Gabriel: Chapter 6

Gabriel

He woke up suddenly, as if cold water had been poured all over his body. He thought he had heard a scream, maybe it was just his imagination again. He thought he heard a voice singing in his dreams, thought he saw another sacrifice touching those cursed emerald stones. No, he was still in that room, the one that was padded to prevent him from hurting himself. God, he hated those walls, wishing that he could tear them apart and escape through the hollow he would create. For now those walls would remain, for now he would bend to the will and power of those who kept him in this prison. Soon though, soon he would escape and there would be nothing they could do. Not even her, with her traitorous body and that damn child of hers. No, he wasn’t going to think of her, not now and never again.

He sat up, throwing his legs over the side of the twin-size bed. He leaned forward and rested his weary head in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. He thought he could feel the poison of the place seeping into his system, he knew it was there and didn’t much care now. What did it matter if he died anyway? He could sit here, pitying himself, he thought. Or he could pace about this empty room, prowling like a caged tiger. He could call for a nurse to get him a sleep aid or he could he just lie awake for the rest of the night, not that there was much night left. From a tiny window he could see the first few rays of sunshine peeking through the gloom.

Yes, he could do any of those things. But did he really want to? He knew he didn’t feel like sleeping, not after the dreams and the realities that seemed intertwined and yet illusory. He didn’t want to prowl his cage, nor did he want to lie awake pitying himself. So, what to do now? He closed his eyes a moment, allowing his mind to drag him back to his post in a blackened field. He could hear them singing, singing over and over to the next woman to die.

Only, there was no woman there, no new girl tied to the runes and the skies. He heard footsteps, bare feet on the cracked and worn emerald green road. He refused to look up, he didn’t want to see another sacrifice, not another death. He listened closer and heard only one set of feet, one person, not the five that came with sacrifice, death and tradition. One person. He looked up, his green eyes flashing with the thought of saving one person, one girl from such a fate.

She had stepped on the runes, was already beginning to succumb to the magic weaved within stone by blood and bone. No, she wasn’t transfixed by magic, he realized, she was trapped by his eyes. She stared at him, as if she knew him, but she was too close to the stones that would take her.

He began to scream at the top of his voice, crying out and wishing she could hear. “Get Out! GET OUT!”

He saw her eyes widen in terror, saw her press her hands over her ears, trying to block his voice out. Then she ran, she fled back the way she came, never having touched the stones that would bring her harm. One, he thought, I have saved one.

Lyra: Chapter 5

Lyra

The air was still and warm, soft in its delicious suffocation. She could feel the warmth fill her lungs, straining to draw in the breath. Every moment she drifted further out on a dead river, drifting on a box boat. The stars twinkled like tiny flames above her, burning up the atmosphere in white light. The silence grew heavier and heavier, pushing her down and pinning her in her imagined vessel. Candles floated past on this imaginary sea, sparkling in the endless darkness and gently burning all memory. She wondered if this could go on forever or if it would somehow end, her thoughts dancing about her.

Gently, she began to twirl, her little boat turning slowly like the needle of a compass, growing faster and faster. Everything moved by until all was blended together into a weary gray, melting and running to the bottom of the water. It dripped and faded until all that could be seen were four white walls and a white door.

She stood from her dissipated boat and traveled for hours to the white door that, a moment ago, had stood a hand’s breadth away. When she turned the silver handle she found herself suddenly filled with cool tongues of flame, burning up from within until everything was ablaze. She could not feel, only the flames drowning her beneath waves of heat-possessed feeling. They burned her into ashes, then froze her in cold fire. She collapsed, falling to her knees, frozen and burnt.

A hand took her arm and pulled her out of herself, leaving the burning corpse to brighten the white room. When she opened her eyes, she saw everything in a different light and a man, with enchanted green eyes, closed them again. Blinded, she struggled to move, but could not, trapped in icy quicksand. Then everything stood still, time not even daring to move. The enchanted green eyes opened her silver ones to a violent sunrise that changed all to blood and rained fiery petals of forgotten flowers.

When her eyes opened again she was encased in metal, trapped in an iron prison. The enchanted green eyes stood outside her, pouring into her soul and forcing himself into her mind. She fought the eyes, fought the prison only to find herself being dragged deeper into the depths of it by chains of sky and moon. Silenced by a wickedness that lay at the center of the enchanted green eyes.

