Allie's Tale (Chapter V) Part II (of 3)

I was nine years old, white pillowcase pulled over my head despite my aunt's scolding, only this time without the accompanying lightheadedness that comes with too much recycled air. Just as then, colors and shapes crept unintelligible about me, but it wasn't fear of what was out there that bothered me. The pillowcase only got scary when there was that brief moment of terror when you felt unable to take it off, stuck, trapped.

I didn't know how long it had been. Seconds. Just seconds probably. What was happening to me? It was the girl. The girl somehow did this. She took my eyes. No, impossible. That didn't make any sense. A trick. Were my eyes open or closed? Open. Definitely open.

I slammed my lids shut, hoping for the tranquil black behind the lids, but it was gone. The blinding white raged on. I tried to picture something, anything. I couldn't think of anything. I tried to recreate my room back in Chicago and couldn't. Still just white.

Come on, think of something, fucking anything. Again, nothing. I thought in moments like these it would have been easy to pick the really important memories, the places I'd seen, the people I loved, but none of it came to me. My fear of being unable to craft the images was gradually transforming into this new panic where I couldn't remember the things I thought I treasured most.

Then without meaning to, my mind found Jet. I slowly and arduously found myself able to recreate his features, but it was like I was teaching my brain all over how to do this, how to see. The other memories followed. Winter mornings at my family's old house on the Hudson, racing my uncle around the gravel track at the park down the road, the giant goldfish in our neighbor's pond. The stupidity of remembering those damn goldfish somehow left me much more relaxed.

My heart which had been racing a thousand beats per minute calmed after I could begin recreating sights behind my lids. I was steadily able to recreate even more images, drawn out of my memories. Feeling less hysteric, I tried opening my eyes again. Just white still, but I felt less panicked. Shouldn't my other sense me picking up about now? I steadied my breathing, and over my still pounding heart, I listened.

The Chopin continued, somewhat less elegantly than before, and I was briefly amazed the musicians could continue their performance without the ability to see. It wasn't strange at all to me to know that the blindness affecting me was pandemic to everybody in the room. I don't know how, but just as I knew I needed air to breathe, I knew that the girl on stage was Mania, and I knew that she somehow did this.

Then, after my heart had just calmed, there were new sounds.

Tearing, gasping, ripping, screaming, splashing.

And the pillowcase, no matter how I struggled, would not come off.

I don't know if it was the sounds or the smell that had me sick again. Off balance and unable to see, I was sure I'd vomited on my hair, but at least momentarily, fear trumped embarassment.

The sounds continued and intensified. It was too much to process. Cries for help, shredding, whimpering, begging, and a faint humming, no, laughing, all blended into a twisted cacophony and yet the Chopin continued. A faint metallic smell. And as I understood what was happening, free of that sort of denial that should protect the mind from such atrocities, my vision returned.

And no sooner that it had, I slammed my eyes shut. I tried to get up, to run out into the hall and take my chances with the man by the stairwell, but I couldn't will my body to move. It shook and shivered but wouldn't respond to my very basic commands. Run. Stand. Run. I felt the need to be sick, to vomit again, but unable to manage even that motion, I swallowed hard, sickened further by the acidic flavor, and inhaled true horror through my eyes.

The walls glistened cardinal red. The stage curtains, once golden, were stained crimson. Puddles of red paint slick at their base. The orchestra lay distorted and folded over their instruments, many with their heads cleanly removed, limbs scattered. Their blood puddled and ran through the cracks in the wooden floorboards down off the sides of the stage. And yet none of this was even the slightest preparation for what remained of the crowd on the main floor. I flickered my eyes open once more and again slammed them shut.

Dead. All of them dead. Some disfigured as if they had exploded. And as I opened my eyes a third time, I found myself unable to shut them again. They took in every detail of every atrocity. Families dead, parents covered in the blood of their children, children drowned once again in the blood of their mothers. Necks slashed so completely that the heads remained attached with only the slightest sinew. The floors and walls slick and running, alive, with human blood. And yet somehow, it wasn't the sight that broke me. The smell. The idea that this smell was the blood of all these people and that little molecules of all their blood were being sampled and analyzed through my nose and with my brain and how each and every person in this room was somehow inside me infecting me with their death--

And as I sat paralyzed, awestruck and terrified, she spoke, "Do~novan, so silly."

The sound broke my paralysis. I had to shift my viewing angle to locate her. It required tremendous effort even for this tiniest movement. She was face to face with the standing boy I saw earlier, her two knives pressed threateningly against his throat. His arm hung limp, severely injured, from his side, gun in hand. He must have fired the shots. There had been five ushers surrounding the boy before my vision left me. Three lay dead on the floor, the other two clearly wounded, although still standing. Mania was so entirely stained with blood that her skin and dress were stained scarlet, and it was impossible to tell if she was somehow wounded. She seemed unscathed.

The boy, I guess, Donovan, did not waver in his fury and, through clenched teeth, growled, "You fucking disgrace this family, freak."

She leaned in to the boy and spoke too quietly for me to hear. His expression remained unphased. As she spoke, she gestured around the room, "-- all of this?" She pointed and danced about, clearly proud of her massacre. I was too terrified, too sure that these were my last moments alive, to care much about what she was saying. Thoughts of finding my moment had all left me. I sat and shivered and shuddered and waited for my life to end.