The Void

Chapter Three. The Grand Ballroom.

I can feel the ghost of Selena's grip around my wrist, the lingering warmth of the way her skin pressed tightly against mine, leaves phantom tingles behind. It's strange to know the woman's name now, to know that she is following just a few paces behind me with an anxiety that rivals my own.

It's a hard pill to swallow, knowing that her emotions seem to battle against my own in a way I don't like acknowledging. The way my own death is now becoming centred around her and the small fleck of guilt that bites at me for saying I would never forgive her.

We leave the bathroom behind; the cold stone and white lighting was intense and yet from the moment I step out of it everything else feels colder. More suffocating than anything I have experienced before, like whatever magic is at play here is a chokehold around my throat.

Magic. If I hadn't seen it, I would be convinced that I finally got brain damage from all the head trauma. The fact all those fairy tales and horror stories are all real, well, my disbelief is about as palpable as one could expect.

A chill runs up my spine at the smell that envelops us, stepping to the back of the single file line that runs down the corridor of the dungeon. There frankly shouldn't be such nice suits down here. The smell assaults me, a headache blooming behind my eyes, as it burns the inside of my nose. Bleach. Blood. Death.

Darkness glides against my skin as I follow everyone forwards, the click of heels resonates against the silent concrete. The odd sniffle can be heard from the front of the line, as the magnitude of the silence around us tightens.

A blur of colour moves in front of me, men and women that were dirty and cold are now adorned in dresses and suits just as majestic as my own. They weren't granted showers; blood still smears against their skin, but they've been pampered in every other way.

Fear clings to the air around us, thickening the oxygen with every gulping breath I take.

My eyes dart over my shoulder, letting hysteria steal my composure for a second. The tense line of her jaw, the way the gold that coats her eyelids twinkles even in the dark lighting and the way her eyes are focused on one thing, me. I can't tell what she's thinking, perhaps she's starting to regret not giving me what I asked for, or maybe she's tired of feeling my heartbeat along with her own. It dulls, fades as the minutes pass but it's still there rapidly as my own.

To think I have spent years of my life working and saving and failing at all of it, only to be shoved into the most expensive gown I have ever seen. To die. It's wasteful surely, dolling us up in the finest clothes they can find, to have us stain it. Their distress isn't as compartmentalised as my own, their heads dart around in some stage of distress, crying or shaking, or so pale that it seems as though they are a corpse standing here. A painful stab resonates from my stomach, to see so many people stand around you and knowing you're all doomed is something that no one could possibly rationalise.

Fighting for freedom, for life , for myself has never been something I have wanted, death has always lingered on the outside like a friend I wish to welcome in. I've been resigned to unhappiness since the moment my Mum died. Frankly, the life we lived before wasn't glamorous either. Smothering my anger in public, letting it fester and build in my chest became second nature. My pillow bore the brunt of what I couldn't articulate.

The end goal was always to push it down far enough that I could fool myself into thinking it didn't exist anymore, until it stopped poking at me during the day and raising its vicious head in the night.

My rebellious stage grew and faltered when I was younger, our life was hectic, running from something she wouldn't confess and yet, she resisted the urge to throttle me when I pushed back hard enough to make us both cry. This moment here feels like unavoidable doom, there's no point breaking my own mould to try and fight for once, a waste of energy even. Energy I don't have, not for people that have the ability to rip us all apart without breaking a sweat.