How She Lived

00; prologue

"I really didn't expect you to be such a lightweight."

It was one thing to feel pain. And it was another to feel each syllable of that sentence carving themselves into my eardrums, painstakingly piercing and cutting their way through until they came close to my brain. I barely registered the small but recurring strikes of ache that clutched my body. When I had thought that was the worst of it, the voice spoke up again, this time much closer and it was purely as though my mind was on the verge of exploding.

"I mean -" It was a feminine voice - that much I could decipher - one that was sharp and had an ominous edge to it. "- I didn't expect you to be so weak. I honestly had higher hopes for you," she drawled out, "you especially, since you couldn't have fallen far from the family tree. But clearly I'm sorely mistaken."

The thing about being bombarded with a deafening voice was that it immediately wakes up your other senses, and with that, my eyes flew wide open, only not to a sight I wanted to see. I couldn't see anything, entirely pitch black in my line of sight. My eyes were shielded apparently with a blindfold, which cut into the corners of my eyes every time I blinked. My mind came up blank whenever I tried to decode whatever it was she was trying to say, but a slow and distinct series of heel cladded footsteps soon echoed around the room.

"It's pretty pathetic you know, watching you fret."

With that I'd only realized that my hands were working on the ropes that held them together, and though they were inflicting cuts around my wrists, they hardly stood on par with the other bare wounds. And then I fleetingly remembered something my father used to tell me repeatedly. So with my heart beating tauntingly against my ribcage, I mustered all the energy I possessed and breathed out, "Please, if money is what you want, I can give it to you."

She scoffed indignantly, and like bat-voice it echoed throughout the room. "So Skylar," she started, her presence loomed behind me, sending chills up my arms and leaving the cold air of the room fanning over my bare arms. "You clearly don't know me very well. Because if you did, you wouldn't have said that," she said. I imagined her rolling her eyes, but I didn't have a face to match it with.

"Have I seen you before?"

My voice was strained and timid, and she - whoever she was - used it as an advantage. Clearing her throat and sounding very well amused, she said, "Maybe, maybe not. Though it would be humiliating if I were to be associated, in any way, with the likes of you."

I raised a brow absentmindedly, before pulling my dry lips apart once more and baring my teeth at her. "Then why am I here?"

At that, she scoffed, and a short, sardonic laugh followed soon after. "Just some unresolved business actually, all that will be done with once you're dead." She leaned closer to my shoulder and in my ear she proudly declared, "Your job in this is simple, you don't even need to lift a pretty finger. So don't mess this up and go with the flow, alright?"

Just some unresolved business. Instead I focused on the latter clause and stared blankly at her hooded figure. "You're going to kill me?"

She gasped, but I could sense that it was soaked with heavy sarcasm. "As a matter of fact, yes." She paused, before continuing with her cynical tone intact, "It will be mostly painless, so don't worry too much about it." She was smiling.

"I don't even know you," I said firmly, though hardly keeping my voice from wavering.

Her boots scraped the floor as she moved across the room, and then she settled in front of me, her breath coalescing with my hurried ones. "There are some things you will never understand, Skylar," she said with an irritated sigh. And then I could no longer feel her presence, instead she resided a few steps further from me, and I was allowed to breathe again, despite the staleness of the in the confined space.