Amidst Crimson Kisses

Chapter Twenty: Otherworldy Beauty

Margo's POV

The ballroom expires in a clamor of angels as I fall under the transparency of contorted madness. It's not long before I'm revolving around the marbled landscape as my body deforms into the perversion of a plastic ballerina, spinning in Pandora's box. I sail across the floor, chasing after the abyss while Mortem entangles within the lost fragments of my mind. It's a revolting mystery, but I can't deny our fluid movements as I intertwine with the infamous beauty of Rosewood Academy. Her name is enchanted like her countenance as our palms connect and we travel the breadth of a circle.

How I had escaped the imprisonment of Hallie and Marley's spell wasn't important, not when I gained depth in my dive to mayhem. I'm aware of the surface cracks severing parts of my amnesia from the girl roaming the walls of my mind as she lays waste to cherished memories. They say only pain decimates forgotten memories, and I can perceive the trauma inhabiting her spirit. I ponder yesterday as Hallie's immorality becomes a whisper in the wind while Marley professed her fall from grace in terror, but still held peace in her fierce eyes. Of course, Hallie calmed Marley like a wave settling into the ocean as the tide vanished amongst the lucid stream and my comprehension dissolved in serenity.

"Hello, again," Hallie says, glaring into my bewildered irises. "I need you to focus on my voice and drown out the rest of the world. You need to understand that today never happened. You never met Ajiona in the garden, so you never walked to our table in the first place, and we never used illegal drugs to persuade you to tell the truth. Understand you're nothing to us, so we're not friends, associates, or even on the same level of society. In fact, the next time you even think of approaching us remember deep down, you'll never be good enough to inhale the same air that we breathe."

"P-Please, don't make me do this," I beg, forcing each word off my tongue as I collapse on my knees. "Hallie, whatever I did to hurt you, I'm sorry, but p-please don't force me to do this. Ajiona is all I have...I have no one."

"That's a good girl," Hallie sneers. "Now you're going to take a walk back inside the building until you've reached the elevator, and you're not going to stop wandering until your intoxicated mind finds the fifth floor. After you find it, I want you to curl up in a circle and fall asleep until you forget everything that's happened today."

I didn't know the beast I was capable of becoming as I disentangled in a den of hypocrisy, and withered in the darkened halls of Rosewood. Indeed, my comprehension wasn't solely mine as I ricochet across the room intertwining with a phantom. I thought I would never break the grasp Hallie held over my heart. Then a disembodied voice spoke to me in the blackened hallway and she told me to remember everything everyone has forced me to forget. She said to remember until the night I saved Asher becomes clearer then the ocean I dived into even when I was commanded to let them both die.

"A token of my kindness is my name, Ana as well as a these parting words. You and Juliet are closer to each other then you ever thought you were. So in her name I gift you with freedom."

After Ana's command I found myself abandoning Hallie's cold commands as Juliet expelled from the opposite end of the hallway. I was imprisoned in myself for far too long, following someone else's blind orders until Ana freed me from teetering through the silence of Rosewood Academy. Now I wonder if I should follow Juliet into remembrance until I grow closer to the truth about her great escape?

"Remember who you are?" Juliet smiles as she miraculously revolves to life in my arms. "There's beauty even behind your darkest sin, and where you were once ferocious as a lion now, you were left desolate. You have to find the spark deep within your soul and hidden behind fragments of your brain disguised as fantasy. You have to let go of the girl you think you are, and that includes every aspect of everyone you believe you've met. You can never trust anyone, not until you watch them all bleed."