She looked over the words she’d just written. The story seemed about right. That tiny shell of memory gave her hope. She jumped a bit in surprise when she noticed her mother standing to the side of her, but she didn’t look the same as the last time she’d seen her alive. Now, she was nothing but a ghost, one of the shadow-like figures she’d seen earlier. Once her initial fright passed, she smiled at her. An arrogant kind of grin that had her mother frowning in disappointment. 

“I never wanted you to turn out like your father.”

“Why not?” she asked curiously. “You obviously loved him, so which of his traits did you not want me to inherit?”

“None of them,” she murmured. “Not his cold apathy. Not his arrogance. Not even his strength. I always wanted you to grow up to become your own person. To find something in this world worth living for that wasn’t money, power, or sex. Something… beautiful. More meaningful. Different.”

“Dad was always smarter than you,” she stated, frowning at the woman’s words. As much as she had cared about her mother, her optimism had always bothered her. It’d always seemed childish and out of place. It’d always seemed like a chorus of lies. “He always knew there was nothing beautiful about our world.”

Her mother shrugged, her dark eyes never breaking contact with her own. “Maybe so.”

Her mother turned to walk away, her steps soft and unhurried. Her dark, kinky hair danced with the wind along with the royal blue dress she’d always worn. She hesitated before stepping out of the door, turning to her with sad, dark eyes. 

“I’ll see you again sometime, my little duckling.”

And with that phrase, she made her departure. She frowned at the nickname her mother had used to refer to her. Maybe her mother had suddenly forgotten that she wasn’t a child anymore. She wouldn’t put it past the woman. 

She moved to enter that very same room, surprised to see it wasn’t the same old plain room identical to the ones she’d just left. This room was bigger and large portraits of random people littered the walls. 

She hated their faces; how utterly defeated each of them looked. As she did her rounds, she frowned at the eyes that followed her around the room no matter where she went. The orbs presented in the portraits spoke volumes, way more than any words that could be said. She recognized those faces, but she couldn’t put a finger on how.

She was sure she’d find out eventually.

“Do you know who they are?”

Her eyes widened, thoroughly startled by the raspy voice coming from behind her. She whirled around, clutching the pen in her hand tighter. Even as she shivered slightly from fear, she held the object within her hand like a weapon. “Come any closer to me and I swear I’ll shove this through your eyeball and straight to your brain, witch.”

The witch let out a low laugh, well aware of how easily she could call her bluff without repercussion but apparently choosing to humor her. Gesturing to the portraits, she spoke up in a loud rumble. The sound made her skin crawl. “These are the portraits of the townsmen and women of Manson.”

“Manson,” she muttered under her breath. “That’s where I lived, isn’t it?”

“Mm.”

“So why are these pictures here? Why would these people matter to me? To anyone for that matter?” Her brows furrowed and her voice deepened in slight anger. “They’re all demons in human form. Who’d care if something happened to them?”

The witch took a few steps forward and she took some steps back, desperate to keep some sort of distance between them no matter what. The witch ran a hand over one of the portraits causing tiny particles of dust to fall to the floor beneath them. 

“Everyone can be lost and has someone to lose,” the witch sighed. “They may not matter to you or me, but they did to the people that loved them. I’m sure your actions have caused a great deal of pain to those that do care.”

“What did I do to them?” She waited for an answer, but the witch only continued to stare at one of the portraits, her eyes holding those of the boy in the picture. She grew irritated at the fact that the witch was blatantly ignoring her but fought to keep her emotions at bay. “What the hell’s the point in all of this, anyway? You act as if I’ve harmed you.”

Even as she said it, she couldn’t stop her curiosity. What had she done that impacted the lives of so many people? How can one small life like her own hold so much power over others?

“Did I kill them?” she asked. If she had, she had no doubt each and every single one of them deserved it, but she still had to know. “Are they dead?”

The witch finally turned to her, her voice low. “You are just a spider in a web; clinging on to whoever comes close enough to touch you. Draining the life out of them to fuel your own pathetic little fire.”

“You don’t know a thing about me.”

She let out a humorless laugh. “Oh, I know more about you than you know about yourself.”

She paused, a mixture of frightened, disbelieving, and undoubtedly curious. “Who am I, then? What’s my name? How did I get here?”

“Figure it out yourself. I’m not here to tell you your entire life story. I’ve already been generous enough.” The witch nodded at the journal in her left hand tellingly. “That’s what that’s for. My gift to you. Treasure the damned paper more than you treasured our people.”

“Our people?”

“It’ll come back to you in time,” the witch bit out, turning on her heel and making her way to the door. Just before she stepped out of the room, she turned back to her and said, “I’ll make sure of it.”

And then, she was gone. 

If she wasn’t already terrified before, she certainly was when the witch slammed the door behind herself. She heard the click of the lock and with slow, cautious steps moved to test the doorknob. The witch had locked the door; locked her in the room filled with portraits of strangers who wouldn’t stop staring at her with their sad, hopeless eyes. 

Anxiety grabbed hold of her mind and body. Her heart sank in her chest; the beating getting louder and louder until she was sure it’d beat out of her rib cage. 

“What an interesting way to go,” she whispered to herself, the pain worsening.

Her breathing picked up and she shrank into herself, curling up upon with ground just as tears began to leak from her dark eyes. Her white dress was blotched with patches of brown, residue from the less-than-pristine floor beneath her. She let out a scream, loud and raw and enraged.

She’d been locked up for enough of her life. Couldn’t the deity above let her experience peace if only for a moment? Just an hour, a minute, a second… 

Anything. 

Anything to stop the insistent madness that wouldn’t stop trying to claw its way inside her and in turn, pushing out her sanity as if it had never held a place in her heart.

Her ears wouldn’t stop ringing; ringing and ringing and ringing until she was sure it’d drive her mad. Her chest hurt just as much as the banging in her head. She sat against the wall in agony until the insistent, maddening pain finally put her to sleep.