Edith stumbles inside the gothic galore of a true occultist's wet dream.
Considerably larger than a FedEx truck, and having as much personality as a funeral, the room was white on the walls and black in everything else.
Victorian furniture is spread around in a lousy vision of professionalism: the bed was in a polymorous wedlock with a wall and a window; the sofa set was locked in a passionate, and quite possibly permanent, smooch with an empty kitchen isle; The cabinet drawers were cheating on the discarded food cans for they housed a television within. The walls were victims of loneliness, assault and dripping depression. The dressing table and stool were happily visiting the bed with their two children, side tables, playing with the lamps.
And everything beyond the claustrophobic family dynamic was empty space for Edith to wander around and contemplate whether the designers had buried their brain cells before opening the drafts made for this place. Or was the draftsman getting high with his bosses when he got this approved.
Nevertheless, the supernatural world was a sheer disappointment for Edith Chambers. Everyone around was rude and selfish.
She steps on a stool, jumps over the dressing table and falls onto the surprisingly cushiony bed. An eerie gust of cold wind kisses her nape. Edith shudders, eyeing the windows to find them bolted shut. With a big, obnoxious, lock on it.
"Pfft," Edith scoffs at the mockery of her captivity.
From family, Marlin, college to this...flamboyant supernatural castle of a prison. Edith could see a pattern of shackles always weighing her down. She tries to act free within her confines and everytime, the binds get tighter and the space more confined.
Edith wonders what Pristine or Estella might be upto. An artificial vampire. A beautiful wolf. And a stupid human. All prisoners of circumstances. Edith wonders what Julius did for Estella to get so mad at him.
Wait—
"If the supernatural world is real— then...did i...really...get on the bad side of the royalty?!"
She stares at the bland roof and sighs a moment. Then a thought creeps in: what if the bed has cockroaches or lizards or bugs in it?
Another: What if they use me as a blood bag?
And another: What if I become a sex slave?
The blind preposterousness of the third thought had Edith pinching her arms and gasping for air. An empty mind was the devil's home. It's true and what even would they use her for—?! In her perspective, she is the most useless leverage in existence.
Edith sneaks a peek inside her shirt and scoffs at herself. Nah. Can't be.
Won't be.
Right?
The room for contemplation narrows to void when the dressing table, standing in front of the bed, suddenly slides diagonally, bashing it's stool and the side tables away from its path.
It's wooden legs scratch across the floor making a screeching sound that Edith feels in her goosebumps. Her heart drops. Death was easy...but was she ready?
A wicked laugh sounds beyond the kitchen isle.
Edith shrieks.
The sheer possibility of anything and nothing has her brain in a frenzy. She stands to run but the bed speeds and crashes itself into the wall beside the door. Edith screams, like a madwoman, losing her footing which in turn bangs her head on the wall.
A warmth embraces her face.
"Bullseye!" A highpitched squeak breaths life in her ear. Edith shudders away, flailing her hands at thin air. But the cold breath is gone as fast as it came.
The side tables zoom across the empty space in pairs, all by themselves. Edith sees nothing, but hears everything. A toe-curling horror houses itself within her being.
The sound of wood against flooring, cutting, piercing, fast gusts of wind, swooshing. Maniacal laughs, lacking emotion. Mockery.
She screams again when the bed starts moving again. In front, the cabinet doors fling open and the television comes flying in her direction. Edith pulls a pillow over her head and ducks from the attack.
A throaty, gutteral, groan resonates. Edith's whole being sits up in a flinch. All her senses are on high-alert. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, numbing her pains.
The television sits on the dressing table and the bed crashes into the kitchen isle. There is a moment of silence, if you rule out Edith's hammering heart and racing breath.
"WHAT ARE YOU?! WHO ARE YOU?? WHAT DO YOU WANT!!" She breaks it, crawling up to the headrest and using the pillow as her shield.
The room looks as normal as her sanity within.
"I don't wanna tell you~ I don't wanna tell you~" Chirpy child-like giggles rounded the room, falling on Edith's ears like 8D surround sound.
From that moment forth, Edith hated children.
The stool zoomed past the bed and flung into the arms of the sofa. Edith's breathing stopped for a split second.
Her jaw was chattering, involuntarily. On the wall in front, Edith witnessed the beginnings of a shadow.
"Please...i have nothing to give to you. I am a broke college student. We don't even have good food to eat...I'm not healthy enough for you to eat. I have a heart disease...and piles. I've had it since I was 7, along with pyria. I never brush my teeth— I beg you, leave me alone!"
The shadow drops onto the floor and swooshes under Edith's nose in a blink of an eye. Edith holds her breath as a grin forms right opposite her nose. A toothy grin, embodiment of nothing yet holding the power over anything.
It grinds it's teeth together. Edith, almost choking, returns to breathing again.
"A-are you a vengeful spirit? A Ghost?" She stutters out, breathing quick between her words and digging her nails in her palms to fake some confidence.
Her doey pupils are blown wide, face red with embarrassment, exertion and...because of her bleeding forehead and nose. Edith had yet to realize it.
"Ghost—? Kekekeke! I'm no ghost!" The shadow drawled menacingly, closing in and passing through Edith's body.
The sensation was equal to nothing short of hugging the sun on impulse. Her insides felt as if being set on fire. Bile rises from her gut and gags over the pillows.
