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THERE SHE LAY: beneath the subtle kiss of a waning moon pressing gently past the stained glass windows to forge a technicolor dreamscape and seep moon beams into her bloodstream, there's a gentle stillness to it all, as if it were a sweet reverie.
( instead: a nightmare ).
A colorful kaleidoscope burns behind her eyelids, and then there's a stir; a furrow of her eyebrows, a crease in her frown lines, a stinging ache in her temple and the slow brush of her lashes against her cheeks. It's too much at first, to open her eyes that is, but she can't ignore the strain in her muscles or the abnormally fast thump of her heartbeat reverberating through her mind.
Her eyes are first met with a vault ceiling of overreaching wooden beams and shadowy corners untouched by the lunar light, orchestrating an ambience of eerie silence only disrupted by the scuttle of wicked phantoms slithering between the stone angels and polish chipped pews. She can see the flittering fine dust particles in the air and just ahead of her, the stained glass windows of prophets & holy souls lined up.
When the ringing in her ears mellows out just to the point where she can't hear the rapid beating of her heart, Jun catches onto a distant rustle and then a harsh and rapid flapping, it's when she sees a lone black feather swaying– rhythmic and hypnotically –downwards can she assume it's a bird, a crow most possibly from the size of it. As her senses start to sharpen, there's even a creak; a weak groan of what sounded like old wood holding too much weight.
The creaking of the wood continued every now and then as Jun willed the strength to return to her bones, it soon became oddly deafening as it resonated through her head to irritate the already ache beneath her brow. The girl sits up, leaning on her elbows, with a frazzled mind yet an unfounded resolve to locate the origin of the sound, throat closed up and drying with each deep breath she takes past her lips.
She blinks, shifts her eyes across the room once, then again. Nothing.
CREAKKK!
It's there again, following the aforementioned flapping and Jun winces, hand to the side of her face and her eyes are burning. She lays there for a moment, against the hard wooden floor panes urging the haze of her mind to clear. She aches all over but a specific kink in her neck causes the girl to slowly tilt her head back, thick black tresses sweeping onto the floor and she sighs. Be it out of exhaustion or exasperation, she doesn't know.
Her eyes open again, brown pools reflecting the Holy Mary as the moon strikes light through the tall window ( in the corner are red spider lilies budding, what an odd place for flowers to breath life ), illuminating the image against Jun's cheeks. Despite basking in heavenly glows, there's a tightening in the girl's gut that rattles her core, something isn't right. There's a thought at the back of her mind, coming to the tips just to recede into the depths of the forgotten, but she catches it, tightly grasping with a sense of purpose.
Look up.
She does. She wishes she hadn't.
The creak sounds again, except this time she knows where it's coming from: she's not alone here it's seems, feet dangling, rope grinding against one of the wooden beams, then wrapped and knotted against a throat ( A flapping of wings again ), crows pecking at flesh with each gradual turn of the body. Jun's thoughts are slow, perhaps it's the blood rushing to her head and the thumping of her heartbeat flooding her ears once more and when had her breaths become so shallow? so harsh that her lungs were stinging.
Jun doesn't move, at least not until the body slowly swings round to face her. It's a girl, or a shell of one now with the color drained from her face but oddly enough, it's not the shadows or the sight of a corpse that encourages a reaction from baffled Jun. No.
It's when the girl of the living notices that the girl of the dead has no eyes, empty sockets, hollow, of rotting flesh and abysses of nothingness, and yet Jun feels she's staring right into the depths of her with her hands wickedly tied clasp in a prayer, mouth sewn shut.
CREAKKK!
And then Jun's screaming. Screaming as she scrambles to her knees, screaming as she kicks herself so far back into the wall as to merge with the shadows, screaming as the pain beneath her brow surges, as she covers her ears and shuts her eyes ( as if the image would whoosh away, like it's a mirage, god she wished it were just a nightmare ), until it feels like her dry throat's ripping open with sores and cuts and until she can't hear her heart BADUMPBADUMPBADUMP through her fucking bones that she feels are gonna snap&crackle through her skin.
It's loud, more thanloud if she can feel it shaking her to the core. She's screeching bloody murder! with her nails digging into her scalp and she's shaking her head so fast back and forth that her neck might just snap, hair whipping to stick to her teary cheeks, eyes spilling oceans and she just doesn't want to hear the damn creaking of the rope and the flapping of wings and the pecking of those flesh eating birds.
She's quaking in her own skin cause she may not know much right now with her foggy head and frazzled thoughts but this feeling is familiar and there's that strain in her muscles–in her nerves–that's telling her she damn well better be frightened, like all this is a reflex, a repeated action for a repeated trauma (?).
Amidst the madness is a sole word coming from Jun's lips, a mantra, a name she doesn't know yet one that she truly believes will be her solace: Izuku.