Lyra awoke with a start, trembling and shaken by her nightmare. Her heart was beating erratically, her breathing ragged and forced. She was drenched in a cold sweat, the room seeming to rock like a storm tossed ship around her. She was also shivering with cold. She pretended that it was because the windows of her room had been blown open by a sudden gust of wind, with lacy flakes of snow swirling about her. Slowly, she would push aside the blanket her mother had given her, reluctant to leave that warm bed, then light a candle. She imagined herself going to the windows, quickly closing them, securing the latch and then finding her way back to the bed. Crawling back under her warm blankets, she shivered from more than cold.

Once again wrapped in her imagination, she began to think, forcing her weary mind to focus. She found herself drifting, like in her dreams, more often now. Drifting farther from the friendly nurses, from her mother, from love and time. She seemed so out of place in this realm of the living, drifting further out. The dreams, she did not understand them. Didn’t recognize the meanings beneath the surface of what she saw. She didn’t want to understand. She just wanted to lead a normal life, not live within this glass coffin everyone else built for her. She never strayed from her box, gazing out into the world that was denied her and never truly living.

She shivered, pulling the blankets up and almost over her head. Morning would arrive soon, her fiery birth igniting the sky and awaking all that inhabited the city. And she would be among the living again, jostled about and drifting. Lyra sighed heavily, turning over and hugging her pillow close.

Realizing that it was useless to try and sleep any longer, she pretended that she stood from her canopied bed. Her black spider’s silk gown falling all about her in an onyx pool, the contrast of dark against light skin glowing slightly in the pale candlelight. She would rub her hands together, the room brisk from its moments of interaction with the snowy night. She would place some more logs on the dying fire and curl up on a window seat, staring out into the starry dark.

She imagined that she lived in a large manor house, in a quiet city called Eve, where, instead of a sun and a moon, there were two moons. One to light the day and one to light the night. Right now the night moon of Eve would glow in an ethereal black light, the children of Eve waiting on every venomous word that fell from the moon’s scarred lips.

In the twilight of her mind, she could faintly make out the spires of Aeris rising over the crest a place she called the Forgotten Hills. Aeris, Eve’s sister city, glowed faintly as rain fell over the place. It would be a very different experience for Lyra, to see the rainfall, but not on her city, not on her. How beautiful to watch the tears of heaven’s womb fall upon the heads of her brothers, upon the world on the other side of the vast mirror that separated the two. Still dreaming of her imaginary world, she began to fall asleep, her essence flowing out and walking outside of her.

She watched herself sleep for a moment, gently pushing back an ivory strand from her face. Then she began to glide out of the room, pushing past walls and doors as if they did not exist. She watched children sleeping in their beds, curled up with their teddy bears. She floated past the Eve Lilies, their bright pink and white blushing against the starry sky. Stopping by a small brook, she watched as black swans drifted down stream, their children lying slain on the shores. She knew the signs, but could not turn back to awaken.

Slowly, Lyra traveled further and further from herself. Farther than she had ever been, farther than she wanted to be from that darkened window seat in her mind. The white pavement beneath her feet became broken emerald stones, eroded by time. Everything was changing. Dying trees, twisted by memories of a time and a pain unknown to mankind, surrounded her. Ahead of her was a crossroad, with blackened fields beside her and a scarecrow hanging from his post.

Suddenly, the scarecrow looked up, his violent green eyes trapping her where she stood. She knew those eyes, knew that face. She had seen them once in a dream, a dream from thousands of nights long gone. His mouth moved, no sound coming from the twisted lips, but the words soared, screaming and smashing, within her mind.

“Get Out! GET OUT!” the words said. They threatened to shatter her psyche, threatening to break her soul. Before the words could destroy her, she fled. Her haunted feet flying past dead trees, past sleeping children, past dead and dying swans, back to her body. Back to safety, back to the white prison that had become her home. The voice echoed in her brain, trapping her in a living nightmare, refusing to let her go. Screaming, her eyes finally opened, the green eyes imprinted upon her soul and the violence of the voice’s warning reverberating through out her body.

David Simmons: Chapter 4

David Simmons, Patient No. 10120230344. Age: 24.

He heard her screaming, heard her crying. He had tried to get someone’s attention, but no one would listen to the crazy man. No, no one would listen to him. He could hear her cries of anguish drifting through the vents and he couldn’t do anything to help her. He cried, slumping against the door to his room, pounding against it uselessly, begging for someone to listen to him. He was cried out, his voice hoarse and almost gone, when they found her. He knew that they had found her, because he heard a doctor call code.

