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The world swam back to me in fuzzy, disjointed images—white tiles, a ceiling too sterile, and the incessant beep of some goddamn machine that seemed hell-bent on mocking my headache. My head was pounding like it had its own heartbeat, each throb an accusation, a reminder of... shit, what exactly?
"Fuck," I muttered under my breath as I tried to lift my hands to rub away the grogginess from my eyes. That's when the cold steel bit into my wrists, the handcuffs clinking their cruel laughter at my predicament. Panic clawed at my chest, rising like bile. Handcuffed? To a hospital bed? This had to be some kind of twisted joke.
Through the blur of my vision, I could make out the shape of a police officer standing just outside the door, the glass partition offering no real barrier. His stance was rigid, the kind of unyielding posture that spoke of authority and a stick shoved way too far up his ass.
"Hey!" I barked, the word more of a croak than the biting command I had intended. "What the hell is this about? Why the hell are you standing there when you should be out there searching for whatever sick fuck is on the loose?!"
But he didn't flinch, didn't even spare me a glance. Just stood there like some stoic guardian of my personal prison, his stern expression carved from stone.
I tried to piece together the fragments of memory that danced just out of reach, taunting me. The last thing I remembered was… the blood, Aria's lifeless eyes staring at nothing, her laughter forever silenced. And then there was him—my so-called admirer turned fucking nightmare. Was it really admiration when you're being hunted like an animal?
"Officer!" I tried again. "You can't just keep me here!"
Silence. Goddamn it. Why was it that the one time you wanted a cop to talk, they suddenly found value in the whole silent treatment schtick?
I let out a bitter laugh, the sound hollow in the sanitized air. So this was my life now—heartbreak served with a side of handcuffs. Aria would've laughed at the irony. Hell, she probably would've made some snarky art piece out of it. But she wasn't here, was she? And I was starting to think that maybe losing the will to live wasn't the worst way to go out after all.
It was all there, playing on loop—the way Aria had looked at me, eyes wide with terror, crumpled on the ground, a crimson bloom spreading across her chest. The laughter we once shared now a grotesque soundtrack to my unraveling sanity.
"Please, you have to believe me!" I screamed, my voice hoarse with desperation. I thrashed against the cold steel. "It wasn't me! I didn't do this!"
The room seemed to close in, the stark white walls trapping me in a sterile cage. I could feel it—the rise of hysteria, clawing its way up my throat, a wild thing desperate for escape.
"Help me!" The plea tore from my lips, a raw, ragged sound that bounced off the indifference of the officer outside. But it wasn't the cop who answered; it was the cavalry in scrubs, a swarm of blue uniforms rushing in as if I were the one bleeding out on the floor.
"Miss Holloway, calm down. You're safe here," one nurse tried to reassure me, her voice a pathetic attempt at soothing. Safe? I wanted to laugh, to scream at her ignorance. Safe was a fairy tale, and my story had become a nightmare written in blood.
"Get these fucking cuffs off me then!" I demanded, the rage bubbling inside like a poison. They weren't just restraints—they were reminders of every choice stolen from me, every ounce of power ripped from my grasp.
"Please, hold still. We need to sedate you," another nurse said, approaching with a needle that gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lights.
"Fuck your sedation!" I barked back, but my fight was as useless as my cries. The sting of the needle was sharp, a cruel kiss that began to blur the edges of my fury. My limbs felt heavy, my world tilting into darkness as the drug coursed through my veins.
"Betrayed... by everyone," I slurred, the words trailing off into nothingness. Even as the sedative pulled me under, I clung to the bitterness, a lifeline in a sea of treachery. They thought they could silence me with drugs, with cuffs, with their goddamn pitying looks. But I'd be damned if I let them put out the fire within me, the ember of rebellion that refused to die.
Even in the encroaching darkness, I swore vengeance. For Aria. For myself. For the twisted game that had become my reality. And as consciousness slipped away, one thought remained—a whisper in the void:
This isn't over. Not by a long shot.
The darkness enveloped me, tendrils of black ether curling around my mind, pulling me deeper into oblivion. Yet even as I sank into that fathomless abyss, pinpricks of light began to take shape, distant stars in an endless night. They swirled and coalesced, bleeding into one another until they formed a hallway, its walls paneled in dark wood.
I blinked, slowly coming back to myself. My limbs were free, the handcuffs and hospital bed gone. I stood alone in an unfamiliar mansion, its halls lit only by the moonlight streaming through tall arched windows.
A creaking floorboard made me spin around. At the end of the hallway stood two shadowy figures, their faces obscured. They beckoned to me silently before turning and gliding away, their footsteps making no sound.
I followed in a trance, my bare feet padding over the cold wooden floors. The spirits led me up a staircase and down another hall, stopping before an ornate set of double doors. As they gestured toward it, I heard a faint voice whisper, "The dagger...the key..."
The doors swung open, and I stepped into a study. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls, ancient tomes packed tightly together. Strange artifacts covered every surface—statues, animal skulls, glass vials and bowls etched with arcane symbols.
"Celeste..." My mother's voice was distant, as if calling to me from the bottom of a well. "Celeste, wake up..."
I jolted, my eyes flying open. The hospital room came into focus once more. Morning light streamed in through the window. The spirits, the mansion—just a dream.
Consciousness clawed its way back to me, dragging along the unwelcome sensations of throbbing pain and nausea. I blinked against the sterile brightness of the hospital room with dry eyelids. Fuck, it felt like a freight train had used my skull as a fleshlight.
"Ms. Holloway, you're awake," came the clinical voice of Dr. Sterile—or whatever his name was. I couldn't care less.
"Looks like the sedative has worn off," he continued, peeling back my eyelids one by one, checking for signs of life or whatever it is doctors look for in the eyes of the half-dead.
