Veil Over Madeline

FRAGMENTS

I get this feeling in my body like I'm trapped in a room. I see us there, enclosed by white walls, the kind that swallow everything whole. With Nina, it always felt like that—an endless silence pressing against my ribs until the air turns violent and thin. We are stranded together in a space that isn't quite real, her in one corner, me in another. She doesn't move, her gaze heavy and unblinking like a storm gathering on the horizon. Her stillness is worse than anger. It is the kind of quiet that drowns. Between us, the floor shimmers, dark and wet. A thin rivulet of water pools at my feet, its chill snaking up my legs. It creeps higher, slow but insistent, a tide too determined to stop. I want to call out, to break the spell that keeps her rooted and unreachable. But when I try—when her name touches my tongue—the silence thickens like fog, swallowing my words whole. Her expression hardens, unreadable but unkind, and the water climbs. It is ankle-deep now, its surface reflecting faint ripples of light that don't seem to belong to this place. The air smells of salt, brine, and something older, something ancient. I shiver, the brisk biting into my skin, and still, she doesn't move. Her absence, even as she stands there, carves a hollow inside me I don't know how to fill. I take a step forward, but the water drags at my legs, tugging like invisible hands. Each drop is a warning.

"Please," I whisper, my voice barely audible over the soft lap of waves against the walls. She doesn't answer, doesn't flinch. The water rises faster, swirling around my knees, then my hips. My breaths turn shallow, frantic. I want to believe she will reach for me, that this tide isn't meant to take me under. But her arms stay limp, her face a mask of indifference. She watches me the way a shoreline watches a shipwreck—distant and inevitable. The bone-chill rises to my chest, the water pulling at my heart with each passing second. My fingers brush the walls, seeking something solid, but they find only smooth, unyielding surfaces. The room feels alive, its pulse synchronized with my own panic. It wants me to drown. It wants us both to sink. But Nina stands untouched, her corner dry, untouched by the rising sea. I open my mouth, but the words don't come. Instead, salt and cold fill my throat, stealing the air, stealing my voice. The tide claims me inch by inch, its icy grip relentless. My muscles burn as I fight to stay afloat, each movement more desperate than the last. When the water reaches my chin, I tip my head back, the ceiling above me a fractured mosaic of shifting blue and gray. The light refracts, beautiful and cruel.

"Nina," I choke, the word scattering like foam on the surface. She doesn't look away, but something in her gaze shifts—emptiness sharpening into absence. And then she's gone, her corner vacant, her silence left behind like a shadow.

The water surges, covering me entirely, dragging me under into its cold, endless depth. My chest screams, my limbs jerk, and as the last fragments of air slip away, I realize the truth: I've been drowning long before the water came.