He pulled his knees up to his chest, wishing himself elsewhere. He pressed his puffy eyelids together and pretended he was back in his library, his safe haven. Even there he could hear her crying for help, pleading with him or anyone to rescue her from what was coming. In the end he could do nothing, he was helpless and, for that, he could never be forgiven.

Laughter filled his senses, tugging on him and calling him forward. He couldn’t resist the honey and sugar of those voices, the honeysuckle of those laughs, they were gently pulling him toward them and pushing him past boundaries that could never be re-crossed. He didn’t care, he loved those voices, could drink them in like cool water from a burbling fountain. He opened his eyes, staring into a face carved out of ivory, with eyes of bright sapphire. This face was happy, a beautiful smile filling every piece of sculpture with sparkling light. He turned slightly, his gaze falling upon another face, this carved out of ebony, with white eyes circled by dark emerald. This face was sad, as if every part had been wept over by the sculptor and forever changed because of that sorrow.

They were as different as night and day, yet so alike in nature. Like sisters torn apart by their secrets, but the laughter remained, pulling him away and down a row of books. Further and further he went, dancing and whispering to the voices ahead of him. They kept calling him, kept laughing, honey and sugar. As he got closer the voices began to fade, one voice filled with dissonance and bitter-sweet memories.

“No! Don’t go, please! I’ve finally found what I want, please don’t leave me now!” He called out, again and again, pleading with invisible beings that no longer laughed and now only cried.

“I cannot stay, I cannot go. What am I to do? What am I to do.” A voice filled with smoke and air, sweet and sour, kept crying out to him, stretching out invisible arms to hold him.

“Hear me! Come to me! Take me with you! Please, don’t go!” He stretched his arms out to take that voice into himself, to hold it. As quickly as he came, he was back in that tiny white room with the sound of bustling nurses and screaming patients. All alone with a twin sized bed and his few books, he was still slumped against his door. All cried out, he shed a few more tears, tears for a woman who was dead and a woman who could not stay with him.

Eve: Chapter 3

Eve (Last Name Unknown), Patient No. 00052566322. Age: 19.

No, they couldn’t see her. She was invisible, invincible. No, she wouldn’t go. Didn’t want to go with them. They had forced her to put on that dress, the one that always meant death. Electrocution, suffocation, mutilation, whatever torture they had devised. She would have none of it. She didn’t want to go with them, didn’t want to wear that dress made of soft black silk. No, she wouldn’t go. They couldn’t make her leave home behind, leave everything she had ever known to give her life for a people she didn’t give a damn about.

They were dragging her, pulling on her and that awful dress, until she thought it might rip. She hoped it would, because they couldn’t take her if it was ruined. That would never do. They had done everything so perfectly, had made sure every detail was perfect, was in order.

They had perfumed her skin with rose petals, had washed and combed her hair until it shone like polished ivory. They had left it down, because the curls had to be just so or they would all be punished. They had tinted her eyelashes with purple ichors and reddened her lips with lamb’s blood, they had been meticulous. The two men holding her arms, continued to drag her toward the spot that would be her own personal graveyard. The two women behind her carried the gilded box, the one that only dead girls knew what was inside. She tried to dig in her heels, but, without shoes, this was nearly impossible.

Finally, they arrived at the crossroads, the men lifting her stubborn feet until they were on the runes that would keep her there as prey. The two women began the rituals, placing the box at her chained feet.

“We give our souls to the gods of justice and heart.” Began the first woman, winding a silk cord around Eve’s hands so that she could not open the box or tear the dress.
“We give our hearts to the goddess of revenge.” Replied the first man as he gingerly brushed a curl back into place.
“We give this, our child, unto the demons of Hell,” Continued the second woman, weaving a dying flower into Eve’s hair.
“Without the sacrifice of blood we are nothing and nothing remains within.” Finished the second man, a single tear trailing down his leathery cheek. She hoped the man would choke on his tears. Why should he cry when he was the one dooming her to this fate? Shouldn’t she be the one crying now?

She screamed at their backs as they walked away, pleading and begging for mercy, for them to spare her life. They were deaf and mute, never looking back at the girl doomed to die, standing at the crossroads. She couldn’t move, her feet feeling as if they had melted into the worn and cracked stone beneath her feet. She struggled with her hands, trying to untie them… and, and do what? If her feet wouldn’t move, how was she going to escape? What would it matter if her hands were untied if she couldn’t move her feet?

