Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2017 23:45:49 GMT -5
Midnight sounded.
The castle erupted in cheers of delight as souls all throughout the walls celebrated the coming of winter and end of Harvest; or more base desires as they looked upon their lovers’ unmasked face.
Far from where a blue-eyed boy behind a cat mask smiled unknowingly with his best friends, or the smitten Veela sliding her hand up the back of her wolfish lover’s neck, or the sugar skulls holding each other tightly in a secluded corner, or even the still body in the quiet room, a young boy laid in his lovers arms and realized with a jolt that he’d forgotten his promise.
In the lover’s search, he asked the Irish boy if he’d seen the missing girl. They asked the sugar skulls, and then the Veela and the wolfish professor. There was no alarm. The masquerade lost many students in the evening only to be found again in the morning.
But, this time, the girl’s dorm was empty. The library and the forge cold and dark. Her usual haunts left unoccupied. Those searching beginning to burst at the seems with increasing concern. Down an empty and long hall, the feigned lover’s footsteps echoed; his calls for her unanswered. It was an open door that caught his eye, that pulled at his gut. Her name called again as he came forward, glancing inside the cavernous room. Shapes of stacked, unused desks and chairs piled along the far wall, the shadows looming to the ceiling. It was the shimmer of blonde hair that caught his attention before he left.
Pushing open the door, the light from the hall spread across the floor until the horror was revealed.
She laid stained red and lifeless on the cold floor. Red, angry lines marked her flesh; scattered up her long limbs until there was no clean patch of pale flesh to be found. Her white dress ripped and blood-soaked in a ragged pile beside lumps of her sunshine hair. Lips parted as if in a gasp, gray-blue eyes gazed up at the ceiling with tears streaking down her cheeks like claws raking through the blood, she laid silent and unmoving. The closer the lover came, the more horrific the sight. Blood oozed from between her thighs; covering the floor surrounding her in a crimson puddle. Beside the mutilation, shining like two flares in a storm, initials I. A. carved into her hip.
The silence grew louder; the pulsing in his ears echoing louder and louder until the tiniest, barest shudder of a breath shattered the crescendo.
She was alive.
Rhett Miller Mihaela Elisabeth Howard Malachai O'Collins @elsawinslow @waya @alexanderwestman Jasmine Rivera Delgado