Counting...

Prologue

Prologue

~***~

Dorothy allowed herself a second to control her breathing, but despite her sitting down and listening to the soft music that kept replaying in her head repeatedly, she found her fingers still shaking persistently. Dorothy blinked once, blinked again and kept them closed this time. His face was still embedded behind her eyelids. She opened her eyes again.

That was no comfort at all.

That boy destroyed everything.

But she had to find him, he could return them all, they would all be back and normal if she can only find him. And it was only these words that made her stand on her own unsteady two feet, Dorothy stumbled for exactly five seconds before she had found her center of balance.

She glanced down at the fountain, this used to flow with crystal waters at one point, an extravagant centerpiece to the indoor garden that her mansion once had. The flowers blossomed and they all danced when she shuffled her way through them. But they were all devoid of color, and their dances appeared to be exhausted in their monochrome state, even her darling roses were sucked of their lively colors. The fountain no longer flowed in water, but it did appear to have an iron smelling red liquid pooling along the bottom, a liquid that not even Dorothy's curiosity wanted to investigate. It was the only color in this monochrome world, everything was in black and white, and a million shades of gray, Dorothy feared that if she stuck around for far too long that she would also fade to a colorless state.

Dorothy pursed her lips, she got down on her knees and pulled on the loose rocks that were hidden under the edge of the fountain. Her gloves were already soiled, and her dress was beyond hope at this point, so she didn't quite mind the sudden attack of mud and dust that splayed onto her torn skirts when she had at last moved the hefty stone away. The red headed girl peeked through the opening.

There was a staircase visible below.

There used to be a pulley around the fountain room that would lift the fake rocks and properly make the hidden entrance easier to pass through, but Dorothy could not recall the location of that pulley.

That boy probably hid it.

Dorothy put her feet through the hole, letting herself slip through, glad when she felt the ground under both of her feet. There was an instance where Dorothy's dress around her thighs bunched up and slowed her down, but a twist that way and a hop this way fixed it easily. She was a depressingly thin girl, and she made it through quickly enough. Once under though, Dorothy's dislike for the dark overwhelmed her. The staircase was not long, but the water from the fountain above had eroded it to the point that it was impossible to cross without tripping, which made it all the more difficult to trust. Still, the rooms below this staircase were the only ones she hadn't checked.

He had to be there.

Dorothy held her hands out, careful to walk to the wall, then she slowly made her way down the staircase as she hugged the moist walls.

Dorothy loved Hide and Seek, she used to play that game over and over, never tiring of it, because that game was never the same, one could only imagine where any one child would hide in a house as large as this one. Now, however, Dorothy despised the game down to the pit of her soul, or whatever wasn't taken by that horrible demon.

That boy was a devil, and she had no idea what she was getting herself into when she got his attention. Dorothy should have tried a little harder, she should have stayed away from the pale, dark haired boy with the mysterious expression. But Dorothy couldn't help herself, she had walked up to him, she smiled, she spoke, she invited him to her house to play.