Page 39 of Threads Of Madly Whispers

Naseria winces. “You’re the devil.”

Class is dismissed shortly and with the forty minutes of lunch I have before assisting Madgar I make my way to the library. Naseria’s father is in town, with a suitor he wants to introduce, and to her disfavor she has to leave. It’s been quite an ongoing game of charades. He brings men of caliber to a daughter who loathes the thought of marrying anyone resembling her father in the slightest. Daddy issues.

“The feminine urge I have to become a man’s walking nightmare – my father’s walking terror is unworldly, Essa” Naseria sighs.

“Maybe one of those suitors will be the one.”

“ Doubtedly, hence I shall be alone until a man lets the world know he can not breathe without me, I suppose”

“Forty minutes.” Madgar hands me a juice bottle and a wrapped sandwich. “I made you a lobster roll and that —” she points to the bottle “ — is cranberry juice, eat up and get to work.”

“Thank you”

Once seated in my corner, I place the meal aside and grab my iPad. It’s become a habit now, to have it within reach when the silence settles in. Some months back, Madgar made a passing comment about how I looked sick, and when I admitted I wasn’t eating well, she started making me meals. I didn’t question it then. Her kindness felt like something I didn’t deserve, but I accepted it anyway. The same went for the neatly wrapped iPad I found in the backroom, my name written on the tag. It was a gesture that, at the time, didn’t need explaining, and I never asked for one. Maybe there were things better left unspoken, things that only Madgar understood.

In a sea of thieves, she’s a charmer.

After we stole the book, I spent the night reading through it. Most of the pages were filled with verses and hymns, their words soft and familiar, like the remnants of a forgotten prayer. But one odd passage caught my attention, drawing me in like a moth to a flame. The words were different, darker, almost too sharp for the rest of the pages. At the bottom of the passage, in a neat, flowing script, was the name Lady Annbeth. It was the kind of name that seemed to hum with a strange energy, one that pulled at something deep inside me, urging me to know more. What did it mean? Who was she?

“Souls trapped in a cage built by him la la la la, my sanity ripped to shreds la la their cries heard with in the tower la la la skeletons and broken bones collecting dust la la la”

So I did my research, she was a gambler turned cartomancer. Ann was into tarots and visions. She was referred to as ladytheopálavosby the townspeople because she was known for speaking to herself in tongues and carrying an absurd amount of crosses in her bag. But one night something so sinister bloomed in the depths of her heart and she killed her husband and son. When the town came to know of this, they stoned her to death.

However, sightings of her started to be rumored a week after her death.

Glancing at the clock mounted on the wall, I tear the foil away and bite into my sandwich, its seasoned flavors flaring in my mouth. With a click, the glow from my iPad reflects across my face. While I had done some digging, sleep got the best of me before I could finish reading the article.

With a pen in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in another, I read through the files, jotting down any piece of information that feels like a snake in the grass, because after all, not everything is what it seems. I flip through a couple more articles until I spot yet another odd passage.

“Three saved, two killed. It was not a murder, but a sacrifice. I knew her better than I knew myself, so take my words to heart. Ann saved lives.” —Bonnie Wick

I sip the last bit of my cranberry juice before tucking it into my bag and throwing the wrap into the trash. I have five more minutes left so I do a little Google search onBonnie Wick, and my oh my is the internet notorious.

Alongside her home address and government name, I also find out that she was a dear friend of Ann.

Chapter 22

Thorn – unknown 11700

She is the moon, and I— I am the darkness that wraps around her in silent reverence, a shadow so deep, so endless, that only in my embrace can she truly shine. And isn’t it hauntingly precious, my darling? For in your quiet, radiant glow, you have brought me to my knees, unraveling what was once whole, leaving me with the broken pieces of my heart clutched in trembling hands.

It is you, and only you, who has led me here, to this hollow space where time stands still, and I am bound to you, consumed by the beauty of your light.

Chapter 23

Thorn

Hymn for the Dying

“Dear Heavenly Father, My sins scar my hands like broken glass imbedded in my throat. My innocence was lost when I first tasted death on my lips. Forgive me for the lives I have stolen. Forgive me father for I have no regrets.”

My favorite color is blood, its cardinal hue is what Zagerus was known for— that and life. The life I happen to grasp in the roots of my palms and at the soles of my feet. A paradox of queries leave many postulating if Dionysus and Zagerus were one, but what people fail to hold water to is how Achilles theorized their identities. Mythology has a way of defining human behavior a cut above human principles. The way I’m drawn to the sadistically callous tantalizations that are abhorred by nature, yet myths praise such acts. Allegories seen past social standards and decorums while lore’s define me.

I can not live by the ordinances written for us. I can not keep my hands shackled and my exigency unmeet. Thisferocity in me is unbound and liberated. And when it slips through my control, not even society can tame its bestiality and uncanny acts. Neither can anointed manacles nor cutting the strands of my locks cage the rottenly warped creature living under skin. Bloodthirst, sadism and wolfish inhumanity is a malady coursing through my veins, leading to the infected hollow organ beating under my rib cage. It’s made a sanctuary in me, a nest to give asylum to the cancer spreading in my bones.

Born in blood and sworn in blood yet for peace, blood must be spilled, and the river shall run red. It’s such a simple word that carries a meaning rooted trenches deep for a blind man to see. Yet, Bram Stoker has given it branches of meanings in Dracula. How the crimson liquid can be seen as the greenery of honor and embody the desperation of a tainted revenge.

This town is shrouded in it, running in the streets and smearing the darkened corners. Sybactus’s beauty is not in its small shops and mythological tales, but in the lives sewn to the ground and the secrets whispered at night. Roses are beauteous with thorns that thirst to draw blood, just like a heart bleeds for a dead lover.

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