Chương 10: Chapter Nine: Mercy? Did You Leave The World Behind?

Music. Music from out of a horned, brass vessel standing on strange legs connected to a wooden box. Nonsense words spill out of my mouth half a second before they escape from that horn. The same song repeats and stalls in the same place. Lanhor, deti, veylu, hasi - hondi, lan purti. Who mehaded? Zan suni.

"It's a million little horrible things, and I'm being swallowed by it. This is my small, little painful death, the death of my soul..." It's fruitless to make sense of the insensible. It lags just there, on the precipice of a moan and a hello. Time splinters, and I raise my head in confusion. Familiar surroundings move like islands near and far. Couch, rug, popcorn walls–No, that's not right. My mind slides back into place and corrects the error.

Spiraling away from the truth and further into a circle drawn around me. Seeing what I want to see and not what's real. But it was real. Her mournful voice croons in that old eighties solo style I would have danced to in the kitchen. Something about it makes me want to get up and dance. Spin away and to nowhere. Just four walls between me and something... I'm forgetting something, aren't I?

"Do you believe what you say? No, you don't know. All that you crave, right at the edge, and thrown away. Do you believe what you see?" I'm dancing. a flowing green dress, I don't remember putting on spins in an arc around me, ballooning as I twirl from the couch to the middle of the room. Beige fibers sweep my toes, and I spin so hard it feels like I left my brain behind in the process.

"Your eyes are just mirrors. Pull them out and see what you find. If it's the truth you crave, that serpent's your face..." Empty and smooth on the inside, I no longer minded the strange tune as the words started forming meanings I didn't know what to make of. Did I need to? Nothing's wrong here. Every utterance became a deliverance as I relished the clearing of my mind's chaos. Closing my eyes and letting my feet guide me to the strange beat. Spilled coins matched the song, and I sang in sync with her. Me. I sang.

I'm singing. Paint runs down my face and disappears. I'm trying. I'm trying so hard to remember. I was there. I was here. That room. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. I was in that room, and I was held by her. Who is she? The dance twists as my fingers grip the dress I'd never worn. At least not yet. In the corner of my mind, something entirely me screams for me. Howls at me to see. To see past it/ What is it?

The couch calls to me, and I shuffle back. One heavy cement foot at a time, resisting the pull of the repeating song, as my mouth dries. Still, I'm singing. Or I'm screaming? I feel blind. I was blind. The world falls apart, and the rug feels wrong. The leather sticking to my sweaty thighs is wrong. I am wrong. The longer I sit in that feeling, at war with the outside and inside, the more my head hurts. Am I wrong for wanting to forget? Or am I wrong for trying to remember?

Fountains of memories explode and then disappear in the chaos. Rebuilding piece after piece of me. And suddenly my faithless body is arching, and my mouth is opened in a scream. A real scream that isn't confined to echoes of my mind. I'm falling with no end in sight. When the music stops, I'm still screaming, half-sobs interrupting only to break away into a primal wail of regret and horror. Blood leaks from the corner of my mouth, and I throw up all over the wrong apartment. The wrong house. The wrong life.

Warm hands lift my head, and I'm soullessly staring at my salvation. Strange and beautiful. Overlapping figures in my double vision form one beautiful picture. One deity.

"Mama?" Her lips pull back to reveal her smile. Soft as firelight and cold as the wind, slicing my cheeks.

"I hate you." No. No, no, no. Don't do this.

"You're an animal."

"If it weren't for you..." Her eyes light up in cruel delight, cascading colors interfering with each other, as her hands smush my tear-stained face together. Stained glass eyes emptying and rolling out of my face like marbles. She smells so sweet and so rotten. Her hug is so right, I can't imagine anyone else embracing me. Blood-curdling screams escape me as I roll back and forth on the bed, as so many hands hold me down. Her demands and terrified orders sucker punch me as I melt into the sheets.

The awful smell of herbs is dragging me back under. Seizing under the crushing weight of her love. Reality splinters into endless shards, and I can't put myself back together again. This is how to disappear.

"Is this your best?" A roar from the depths of hell caused a young trainee unlucky enough to be on call today to jump.

"Niathe, calm down!" Hadrian's eyebags had grown bags as she watched her close associate pace, sword in hand, like a wounded lion in front of her. Whimpers and cries tugged at the strings of the minds of all who heard her. Worry and confusion were plain to see on her face, but underlying it. Guilt. Everyone else was dismissed from the room; there was no way to hide it. Hadrian watched her shudder with each hoarse scream and flinch at the sound. Wide lilac eyes refuse to look where her heart is.

All illusions are cast aside in that moment, and all she can do is pray. Her shame would never come to light, and her mistake never to be repeated.

"May the Gods..." The sky darkens as the hours go past, increasingly pale faces of physicians, and the thundering of the hearts of those in the know. It was all pointing to a conclusion too unbearable to mention. Green eyes vacantly gazed out of stained glass windows beneath a shrine. Blood-soaked clothes under her palms loosened their creases as she relaxed her grip. The smallest of smiles graced her face, and her chubby finger curled once again. Tracing the imprint of a scar healed over.

Blood streamed down in a steady trail from the corner of her lips. Rain clung to the windows, and a brief shock of lightning revealed a haunting visage.

"Welcome back." Shadows of rain darkened her pale face, "Sister." Her glowing eyes turned to the incomplete sculpture, and her smile broke. Broken mirrors reflecting the beauty and horror of the effigy.

"Have mercy on us all."