C Is For Carmiabell Locks

Chapter 28: The Plan

The feeling that Carmiabell had a stalker hounding her only intensified after everything. She could guess that there was someone under her bed or behind the waving curtains, or maybe the shapeshifter was right beside her in the form of Zuina.

More or less, she did not quiver. She wanted to seem dead, which maybe she was. The gust of iciness was bursting through her veins like a possessed arrow, her heart slowly giving in to the effect.

She could feel it at a distance, the chill, the cold, the darkness, the throb. She could feel it seething through her like crawling snakes in their caves.

She could pretend that she was right as rain in front of all others, but in her mind she knew it. She knew that the line between her and the afterlife was blurring, she knew that the anonymous midnight prowler, shapeshifter, the raiders, and everything else in the puzzle was a scum, but nothing hurt more than the fact that she was in the heart of it all, if she was not utterly a stray in the so called deciphering the nightmare.

A tear after another she sobbed in writhing pain from the inside in silence soaking her pillows in warm tears. She wondered what Zuina was doing facing the other side but she knew her, she knew her more than everyone in the world, and she hadn't a twitchy guess that she too was not as deep asleep as she seemed.

If only there was a sprinkle of stardust to engrave a real smile back to her face, if only there was a glorious fire touch to light up her way, but unfortunately all in plain sight was nothing, an abyss screaming nothing but the way it all ends; in the deathbed.

Behind Carmiabell, her bed wiggled the blankets shifting subtly.

“I couldn't sleep,” Zuina whispered behind her. “No do not turn. My teeth smell like rotten eggs.”

Besides, it wouldn't be the nicest experience,  Zuina seeing her eyes melting or noticing the redness in them.

“Do you think tomorrow's plan will work?”

Confront Mrs Tuth Infront of the whole school. It sounded like suicide, or maybe it was. She could be a potential black dreamer and the snap of her finger could be the end of Neporian High. Who knew?

They had stepped on too many eggshell and time was not on Carmiabell's side, they had to skip to the gist and cut the crap. If she would buy the ‘get mad’ show and unveil her secret glowing eyes in the middle of Neporian High well and good, if not they were screwed. But she would have to explain what Carmiabell's name was doing in her diary or project ‘alchemically changing dreams’ book was doing in her secret hideout.

“I don't know,” the answer was brief and slick to vail the shakiness in her tongue.

Carmiabell's entire heart wished that it worked. That she would cure her no matter how it went from there on. But there was a part of her that spoke most truths that stood dead in the face of that plan.

“What do you think about Damon?”

The switch of topic came with a warmth that Carmiabell had longed to feel, but behind it there was a crippled face of endurance. The only thing she could picture was how he would feel if she left. Would there be tears or a smile on his face? Would he remember her or was she just another girl not even present in his diary? What was she to him?

“A lot of things.”

Charming. Charming. Charming.

°*°

In the middle of a conversation that had narrowed Carmiabell to fantasize about her entire eulogy until death with Damon at the side of the protagonist, each scene being triggered by words from Zuina's mouth, somehow, Carmiabell fell asleep and was only awoken by a light shimmering bright against her eyelids.

She squinted her eyes before clearing her vision.

“Wake up Cam, you are late.” Zuina had already dressed up and that skirt that exhibited her curves and perfect edges must have been worn at the wrong event; expulsion if not burial. It was like one borrowed from a Northern princess.

As Carmiabell unwrapped herself out of her blankets, Zuina could not stop watching her in an amusement that Carmiabell later on got lured to.

The black veins had penetrated. They had broken through the barricade of the left arm and her stomach was another place she had suffered.

Panic took the chance and dived in, but panic was not a solution. It was never a solution. It made the effect spread faster and everything that came about it was nearing her to death.

Hyperventilation began from a low breath till huffing and puffing like a buffalo in burning rage, except it was not rage it was the exact opposite; vulnerability, fear, death.

“You need to calm down.” Zuina slid to the side of her bed, sinking the cotton-filled mattress. She intertwined her fingers with her cadaverous ones and laid her head on her shoulder reassuring her with gentle caressing and words of consolation that everything would be alright.

Her heart rate slowed down with every breath  regaining its composure

A morning autamnal breeze hit them as they all entered the school gates with intentions far more that what the school had been intended for.

The Alchemy class seemed to be perfect, but Simon had an opposing suggestion; the cafe. It was a genius solution, but Mrs Tuth would be the last lady to engage in a room full of hormonal teenager munching in what most vampires considered as trash.

Simon plotted a lure which was fine but plan B was just around the corner in case A burned to the ground.

Zuina's cue was very simple; Simon clapped twice. It wasn't very professional, he literally did it while he was seated on the cafe table doing absolutely nothing. Zuina was the scapegoat or the dumbest one to ride a wild horse. Carmiabell didn't see herself worthy but at least they saw it in her.

Zuina got to her feet after sighing and charged towards Alma. She was an easy target since she was the kind of student that sat with her clique in the corner while the biggest thing she could do was gossip a lie behind one's back.

It would be a good way to go through her third neighbor and at the same time Mrs Tuth to verify which is which of the three neighbors.

The tackle took Alma by surprise while she was stood by her table, food blasting into the air as they both landed violently on the tiled floor. Zuina’s composure settled, as her right hand stretched to the air and whacked at Alma’s face.

The fury in her eyes as she stretched to clasp Zuina's second hand was not one that could easily walk away from Carmiabell's eyes.

In a drop the wrestle was surrounded by fans of war, each shouting louder than the other, “fight, fight, fight.” The mob went wild.

The sound and rumors travelled fast and the cafe door was booming with incoming students. No one wanted to miss the next Neporian High hype first class.

In the middle of all the pandemonium, the front door blasted open and there was Mrs Tuth, the principal, and other faculties.

Carmiabell braced herself but there was something. Her heart rate was going down, not down because it was reinstating self-possession from the adrenaline, but slower because it was being forced too.

From an itty-bitty ache to an inferno tearing her apart. She would have screamed but her vocals were down, and so was the whole army of her immune system.

Everything went blur, the world began spinning, and out she went like a torch.