Suddenly, the gilded box began to open in front of her. At first, she tried to look away, certain that if she didn’t look she would be saved. After all, only dead girls knew what lay inside that tiny casket. She wasn’t going to be one of them, she couldn’t die. She was invisible and invincible; no one would ever kill her.

Unable to look away, her eyes drifted over the contents in the box and she let out a cry of agony. Within the box was a broken white rose. Her fate sealed, she stood, lifeless, at the crossroads. Drowning within herself and awaiting the destiny she could not avoid.

In cell number 25, 19 year old Eve died. No outward cause presented itself. She looked so beautiful and perfect, stretched out like the Lily Maid in her boat upon smooth waters. The only strange thing about her was that her hair, which had been blacker than black, had suddenly gone stark white, a dying flower twisted into her hair and a tiny pinprick of blood lay between her breasts.

Gabriel Caine: Chapter 2

Gabriel Caine, Patient No. 21200057342. Age: 26.

He was the scarecrow, a sacrifice to the gods of hate and pain. He writhed on the twin mattress, soaked with sweat and memories buried too deep for words to find them. He had stepped into that world where he no longer knew himself or anyone else around him, he was only a scarecrow, crucified to his post and abandoned in his field. Worn emerald green stones belonged to the road that twisted about the countryside, full of crossroads and demons, saints and sinners lost on their way to Hell’s Court. He belonged to that world; the one that raped the innocent to keep everything in balance, the one that shattered itself and spun out the colors of reality into pools of paint and rain-water. He knew that the roads and crossroads were only figments of frustration in his twisted realities, but he still tried to follow them with his eyes, still tried to leave his post to walk those beautiful and rough stones.

The doctors told him that he would be fine with therapy. What did they know about him? What did they care if he was ever whole again? Had they ever seen the Night of Eve, when Hell’s Court brought the sacrifice to the crossroads and left her there? Had they ever heard the moons of Catalysis and Neptsis screaming in their orbit, ghosts of his reality? No, they hadn’t. They said those places and those things didn’t exist, but they seemed so real to him. Maybe he was crazy, maybe it was just all this horrible illness that had taken control of him. Or maybe he was right and he was that scarecrow, chained to a wooden stake, awaiting the next sacrifice at the crossroads.

The one thing he had never understood was why? Why did they sacrifice at the crossroads, what made them leave one of their own to die for all of them? How was that fair? And how did he fit in? Why must he stand as witness, as a helpless man captive to a will beyond his own design? He just couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand to watch as girl after girl was sacrificed, couldn’t stand to listen as day after day the moons cried out for one another, lost and drifting on an endless sea of sky and space.

Sitting up, he shook himself and tried to focus, he could hear the nurses making their rounds, could hear other patients crying out and banging against their padded walls. Maybe the screaming of the moons was just the cries of disillusioned people, trapped within their own heads and trying to escape. Maybe those girls that he watched die were just young women he had read about in the newspapers back when he had a job and a home. And a wife. This last he thought of reluctantly, as if conjuring her name and image would send him back to that god-forsaken post.

Since he was already beginning to think of her, he let his mind wander to their last days as man and wife. She was crying that day, the day she left him. Her arms were full of another man’s child and another man’s love. She couldn’t stay, she said. She couldn’t watch him destroy himself any longer. So she walked away, still holding that other man’s child and that other man’s love. She had never really known him, he decided. Had never really forgiven him for being himself. And, in the end, who else could he be, but himself?

He stopped the rest of the oncoming flood, before it began to breach the dams he had built for defense. He didn’t want to overindulge his memories, which would only leave him with an ache in his heart and his empty arms. Damn her. He had loved her, had tried to give her everything he could. Why hadn’t she seen that? In the end it had always come down to the fact that he could never be what she wanted him to be and the “real” love of her life was waiting with open arms and an open bed.

Well, that was fine. Who needed her anyway? He didn’t need her. The sounds of patients and nurses with carts full of medication faded into background noise as he settled into the sound of an imaginary piano playing Beethoven. His fingers moved in time with the music, grazing chords and keys like he would a lover’s curves. Beethoven was really all he had left, he supposed. At least Beethoven would never ask him for a divorce and then give birth to a child that would never even be his.

