JOCELYN pov
“This is not a game” ~Angelica Schuyler (Hamilton the musical)
“Isn’t it?” I whisper, I am sitting on the floor in a dark shadowed corner. I can barely see a thing until my eyes adjust to the dark space. With my back to the corner I stand up, and as I do, a solid ray of light shines upon me. I squint at the sudden fluorescent brightness. A firm tug on my right foot forces me to take a step forward. I gasp at the unexpected movement, and try to back up just to find that I am stuck in place. Looking down at my uncooperative limb, my fears are confirmed. Connected to each of my wrists and ankles is a thin, silver rope. My eyes follow each rope leading endlessly upwards. As far as I can tell they have no end. Another pull, this time on my left foot, forces me to take another step. I try to resist pulling just makes me feel a dull pressure in my ankle until I hear a distinct snap. Looking down at my leg I hope to see that the rope is broken, but I only find that my ankle is bent at a very unnatural angle. Still, feeling no pain I assume it's fine.Helpless against the pull, I involuntarily move to the center of a spot-lit stage. I now stand in the middle of a bright yellow spotlight, and face a sea of black beyond the stages’ end. Then a spotlight singles out one chair in the very front row. In that chair sits a young girl. The girl has a kind freckled face and long straight brown hair. She looks to me like one of those cheerleaders you hope never to bump into in the halls. As the girls coffee brown eyes rove over my face, a look of disgust mutilates her kind features. I'm really confused, why is she looking at me like that? I am forced to turn my head sharply to the right. I find myself looking into a spotless floor length mirror. A girl I do not recognize stares back at me, or more accurately, the shell of a girl. Dull grey eyes opened wide in shock under a rat’s nest of dirty, brown tangles of hair. Smudges of dirt paint her face and clothes. She wears only a thin, knee length dress that at once could have been white and angelic, but now drapes over her too skinny body in muddy tatters. Her arms and legs are covered in scratches, mud, and blood. Her feet are dirty and bare. I notice the light reflecting along the girl’s arms and feet along wiry silver rope. The girl in the mirror reaches up with dirty, shaking hands, I feel myself doing the same. I look down to my own hands and see a perfect reflection of jagged, unkempt fingernails. I look back up and focus on the face of the girl in the mirror. The girl licks her cracked and bleeding lip, I feel my tongue brush across dry skin, and tastes a bitter copper flavor reserved for blood. “This girl and I,” I think to myself, “we are one and the same.” As this frightening reality comes crashing down on me, I open my mouth to let out a scream, but no noise is released. I snap my mouth shut just as a light on above a trapdoor a few steps away from me, and my shining ropes go slack around my limbs.
I take a step towards the front door, only one, to reassure myself that I have control over my body. I tentatively close the distance between me and the trapdoor. As I step upon the trapdoor I feel the pain for the first time. My whole body is screaming wherever raw flesh touches fresh air. My lungs sing, with every breath it gets harder to breathe. My bent ankle, I now feel is broken, buckles so I put My full weight on my right foot. My stomach convulses with hunger pains, and my head pounds. Then, the voices start. A cacophony of doubt and rejection fill my head…
“You’re not even trying”
“You can do better than this”
“Why are you being so stupid?”
“Stop being an idiot!”
The poisonous words pound against my skull until it all gets to be too much. I fall to my already bruised knees. I lift my head up high and scream. This time, I hear it. It’s a loud piercing noise against the hollow emptiness of the huge stage, and then, laughter. I look up, puzzled, and through the blur of tears I see the beautiful girl in the audience laughing in delight. She is happy to see me in so much pain. As I crouch, trying to puzzle out a reason for the girls delight, something airily brushes the top of my head. I stand up and find myself facing a rough fraying rope, fashioned into a noose. I slip it around my thin dirty neck. It’s scratchy. Comfort isn’t my top priority, as long as it does it’s job I think. I'm, so beyond caring what happens to me but the girl in the audience is observing this whole thing. Seeing what I am doing, her eyes sparkle with excitement. I take one long burning breath. The trapdoor opens, just as the silver ropes, still wrapped loosely around my arms and legs, grow taunt. Once again taking control of my body, and holding me up. The rope around my neck dissolves into nothing, leaving me dangling by my arms and legs over a dark chasm beyond the trapdoor. The voices come back now, as only insistent whispers. I manage,barely, to block them out. The shimmering confines lower me slowly into the dark below, until even my head is below the stage floor. My feet dangle above nothing. Tears course down my cheeks and neck, falling into stinging cuts. “I’m not even allowed to die?!” I scream into the abyss.
