ᴀꜱʏʟᴜᴍ :: ᴛ.ꜱʜᴇʟʙʏ

ix: last laugh

The streets of Birmingham had turned to chaos. Alone in the fray, Winnow clutched her threadbare coat more tightly around her frame and tried not to panic, jostled by bodies far larger and rougher than her own. Almost everyone else in the crowd seemed to be taller than her, and she could hardly see anything over the looming silhouettes of their heads and broad shoulders.

Oh, God. Already, Winnow regretted her decision to steal free from her mother's apartment and take to the streets, but it couldn't be helped. Such silence had swallowed the flat since Albie had taken her home from London. In the car, she hadn't managed to find the nerve to confront him about Chang's accusations, though she had mulled over the right words so many times. And in the days after, Albie had disappeared back to the city; Winnow hadn't seen him since. The walls of her reassuring childhood flat had begun to feel like the bars of a cage.

Eventually, she would talk to Albie properly, and discover the truth from his lips. But she couldn't do it now. Not when everything was so fresh, so raw. Not when she could still hear Chang's smooth voice telling her that Albie was a Titanic, just like the men who had once broken her to pieces and thrown her behind iron bars to rot.

In the days since London, Winnow had not seen anything more of Brilliant Chang or his many snow-laden friends, either, though he had sent her more than one red rose pinned to a calligraphic letter, filled with compliments and platitudes. Though it was easy enough to doubt him, Winnow knew she had earned this place and his distant respect through her agreement to their deal; he would treat her to material comforts for as long as she stuck to her word. He had never outlined the consequences for breaking it, but she could guess well enough.

With Albie in London and her mother working at the laundry during the days, the reassurance of solitude had begun to wear into claustrophobia. Every night, Winnow could hear the distant hoots of laughter and shouted conversation from the city streets, and though they were filled with joy rather than pain, it wasn't long before they began to remind Winnow of the screams of other patients in the asylum. Sometimes, in the blurred space between day and night, she had been the one screaming.

Sometimes, even now, her mother pulled her from her nightmares and held her until the shaking stopped.

Air. At first, Winnow had only needed air, if not an outright escape. She didn't know these streets anymore, strung with laughing revellers, with glamorous women hanging off the arms of suited men, with tiny vials of white powder flashing between palms. It didn't matter. For some reason, her hands were shaking. The days spent in solitude, inside, uncertain of one of the few people she loved the most, had brought her plummeting back to the painful company she had kept in the asylum: trapped alongside her thoughts and her memories, wishing she could escape both.

Soon, though, with the key to her apartment clutched tightly in her hand as she walked, Winnow gravitated towards the glow of city lights, finding the place where life shone brightest. There, her head couldn't possibly remain crowded with darkness, with the wraiths of what had once been.