really like this song then def go check them out)

It was on that day that Ebony realized she was a chess piece, a pawn, in the Goddess's twisted game. She went nowhere that wasn't for Her enjoyment, and each move seemed illogical and oddly placed. But there was no opponent in the game, and there were no rules. No matter what happened, the Goddess would win - regardless of circumstance or which pawn she so ever happened to use. She always won.

So when the surroundings of a castle's interior Ebony was all too familiar with focused into view, she simply laughed. She truly was going to die.

Towering domes of obsidian and ruby. Black sand ridden with sardonyx rocks. Ebony fell to the ground in shock. As much as she hated it, she was home.

Her trauma came upon in waves with tremors so deep that human spines six feet under quaked with each movement. And each wave grew progressively worse, but slowed, and the bite was longer and harder.

The first wave sent Ebony back to her mother's funeral. Standing before the casket, no more than seven, watching emotionlessly at her mother's face - which would never smile at her again. Her fleeting forehead kisses and warm embraces were gone forever. She trembled, holding in a sob, but felt her father's anger radiating from behind. Emotion is our weakness, he'd once said to her and Crimson. And it is their power.

So she never shed a single tear in front of others. But when it was silent, and dawn had risen, soft sobs could be heard from her room every day for two months. That was before her nightmares got worse.

Shuddering, Ebony withstood the first wave. It was bearable, in a sense - the pain brought clarity to her mind along with its ever so familiar despair.

But then the second wave hit, and she found herself in the Absinthian Court. She could feel the pressure of hundreds watching her from above, and thousands more waiting outside the castle doors. She could feel their thoughts. Hear their feelings. And none seemed to favor her at all.

Everything she did, no matter what happened, was argued against. She could have simple smiled at them and they'd curse her for it. She was brought down to constantly live in fear, to constantly walk on eggshells around them. If she ever happened to one day mess up, it would ruin the day and days to come. She hated their voices, pretending to be kind and understanding and then flipping the second she refused to trust them. They were for their own fain, and did nothing out of that corrupt jurisdiction.

And after having suppressed it for so long, that magic seeped from her system and left her barren.

The third wave hit with memories of her and Crimson - after the change. The look in her eyes no longer was of love, but of burning hatred - and soon after, rage. The atmosphere around them darkened to the point where it was simply an abyss, and just her and Crimson. "You did this to me!" the younger memory of her shrieked, trying to tear at Ebony's skin with her razor-sharp blood red nails. "This is all your fault!"

Ebony took a step back, terrified. "No - no it's not-"

"You know it is," her sister hissed back through sharpened teeth. "There is no one else to blame! None alive, regardless. I am miserable thanks to your mistakes."

The guilt hit her harder than a boulder. Of course it was her fault. If she'd known, considered the situation, pondered her engaging in conversation with her rage-drunk father, and thought it through, then maybe things would be different. Maybe he wouldn't have raised his bottle. Maybe Crimson wouldn't have needed to save her. Maybe her sister wouldn't have to have sacrificed her mind-

A sound pierced her eardrums as the younger memory of Crimson vanished, too high to be of recognition and too loud to even fathom being ignored. She screamed and covered her hands over her ears, trying desperately to drown out the sound.

The sound grew louder. She fell down, squirming profusely in agony. It refused to cease.

A trickle of blood began to fall down her neck from her right eardrum, and then with the addition of her left. How much longer would it take until she lost her hearing?

In truth, it didn't take much longer than that. It became loud to the point where it was all she'd ever known, and then there was the blissful - and massively unsettling - silence.

Slowly, she rose. Was her hearing truly gone? She tried saying something, calling out a plea to be heard, but the abyss swallowed her cry. Her ears never registered the sound.

Her breathing grew shallow as she slowly began to panic. The darkness was closing in on her. It was so thick she couldn't see her own hand right in front of her. She heard nothing of the screams she let out and felt nothing other than the abyss's cold and her own fear seeping through her veins. She could taste black on her tongue and it was revolting.

Then a figure - a figure in white - started moving toward her, slowly at first, but then faster as it got closer. And as it did so - its features became more defined, more clear - and it wasn't a person.

As she peered closer at it, her curiosity  melted into additional fear. She - she knew this creature. And in no way was it friendly.

It was the creature from her last dream, and it had begun a game of cat and mouse. Her pupils dilated and became unfocused as she hurriedly stood rigid upright and then began running for her life.

She didn't know where she was running. All she could think of was the creature gaining on her, and how fast her heart was pounding.

Then suddenly her footing would no longer make purchase and she began falling - down, or up, or in another direction - she couldn't tell.

But she fell into white.

It was a room of red. The color consumed the room, it was its color and none other would be had. The harsh pigment stained the mortar walls and defined the blanket curtains. It framed the bedspread and highlighted the contrast of Ebony's appearance to that of it she sat in.

But perhaps the most striking part of the room was the living person who stood by her side and was by far the most noticeable red of all:

The Absinthian Queen, her sister - Crimson.

1090 words

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Whew! That chapter took me a few weeks to write. I feel like I'm a little out of practice, but I still enjoy writing for you guys!

I hope you enjoyed that chapter! Hopefully there will be more to come soon after this one.