now_ish Here's a lullaby to close your eyes.
It was all around me, swirling and licking upon the modest breeze I could not feel. The blood red satin tapestries seemed to build for me a twisting hallway through which I could not find an end. I was compelled to follow its trail, curious to the game that I'd awoken to. Tiny voices tickled my ears. The lovely song of a child's cry. But for some reason it did not favor me as I was used to. It crawled under my skin and chilled my bone leaving little bumps on my soft skin and an ache in my chest that I'd forgotten about through years of having no heartbeat. Adrenaline. I was afraid? No.. this could not be. There was some eager force at work mixing its magic onto me and making me feel this mortal nervousness.
My hands blindly navigated me thorugh the satin tunnel until I came into an empty room made with wooden floors and walls. No furniture or windows made this less of a prison. There seemed to be no ceiling, either. The walls simply led to an unseeable darkness that stretched on into eternity. Eternity. I must've reached a dead end, yes. I will go back now as this growing feeling unsettles me, making me feel as though I must flee. Once I turned around, though, there was no tunnel. No more soft tapestries to lead me out. Simply another wooden wall.
I turned back around again and now before me knelt a small girl with her back and black hair turned toward me. She was humming a tune. A soft, merry tune although in the silence of the darkness it only served to heighten my need to flee. Curious though, I edged to peer at what the child was doing. In her hands rest a doll dressed in a black and white uncomplimenting dress. A nun? I stepped quietly forward as though to avoid disturbing the child to better look upon the face of the doll. The ruby red, sweet smile was familiar to my eyes. I searched further upon the plastic face. The doll had no eyes.. but the face was the same. It was Miss Edith!
"You'd do well to leave that doll, young miss," I warned as well I could but found my voice shaken. Miss Edith was my property and this wretched girl has dressed her unproperly. "Why?" She asked me, unwavering and refusing to turn to face me. Her voice still held a quiet melody. "Because she doesn't belong to you. I am her mummy, now hand her to me."
"No."
"Insolent child!" I hissed and moved toward her to snatch her up by the shoulder. I forcefully turned her around to face me but when I did so I found no face, no body, nothing but clothes that crumpled to the floor at my feet. I gasped a sharp breath and stood back up with a stumbled step in retreat, my eyes suddenly searching the room in frantic haste. When I looked back down, the clothes were gone, though Miss Edith lay on the floor staring at me.. with new eyes.
"The pixies have come for me," I said aloud, backing myself closer to the wall behind me, my voice raising as a fearful lump began to form within my throat. "Come to take me, they have! I'll not hear of it!" I pressed my hand back against the wall though felt skin upon mine. I looked down and there was a small hand in mine. Looking up at me was the little girl, on her face a peaceful, friendly smile. Breath was held in my tight chest.
The child... was me.
I yanked my hand away and fled backward from her. This seemed to displease her for her welcoming, friendly smile faded while she stepped toward me. "Why do you run?" She questioned. "Why do you flee? What have I done to you? Why have you forsaken me? Why did you forget?" I felt my shoulderblades press against the wall and I slid down to the floor slowly, unable to believe what I was facing. "No," I pleaded, "I haven't forsaken anything! I have not! I am innocent!"
"Lies," she continued, her face beginning to grow cross. "You stopped playing with me when you met your new daddy. Our daddy was not good enough, mm? Shame, miss." My eyes were drawn upon Miss Edith whose lips were moving in unison with the girl's. My now living heart pound so heavy in my chest it felt as though it might burst free. "Left us all, you did." I looked back up at the girl again though now all that remained of her face was a skull. Torn flesh hung from her boned fingers and there was not but a skeleton underneath the white dress she wore. I was so frightened -- perhaps the most I've ever been before -- that I could do nothing but breathe. "You left me. You left us. But we are coming back and you will play with me again. You will remember how it feels to be left... so... alone."
I felt something wet against the hand pressed against the wall. I looked down upon it and found blood soaked into my palm. Blood that was seeping from the walls surrounding me. I looked back and, instead of the girl standing in front of me, it was Miss Edith. "Moooooommyyyy..." She sang to me, her voice echoed in the silence of the room. "I hurt... mommy..." I closed my eyes tight. I couldn't bear to watch this horrid display any longer. I could do nothing more than wish it away! AWAY WITH YOU ALL!
But a girl's blood-curdling scream forced my eyes back open and swinging in front of me with a noose wrapped around her neck was Miss Edith, but her face was not her own. It was.. mine! Warped into the vampire's features that I'd bore so many times, her face looking pained and tortured.. and then she burst into dust that fell to my feet.
I could take no more. My mind was reeling in pain from the fear surging through every vein. I collapsed, cradled my knees against my chest, and screamed. "NOOO!"
An iron grip from my hands took the blanket that remained underneath me, the echoes of my screaming forcing me to sit up and snap my eyes open to my dark reality. A dream, only a dream. A dark, wicked, filthy dream.
I sat there shuddering in the aftermath of my dark lullaby, my arms wrapping tight around my bruised and battered body. It was hard to wash away the images, the screams. Those zombies.. only them.. only them could process and weave such black webs inside my head! Or was it Sister? Or Daddy? The betrayal of them! I didn't like this. I know this feeling. This feeling of when I move and yet I can feel the heavy tug from the goblin's fingers, holding me away from strength. From my power. Broken. A wilting flower I've become.. just like the stars taunted. "It hurts," I finally muttered, rocking myself back and forth as my eyes dart about the familiar room. I finally saw Spike laying beside me, broken and beaten, my poor deadly knight.
With a painful inward breath I reached out to him as best as I could, bidding him quietly to come back to his Princess. It was so dark but the shadows turned and whispered, whispered to me of the deadly sun that has risen and swallowed the stars outside. I could feel its evil, shimmering fingers.. it's trying to reach to me through the cracks, trying to reach to tear me away!