A Designer Dress From Heaven and Your Dirty Wedding Ring

xiii. little girl gone

this chapter contains warnings for the following: guns, canary's daddy issues, victim blaming, blood mention, maternal death mention, dry-heaving, mentions of mental, emotional, and childhood abuse

You're shocked into consciousness, startling awake in a pile of plush blankets and cloud-soft pillows.

It's dark around you, no light save for the gentle amber glow of the small, overly round bird lamp on the nightstand beside you.

Hand pressed to your chest, you will your heart to calm as you try to blink past the surrounding darkness. It's as if a haze has settled over your mind, pieces of your environment moving in and out of focus and twisting into new shapes when you look away. You catch glimpses of furniture, small decorations, and knick-knacks, but your brain can't settle on them—stuck in a state of not entirely present that has your muscles loose and your body feeling light, like you might float away if you don't anchor yourself.

You press your hand harder into your chest, fingers curling into the soft fabric of your clothes.

Where are you? How did you get here?

Your head gives a dull throb as you struggle to piece together your memories. You remember the panic and desperation you'd felt before, the adrenaline that kept your exhausted limbs from collapsing beneath you. You remember the club, everyone standing around you while you faced—

Your hand slides from your chest to your stomach. Where you expect the echoing pain of your gunshot wound, you find none, not even a small ache.

Shoving the blankets away, you fumble with the hem of the soft white shirt you've been changed into, pushing it up to your chest.

Not only is there no bullet-shaped hole, there are no marks anywhere on your skin. No scars, no scratches, no bruises. You sit in this murky room, drifting somewhere along the edge of reality.

It feels...familiar—like you've been here before—but something stops you from connecting the dots.

You can't figure out where you are if you stay here.

You plant your bare feet on the hardwood, the warmth soaking into your skin from your toes all the way up your legs. When you push yourself to stand, the room shifts and your body tilts with it. It takes almost a minute for the vertigo to settle and your brain to right itself, but when it calms, you see the world around you with new clarity.

You take in the soft pinks and earthy greens of child's furniture, the extensive collection of stuffed birds, and a hand-crafted dollhouse with a heart-aching fondness that is quickly overtaken by confusion.

You're in your old playroom in your family's summer estate. The one you distinctly remember redecorating two months before your wedding. You'd packed everything away, saving it for a child you would never have and turning the room into a small library.

How is this possible?

Is this a dream?

Or is it—

A sharp click pulls your attention to the playroom door, watching as it drifts open with a creak that echoes across the room.

With no other option, you carefully step into the hallway.

This is how people die in horror movies.

Ignoring your better instincts, you follow the familiar length of the hallway. Everything is the same as how you remember it: the pictures, the overpriced décor, your mother's plants.