The Curse of Once Upon a Time

Chapter XIX: Monster

When Serenity opened her eyes, it took her a while to adjust and remember where she was. She didn't completely know where she was though. What she did know was that she wasn't at the hospital like she had been before.

The last time she had been at the hospital, she'd run into Saige. Rather, Saige had come to find her. The last thing she could remember with perfect clarity was the deal. Saige would help Serenity away from her family and deal with the demon in a way that didn't harm her in return that Serenity would do her best to be good—whatever the hell that meant.

Serenity hadn't had any other option. Any other good option. It was either stay in the hospital until her lungs were healed and go with her family so they could try to get rid of her demon by their own means or go with Saige so that they could get Serenity's demon out under the agreement that she was good.

Serenity was pretty positive she would rather Saige's help to her family's. Saige was experienced with demons. They could handle it with as little harm possible to Serenity. From the way that Salvadore had been talking before, she wasn't sure that her family would be doing the same.

As she was waking up, Serenity's memory was hazy. All she knew was that she had made the deal with Saige and then things had gone blank from there on. She just couldn't understand where she was. She couldn't even understand what she was feeling. It hurt. Seemingly everything hurt. Based on the deal she had made with Saige, she would be assuming that she wasn't supposed to be hurt.

She was sure she wasn't a complete idiot. She knew that she had heard Saige say with as little harm to her as possible. Unless she was sorely mistake, it didn't seem like the state she was in was really the prospect of as little harm to her as possible.

Her body was aching. There was throbbing in the back of her head, aching in her shoulders and sore in her thighs, and her hands felt as though they'd been wrung out through her fingers, almost as though they'd been stretched and run against sandpaper. To sum it up, she was in pain and hurt and it didn't seem like her family could have her much more than she was hurting already.

She tried to sit up, but in the process of trying, her arms gave out and she dropped back down with a loud groan. How had she even gotten to such a horrible state? How was it that she had gone from being treated at the hospital to pain so bad she couldn't even sit up? Maybe her agreement with Saige was a little more than she could handle. She hadn't realized there would be that much fine print. She didn't want to think about what pain her family could have caused if Saige's method was the least painful.

"You're awake, finally."

Serenity opened her eyes to the strange silhouette hovering above her. It took her a while to try figuring out what the silhouette was. Her first thought had been that it was Saige; Saige had been the one to take her out of the hospital, so it should make sense that they'd still be together. Plus, the blurry figment of a person had the same type of transparent glow that Saige did.

Yet, upon closer inspection, Serenity realized that whatever was above her wasn't Saige. Unlike Saige, it had a reddish-pink glow, eyes orange like fire, and bright red and orange hair. Whatever it was, it certainly was not Saige, but Serenity knew one thing it could be.

She had the sinking feeling in her stomach that it was close to what Saige was. It wasn't a solid figure like a human would be, but shared the same physical attributes as a human, like eyes, hair, skin, and so on. Aside from its hair color. Most of it matched a human and shared similarities with Saige.

If there was one thing that came to mind when she saw it, it was demon. A demon or some afterlife spirit. Saige had told her that there were other immortal beings. There was the rest of the Tellers, that much was obvious, spirits, angels, and demons.