He supposed a lot of things, thinking too much for his own good, really. Even Dr. Samisen said so. Why not think though? He was a poet, a philosopher, an intelligent man with a good brain for thinking. Why shouldn’t he try to figure out the world that was so cruel to him, try to figure out the world that resided behind closed eyelids and broken psyches? He had a right to think, just like any other Joe on the street. So he would think, he would lapse into that pool of memory and epiphanies and trains of thought, then drift away on whatever might decide to command his attention.

He liked that pool, that place behind his eyes, within something deeper than his soul, the part of himself no one would ever know about except him. The place that housed that world that forced him to stand at his post, to keep record of the girls that traveled on the back of the wind into the Mirror of Eve. God, he thought, why do I keep coming back to this place? Why do I do this to myself over and over?

And with that thought, he found himself at his place, dreaming of another young woman’s death.

She stood, lifeless, at the crossroads. She was drowning within herself, breathless and frantic. All she could see was the broken white rose lying at the center of the crossroad. All she could hear was the breaking of a thousand hearts. She could not feel, the mirror in front of her bearing no claim of her existence. She remained, doll-like, at the point of intersection, frozen in time without a soul or a heart to hear her silent screams.

The emerald green blocks of stone were worn and cracked underneath her bare feet, the green darkened over time. The Mirror of Eve sparkled violently, glittering and blinding, but empty of any reflection of life. Behind the girl was a wide field, charred and blackened by time and in the middle of the field stood a scarecrow, his old grey hat pulled down over his eyes.

The moons stood side-by-side, one about to fade below the horizon of endless azure sky and the other rising to greet another day of night. Lower and lower sank the one, a shining ivory disk against the bruised and battered sky. Higher and higher rose the other, darker than ebony, its face etched in blood and tears. An intense black emptiness filled the sky until no light shone but that of the bleeding moon, only its crimson stained the wretched night.

As the suffocating darkness surrounded her, the brighter red light fell upon her chest. For a moment time stood still and only the red light seemed to move. The light took on a life of its own, its fiery fingers moving up to the girl's throat and its hand moving as a lover's over her pale face. The light morphed and transformed until it had the shape of a man, its hand continuing to caress the girl's face. As it passed its hands through her snowy curls, it began to dissipate, changing the girl's hair to a rosy pink, then fled swiftly upward. Leaving the girl behind, lying dead at the crossroads, a white jasper lily in her hand and an onyx dagger plunged into her virgin soul.

The scarecrow, in his blackened field, was the only witness, the only eyes to see the death and hear the screams. From one violent green eye fell a broken tear, his sadness hidden partially by his dark hat. He did not move from his field, or move at all, remaining frozen at his post. He only wept, a silent witness.

Quietly, the girl's body withered, burning from a fire within until all that remained were dust and ash. These were picked up by the wind, fleeing the place on her back. She fled to the Mirror of Eve, it now opening, as a door, to her remains. On the other side she was once again transformed, shedding all the pain of living like a winter cloak. She seemed to glow, ethereal and unbroken. She looked out of her mirror, seeing with new eyes all the emptiness of the place.

The scarecrow watched as the Mirror shattered, sparkling like millions of fiery stars upon the emerald stones. As the pieces faded into nothingness, the moon began to cry, blood and ice falling like daggers to the earth. Everything stood in silence. All that remained of the girl was a broken white rose, a white jasper lily and the onyx dagger, stained with the blood of her virgin soul. And these were consumed with fire and bloody ice so that none may know of the rape of the lifeless girl at the crossroads.

Lyra Gale: Chapter 1

Lyra Gale, Patient No. 33317021034. Age: 22.

Lyra stood against the window, framed by dappled sunshine and shadow. The friendly nurse said that her hair looked very pretty in the sunlight, so she tried to stand close to the light any time she knew someone would see her. She was dressed in a simple white gown, with her hair pulled away from her face in a high ponytail. Not exactly what she had hoped her mother would see her in, but she supposed her mother would understand the lack of proper attire in a glossy prison such as Eve's Insane Asylum.

She fingered her hair, a startling ivory color and curlier than the curly fries she was craving, everyone used to say how beautiful she was, because of her hair. No one had ever seen such a color, except on elderly women who tried to cover it with dyes. She had never tried to dye it, had always been fond of the uniqueness of having been born with stark white hair. Her mother had tried to convince her to dye it once, she had said red would suit her complexion better, but Lyra had refused. What a waste of hair dye that would be, not to mention the money spent on the dye itself.

