Page 5 of Porcelain Grave

It’s not a king. It’s not a queen. It’s a hand-painted porcelain illustration. It’s me. A miniature, porcelain version of myself, looking terrified, trapped in a frame of ornate black lace. And holding me—his fingers wrapped possessively around my waist, his face a mask of psychotic devotion—is a porcelain version of Rhys. It’s a fucking mirror of our entire twisted relationship captured on a piece of cardstock.

"What the fuck..." I breathe, staring at the card. The detail is insane. It looks like it's watching me.

The clown suddenly breaks into a jarring, erratic dance—a series of sharp, twitching movements that look like a broken marionette. As he spins, he throws the rest of the deck into the air. The cards don't fall normally; they flutter down like dying birds, and as they hit the marble floor at my feet, they transform.

They aren't cards anymore. They are tiny, fragile porcelain dolls. Hundreds of them. All of them are me. Some are screaming, some are weeping, some are stripped bare—and every single one is being held, crushed, or owned by a tiny porcelain Rhys.

I recoil, a gasp escaping my lips. It’s too much. It’s a fucking psychic assault. I feel exposed, stripped naked in front of this freak.

Rhys, however, looks absolutely enthralled. He lets out a low, dark chuckle, his hand gripping my thigh, squeezing hard enough to bruise. "See, Ophelia? Even the art knows you belong to me. In every version of reality, you are mine to break."

Before I can process the horror, a new sound echoes through the room. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

From the opposite wing of the stage, his partner emerges. She’s a vision of unhinged gothic decay. Her makeup is smeared across her face like she’s been scrubbing at it in a panic, and her dark clothing is tattered and stained. She doesn't smile. She doesn't speak. She just stares at me with wide, vacant eyes, her lips stained a deep, wet crimson that might be lipstick—or might be fresh blood.

And in her hand, she carries a massive, heavy iron axe.

She slowly drags the blade across the polished marble, the screech of metal on stone sending a jolt of pure electricity through my nerves. She stops beside the clown, resting the heavy head of the axe on her shoulder, her gaze locked onto me. She looks like she’s deciding exactly where to swing.

The act becomes a blur of horror theatre. The clown speaks in riddles, his voice weaving a web of confusion while the woman moves with a terrifying, predatory grace. She lunges forward, the axe whistling through the air, stopping a fraction of an inch from the clown's neck in a display of lethal precision. She spins, the blade slicing through a velvet curtain with a violent rip, the fabric falling like a severed limb.

I’m frozen. I’m fucking terrified, but I can’t look away. The adrenaline is spiking, mixing with the fear and the strange, dark eroticism of the violence.

Then, suddenly, Rhys stands up.

He doesn't just walk onto the stage; he claims it. He strides up there, his presence instantly dwarfing the performers. He looks at me, and for the first time, I see a flicker of something purely theatrical in his eyes.

He grabs a prop—a jagged, oversized fake knife—and begins to mimic the clown's twitching, erratic movements. He starts to act out a psychotic, exaggerated version of himself, making wide, manic gestures, his face twisting into a caricature of a madman. He’s being ridiculous. He’s being a fucking lunatic for the sake of a show.

He lunges toward me, mimicking a kill, but at the last second, he catches me around the waist and pulls me up onto the stage with him. He spins me around, his laughter echoing through the void—a sound that should be terrifying, but because he’s doing it for me, because he’s willing to look absurd just to see my reaction, something snaps inside me.

I burst out laughing.

It’s a jagged, hysterical sound. I’m laughing at the horror, laughing at the madness, laughing because this powerful, terrifying man is playing the fool in a gothic circus just to make me smile. It’s the most fucked up moment of my life, and I love it.

Rhys pulls me flush against him, his eyes burning. "There she is," he whispers against my lips. "My beautiful, broken girl."

The clown and the woman finish their act with a final, synchronized bow—the woman slamming the axe into the stage floor with a deafening thud that vibrates through my boots.

The clown bows.

"For the lady.”

Then he and his partner disappear back down, leaving us alone.

Rhys doesn't wait for the applause that isn't coming. He scoops me up in his arms, carrying me off the stage and out of the monochromatic nightmare, leaving the porcelain dolls of my shattered self scattered across the floor.

Rhys doesn't let me walk; he practically steers me, his hand a heavy, possessive weight on the small of my back as he leads me away from the wreckage of porcelain dolls and the lingering scent of the clown's greasepaint. We move deeper into the bowels of The Midnight Menagerie, passing through corridors that feel like they're breathing, the walls closing in until we emerge into a wide, open plaza that makes my fucking skin prickle.

"Where the fuck are we now?" I whisper, my voice still sounding raw and fragile.

He doesn't answer. He just smiles—that dark, knowing smirk that tells me I'm exactly where he wants me.

In the center of the plaza stands a carousel. But this isn't some cheery, brightly colored piece of shit from a local fair. This is a fucking nightmare carved in wood. It’s 3 a.m., and the only light comes from flickering, antique gas lamps that cast long, dancing shadows across the pavement. The glow is sickly and yellow, barely reaching the edges of the ride.

The horses... fuck, the horses are wrong. They’re carved from a wood so black it seems to swallow the light. Their eyes are cracked porcelain, staring blankly into the void with a gaze that feels far too sentient. Their mouths are open, carved with a precision that makes them look almost human, as if they're frozen in a silent, eternal scream. Some of them have jagged antlers sprouting from their heads; others have skeletal, leathery wings folded against their flanks.

There are no speakers. No digital beats. Instead, the air is filled with the wheezing, melancholic groan of an ancient organ. The sound is coming from somewhere hidden, a ghostly melody that feels like it's pulling the air right out of my lungs. A winding, wrought-iron staircase leads up to the platform, looking like a spiral of thorns.