Black Wings

4. Down the Rabbit Hole (part 1)

I cracked my eyes open and blinked against the blinding light. There was something jabbing my elbow. Actually, there was something jabbing my whole body. I pushed my palms against a rough surface and stiffly sat up. My limbs felt like twenty pound dumbbells were strapped to them. I groaned at the steady throbbing in my head. What the heck happened? The last thing I remembered was the crazy pedo guy shooting me.

I gasped and looked down at my chest, where a two inch hole in my shirt was filled with dried flecks of blood. It didn't hurt at all. Am I dead? Carefully, I peeled my formerly favorite t-shirt away from my skin and gaped at the clearly unmarred skin underneath. Was I not shot after all? Why did my shirt have a hole in it, then? I rubbed the blood away, searching for my wound to no avail. It was gone.

I looked around me frantically, trying to see if it somehow jumped off my body. Where could my gunshot wound have gone? I only registered that I was sitting in a pile of rubble after the sound of sirens penetrated my ears. What on Earth had happened? As far as my eyes could go, there were huge chunks of rock and debris strewn everywhere. Was that a yellow table over there? I twisted around, spotting a familiar arching M half buried in debris.

"You were not supposed to come back."

I jerked at her voice. She sounded louder and more clear, like she was speaking directly into my ear.

What happened? I asked her. I didn't get a response, but I felt something... strange. Was that resentment? I shook my head at the feeling. The sound of sirens was getting louder. I needed to get out of here. I stumbled to my feet, nearly falling over the shifting rocks. Bits of plaster and god knows what tumbled out of my curls, coating whatever clean parts of me left a dusty white. I didn't exactly know where I was going, just stumbling my way over rocks and tables and chairs and- was that a human leg? Oh God.

I kept going until the debris was few and far in between, and pushed past the murmuring pedestrians that started to gather around the carnage.

"Hey! Hey, you!"

I ignored the voice of a nosy woman and kept going. Maybe she'd leave me alone.

"Stop! What the hell happened here?!" Red and blue lights flashed in my peripheral.

I ran. What a time to be wearing heeled boots.

✹ ✹ ✹ ✹ ✹

I didn't even think about where I was running to, just unconsciously feeling pulled toward the warmth and safety of my brother's one story house. Home. I got tons of weird stares on my way there, so there was no doubt that the police would find me eventually. I just had to explain everything to Chris, and he would fix this whole mess. Who knew? Maybe I had hallucinated that whole episode, and Chris would tell me that McDonalds did not get mysteriously crushed, and we would all laugh and visit a therapist. I looked down at my still bloody, dusty clothes. Okay, so the hallucination thing was a stretch, but it was the only plausible explanation I could think of. Unless everything I know is a lie.

I immediately shut down that line of thinking and knocked as heavily as I could with sore limbs. I waited a few minutes, then knocked again. Where was he? I tried the doorknob, knowing Chris never left the door unlocked, but to my surprise, the knob turned without a hitch. Weird.

"Chris," my voice was a hoarse whisper as I stepped inside the entrance hall and kicked off my shoes. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Chris!"

I scoured every foot of our small, minimally furnished home to no avail. He should have been home. He worked a midnight shift at some packing company, and he was always home during the evenings after I got back from school. The sun had already set a while ago, but he always stayed home until I went to bed at 11 PM on the dot. "Christopher!"

Maybe he freaked when I didn't come home on time and he realized I left my phone on my nightstand this morning. He probably went out looking for me. I raced to my room to get my phone, giving a longing look at my sunflower yellow queen bed. I would call Chris and shower all the gunk off first, then I could take a nice, long nap.

I had twenty seven messages and twelve missed calls. A few messages were just for a group project. Twenty one messages and eleven calls were from and increasingly worried Kate. I had only gotten one call from Chris, and he didn't leave a voice message. He texted me only once: You need to come home now, Lily.

He was going to be so pissed. I hesitantly dialed him, my sense of dread growing with each brrrrr of the call going through. He didn't pick up. He always picked up, or shot me a text when he couldn't talk. I waited several minutes, frozen to my plush pink carpet. He didn't text me, so I called again. I stopped after the third attempt, knowing it would be fruitless to keep calling- unlike a certain fiery redhead that had called me eleven times. Even though she was my best friend and knew about most of my issues, I had no idea how to explain what went on today. I didn't even know what went on today.

I resolved that I would feel far better about calling Kate if I looked like a normal, clean human being. Stepping into the steaming hot spray of my shower, I closed my eyes and pretended that the water sloshing off my body wasn't tinged red. Sadly, all my clothes ended up in the dumpster- and that included my well worn leather jacket. Ah well, I guess a little shopping therapy would go a long way in making me feel better about the great big mess I was in. It was rapidly becoming clear to me that what I experienced today was not a hallucination at all- at least, not the McDonalds thing. I still wasn't sure if Lucifer/Arthur or Voice was real, but I definitely knew that I didn't want them to be real. All I wanted was a normal life. I wanted to go to a normal college with a normal best friend and get a normal boyfriend and a normal job. I didn't have room for men with wings and disembodied voices occupying my future plans in life. I just hoped to God that the person I had stabbed wasn't real, because if he was, I was a murderer. A no good, horrible villain that didn't deserve a normal life.

"On the grand scale of things, I'd hardly call you a villain," Voice proclaimed.

My eyes snapped open. If Voice was actually a real person, she heard all my thoughts. Every single, embarrassing one. She was there when I butchered conversations, committed petty thievery, and she was even there when I kissed Kate.

"Your life is very sad and ultimately insignificant."

Gee, thanks. Love you too. I never really interacted with her beyond a few sarcastic remarks, but I was dying to know if she had any insight on what happened at McDonalds. The last thing I remembered was dropping to the floor after being shot- or not shot. She may have just been a hallucination, but it didn't hurt to ask, right? I mean, if I was actually crazy, I think witnessing a winged guy who named himself after the devil really topped asking my inner voice a question.

Voice...

"I refuse to be addressed as such. You may call me Wraith."

I wasn't sure if naming your voice was healthy, but it was admittedly easier to call her by a name instead of just 'Voice'. Maybe I'd even feel less crazy if referred to her with a name, but Wraith was just creepy. Wasn't that like a monstrous ghost? Why couldn't I call her by a friendly ghost's name?

Can I call you Casper?

"Absolutely not."

It was a masculine name, so I couldn't really blame her. Casey?

"My patience is wearing thin, Parasite."

We're naming you, not me. Parasite? Really? You're the parasite!

"You are the only parasite occupying this body, Parasite!"

I took a deep breath for patience. Who knew conversing with a voice in your head could be so exhausting? Can you just give me a not creepy name to call you?

There was a really, really long pause in which I shampooed and conditioned my hair with my signature apple scented duo. I would've stayed longer in the serenity of the steamy shower, but my skin resembled a very ripe prune for a while now. I turned off the water and stepped onto my bath mat when she finally deigned to respond.

"The name given to me at birth was Lilian."

I turned on the hot, calming water again and stepped back into the shower.