Grey City Rhapsody

III: Halfway There

Ash's eyes opened and found herself in a room she didn't recognize. From floor to ceiling the walls were a soft pink furnished with plush carpet and wooden furniture painted a creamy white. A small bed meant for a small child lay against the back wall; adjacent to the wall: a floral painted toy chest rested beneath a window so dark, it was as if something had caused the moon and stars to hide in fright. Her eyes fell upon the dainty nightstand with a carousel light sitting atop it. Images of happy giraffes, elephants, stars, and suns danced in gold around the room as a gentle melody lulled her nerves. She stood alone beside the door, unmoving in her blue-collared night dress. If only there were curtains she could close to alleviate the unsuitable wrongness of the black window. Maybe I can cover it with the blanket? she thought. The steel pins of the music box hidden somewhere at the base of the dancing rose-colored carousel continued to click and strum a serene melody as Ash marched purposefully toward the far side of the bed and jerk the sheets out of their well-made placement on the mattress. Shaking it open once, the woman turned toward the creepy pane; arms already above her head and blanket obscuring her view. As she reached on the ball of her feet to grab at the unused curtain rod, the music tapered off to a halt as a golden giraffe stopped in its dance right behind her. 

That's when she noticed that in the sudden and deafening silence, the clicking had continued, toneless except as a fall in pitch like a metal fork against a plate made of china or fingers drumming rhythmically on a hard granite countertop, or...long, sharp nails tapping monotonously against a glass surface. Fingers trembling slightly and knuckles white, she let out a shaky breath and lowered the clothing offending her sight. What she came face to face with was something no man or woman would ever want lurking in the dark. But these were not the horrific luminescent orbs from her previous dream, these eyes were unnaturally human, an unnatural hue of Cerulean; and far too small for a face that seemed to have no end in the inky blackness of night. To her unimaginable horror, the creature opened its nightmarish maw to reveal rows upon rows of sharp, glistening daggers in the light of the happy giraffe. Aisling could do nothing but close her eyes and wish the terrifying creature to disappear or her heart to stop beating so that she might have some welcome respite from it in death. 

Her relief came in the form of a foreign pressure on her left side that forced her face to hit something solid to her right. A hiccupping laugh escaped before being stifled, and Ash, after remembering where she was, looked over the fat man's chest at her brother's goofy face. "Wake up," he chuckled, "the plane's descending already." 

As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, the fat man glared at her before looking back at the magazine in his hands. She stuck her tongue out at him as soon as he wasn't watching and peered out the small plane window at the airport runways and the varying shades of grey in the dreary, clouded sky. "Welcome home," she whispered to herself.