Page 9 of Avelina

Psycho Snow White pursed her lips, then shrugged. “My name is Seleca, but that’s not important. You and I may get to know each other at some point, but for now, I’m just a girl searching for her dog, like you.” She said the word “dog” like it was a great insult. Rogue, having navigated around the ball of fire, walked between us and sat down, glancing up at me and then back down as if ashamed.

“Who’s a good boy?” she said, smiling. He growled for a brief moment, then quieted. I had never heard him growl before. I looked from him to the woman and back again, trying to comprehend what was happening, but I couldn’t. I was experiencing an abrupt dissolution of my reality.

Psycho Snow White stepped toward Rogue, crouching down to slip her hand under his rib cage. She picked up his giant body with one arm as if he were a stuffed animal. Rogue whined loudly, but he didn’t struggle. He turned his head, and for a split second, I saw the skin around his eyes ripple like the surface of a pond. Then she threw him into the ball of fire.

I screamed. I’m not proud of it. I don’t think of myself as a person who screams stupidly and falls down, but I had done both of those things in the last two minutes. You are such a cliché, Evilina thought.

“Don’t worry. He’ll be fine,” she said, walking toward me. I got the definite feeling that she stalked me now. The closer she got to me, the bigger she looked. I had never been in a fight before, and I had absolutely no instincts for it. Plus, I was injured, okay? I didn’t have a prayer.

Her interaction with Rogue had given me an out, and I turned to run, but she caught me easily from behind, wrapping her arms around my rib cage. I convulsed, my broken ribs screaming, but she hung on, dragging me toward the blue fireball.

“Have a nice trip,” she said. “I’ll catch up with you later.” Then, she tossed me in.

Chapter Four

Linorra cracked the door open, looking out. The first thing she noticed was the smell of roses. Beyond the door was a lovely garden with giant yellow flowers she didn’t recognize. They were as tall as her castle and as wide as a drawbridge. She pulled the key out of the doorknob and watched it transform back to its original shape, then dropped it into her coin purse and tied it shut, pushing the door all the way open to step through. Somewhere in the distance, a deep roar vibrated through the air, straight through her body. She steeled herself and closed the door behind her.

The blue light engulfed me, seeping into my flesh and dissolving my skin like acid. I squeezed my eyes against the light, but it had a crushing physical presence that penetrated through my eyelids, directly into my brain. My skin bubbled, melting away from the muscles and bones.

I had an instant to ponder that before all coherent thought was banished by pain. My entire being, every inch of skin, every organ, every bit of real estate inside my body and spirit, lit up with what could only be described as agony.

I think I screamed, but I couldn’t hear myself. All I could hear was a ringing in my ears so loud that my whole body vibrated with it, making me feel like I would rip apart from the inside out.

Out of nowhere, a terrible anguish struck me, a deep self-loathing I couldn’t explain or sufficiently justify until, in a moment of horrifying clarity, I realized that so much of me had burned away that I could see my own soul.

And it wasn’t good.

Evilina, who had always lurked in the back of my mind, was actually my truest self. I was not only capable of carrying out evil deeds, but I thoroughly enjoyed them. I was that person in the movie theater who laughed at the wrong times, like when everyone else is fighting tears. I was that person who saw horrific news stories and shrugged. I was that person who was the last to know everything because I didn’t much care about what happened to other people.

I wasn’t all bad, of course. I loved my parents and my friends, but I had spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about myself. I was selfish and spiteful. Was I really even that close to my friends? I’d been essentially friendless until my twenties, and when I finally did make friends, I always kept them at enough of a distance that I would emotionally survive it when they inevitably realized they’d made a mistake. I really only had one friend I hadn’t slept with, and Marti was arguably a bigger bitch than me.

If I was being honest, my best friend was a dog, and even he had abandoned me.

In that moment, I didn’t think so much as know, irrefutably, that I had earned this pain, and I was now in Hell, as was only right and just. Despair filled me, but I couldn’t cry. I only trembled, rigidly braced against the pain as I floated, weightless, useless, and appropriately forgotten in that merciless light.

I lost all sense of time, but at some point, I regained an awareness of my physical body and realized that I was waking up. The pain was gone, leaving behind a blissful numbness. Whatever I had been before had surely been burned away.

Good riddance.

I still squinted my eyes against the piercing light, but it had turned into a cool presence that was ecstasy by comparison. I relaxed, reveling in the sweet absence of sensation. I stretched out my arms and legs experimentally, but I couldn’t feel my injured wrist, ankle, or anything else.

I could sort of feel them. I feared that my moment of respite would soon end, and I mentally braced myself against it. Unlike the initial experience of intense pain, however, I now had a dull throbbing that started in my chest and gradually spread outward. The stronger it got, the more I understood that this was not pain. It was pleasure.

It was as if a devoted lover embraced me, gently massaging away all the pain in my body. Having come face-to-face with the worst part of myself, I surrendered to my fate. Shockingly, the despair that had consumed me was replaced by unqualified acceptance. The throbbing in my chest traveled down the length of my arms and legs, pushing out a joyful warmth.

Hesitantly, as if addicted to the feelings, I released the fear and anguish that had skulked in the background of my psyche for years, terrorizing me and simultaneously tricking me into ignoring its presence.

The gentle throbbing built to a crescendo of emotional and sensory pleasure, transforming into something resembling physical pleasure. It was like waking up to the smells of sizzling bacon and baking bread on Christmas and then finding out that someone had gifted you an industrial-strength vibrator. Every physically or emotionally gratifying feeling I’d ever experienced mixed together like a warm broth and soaked into my body and spirit.

I had never really believed in Heaven, and if I did, I was pretty sure that Evilina and I wouldn’t be making an appearance there, but this place came close. Tears spilled down my cheeks as a surge of profound relief flooded my entire being. I screamed out my excitement, only to realize that this place still blocked all sound. Maybe I was wrong, I thought, as the pleasure reached a terrifyingly intense climax. I do belong here. The feeling pulsed through me over and over until I thought I might overdose on it.

Finally, the sensation ceased just as abruptly as the pain had begun and I drifted limply in the silent aqua-blue light. The ringing in my ears subsided. All was calm and still. I took a deep breath in and out, wondering idly how I could breathe at all in this strange place, and let myself relax completely. I’d dozed off when the whooshing sound started again, first as a low grumble and quickly escalating to a roar, and then I fell a few feet through the air, landing with a soft squish onto wet grass. I had the uncomfortable impression that I had just been flushed down a toilet, or maybe out of a birth canal.

A cold, misty rain drifted in from the side instead of from above, cooling my face and arms. The return of scents and sounds overwhelmed my senses. I opened my eyes to look around, but my light-assaulted eyes could now see nothing except blackness and a fading afterimage. I closed my eyes again and just lay there, shivering.

Low, muted thunder rumbled somewhere in the far distance. Leaves rustled in the wind, mixing with the rhythmic pattering of rain on the ground to my left. The familiar scent of redwood trees wafted into my nose, quickly replaced by dog breath and a disgusting, all too familiar tongue licking my face.

I opened my eyes again, squinting. My sight adjusted, and I could just barely make out Rogue’s form in the dim moonlight. I tried to push him away from my face, but I was too weak. He eventually stopped to snuggle his huge body into the space between my knees and chest, half sitting on me, and sticking his wet nose under my chin. I managed to flop an arm up over him, but it was an absurdly strenuous effort.

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