the dark side [tom r.]

7|| Playing God.

Love was a harmless mental illness.

Rosalind had heard that quote in a film. But they lied in films, didn't they?

Pretty women powdered their faces and smiled behind cameras, their smiles so fake they looked like rotten jewellery. And they recited lies, façades written on frail paper, letters curving like the swell of a chest or the burn of a kiss.

And they lied about love. It wasn't perfectly splendid. It wasn't beautiful and romantic. Love was a dog from hell; a dangerous, bloody hound that ripped the soul apart and then stitched and ripped and stitched – until the shreds were so damaged they were beyond repair.

Rosalind pondered as she sauntered around the manor, fingers tracing sleeping paintings and bare feet stepping against cold marble. The silence was deadly, like the stillness of a hallowed cemetery withering near an abandoned church.

The air was chilly too, causing armies of goosebumps to rise beneath the red silk robe she was wearing, embroidered with lace the colour of pomegranates. She needed to get back to her bedroom.

But then she heard it, a muffled, quiet whimper. Rosalind paused in her tracks, fingers clenched, eyebrows creased in concentration. Was she dreaming again? The nanosecond of uncertainty that glossed over her brain was enough to leave her dazed. What if she was stuck in a loop of dreams, her mind unable to distinguish between bleak reality and the chambers of her subconscious?

Another whimper, a sob, a cry. She stepped closer. Sob. She identified the source of the sound. Tom's office. Whimper. The heroine touched the doorway, the nearby painting, her hair, any physical object that could verify her consciousness. Sob. She pinched herself. No, this was reality. She was awake.

Pushing the door open, Rosalind found Tom leaning back in his chair, fingers tapping rhythmically on his desk. Right across from him sat a boy –not surpassing the age of four– whom she assumed had been making the noises that begged for her aid.

"Rosalind, I see you've finally come," Tom welcomed, leaving his seat and making his way to her. The heroine was staring perplexedly at the child's back, wondering why he didn't make any reaction to her presence. The whimpering hadn't stopped.

"Were you expecting me?" She asked, vision still stuck on the unmoving boy. Some sort of eeriness oozed off of him, an unsettling aura that told her he wasn't just any ordinary kid. What did she expect from Tom, anyway? Surely it was nothing usual.

"Do take a seat." He opened the door wider for her to enter, and she studied him for a hard moment before walking in. Reluctance was obvious in her steps, especially when she realised that she was wearing nothing but a robe in his office, at two in the morning. The notion painfully brought back teenage memories that she mistook as dreamy clouds after so many years of bitter solitude.

Rosalind chose the chair on the left side of his desk, and before she sat she caught sight of the body sitting across the bureau. A gasp left her throat, oxygen alarmingly restricting in her chest as her visage turned the colour of chalk.

The boy –or creature– was faceless, eye sockets empty with nothing to stare at but obscure blackness. His nose and mouth were only a patch of skin, his face lacking any humane feature that made him any less terrifying. She was utterly baffled, so much that she had to sit in silence for a couple of minutes.