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CAROLINE GREW UP in a devout Christian home. She's spent many a Sundays' hidden amongst church pews and tangled prayers; her hands have a habit of molding together in devotion whenever something goes wrong, and she can fire off a bible verse like there's no tomorrow.
(Her mother often read the bible before bed, and Caroline, all limbs and white cotton gowns, would climb in beside her and listen to the absolution in Meredith Kingston's voice, like she was bestowing a blessing upon younger Caroline, like she needed one in the first place). (Caroline realizes now that, perhaps, everyone does).
When she first wakes up after her death, Caroline Kingston's initial thought is that Heaven looks a lot like earth. Something light and pretty dances on her encrusted tongue, coating the back of her throat in flavored gild. But something else is tugging her down, down, down the spiraling rabbit hole and she succumbs shortly thereafter.
The second time she rouses, things are different. The pretty things—the taste, the sight, the unexplainable feeling of falling—are gone down the drain, replaced by something dark and ominous. The imperceptible melody of a haunting instrumental pours from a record player across the room. Memories are coming back to her.
She recalls the taste and feel of blood as it invaded her mouth—blood that was a mix of her own and his. The cracking of glass as her head came in contact with it, one, two, three times. Green, vacant eyes. A scream. A fight. A struggle, a knife. Her knife. A despondent mantra, I'm just a girl, I'm just a girl. Girl, not a god. They've had it wrong this whole time.
Caroline stays like this, immobilized on the bed with the ghosts of her life encircling her until she feels like she very well may vomit. And then she stirs, beginning to sit up until she notices the woman sitting at the foot of the bed, thumbing through a large book. A pair of large, wire glasses sits upon her nose, sliding precariously over the slope.
Caroline trails her eyes down to the black, shaggy cat staring back at her from the woman's lap. It's eyes gleamed mean; stark yellow, like a compaction of nebulas beyond.
Without looking up, the woman says, "Give me a sec, sweet pea, this is my favorite part. 'Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell / Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, / Yet Grace must still look so'. Ain't that just the neatest?"
Her tone is thick and honeyed with a country accent, her vowels pressing from her throat like a gasping breath and her constants being caressed by the peeling red of her stained lips. Caroline gives her a once over, pressing her own back against the headboard in a futile attempt to put space between her and the stranger. Disconnected from reality, the woman tucks an unruly wad of raven hair behind her ear, brown skin bunched up between her brows in concentration.
The screams are an ever-present menace in the back of her head. Caroline raises a trembling hand to the dull ache radiating from the back of her skull, tracing along overlapping bandages of white. A scream. A fight. A struggle, a knife.
