When I opened my eyes again, I saw myself standing on the shores of a lake. The air was cold, it felt like small particles danced on my skin. For the first time, I felt at peace. I wasn’t afraid, I didn’t feel like I was lacking. I was at peace in the silence. In the emptiness. But the picture of little Anna dead, and my hands stained with her blood, entered my mind again. Had I done that? Would I do that?
As I looked down at the water, I started to wonder whether I’d become some monster. I touched my stomach, my hand came back up covered in blood again.
“Oh no. NO NO NO!” Was I dead? Is this the afterlife?
Suddenly, memories start crushing back into me. Jessy and Malia, along with another girl, had teamed up to stab me. After all my efforts, I couldn’t even avenge my sister. Instead, I ended up murdered by her murderer. How pathetic.
“I’m sorry Eloise,” I muttered under my breath, shedding a tear.
“Of course you are. Always a coward and a failure. No wonder dad kicked you out and sent you to military school. He was disappointed in you.”
The voice came from the figure of a woman sticking out of the water. “Eloise?”
“That’s right, little sister. I’m dead because of you.”
“No. That’s not true,” I cried out, wanting to fight this breakdown.
“Roman killed me, thinking it was you. I suffered here. They turned me into a killing machine, a monster. All because of you. My sister. The real monster!”
The water froze over as she stepped out. Her body was pale, the ax was still stuck in her chest, and she was bleeding. She looked just like she did when Malia murdered her on TV. She started walking over the ice, coming to me.
I didn’t understand a thing she was saying, but I was scared. This was it. This was my hell.
My biggest fear. Being the reason my loved ones suffer.
“Come, dear sister. It’s so lonely here,” Eloise said as she stretched her hand out to me. Suddenly, her features started to drag. Her eyes popped out. Her teeth fell out, her skin wrinkled. The ice underneath her feet broke, turning back to water.
She screamed, then sank in. Without thinking, I jumped in. I grabbed her, but instead, she turned to me.
Suddenly, it wasn’t Eloise. It was the man I’d dreamt of earlier. The man whose kiss I miss. The masked man from the party. My one-night stand. His smile was creepy under the mask. He wasn’t drowning. It was as if he could breathe easily under the water.
Suddenly, he grabbed my head and pulled me down with him.
I screamed, the sound clawing at my throat, but it was drowned out by the rush of panic that flooded my senses as it, whatever it was, yanked me under. I struggled, kicking and thrashing wildly, but the grip only tightened, dragging me deeper into the water.
Around me swirled ghostly versions of myself. I saw a weak version of me, crying while my head was held under water by my military commander, repeating how much of a failure I was. Another one was an image of me, my skin frozen as I got to the top of a mountain and planted our flag, only to get shot. Each version represents genuine trauma and horror.
The water pressed against my chest, heavy and unyielding, squeezing the breath from my lungs as I gasped for air.
“Help!” I tried to scream, but the water consumed my voice, a suffocating silence surrounded me. My vision blurred, dimming as the world above faded, shadows closing in from all sides, enveloping me.
Just as I felt myself slipping away, the sensation of everything turning black consumed me, I surrendered.
When I finally jolted awake, I was no longer in the lake. Instead, I was on the ground, Malia pinning me down, her hands like iron cuffs around my wrists. Blinking against the disorientation, I struggled to make sense of my surroundings, but my body felt heavy, my muscles weak and unresponsive as I attempted to push her off.
“Get off me!” I shouted, though my voice came out as a hoarse whisper, barely rising above the panic swelling inside me.
She leaned in closer, her smirk wide and mocking, a cruel twist on her lips. “You’re pathetic.” The words dripped with disdain, slicing through the remnants of my confusion and settling in the pit of my stomach like a stone.
My hand instinctively fumbled for my blade, the familiar cold metal a fleeting comfort, but she snatched it from my grasp, tossing it aside as if it were a toy. Panic surged through me, electrifying every nerve as her grip tightened on my wrists, pinning me down with an ease that sparked a fresh wave of terror.
“You’re not even worth the effort,” she said, her voice chilling, each word a dagger aimed at my heart. “Just like your sister.”
The words cut deeper than I could have imagined. My sister. The image of Anna flashed in my mind-lifeless, cold, and pale. The pain in my stomach twisted, sharper now, as the memories assaulted me. I tried to twist free, to escape the crushing weight of her presence, but Malia leaned closer, her breath hot and taunting against my skin.
“You think you’re strong?” she taunted, her voice laced with contempt. “You’re nothing but a scared little girl pretending to be a soldier.”
“Let me go,” I gasped, desperation spilling from my lips. “You don’t have to do this.” I could feel my heart racing, each beat a reminder of how trapped I truly was.
“Oh, but I do,” she replied, her smile stretching wider, reveling in my fear. “You’ve always been in my way. Always stealing the spotlight. But now?” She leaned back slightly, her eyes scanning my face with cruel satisfaction. “Now you get to see how weak you really are.”
I struggled again, my body screaming in protest as the pain in my stomach flared anew. The panic rose higher, making it harder to breathe, harder to think clearly.
“Why?” I choked out, desperation lacing my words, each syllable a battle against the darkness threatening to envelop me. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can,” she replied, her voice dripping with malice, a cruel satisfaction dancing in her eyes. “Because it’s fun to watch you squirm.”
She pressed down harder, and I gasped, the weight of her body crushing the air from my lungs. The world around me narrowed to her face, her eyes glinting with a sick delight at my suffering, at my desperation. I was utterly exposed, laid bare beneath her gaze, stripped of any semblance of power.
In that moment, surrounded by the ghosts of my past and the unrelenting threat of my present, I realized I was utterly alone, trapped in a nightmare of my own making, and there was no escape in sight.