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“Tell her, Freddie.”
“Tell me, Fred.”
“Who do you pick?” My mother chuckles somewhere in the distance, and as I try to step back so I can look around me, my feet sink deeper. “Go on, sweetheart. Come on, listen to our mother…pick. One.”
No.
“Eenie meenie…mine-y moe…” she sings.
Lucy’s chuckles echo behind me, and it’s only when she spins me to face her that my feet move.
A familiar stare greets me, and no matter how many steps I stumble back, she’s still right there. Her hands grasp my shoulders.
“Pretty dolly on a string,” she snickers into my ear, and as she’s holding on to me, I can finally see the light, burning like a supernova in the nothingness. Even though I can’t move, she feels closer. The dark warms as the shadows lurk around us, and everything disappears until she’s right in front of me.
“Beautiful moth…” A trembling smile tugs at her lips. “You see? Don’t you see? It’s just you and me.”
Amber eyes meet mine, and with every teardrop, she dims. Softer than the sun and brighter than the moon.
“Delicate thing.”
“A pretty dolly on a string,” she sobs back. “Shhh…don’t let them find me.”
“Stick, stock…stick, stock…” The cackle echoes around us, all the voices melding together. “Stick, stock…”
I’m spinning and spinning, and all I can see is her getting dimmer and dimmer. “Don’t let them take me away!”
“Eenie meenie…”
“Stick stock…”
“Stone…dead.”
The resounding shot reverberates endlessly, and as I finally manage to stop the spinning, there’s nothing there. Nothing but the void, smoke clouding around me, suffocating me as brilliant white, glittering feathers rain from nowhere.
She’s gone. They’re all gone.
The ground shakes. The dark spins around me. Smoke and feathers. Ragged breaths and ringing eardrums. My chest crumples, my hands burn, and my head hurts with a blinding pain that makes me fall to my knees.
In the silence, all there is the drip, drip, drip of the tears blurring my gaze red. Wiping frantically at my face, it only gets worse. My hands only burn more. Screams tear from my throat.
Drip, drip, drip…
It’s so cold.
Drip, drip, drip…
My tears pool around me, threatening to drown me, and I can’t stop. My screams get louder, and my hands pound at the surface of my puddled tears. Until I catch sight of the eyes staring back at me. Vacant. Lifeless. The blue so milky that it makes the blown pupils stark as they bore into mine.
Drip, drip, drip…
Heavy drops ripple the surface of the pool beneath me, running over the sides of my face and down my forehead until they become sticky strings streaming from me, keeping me connected to the puddle beneath me.
White feathers drown around me, turning red before disappearing beneath the surface.
They’re gone. They’re all gone. My mother…Lucy…my swan. Gone.
Drip, drip, drip…
