Madness

chapter 18- murder's fantasy

Elena found herself there, again. She knew she was there, but she couldn't say it with her mind. All she knew was she was there. There as in the nightmare. This time she did not scream or wail or even utter a single word. The fear had subsided replaced by something withered and splintered. Sadness. This was the kind of sadness that you feel upon seeing raindrops fall on a grave. This was the type of sadness that you felt at the thought of dying in vain, all alone. This was the type of the sadness that was heard in a shriek at a midnight murder.

Laying in the worn out, beaten black, her father and mother and Violet's ashen faces stared upwards as if waiting for something. Shifting her gaze, Elena could make out a corner where the black had broken like an open seam revealing a small, skeletal figure curled in a tight ball facing away from her. Even though the figure was merely an outline of a dusky silhouette, she knew it was Caleb. She'd heard those exact same sobs before. He let out a heart wrenching wail.

Elena knew that the nightmare was supposed to make her feel anguish and torment her and it was working. He was supposed to be dead, but instead it seemed like his soul was crying. Pressing her face against the glass from inside the mirror, Elena's mind stretched open strewing thoughts like leaves that vanish in soil. Why was Caleb not dead yet? Was this his soul dying? She changed her mind, she didn't want to know.

The room began to spin before becoming a blur of black, smudged like charcoal. Panting heavily, it took Elena several moments to gather her wits and convince herself it was just a dream. The room around her fell unevenly in her mind as if it could not fit. She rolled over on her side, her cheek pressing against something dry and crackly. Leaves. For a moment her heart lurched, and her thoughts were put on edge. Something passed through her, like a spirit: cold, fragile and murky. They're from before you killed him.

Her eyes crept towards the windows which were now open, the curtains dancing with the wind which gushed inwards. Luna must've already been awake.

The spark in her eye had dulled replaced with something in between pain and fear and sadness. There were no words for it. She just couldn't come to terms with killing a child. It made her feel the wrong kind of wrong. Mouth dry, she pushed the rusted hued debris onto the carpet and watched them vanish. How could they be real? As she stared at where the leaves had disappeared, a staggering suspicion crept spider like in her mind. Her spirits plummeted like stone. Why do they disappear? What if bits of me start disappearing? What if one day I wake up to a pile of sticks. What if I am just a rag doll filled with leaves and debris.

That would explain the rustle of leaves which echoed inwardly and a fistful of her hair becoming leaves and how empty she felt and the trail of debris she would leave when her hunger was on the brink of insanity.

Steadying herself, Elena shifted to face the ceiling. She had to get better- but how? Maybe killing Fake-Elena would set her free but did that mean she killed a part of herself? What was she doing- waiting to go insane or fall apart? Maybe destroying or getting rid of the mirror would kill Fake-Elena but what if that just set it free? Fake-Elena grew from her father's soul so what if she needed help her father pass onto the next world? That made sense and seemed like a sensible plan but there was no way of going about it. She wasn't sure how she could lay on a sofa falling apart, gradually getting frailer whilst the world went on without her.

She had to visit her father's grave. That was a start. Where in the world was it, though? Pressing through her clipped memories, Elena found her father's death hollow and hardly a memory at all. It shifted in her skull as if trying to make sense of itself. It didn't fit her memory, it was too faint, indistinctive.

Finding a way to her father's grave meant she couldn't do on the trip with Luna no matter how much she wanted to. Hearing footsteps across the landing, she hastily pulled a drowsy, sad look over her face as a carefully, formulated lie formed.