Page 71 of Tainted Serenity

Daxton hardly reacts as he steps through the open door, revealing the space around us, which I take in with curious yet uncertain eyes.

Metal cabinets line one side of the room, and I can only imagine what kind of horror lies within. The door is left slightly ajar when all of us enter the room.

My feet halt in place, unease settling deep within my chest as I realize they have a morgue in this dollhouse.A fucking morgue.This is too grotesque, horrible, and fucked up, even for my own twisted mind.

The cabinet mirrors our figures, making our silhouettes appear more fragile and vulnerable in the room plunged into a dim and eerie darkness. Two stainless steel tables fill the middle of the room, and to my utter relief, no bodies lay there. A chilling cold exists in the space that I didn’t feel in the corridor outside, and it makes the hair on my body rise as I hug myself in an attempt to keep warm.

Daxton walks further into the morgue; his muscles relaxed as if this doesn’t bother him, and it makes me wonder how many times he has dumped corpses in here. This must be where they take the dead dolls, and now I feel stupid that I didn’t realize it earlier.

My eyes drift over to the metal cabinets, and I cannot help but wonder how many bodies must surround us now. An unbreakable sense of foreboding grips me, as though the bodies will come to life and haunt me as time itself appears suspended and as if the lines between the living and the dead have blurred.

Suddenly, two masculine voices can be heard outside the morgue, along with their footsteps clanking against the stone structure. Daxton’s eyes fly open in panic, and he curses, unable to keep still.

“I’ll check the morgue,” one of the men states, his voice seeming distant yet close enough for us to be able to hide.

“We can’t leave now. They will hear the code of the door opening up,” Daxton whispers in a harsh voice. “Fuck. Okay, we have no other choice.”

With long strides, he walks over to the metal cabinets lining the wall before opening one of them. As the chilling realization of his plan grips me with icy fingers, my heart plummets to the bottom of my stomach.

“What the fuck, Daxton?”

“Get in,” he says to Grey, opening the next empty one, too.

In the throes of my panic, terrified of being caught, I’m acutely aware that the men could enter the morgue at any moment and jeopardize my escape. I swing open one of the cabinets, needing to hide as soon as possible.

“No! Not that one,” Daxton hisses, but it’s already too late.

Nausea fills me all at once, threatening to make the room spin while I stare at the dead, decaying body lying before me. The corpse’s blood circulation has been completely lost, leaving it pale and rigid, emitting an awful odor. Their body is an enigma frozen in time, a person existing in another world while being in an endless slumber in this one.

And that face. I recognize that person.

I stumble back, the urgency of the situation pressing in on me like a heavy weight. My heart pounds as if it wants to break free; panic and terror clawing at me. I know I don’t have any time to prolong my hiding, yet I cannot move my body, just as frozen as them.

A shriek wants to tear from my throat, but before I can comprehend more, Daxton closes the cabinet shut before opening the next one, ushering me inside.

Complete darkness envelops me when he shuts the hatch. All over again, I’m back inside the wardrobe, knowing my father’s dead body is the one covering the door so I cannot exit. My mother is out there playing piano, the haunting melody echoing in my head as she plays with expert fingers, hands blood-stained. I want to scream. Scream until my voice turns hoarse and there is nothing left of me, but I cannot find my voice. I have traveled back in time, existing inside a seven-year-old body and locked inside a wardrobe.

Light floods me as two figures appear, and it takes a while for my brain to connect them to Grey and Daxton as they stare down at me. My chest constricts until I’m hyperventilating, my mind living in the past, and not even Grey’s calming touch manages to wake me from my state.

Is this how it feels like to die? Is this the moment when I will finally take my last breath and succumb to the never-ending darkness?

Tears linger on my eyelashes like snow clings to your hair on the coldest winter days, and I stare up at Grey with a terror-struck expression. His face is somber when he looks back, a furrowed expression at the revelation of who we saw lying inside the cabinet beside.

“Aubrey…” I whisper, the tears trailing down my cheeks as I sit up and embrace Grey. The sorrow he expresses is elusive, devoid of any tears or cries. Nearly like unstitched wounds, it’s subtle and hushed, concealing his pain within.

“I know,” he whispers, his voice croaked, yet his face is almost emotionless, as though he is forbidden from expressing what he feels.

“Did you know them?” Daxton asks carefully, interpreting our silence as confirmation. “They arrived here at the same time as you did, along with their boyfriend and another girl from Dankworth Institute. Unfortunately, they all lost their lives during the first game, and Arthur made me bring them here.”

“Jaqueline?” Grey asks, his brows furrowed, and I nod in confirmation.

Unease settles inside me, realizing that our friends are now in the same room as us. I thought they would survive, complete the program at Dankworth Institute until they finally received their happy ending and freedom, but I was so fucking wrong. I was naive for ever thinking anyone would get the freedom they deserved. My eyes meet Grey’s, filled with sorrow and pain yet tinged with acceptance.

“They’re free from the horrors now,” he whispers, closing his eyes.

I rest my head against his chest, a profound heaviness settling in my stomach as I realize it’s only us left in this twisted world.

“We have to survive, for them.”

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