The Mortal Fringe (18 page)

She looks at me like if she had not
heard a word of what I just said.

"You don't have to do this" she says
politely before standing out with the intention of
leaving.

I stand up right after her and propose
again. I imagine what it would have been like asking Elizabeth out.
Then the words flow again, but it's my mind speaking up, not
me.

"I really mean it" I lie, I needed a
punch to realize that if I ever wanted to attend the party I only
wanted to do it with Elizabeth. This is not just a punch, this is
me throwing myself off a cliff and shouting out loud «I'm
dumb».

"Thank you, Alex" She smiles and then
goes quietly back to her room.

I am left in the dining room all by
myself, thinking about what I just did, I was trying to prove
myself capable of getting close to people, and aside from that, I
proved that I feel something that I have never felt
before.

The room is still empty, Jay has not
returned. I throw myself on the bed and I fall asleep thinking
about what would have happened if I had told Elizabeth what my
feelings were, thinking if it would have made any
difference.

CHAPTER 25

In a room with no lights at all, I
stand alone. All my fears are gone and the desperate thought of
Elizabeth's disappearance seems to be only a distant
memory.

"Hello?"

The eco of my voice comes back to
me, but it is saying something else, something I can't
understand.

There is an enormous white wooden
door in front of me. I walk across the room, one step after the
other, carefully watching where I tread on. I am lighter than a
feather right now, I am the most vulnerable I have ever been, but I
am not worried, not at all. That's when I realize that whatever it
is that is happening, it's not real.

The creaky sound of the door marks
the entrance to another place, another room, this one dark and
cold, full of anger and terror, full of what I've been feeling in
the real world for far too long. The door closes behind my back and
I know that all I can do is go forward, through the limitless
room.

The cold, freezing, air makes my
whole body shiver. I can't see where I am, only three lights show
up in the distance and the rest is pure blackness, my fear rises.
Like so many times before this one, the wet mud, now under my bare
feet, brings me back to a place I know, this is where I
die.

I start walking, there's absolutely
no sound around me. The killing silence provokes an unbearable
squeaking in my ears that will only end with my own death. I keep
on walking, something I never had the chance to do here. I can see
some bench like shapes in the distance, but there's a mist that
blocks off my eyesight. There's just one thing I know for sure,
this is a colossal place that would make the most powerful person
in the world look ridiculous.

Suddenly, there's ghostly figure in
front of me, the one that has been stalking me in my sleep for the
past months. She is wearing a black dress that flutters in the wind
like if it was an evil spirit. The faceless body looks at me from
the distance, all I can make out are the two terrifying green
haloes coming from her eyes. My body is paralyzed, now everything
looks familiar. She is getting closer, her bare feet are moving
faster with every passing second, and she will be by my side sooner
than I would have wanted.

She opens her deformed mouth and a
creaky sound comes out of it. I can feel her face almost grazing
mine, her skin is cold as ice and when I feel it. My whole body
goes as cold as hers.

She puts one hand on my chest and
presses it with all her strength, I can feel my heartbeat stopping,
my forces are disappearing and my life is going away. My legs give
out and I fall so slowly that I relive all the dreams that came
before this one, trying to find a way out of it. But I can't,
there's no going back.

Her torn dress is ripping away from
her body. She stands in front of me and when nothing can cover her
damaged body, she pulls a knife out of nowhere as she draws an
unnerving smile at me. Her pale hand risen in the air tells me that
my life is once again coming to an end. She drops her arm onto my
chest and with a harrowing sound the blade of the knife enters my
body and slays my heart for good.

But I don't die.

She takes me to a new place, a
familiar place. The red painted walls and stairs can't hide the
true nature of the room, I am home, my real home. But still my ears
are condemned to eternal silence with only the disturbing beeping
to keep them alive. In the distance I can make out a shadow, held
against the wooden wall in the living room. My mother is hanging
out of a rope, still living, trying to resist the imminence of her
death. I scream to the top of my lungs but no sound comes out of my
mouth. She can see me, she is staring right at me, and the shy
smile on her face proves that at least she is relieved, she is not
alone. I run straight to her with the only intention of liberating
her from her killing trap, but I can't help her, I can't touch her,
If I put my hands on her they disappear, like if I were an all
seeing spirit that just appeared in front of her to guide her
through her final steps.

The ill-fated ghostly figure behind
me touches my arm and before I can turn to wave goodbye, my mother
is gone, and so am I.

She has brought me back to my room;
it's not red but pure black, and everything looks like if it had
been set on fire. She leaves the room and I follow her, the whole
building is burnt and the flames are devouring everything they find
on their path. Still, I feel nothing, not even a burning on my
feet. I walk behind her trying to understand what is it that she
wants me to see, but all I can picture is my mother hanging from a
rope in the middle of my dining room, back home. Suddenly I feel
tears in my eyes, and in my face. We are climbing the stairs that
lead to the roof of the residence, the door is open and the
exterior is pale white, the scorching flames are not around me
anymore and I am completely sure that I am in an utterly different
place.

She walks me to the edge of the
roof and with the same haunting smile she used right before she
stabbed me, she points down to the street. There, I can see
everyone I ever cared about, dead and torn to pieces, covered with
blood and some of them still agonizing. On top of them, Elizabeth
looks at me, straight into my soul and I know that she is down
there because of me. The freezing blade rips my body again and I
fall in the distance, to oblivion, to darkness. To
death.

