Page 29 of Threads Of Madly Whispers

“Odessa.”

“Sebastian.”

“In here, you dance like you dance out in the graveyard, like the dead are watching.” She walks to the center of the room.

“But you are not dead.”

“Do not mistake my bleeding flesh for a living man, Wild Rose, because what’s in me rotted years ago.”

She wants to say something, I see it. Where others wear their emotions on their sleeves, hers shine behind her eyes. But before she can, the music from the piano eludes us. My fingers press one keynote after the other and as the assonance unfolds around us, so does she, as midrange harmonics quickly sinks away the silence.

The room becomes an ambiance of feathery darkmelodies. Her eyes close shut as she swallows a deep breath and her arms raise. Her body is quick to glide and skip to the tenor I tune. She swirls and bows and it’s in the way her body dances that arouses a fiery need in me. It’s wild and I’m slowly losing the dire chains.

Humans can be just as feral as animals, if not more.

She’s a masterpiece, she’s a muse, and she’s mine.

She moves with a grace that radiates a serenity unlike anything I’ve ever known. A peace spreads across her face that makes me feel like I’m looking at heaven on earth. And what a gift that is. I lose time, because mere moments grow longer and I do not stop playing. Her chest heaves as her breaths become labored, but the pained obsession she has with allowing her passion to swallow and break her makes both of us greedy.

The material clinging to her skin hikes up her thighs while her hair dances in the air. And as I watch her turn to fragile jagged pieces with sharp edges, I’m sure that one day she shall bleed me dry. Odessa dances until her limbs drop her to the ground and even then, my thirst is not quenched because I will never get enough of this woman, no matter how much I take from her.

Chapter 16

Wild Rose

Wicked Waltz

The road is tapered, winding like a twisted artery through the heart of a forgotten world. A rock-strewn pathway stretches ahead, jagged and uneven, like the edges of a broken dream. It leads to a jilted church, its silhouette haunting against a bruised sky, as if it, too, is waiting for something lost. The thicket of grass coils around our legs like whispers from the past, pulling at the fabric of my thoughts. Every step I take is punctuated by the crunch of cobblestones beneath our shoes, like the slow ticking of a clock counting down the days to some inevitable fate.

Three days. Three long days since I last saw Sebastian, and one week closer to the life I’ve unknowingly set myself on a course toward. The weight of time presses against me like a suffocating fog, thick and unnerving. Everything around me feels rushed, a blur of anticipation and dread, as if the world is spinning too fast and I’m trapped in its wake. I need a moment—a single breath—to grasp what’s coming,but there’s no room for pause, no space to steady myself. Change is an unrelenting tide, and I am swept along with it, powerless to escape the undertow.

I had once yearned for this moment, for this shift in my life to carry me away from the chains of the past. But now, as the days crumble away, that yearning has turned to a quiet aversion, a bitter taste that sits heavy on my tongue. I had dreamed of a patron, someone to carry me far away from here, to whisk me off to distant lands, and to bury my history in the dust of foreign streets. I had imagined an ocean of distance between my past and the woman I could have been. Free and untethered.

Sebastian—the man who holds the keys to so many of the answers I seek, and yet whose presence only deepens the shadow of my confusion. I should feel liberated by the knowledge that I am finally stepping toward understanding, but the closer I get, the further the answers slip from my grasp. I am standing at the precipice of something far darker than I could have imagined, and I can feel the pull of that abyss beneath my feet.

My life, it seems, has yet to turn its page, to face the light of a new day. Instead, it spirals deeper into a labyrinth of uncertainty, where each step forward feels like a step closer to a line I cannot cross back from. The truth is a noose, tightening with every new discovery, and I find myself caught in its snare. To know so much, yet to understand so little is maddening. Like a tarantula creeping along my neck, its legs brushing against my skin, sending chills down my spine. This is not just a mystery, it is a web of horrors waiting to ensnare me. And the more I unravel, the more I fear that the threads will only pull tighter, drawing me into the darkness that seems to stretch endlessly before me.

Yes, I am moving in with Sebastian. But even as the doors of his home swing open to me, I can feel the cold breath of Callum lurking just out of sight, a menace I cannot shake. My mother, too, remains locked away behind the gray walls of her mind, hidden from the world, from me, from everything. The past—my past—still walks beside me, a silent companion, whispering secrets I am afraid to hear. Greece, beautiful in its sunlit splendor, is stained with the weight of all that has happened, and all that will inevitably come. Its streets, though bathed in light, carry a heaviness, a sorrow that clings to the air like the salt of the sea. Everywhere I look, I see the traces of anguish, each corner of this place a reminder that the beauty here is merely a mask, and beneath it lies a rot that festers in the dark.

And so, I walk. I walk toward a future I cannot see clearly, but one that is drawing closer with each passing day. A future that promises to shatter everything I once believed. The road ahead is uncertain, its path obscured by terrors, but I know one thing for certain, there is no turning back now.

“I have matters that require my attention, but in a few months we shall leave Greece, perhaps to New York”

I want to believe him, yet something in me doesn’t give in like a shred of glass that won’t cut through silk. He wouldn’t lie. Well, not in the clear sense of it. But his words are his best deception, and that man must know how to play anyone like a fool. It’s in the way he offers silence in place of words, in the way his poltergeist guise speaks more than his voice ever will.

But does it matter? Once the truth is out, he too will become a memory.

I haven’t told Callum I’m moving. I hoped I could haveeasily packed my bags and left without a word. But this town is too small to remain in its shadows.

Speaking of the brute, I haven’t seen him for a few days. When I first came to know of his ceaseless affairs, worry would simmer in my blood. He told me nothing of his nocturnal escapades, so I never quite figured where his nights would take him. Or frankly, what the man does other than drinking himself dry and leaving home for days.

But I have an inkling

He is much a mystery to me now, like he was then, yet somehow I believe he is tethered to something horrid. It’s only fitting because Callum does not have a bone in his body that screams decent.

“We can visit, right, Essa?” Naseria weaves through the shrugs and fallen branches as we approach St. Parish church or what’s left of it.

“Of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way”

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