The trapdoor slams shut, severing the metallic bonds. And the only answer I get, is given by a kind voice as I fall down, down, down. “It is not your time yet.”
As I fall the mean whispers stop completely. Silence and darkness surround me. For the first time in a long time, I am peaceful, with just the wind drying my tears as I fall. Closing my eyes I welcome the nothingness that fully engulfs my body.
I wake up surrounded by a blindingly white landscape. At first the brightness is too much, but after a short period of squinting, my eyes adjust enough to groggily take a glance at the alien landscape. The endless white is not only bright, but cold as well. I shiver in my ratty gown. My limbs are stiff but I manage to sit up. I can look all around me now, and I fully take in the blank landscape,and I wipe the last shred of drowsiness from my eyes. Now that both my mind and body are fully awake, my whole body screams in pain. Gasping, I look down and notice that my dress is no longer mud splattered, but stained dark maroon with blood, my blood, and the white expanse beneath me is quickly turning red. What I can see of my skin, is completely covered in long, deep gashes dripping blood. I am really scared now and kind of hyperventilating. A noise that I don't recognise sounds in the emptiness, and I realize it's my own voice. A sound like a cross between a gasp and a moan escapes my lips. I lean forward until I am curled up in a little ball. Just then a warm breeze blows across my back, through the long gashes in my gown. I cringe at the stinging pain. A voice as smooth as silk whispers, I barely hear it through my hissing breaths. The voice is young, and sounds like a boy who is just reaching puberty. “Hello…” the voice was kind and welcoming, but I am in too much pain to do more than moan into my knees. There is a gust of scorching air around me for a moment. Then, excruciating pain as if a thousand needles were stabbing into all of my cuts and scrapes. A blood curdling scream tears out of my throat. “IT HURTS SO BAD!!! Between one second and the next, all the pain is gone. Slowly, like a bird emerging from an egg, I uncurl myself so I am sitting criss-cross. Blinking burning tears out of my eyes, I look up at the form that towers above me. The world seems brighter where he stands. He looks less than human in a beautiful sort of way. Still though, the way he is standing is intimidating and I flinch away from his insinuating stare. His eyes are beautiful faded green, like a patch of moss on the shaded north side of a tree. His hair shines a lovely shade of light whiskey, and is carelessly unkempt. He looks down at me, his face full of love and pity. I stand up suddenly but waver, slightly dizzy. I don't want to be looked at like that, I can handle myself. The boy puts out his arm as if to steady me but I flinch back. I have been let down and put down by all the people I trusted the most. I am too scared to trust in anyone, even with something a trivial as helping me stand on my own. I won't let anyone “help”me again. I stare at the boy. He looks like an angel, I think to myself, then quickly shake that thought away. Still a bit dizzy, I barely manage to stand by myself. The boy sees my hesitation, pulls back his hand and says, “ Hi, I’m Percival.” I say nothing. He takes a half step closer to me, and I am warmer all of the sudden, “You can call me Percy.” I don't want to call him anything, so I turn my face to my dirty, bloody toes. “What's your name?” He asks with such hesitation and caution as if I am a hurt animal that might run off any moment. I step further away from him, but stand a bit taller, “My name is Jocelyn Rose, and that is the only way you may address me!” The boy Percival steps further away from me looking hurt. That did come out a bit harsher than I intended. Without him close to me The coldness came back and so did my exhaustion. I collapsed to my knees, and my vision is getting blurry. The last thing that I know for sure is Percival touching my arm and saying “Jocelyn Rose?”
I come to in a comfortable bed, warm but still pretty sore. I lift my head from the ultra-plush pillows and take a look around. The room I'm in is as big as a master suite. The bed must be a queen. I sit up and the comforter and sheets fall off the upper half of my body. Someone must have changed my clothes and bathed me while I was out.Bandages covered my arms and neck, and I was dressed in only a lacy pink tank top,and as I push back the sheets nothing covers my overly bandages legs, only matching lace underwear. I blush at my “outfit” if you can even call it that, and I hope that boy was not the one to clean me up. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and try to stand up. Apparently I am not as healed as I feel, because my ankle buckles under my weight. My hands scramble for a solid hand hold. Before I fall I grab into a fraying red rope that gives a little bit when I pull myself up. A dainty chime sounds and a young girl rushes into my room startling me. She looks at me for a heartbeat before she says, “ Good mornin’ Jocelyn . let's get you dressed for breakfast with the master.”
