2019-08-25 - Fear Itself

You've got this.

Lillith Winslow's words, quiet and filled with her own determination to pick up the pieces of her life, slipped through her conscious thoughts, permeating through the gauges and tumblers of her own stubbornness.

I'm sorry your mother didn't make it, but you are ready.

Through its labyrinthine hallways and twisting corridors, they found a place to rest, nesting like an egg and unable to be moved.

Isabella Reede had effectively lost track of time, standing in this empty hallway, directly opposite from the door leading into the vacant bedroom of her twin brother, staring at its details with the contemplative silence of one submerged deep in her own hesitation. It wasn't as if it was anything special, recognizing the metallic knob and the spartan grooves that lent it some manner of aesthetic appeal. In the second floor of the Reede Family's old Tudor home, it stood on the very end, the only white door in a series of wooden ones stained with dark, antiquated varnish. Once upon a time, it had looked just like the others until the day she had broken it down in desperation.

Marks from that evening remained on her physically. Her left shoulder hadn't been the same since, bracketed against her body with plates and screws to keep it from dislocating at every strenuous physical activity, the thin, white line of that surgical procedure marring her smooth tan.

Getting up to this point, walking down the old hardwood avenue to reach Isidore's door, had almost been insurmountable, her shadow flitting past her parents' bedroom, lingering, but only briefly, at the threshold leading into the place her mother had been slaughtered, before she continued onwards. She was feeling it already, the weight of it, the frozen, bitter taste of it at the back of her throat, rendering each step difficult and impossibly heavy. It took everything in her to remain upright, the sensation of water, or rubber, filling her knees and locking them together. A hand reached out to brace against the railing, the only thing separating her from a fall back down to the house's main atrium.

You are ready.

She took a deep breath, forced her fingers to wind away from the brace they made against the banister. She reached forward towards the knob and gripped it, knuckles whitening and pushing up from underneath her skin. Ice dribbled down her spine and pricked at her bones.

It easily opened after a twist from her wrist, the long, loud creak echoing in the empty house, thrumming along the natural acoustics built into its vaulted ceilings and spaces cluttered by the colorful signs of the past generations that had called it home. She had let go immediately once the latch disengaged; gravity, the humid air, had done the rest, slowly revealing the familiar outlines of the furniture that had been kept pristine by a loving, grieving mother's hopes that the boy she had lost would return. Green-gold eyes roamed over the bookshelves, the texts and volumes her brother loved to read, the places in which he kept mementos from their past adventures - one from every birthday, at least from when he was old enough to understand the concept of taking things and keeping them. The posters of his favorite bands and movies splashed dated mosaics across white walls, their images muted by the half-light of the evening streaming through his windows; the pictures of his many friends and acquaintances decorating the mirror where he spent a significant amount of time in front of preening - a tendency she never failed to tease him about.

He was tall, handsome even at sixteen, with pale gold hair and eyes like hers; a glimpse of the man he would have become, if he had been given a chance.

She didn't move. It was difficult to do so, when it was standing in front of her, still tasting of the psychic remains of Isidore's past endeavours. Her father didn't have a speck of the Talent and the disciplines that her mother had chosen were decidedly different, even though she knew that there was no way she wouldn't have sensed it. But she could see it and feel it, and knew exactly where it was - the tear that had been left behind. Like an open wound, Time and neglect had stitched it back up together, leaving it raw and throbbing, but there, roiling with its dark promises and silent invitations. Its presence drew goosebumps all over her complexion, and made it difficult to breathe. The air suddenly felt unbearably hot and stale.

You are ready.

Long fingers reached out to touch it, feeling it ripple...and give. Bile rose to the back of her throat, the white-hot spears of an unwelcome sort of exhilaration rushing through her veins and threatening to deafen her with how loudly her heart pounded against her bones. Jaw clenched, teeth gritted, she mustered every available nerve, every degree of her ridiculous and often misplaced bravado and pushed.

Isidore's room fell away, blurring in a swirl of different shades, leaving her in the middle of the familiar winding path into the trees, their skeletal branches reaching upwards towards the light, for the moon that hung heavy and fat in the skies and well above their reach. This place always had it, the look about it that often reminded her of some very specific Shakespearean tragedies - of Scottish moors and Danish graveyards stuffed with their Yoricks, Rosencrantzes and Guildensterns, blanketed by a film of thin mist that reduced the details of the nearby mountains and paths into shapeless silhouettes. Seeing it all again bolted her down, and froze her into the ground as all color drained from her face.

Take a step, she urged herself. Just one. Just one and we'll go. We'll go, I promise.

You've got this, Lilith said again, from somewhere within her skull.

Her boot sank into dead earth. The empty branches shook and she found herself frozen again. The sudden wind whipped through her hair, blowing dark brown tresses across her face, carrying its quiet mocking laughter, and the whisper that felt just right behind her, close and intimate against her ear:

wELCome HoMe LEeLa

The tear split open again as she ran through it, before she could stop herself, her heart in her throat and pure, unbridled terror winding up her spine, tightening everything within her. It was stifling, suffocating, likely to blow the top of her head off, and leave gray matter to splatter into her brother's walls and the vestiges he had left behind of his more superficial life. Her lungs expanded, trapping air and a bloodcurdling scream.

The corporeal world shifted violently to protect her in a shocking wave of instinct and ability, never failing to remind her as to just how easy it really was for her to reach into the churning star core of her own frightening, but inadequately exercised potential, just as mindless and natural as taking a breath. The door slammed loudly behind her, with such force that it rattled the walls and sent several portraits crashing from their settings in a shower of splintering wood and shattering glass, all of its mechanical locks and latches snapping into their metallic fringes. The audible scraping of lighter furniture clawed on the old wooden floors from behind the locked appendage, tipping and falling across, sealing her twin brother's door from within.

She staggered into the middle of the hallway and fell on her knees, her spine bowing as she turned her face against a wall and dry heaved into it. This old, twisted fear, and the fountain of self-loathing that threatened to drown her at the idea that she may never overcome it, rushed through her like a tide, and burned against her old injury. Teeth clenching, she squeezed her eyes shut to prevent the spill of hot, frustrated tears as she clung onto old plaster, taking deep, rapid breaths.

You are ready.

"I'm not," she gasped, to those determined words and the dark of her family home, fingernails digging into the wall. "I'm not. Oh, god. Oh, god."