Terror. A dimension mirroring the living one--but morphed to reflect the imagination of its Overseer. And the current Overseer... has refused to relinquish her power for centuries, tormenting her souls--"terrors"--into becoming... zombies.
Arielle f...
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Levitating above the foyer, to peek out the window over the front door, Penelope snarled. "Oh, she has help already, hm?"
She narrowed her gaze on Arielle, who'd spun to gauge the house once more. The fiery-haired girl sent her a glare worthy of a thousand sharpened swords, and its intensity hit Penelope square in the stomach, knocking her backwards a few feet. She almost lost her balance and toppled to the ground, but she held firm, maintaining Arielle's glare. Could she see Penelope? Or was she only pretending to, encouraging herself, believing she'd be able to breach through that barrier of fire someday?
"Someday." Penelope snickered. "When I decide it."
She'd heard the boy—Oscar, was that his name?—tell Arielle that one only comes into the house if the Overseer allows it; and he was right, of course. But there was always a twist, always a workaround. Over the years, some had found means to hop through that fire, or had created small slits in the wall of flames to creep through—and they pounded on the front door, their hair aflame, their eyes like balls of molten gold, their flesh charred as they choked, crumbled, died. Theirs were the corpses that decorated Penelope's halls—in remembrance of those stubborn souls who'd tried to reach her, but died in the process.
If anyone ever made it past the door, she wanted them to see what happened to those who pushed her too much.
"Ugh, craziness?" She'd detected Oscar's tone turning to disgust, and she snarled at him. "Who is this kid to say that? He doesn't know me." She tilted her head, scanning him from head to toe. "And I don't know him. I'd remember a hunk like that."
Hunk. Another word she'd picked up from the other Penelope. How she hated that their brains molded as one and that all of Penelope's idioms tended to stick, even after they detached from one another. Void-Penelope's vocabulary was loose, uncaring of proper grammar and manners; she'd lost all sense of time and absorbed the language all her Void-dwellers used, replicating it. But Penelope of Terror, no; she despised how the other dimension's inhabitants spoke. She'd been raised with a certain poise and in a century when one didn't utter curses in public—or even in private, sometimes—or where women didn't wear pants.
All the females in Terror wore pants. They had high ponytails and low-cut shirts and slung weapons over their shoulders or into holsters hanging from their hips—and Penelope hated it. The disrespect for tradition, the lack of elegance; how she missed her days as a living human, where all women did was knit and sip on tea and support their husbands.
Refusing to dwell on a past she'd destroyed, Penelope watched as Arielle and Oscar departed in the opposite direction, towards the inflamed trees surrounding the property.
"Yes, run off, you two." She snorted. "Like Oscar said, sever our connection, yes?" Spinning from the window, she hovered across the way until she arrived on the second floor landing. When her feet hit the ground, a few rotten pieces of the remaining railing collapsed and gathered in the growing pile of rust and soot behind her. "Whatever that's supposed to mean."
