The girl of a thousand roses

Chapter 3: Whispers in the Darkness

The room lay engulfed in an anxious gloom. The air was charged with a sense of unease that seemed to permeate the cracked walls and the shadows lurking in the corners. Maria, exhausted by the tumultuous episode she had lived through, had fallen into a restless sleep.

When she awoke, reality and nightmare seemed to merge into a single entity. The room, its walls groaning in silence, manifested itself before her eyes. The moon, barely visible through the window, cast a faint light on his figure.

On her cheek, a gash the size of a wound that refused to heal recalled the moment when rage had turned to madness and despair. She still had dried blood clinging to her skin, like a mark of her own inner fury.

The sheets and blankets, now disheveled and disarrayed, were mute witnesses to the turmoil of her sleep. Maria, upon awakening, felt that something was not in its place, as if a dark secret had entered her life while she slept.

It was then that she noticed the presence in her fist, a presence that filled her with indescribable terror. She held a black rose, as dark as the deepest night, with a blue ribbon that seemed to absorb the light of the room. On the ribbon, two words were engraved in strange calligraphy: "The Voice."

Mary's heart began to beat with an intensity that was unfamiliar to her. What she remembered had not been a dream, it had been an experience as real as it was disturbing. The rose, like an emissary from the darkness, slipped from her fist and came to rest on the bed.

However, the need to recover what had been taken from her, the urgency to break the silence that had enveloped her, impelled her to try once more. Maria opened her mouth and prepared to scream, but the result was the same as the night before. No sound emerged from her lips, only silence and helplessness surrounded her.

The room seemed to close in on Mary, as if the shadows themselves had come to life and were determined to suffocate her. The black rose, with its blue ribbon that seemed to absorb the light, lay on the bed like an ominous symbol of what had been taken from her: her voice.

Despair and frustration enveloped her like a dark cloak, but Maria could bear it no longer. Anger and hysteria overcame her, and without thinking, she began to smash everything within her reach. Objects that had been silent witnesses to her torment became victims of her fury. Broken pictures, torn books, overturned furniture, everything became an uncontrollable chaos.

She was almost done with her room when the door opened cautiously. Her grandmother, an elderly lady, entered the scene of destruction and despair. Her eyes widened with astonishment and fear as she saw the state her granddaughter was in.

Without uttering a word, the grandmother rushed to Maria and hugged her tightly, as if to protect her from the demons that were tormenting her. Maria, wrapped in her own madness, resisted at first, but her grandmother's loving presence gradually calmed her.

Grandmother sat her on the bed and began to stroke her hair, trying to soothe her with soft, comforting words. However, the abyss of despair in which Maria found herself was too deep. Her eyes, once full of life, now reflected an indomitable darkness.

Maria tried to speak, trying to explain the inexplicable, but no words came out of her mouth. Only inarticulate moans and tears of helplessness. Grandmother continued to stroke her hair and murmur words of comfort, but it was as if silence had taken over Maria's voice, as if she had been condemned to eternal mutism.

The room, in its state of chaos and destruction, looked like a scene out of Maria's darkest dreams. Time had stopped in that corner of reality, where mystery and madness were inextricably intertwined.

The grandmother tenderly held her granddaughter, whose tremors of hysteria were slowly beginning to subside. The room, permeated with dark mystery, was filled with shattered objects, testimony to Maria's emotional storm.

However, Grandma's gaze fell on the black rose resting on the bed, and her expression changed instantly. A deep, ancestral horror gripped her being as she gazed at the flower that seemed to have emerged from the deepest shadows of reality.

The grandmother let go of her granddaughter as if the mere touch of the rose had burned her skin. A shiver ran down her spine as she had the strange sensation that a shadow was stalking Maria, watching her with unseen eyes full of malice.

But fate, capricious and cruel, had an even more sinister plan. As the grandmother backed away, her foot found the sharp fragments of the broken vase lying on the floor. In an instant, a shard of glass embedded itself in her throat, silencing her voice forever.

Mary, caught up in her own madness, surveyed the scene with a blank, distant stare. The blue roses that had fallen to the floor were splattered with the blood that flowed from the grandmother, as if the enigma surrounding those flowers had claimed their sacrificial tribute.

The tableau unfolding in the room was a grotesque nightmare, a macabre depiction of the intrusion of mystery into the lives of Maria and her grandmother. The dark enigma grew thicker, as if the very shadows that had invaded the room were closing in around them, like hungry maw of the inexplicable.

The grandmother, with blood pouring from her wound and her life fading into the darkness, became a tragic figure in the theater of the incomprehensible. Maria, in her trance, remained oblivious to the horror unfolding before her eyes, as if trapped in a parallel world of nightmare.

Maria remained silent, observing the tragic scene that had unfolded before her eyes. The grandmother, her gaze lost in eternity, lay on the floor of the room like a grieving specter. The old woman's clothes were stained with blood, and her expression seemed to have contemplated the darkest horrors of the universe.

A new blue rose had appeared in Maria's hand, and its ribbon bore the word "Murder." Gradually, the young woman began to understand the mystery behind these roses. Each one represented an ability she had acquired. The black rose, however, was of an ability she had lost.

Although she still did not fully understand the meaning behind these abilities, Maria felt the need to tidy up her room. With some effort, she sat Grandma in a corner, looking like a ghoulish doll with blood-soaked clothes and a look that had crossed the threshold between sanity and madness.

Maria picked the roses off the floor and carefully placed them in a new vase she had brought from the kitchen. She placed them on her desk, where they now seemed to watch her silently. She sat on the bed, as if pondering the enigma that had invaded her life. Mary's mind was a whirlwind of unanswered questions, but she knew she must move on.

She dressed and prepared to go to school as if nothing had happened. She had only placed gauze on the wound on her cheek.

As she left the house, a friend was waiting for her at the door. The young woman smiled and greeted Maria as if nothing had happened. The two friends walked to school together, and on the way, Maria quietly explained that she had lost her voice, not to mention the disturbing story she had left behind at home.