Her eyelids hung over her restless, wandering eyeballs as her fingers danced on the water’s thick surface—so thick that she hardly believed it to be water. After all, blood does run thicker than water. She hummed dreamily to drown out the vexed sound of her parents’ murmurs, possibly trying to figure out what went wrong with their anomalous creature. ‘Creature’ was their euphemism for daughter, for it brought them less shame and more authority.
“Had it not been for her grotesqueness!” Cried her mother.
“Had it not been for her absurd imagination!” Howled her father, “I could not count on both my hands the times she crept up at twilight to bid the shadows a good night!”
“Whatever is that supposed to mean?!”
A hysterical laugh chokes him as he explains, “I could not tell you! She says that they emerge at twilight and at twilight only!”
“How truly inane the creature of ours is… We shall be seen with her nevermore.” The mother sighs.
Not that she was conscious of what she’d done, but she found herself standing, wide eyed, her hands stained with same crimson that lined the hem of her skirt. Voices wrestled for attention in her preoccupied mind; she had to get away. She never belonged here.
She ran, yearning that she could bid the shadows one last goodbye; she wished she could redeem her inadequate self to the town of sophistication; she wished she wasn’t overcome by cowardice—but she was, so she ran as far as her feeble legs would allow.
She wasn’t quite sure whether her vamoose would be everlasting, but she sought solace in it, more so in the sanctuary she journeyed to—the forest. As the heels of her feet ricocheted off the ground, she came to realize that no legacy of her would ever survive back home. There would be no room for the legacy of a trivially deranged girl in the town of prodigies and aristocrats, no room at all.
No one would miss her; they would be relieved.
She knew how the girls at school would mock her, how the teachers would pity her as though her tiny brain could never grasp whatever was told. She knew that nothing about her behavior was ordinary, she knew all of that. What she didn’t know, however, was that it wasn’t her fault.
She was simultaneously burdened and blessed with the connection of spirits. She now walked and lived in oblivious bliss, unknowingly insane.
The trees narrowed, the whistling wind became louder, and scuttling insects became faster. She entered the unentered depths; the aristocrats back home would never risk tearing or defiling their extravagant attire.
Her wrists had stopped trailing blood, which they regularly did when she would contact spirits or visit their dimension in her dreams.
She now felt as though something was luring her into places she didn’t want to go, but she wouldn’t stop because her body willed against it.
There was no return now, light was dimmed and space was limited. She’d now become a wild animal with all the other creatures inhabiting the forest, and maybe that would suit her better than ‘home’.
Her vision became disoriented as she ran through the cold forest. Her wrists began to slit back open and trail a vibrant burgundy, her sore legs were clumsily leading her forcefully. Had it really been days since she left? Her legs seem bonier and more exhausted than they’d been in weeks. The forest ground, with its rocky surface, left her feet wounded.
Panic overcame her, and her legs were completely out of her control. Unable to slow down, she fell face first into a filthy puddle. She squeaked out a groan and winced at her reflection. Her wild eyes were nearly bulging out her skull, her hair was matted, and her frame was skeletal. She’d lost all sense of humanity, and it made her heart only ache more at how inhumane and lifeless her physique became.
Still, she felt as though she saw herself. Truly saw herself, not the out of her wits girl in fancy dresses, she looked real. She looked… dead.
When she did pull herself up, she ferociously scavenged for food of any kind. After all her efforts, she found plump, ripe berries. They dangled from a green bush, and their juice trickled down the leaves. She wanted to jump right at it and eat it clean, until she saw a squirrel eat it and drop dead.
Her knees buckled in complete exhaustion, she had no more of anything in her, so she just lied there, gazing up at the sky. A luminous, lofty woman approached her. She was slender and gaunt, but oddly sublime. Yet she had no energy for surprise at the presence of such a being.
“I, Dabria, Angel of death, have come here to collect your soul, or at least what’s left of it. I have fragments, but not the whole. I’ll show no sympathy today, just mercy. You’ve been dead since you entered my forest.”
These words didn’t register for her; she can’t be dead. Not even a chance to liberate herself! She wanted to thrust and bite, but her limp body betrayed her. Instead, she spoke sensibly for the first time in her life.
“Why… why was I abnormal?” She said with a gruff voice that she barely recognized to be her own. Tears chased each other on her hollow cheeks.
“You’re right, you aren’t normal.” Dabria’s face wasn’t pitiful.
“You’re better than that. I can promise you this, sweet girl, you won’t be a forgotten nobody.” Dabria vowed.
It felt like Dabria pulled the dagger out her heart and left it to bleed dry.
“I want my name to be Evette, the living one.” She didn’t even think of it, she just knew. Refusing to die in dismay, she smiled wryly at her bittersweet fate. She now knew that she was a rarity not an oddity.
“Goodbye, Evette. This time, we bid you a good night.”