Immediately, the strands of hair on her body rose. Her fight or flight response kicked in. Instinctively, she took a step backward to distance herself from the gut feeling she got. Her gut was screaming, begging her to walk away and not poke her nose into something which was not her business. Her curiosity was dead silent, which was a first. Or, maybe it was because her gut screamed louder for a change.
Beads of sweat ran down her nape after her tantrum in here earlier, which made her look at the numerous books laid all over the floor. A low sigh escaped her as she found herself pacing around in the cabin, desperately trying to calm down her gut so she could think clearly.
There were a hundred, no, probably a thousand good reasons she should not be climbing down into the hole. Yet, she could only think of one good reason for climbing down there; answers. If she could get anything that remotely resembled an answer, she could put this place behind her. She could leave and never look back. She could start a new life; where no one knew her.
Her mind started to reason with her, trying to think of the pros and cons of doing anything. As it always does. Come to think of it, there had only been a few instances in her life where she hadn´t thought about the outcome of a choice.
She wanted to know what would be the least damageable outcome before doing anything. If she knew the outcome or had at least expected it, she could do the cleanup fairly easily.
Determined, she spun around on her heel towards the dark hole. If there was something downstairs, she could assess the damage then. There´s no need to try and anticipate the outcome because nothing has been like she had tried to anticipate until now. She took a few determined steps towards the hole, so she could look down the hole. The hole was as dark as the night, preventing her from preparing herself for whatever was downstairs.
With her heart pounding, her hand reached into the dark hole, trying to find out how deep it went. Her hand didn´t touch anything, then, she started to reach around in the dark, trying to find something which she could climb down with. As if the universe had turned on its opinion of her, her hand found something which remotely felt like a ladder.
Relieved, she positioned herself so she could climb down the ladder. For each step she took, one of her legs waved out into the empty nothing so she could tell how much space she had. Yet, her leg never bumped into anything on her way down. Her heart raced with such a force it deafened out her hearing. Out of nowhere, the step she stood on gave in.
Her gut cinched together as she felt herself in free fall for a few moments, before landing on something hard.
She woke up with a groan, her entire body aching after the fall. The right side of her face was warm and sticky, which made her hand run up to wherever the blood was coming from. Her fingertips found the source of the wound on the side of her forehead, which made her flinch. The sharp pain throbbed through her entire body.
She ended up tearing off the lower part of her skirt, before binding it over her head to stop the bleed. She held over the half-assed bandage, before tilting her head up to look at the hole she had just fallen from. It had been a four-meter drop at least, with about six meters up to the light. For a second, she contemplated climbing back up, which would have been the reasonable thing to do.
Yet, she was already down here.
Another grunt escaped her as she got up on her feet. Immediately the sharp pain spread up her leg, which made her realize that she should go back up, so she didn´t end up hurting herself any further. Finding out something won´t satisfy her if she died down here either.
She turned her head in the direction she could hear droplets of water, realizing that she couldn´t see anything down here either. There was nothing here. She would have to come back down here when she didn't have a thundering headache and a preferably sprained leg.
Defeated, she reached out for the ladder, whilst testing its strength of it. She didn't necessarily want to face another fall and would do most to prevent it if she could. Her right ankle screamed at her each time she placed any weight on it, which made her even more determined to get up from the hell-hole and fast.
"Believe my luck", she muttered to herself as she climbed up the stairs, "The universe fucking hates me."
First, she gets trialed for witchcraft, then hanged. She gets rescued but decides to wander off on her own. Then, she ends up here; a place where God hadn´t been in ages or had never had the opportunity to reach yet. Everything is a bloody dead end. She can´t figure out anything, but she always walks around with the feeling of forgetting something, or someone. Ava can´t even put her finger on whatever she is supposed to remember either.
It was a feeling, aching in her chest, begging to be filled. To be remembered.
She placed her palm on the floor before lifting herself from the ladder which should have been replaced years ago. It was laughable to say the least, her misery that is. Or the universe found it hilarious. She had fallen into a never-ending cycle of anguish, no, hell was a more descriptive word. It was annoying, exhausting, and mentally draining.
"And not to mention, I get a fucking concussion, it´s the first week of snow, I have no water nor food and a sprained leg", she tilted her head up towards the roof.
"If there´s anything up there who finds my misery hilarious, go fuck yourself."