Love Sucks (Rewritten!)

The Mist

What made a thriller a thriller was the anticipation of something happening, or the lack thereof. When she was a child, Abigail read Stephen King's The Mist against Rebecca's wishes and couldn't sleep for a week. It wasn't the deadly wall of impenetrable fog or the creatures that resided within that terrified her. It was waiting for the mist to reach the doors of the grocery store and the paranoia of knowing you were about to meet your fate; the terrible unknown that lurked just outside the glass; whether you would succumb to it, or try to fight something unstoppable.

Abigail felt a lot like that. Like she was waiting for the mist to arrive.

The days that had passed since the masquerade stuck together, an endless blur of monotony. She would wake up in the same room, the sunlight slotting onto her face, and eventually she stopped feeling disoriented at the strangeness of her surroundings. The two women that had helped her clean up that first morning never returned. In their place, an older man with an ageless air to him retrieved her when it was time to leave the room, took her to her meals, and allowed her frequent visits to the library. If she had to spend the rest of her life as a prisoner, at least she was surrounded by books.

She hadn't seen Nathaniel since their last breakfast together, and he had been respectfully absent for every one since. Abigail wasn't sure where he went, or if he was intentionally staying out of sight, but she didn't mind. Not seeing him made the time go by easier. She could pretend that none of it had ever happened, get lost in a world beyond herself in books and the staggering size of Drake Manor. The older man, who's name she later found out was Wallace, would sometimes let her wander the halls; tracing a hand along the thick-painted walls, she would imagine she was the lady of a house far beyond her current situation.

That was until the mist pressed up against the glass. The premonition that at any moment her capture would return was a thought that plagued her. She saw his flashing red eyes in her dreams and in quickly-buried thoughts when she wasn't distracted.

So Abigail did her best to stay distracted.

She was reading when she heard the commotion. The library was a cavernous room, marked by ceiling-high bookshelves and reading chairs and floor lamps, but any amount of noise echoed. A musical voice bounced around, and Abigail stiffened in her seat by the window, her fingers crinkling the pages of the book. Wallace appeared suddenly, followed by a flash of fiery red hair. Evangeline rounded the corner after him, toting along a familiar face Abigail thought she'd never see again.

It was the boy behind the fern: Patten.

They were both dressed finely, Evangeline in an elegant sundress and Patten wearing a white cotton button-up. Evangeline smiled warmly at Abigail, though she wasn't sure what for.

"Forgive the intrusion, Mistress," said Wallace, with a nod in her direction. "They insisted upon seeing you."

"And I can see we were very right to insist!" Evangeline rushed over to Abigail, throwing her arms around her. The book clattered to the floor with a papery rustle and Abigail was stuck in the vice grip of the other girl, blinking confusedly over her shoulder at Wallace and Patten. "You poor girl."

"Evangeline, I've only met you once." Abigail said tersely. "Why are we hugging right now?"

"I thought humans liked to hug."

"No, darling," Patten said softly, sparing Abigail a sheepish grin. "You're thinking of pacifists."

Unsure of whether if it was Evangeline's grip or the shock of realizing that she'd been in close contact with more than one vampire at the ball, Abigail felt faint. It made sense: they were all beautiful in the way that Nathaniel was beautiful. They had porcelain smooth skin and shiny hair and a grace that was unbeknownst to people like her. She had been a stupid naive girl to think that Drake Manor wasn't swarming with them.