A gentle knock sounded causing her to jump from her thoughts and look up. The door opened up and in stepped her mother, ever graceful and soft-spoken. Olivia Gale Blair was a beautiful woman past her prime, but willowy and strong. In her left hand was a box wrapped in cheap wrapping paper, in her right was a still partially lit cigarette. The nurse was scolding her, trying to remove the cigarette, but Olivia kept moving in a way to prevent it. Finally, the nurse gave up and left the mother and daughter alone. The room seemed suddenly very small and very plain, compared to her mother.

"Sorry about being so late, darling." Olivia bent to give her daughter's cheek a gentle peck before plopping down on the white twin bed in the middle of the room.

"It's no problem mother. What is in the box?" Lyra sat down, daintily, next to Olivia and peeked around her at the wrapped box.

"Well," began Olivia. "I thought you might like a better blanket then the one they give you here. You know, something more homey and, what's the word I'm looking for? Colorful. You have no color here, everything is white and more white."

Pulling on the last of her cigarette, Olivia handed the box to Lyra. She stared at the wrapped parcel only a moment, then carefully pulled at the tape and opened the box. Inside was a royal blue blanket with small crimson flowers decorating the edges, she held it away from her to stare at it, then pulled it close to her. It smelled of vanilla candles and cigarette smoke, with a hint of some spice she could not name off hand.

"Do you like it?" Her mother's voice sounded far away, as if she were several rooms over, shouting, instead sitting on the same bed, staring at the same object.

"Yes, I like it." Lyra held it closer, rubbing the red flowers over her face and nuzzling the blue fabric. Olivia watched her daughter's actions, reaching into her purse for another cigarette.

"I'm glad, honey. I really am. I'll be back next week, anything you want me to get for you?"

Lyra stopped in her reverie for a moment, looking intently into her mother's pale green eyes. Thoughtfully, she ran her fingers over the stitches again, taking in the shape of each petal and stem.

"Could you get me some of those curly fries you make? I really want some. With a … a TON of ketchup and a big hamburger, the kind that has everything on it, you know? Could you get me some? Please?"

Noting her daughter's eagerness and sincerity, she nodded and quickly left the room. Once out the door, Olivia slumped against the wall, cigarette in hand and a single tear trickling down her cheek. Her only child, her only love in this world, out of her mind and lost somewhere she couldn’t go to find her. She shook herself and forced a brave face for the nurse coming down the hall with medications to distribute.

She would never come back, her newest husband wouldn’t allow it. Having a daughter who was mentally disturbed didn’t exactly fit into his plans for their future together. It was a surprise that he had even married her, knowing about Lyra and her last husband’s strange disappearance. And, deep inside, she wondered if Lyra would even notice.

The Scarecrow's Dream: Prologue

The room went quiet. So stiflingly silent, it was going to drive her crazy, drive her past the edges of the clear road.

"Please," she whispered. "Please, don't leave me alone, don't leave me here." She pulled her knees up to her chest and rocked back slightly. She could barely breathe, barely move and they were going to leave her, leave her in this prison dressed up to look like a safe place. Her voice took a razor's edge, she screamed, "DON'T LEAVE ME HERE!! YOU BASTARDS, COME BACK!"

Then everything was alive, the air filled with angry whispers and violent cursing, they swirled about her, pushing her down. She fought against the white strait-jacket with those horrible red straps, fought against the urge to cry out. He would come, if he heard her screaming. He would laugh that disgusting laugh, then he would force her legs apart, forcing a dirty sock in-between her lips and he would give her reason to scream. The voices buzzed all around her, buzzing inside her head and her mouth. She didn't dare un-clamp her teeth, or open her eyes. If she did, the voices would find shape, they would find weight and breathe. No, she couldn't let them escape, couldn't let her fears take form, or truth find her. She had to stay, imprisoned by white and red, held captive by the ghosts and the voices and dreams. Dreams that made no sense to her, but had a life unto themselves. A reality that grew and bled, a world that cried out to be opened by her, only opening up that world would make her disappear.

From the little window in the door, he watched her struggle against nothing. It pleased him to watch her struggle against the strait-jacket, like a butterfly trapped in its cocoon trying to release its wings and fly away. Nevertheless, he had that little butterfly, she belonged to him now. He was the spider and she was a butterfly trapped by silk and red ribbons. Soon, very soon, he would feast on that little butterfly, trapped by webs of her own design and struggling against her own mind. And she would be delicious.