Page 69 of Ethereally Tainted

The headache is so sudden, it feels like a vice squeezing my head. My temples pound as if a hammer bashes against my skull from the inside. I am so tired that I can no longer fight it, and my body melds into the mattress as I succumb to overwhelming fatigue. As I drift off to sleep, I remember the salty taste of the eggs I ate, realizing the plate closest to me wasn’t Aubrey’s.

I ate from my own plate.

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BLOOD. THERE IS BLOOD everywhere, and a rotting stench fills my nostrils. The room I’m in is small, with a single bed with nightstands to the side, a TV in front, and a carpet that used to be bright but is now soaked in the gooey liquid that stinks of metal. My chest heaves with labored breathing, and I’m terrified of losing my breath.

What have I done?

What the fuck have I done?

The scream roars from my throat, a painful one that takes all the energy from me, and I curl up beside the bloody body on the carpet.

“Please wake up,” I sob out loud, feeling the pain tearing through my heart. “P-please.”

Tears soak the hospital gown I didn’t have time to change from. I grasp her shoulders and shake her vigorously, desperately to wake her up.

She doesn’t move. Her eyes are closed, and she looks peaceful. She has no right to be so peaceful, not after what she did, something far worse than I.

As soon as I hear a knock on the door, my body jerks, and I crawl back into the corner, hugging my feet as I do so.

“Excuse me, Miss? Are you okay?”

The sound of an unknown voice wafts in from outside, one I’ve never heard before.

“I’m coming in.”

Before I can protest, the door opens, and a middle-aged woman enters the hotel room. As soon as she opens the door, I hear a crash of glass and a high-pitched scream that cuts through the air. It’s not as horrifying as my own screams. How could it be, when she wasn’t the one who needed to do this?

A murmur of conversation flows throughout the room, and someone in uniform takes my arms and fastens the handcuffs around my wrists. But I don’t feel anything, I don’t understand anything they say. Everything drifts around me as if it were a dream, and god, how I wish it was.

Before I’m carried out of the hotel, my bloodied body falls once more on the floor, and my scream tears apart my organs.

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WHEN I WAKE UP, I have a dull throbbing in my head, but it’s nothing compared to the pounding I felt before I drifted off. I’m overcome with emotion, and I don’t realize it until the dampness of tears spreads across my t-shirt. When I look at the window’s reflection, I glimpse the heartache in my eyes and the sound of my sorrowful sobs echoing around me.

The nightmare lingers, leaving me with an unsettling feeling of unease that crawls through my body, a feeling that something is wrong. Entirely wrong.

Not a nightmare. No–reality.

My grief is so heavy that I feel like my chest is about to burst, the guilt and shame squeezing my ribs until I can barely breathe.

I curl into a fetal position, letting anguish take over my entire being as I cover my face with my hands. A lump forms in my throat as the memory comes back to me, a memory I wish I could forget, wash away as if it were nothing. I thought I had forgotten all about it, that I had pushed it all back until nothing remained of it, but I was utterly, completely wrong.

At Grimhill Manor, I blocked out all my memories and concentrated on staying alive. It was the only way to survive. And now? Now I can feel myself slowly being swept away by the huge wave that comes crashing down on me, one where I cannot breathe or move, only accept my fate. Layers of unsettling emotions fill me up from the inside until it feels like I will explode as a cry rips from my throat. The shame, guilt, regret, and relief I felt all come back, filling me until I don’t know what to do with it.

I killed her. I fucking killed her, and it’s all my fault. I deserved to be taken to Grimhill Manor, hell I even deserve to be put in this hellhole. I never deserved anything good in my life, not after what I did.

I don’t know how long I lay there, wrapping my arms around my legs as I let tears fall freely. I have no right to cry, no right to feel happiness.

When it feels as if I have let out all of my emotions, I finally scramble to my feet, needing to talk to a certain someone. Another thing on my guilt trip.

I put on a pair of black cargo pants before leaving my room, not bothering to fix my appearance. I probably look like shit, and I don’t care.

The way through the corridor feels like it takes forever, and all I can think about as I walk is not to be affected by the disgusting frequency of too much hand sanitizer. The ceiling lights illuminating the corridor are far too strong for me, and I’m forced to squint my eyes as I walk forward. My eyes sting, but the tears have stopped for now.

With a deep breath, I collect myself before softly knocking on the door.

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