The shadow continued hollering, "I am the God among spirits!" Cue some maniacal Disney laughs. "I am the King of the unseen. The Ruler of Everything! Prince of Darkness! The Shadow Stealer...!"
Edith tries to regain her burnt senses. Her brain feels fried.
The list of aliases went on...and on...and on...and with each title, the shadow's form became greater...and stronger...and bigger.
"...and you shall worship me!"
Edith looks up with a pained expression. Talk about God-complex and this thing was the embodiment of it. Nevertheless, she drops her head on the bed, in a respectful bow. "I shall serve you, my Lord and Master! Guide this lowly creature with your best intellect!" She pleads dramatically. Exhausted.
Another childish giggle echoes through the damp room.
Edith looks up from her dedicated bow to see the Shadow having materialized itself. Edith frowns at it's appreance.
It was hardly as tall as the distance between one's knee and ankle. His head had grown a shrub for hair which looked too prickly and spikey to touch. His eyes had four pupils each, all moving around in different directions, creeping the living daylights out of Edith. His nose looked like a big chunk of twisted clay and mouth held sharp fangs peering from either side of it. His ears stood long, tall and proud, like an elf's. Man's neck was borderline non-existent and Edith wondered how his doughnut like body handled the hunky muscle arms attached on its either side. His legs were small but feet obnoxiously huge.
The proportions flew her mind, and half of her fear, away.
He groans, whining on the floor. "Parrot Green, seriously?! That's the best you could come up with?!" He snarls at Edith, whose eyes widen in surprise.
Say what now—?
"I came up with—?" She mumbles, only to receive a pillow smack on her face.
"After being terrorized by me, the horrifying Quilibet of Anubis, the nightmare of the nightmares, ruler of horrors and THIS IS WHAT YOUR MIND CONJURES UP?!" He groans again, dispirited and whiney.
Edith couldn't take his deep voice seriously anymore. She was too focused on the strings of green slime being formed in his mouth while he spoke. His spit glistened and for Edith, it was beyond fascinating.
With his strong arms he pulls himself onto the bed and he sits in front of Edith with a grimace. His thin lines of dark lips press closed against each other and the sharp fangs glisten under dim lights. His eyeballs keep moving in all directions, like wandering tadpoles.
"What are you?" Edith questions.
"Your worst nightma—"
"Yeah, besides that."
"The Rule—"
"And that. I know you're the mighty majesty of menace, moving on, if you're so great, then why are you here and not on the throne?"
The creature's sickly green skin over his forehead contours into a frown.
Gotcha!
Edith let's a wave of smug subtlety rush within.
"Why would I need a throne if I am a King already?" He grumbles, hands flailing left and right as furniture flew across the room. Edith ducked another hit from a tin can and continues.
"Then where is your kingdom?" She questions swiftly, jerking as a mixer went right over her head.
"Everywhere is my kingdom."
His words are sharp, tone absolute and yet Edith finds his thick-skinned, love-repelling, face to hold a subtle weakness; a stain of vulnerability in one of his many eyeballs. An invocation of pity. A note of loneliness hidden behind pits of pride.
Edith looks back at the creature, jaw dropped, eyes unmoving from his. She leans in, smirking within, as she replies in a thick whisper:
"In my world, that's called calling a bluff."
"I'M NOT A LIAR!" the creature screams, furniture smashing against the walls repeatedly. His huge nostrils flare in vehemence and slimy spit runs down his jaws.
"I didn't say that! I said that you have nothing to prove otherwise!!" Edith shouts back in his face.
"I don't like you!" The creature screams in her face, his slimy spit landing on her nose.
Her hand wipes the spit over a pillow.
"WE'LL YOU'RE SITTING HERE EITHER WAY! WHY ARE YOU HERE, HUH? DON'T YOU HAVE A KINGDOM TO RULE?!" Edith screeches. throwing all fear, respect and sensibility— oh wait she didn't have that to begin with— out of the window.
"YOU'RE NO FUN TO TORMENT!!" The creature seethes, high pitched, all eight of his pupils now focused on Edith's lanky form.
It's now or never.
"WELL I RECKON YOU'RE LONELY AND STUCK! YOU HAVE NO COMPANY IN YOUR EMPIRE OF NOTHINGNESS AND SEEK VALIDATION BY SCARING OTHERS BECAUSE THEIR FEAR BECOMES A PROOF OF YOUR EXISTENCE AND IT MAKES YOU FEEL THAT YOU ARE REAL!!"
"SHUT UP! YOU KNOW NOTHING! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
His eyes are watery, parrot skin tinging rosy. His fists are clenched, he's banging them over the bed.
The bed speeds again and Edith wails, holding tight onto the bed spreads. It spins, a first, till her brain is dizzy and the blood from her nose drops to her lip. She realises it's presence for the first time. She was bleeding and she didn't even feel anything.
The bed stops spinning.
Edith coughs and falls on the bed, gasping. The world felt dim. Come to think of it, she had stopped feeling pain. A sweet drowsiness was overtaking her. It was so easy to give in and fall asleep.
The creature stops throwing a tantrum and towers over her. He keeps a rough hand over her forehead and his concerned beady eyes flash golden.
"You'll die within today."
And Edith felt like sleeping wouldn't be a bad choice.
<3