I wake up screaming. My hand's pressed
to my chest, holding my heart and breathe as if I just came back to
life from a painful and longtime agonizing death. My eyes see
everything as black as it was in my dream, the room is empty and I
can't focus on the walls that surround me, I feel like in a
dangerous rollercoaster where everything moves and I am not
attached to a seatbelt to protect me. I'm spinning, but the image
of those corpses lying on the street comes back to me as real as it
was in the dream, I can't stay in the room any longer, I have to
make sure that it was just a dream and not real. I run across the
now longer than ever corridor that stands between my room and the
stairs to the terrace. I can hear the thunder outside, and the
lightings draw strange and terrifying shadows along the way, but I
don't lose sight of what I want, I don't care about the storm, I
need to get to the terrace.

I climb the stairs as fast as I can,
some of them are wet because the windows are wide open, as is the
door to the patio. The lighting and the thunder make me more
confused than what I already was. The dizziness from the dream is
nothing but increasing and by the time I reach the door to the
stage of my dream, I am not sure I can call the difference between
what's real and what is not.

When I cross the door I go straight to
the edge of the terrace, the swamped floor stands between me and
the place where I will be sure that all I saw was a dream. I'm so
close to the edge that I can see all those bodies again, clearer
than ever, particularly Elizabeth's body, on top of all the others.
She looks at me and reaches for my hand, as if she wanted me to
join them. I come back to reality -or my version of it- when I
notice that something is off. My right foot slips and I lose
control of my body. The next thing I am sure about is that it was
indeed, just a dream. My knees crash against the metal railing and
my whole body weight goes over it.

For a short moment, I think I'm
flying. I am hanging from the edge. The fall would have been deadly
but fortunately I was able to grab the railing.

I scream as hard as I can, but the
thunder mutes my struggle to get rescued. This –I think– is the
moment I die. If I slip and fall from the roof, there's no way I
can walk out of it, I'll break my neck on the act.

I start to feel how my hands lose
their strength, for more than five minutes I've been holding all my
weight from here and my numb hands won't hold me for much longer. I
am out of options and screaming is the only one I can keep on
using, until my hands give in.

"
Help
" I think to myself

I scream for the very last
time.

My hands begin to shake, my whole body
trembles and my voice is no longer useful. My hands can't anchor me
to the building, to my life, anymore. It's like the railing is no
longer there.

I will soon be the first of the many
corpses I saw on the street below my feet.

Finally, my hands give in, and I fall
into the void.

CHAPTER 26

Someone grabs my hand before I
disappear into the darkness. Whoever it is on the other side pulls
me up and over the railing. I remain on the ground, trying to
recover my extinct breath. I don't want to open my eyes, I am too
terrified to do so and realize that I am actually dead and I just
arrived to whatever place awaits for us.

"I told you not to put my plans in
danger" That voice… I know it.

But it can't be. Not her.

I open my eyes slowly, and the figure
of the woman stands out in the darkness. The lighting shows her
face, showing dangerous traces of hate and fury through the horrid
look she is giving me.

Constance has come to my aid, not
Elizabeth, or Jay. I need some time to process it. Have they
forsaken me to my own luck? I try to stand, but I can't. She stands
there in front of me, not moving, not even blinking. She looks at
me with so dark eyes that I keep wishing for my death to arrive
right now.

Finally, she puts her hand on my
shoulder and in just a thought, I am lying on the dry –and more
comfortable– floor of my room.

"May I ask what you were trying to
achieve by throwing yourself from the roof?"

"I did not… The dream, I just wanted
to…"

"Throw yourself from the roof and ruin
Elizabeth's future."

"She ruined mine" I whisper,
regretting I said that just after doing so.

Constance approaches me and with the
sharp end of her boot she makes me roll over and lie on my back.
She kneels in front of me and grabs my face with her two pointy and
skinny fingers.

"I warned you" she mouths the words
very calmly, so I can understand everything she is saying "I won't
let you damage her."

"Like you once did?" I ask, recalling
what Elizabeth told me about Constance's previous female
protégée.

With my eyes fixed on her long enough
to see her fury grow sufficiently big to destroy the world, she
crashes my head against the floor and knocks me out for the rest of
the night.

When I wake up I see Jay's fern eyes
fixed on me. He is standing in the corner of the room and doesn't
move. He only stares at me, and even though I am wide awake, he
remains still. He is hardly recognizable, his body looks bigger,
and stronger. I stand up, feeling the pain thorough my body, I am
sure that I could count the bruises I have without even looking at
them. My legs shake constantly and my knees don't seem to be able
to hold my weigh, so before I fall down, I sit on my
bed.

"Welcome back" I say brining my hand
to the back of my head, there's no blood; Constance didn't hit me
as hard as I thought.

"I'm not back, I only came to make
sure you were not dead."

"Yet" I correct him.

"Exactly" he looks at me with his
emotionless face, making me feel worthless of his time, and my
life.

We both keep our thoughts to
ourselves, talking is not worth the effort right now, I am more
concerned about what happened last night.

"I'll be seeing you."

"Wait" I say as quickly as I can. "Do
you always do this? Or is it just because of me?"

"Do what?" he sounds completely
different, I've known him long enough to be sure, he's not the Jay
I've been living with.

"Asking people to trust you and then
leaving them on their own, like if they were some piece of nothing
that did not matter."

He comes closer, so close that I could
touch him if I raised my hand towards him.