7
White lime walls surround me, and I’m lying on a white table. I scream: Let me go, I’m not crazy! I don’t imagine them. They exist. I am their prisoner. I know the straps won’t let go. They never have.
That’s why I’m surprised when they melt away as if made of ice. I sit up, clutching my chest with my hand. Everything is so light, and everything is so familiar. And yet it’s not.
The space is murky, and I blink to make it clearer. The white light becomes turquoise, and the walls of the psychiatric ward turn into rock. The neon lighting spreads from the ceiling, emitted by faint crystals. I’m underground. The air is damp and scarce.
I get off the bed, and my naked feet are caressed by sky-blue mist. It’s not easy to move; my limbs are heavy, and I see everything in pieces. As if I’m drugged, and honestly? I hope I am.
In the middle of the rock room stands Darya, with a long, black-haired woman.
I’ve never seen her before. Looking at her, the hairs on my neck stand up.
Her white skin is unnaturally yellowish and scaly.
She drags her black, sharp claws along the edge of the large bowl in front of her.
The bowl is held by a column, and from here, I can see it’s filled with water.
“How is she?” Darya asks, looking at the bowl. The absence of wrinkles makes the woman seem ageless.
“Sleeping.” Her voice is deep and her mouth doesn’t move. A golden band follows the curve of her head, ending in a golden circle in the middle of her forehead. A red eye nestles within it.
My curiosity overcomes me, and I step closer to the bowl.
Only I am reflected back. From a distance, I could have sworn I saw movement in the liquid.
I touch the marble, and the black-haired woman hisses.
A cruel smile appears on her pallid face, and only now do I see how dark crimson her lips are.
No, they’re not quite red; dried blood covers her lips.
The red eye on the forehead band turns toward me.
“She is with us,” says the woman, fixing her black gaze on me so quickly that I shudder. I pull my hand away from the bowl. The woman’s spiky, unkempt teeth become visible.
I look towards Darya, my breathing quickening. With a calm, cynical look, he stares at me.
“Hello, Lotte.”
The room suddenly feels narrow. It moves, and the blue mist rises on my back, hissing, blocking the view from me. I step back, defensively placing my hand in front of my chest. Before the mist can engulf me, the woman whispers a word through her needle-sharp teeth:
“Kindra.”
I wake up, clutching my neck.
I breathe. I’m alive. I take deep breaths – the air is now dry. It was just a dream and normal .
“Light…” I groan. As in the previous two days – or after my previous two awakenings – the yellow eyes open immediately. I have no idea how long I’ve been in the room.
It seems to me like more than two days have passed, maybe even a week.
After the withdrawal symptoms following the overdose, I now feel for the first time that I can see through the fog covering my mind.
It was like a cloud enveloping my field of vision.
Of course, I know it’s not true, but I still feel that way.
I hear the yellow eye behind me opening, and instinctively I turn around, but only sigh. If it hasn’t harmed me so far, it won’t now.
“What the hell is going on here?” I ask the large-eyed figure. In response, it just blinks, and I shake my head. What is happening here? Why am I here?
Kindra . What does this word mean?
My stomach growls, and I reach for my bag to search for food, but I first check the medication pockets. I find nothing in them.
I take out a large bag with the emblem of Maison de Sucre et Joy. My eyebrows raise as I imagine Darya waiting in line for a sandwich. I carefully part the two slices of bread, already fearing its contents. Cheese. I hate cheese.
Nevertheless, I take a bite, thinking I won’t have many opportunities to eat normal food while I’m in this demon world. I look at the scratches covering my hands, acquired from banging on the door in the past hours, days.
I have to pull myself together. Enough days have passed with self-pity and withdrawal symptoms. If I can't get out of here, my only plan is to be prepared for whatever Darya has in store for me. And I need to find a way to get my fucking meds back. This plan is not yet lost.
The light hasn’t changed since they closed me in. I don’t know if it’s night or morning. My gaze catches on a gilded tub in the middle of the room. How did I not notice it before? The rising steam beckons, and I want to immerse myself in it.
I peel off Darya’s leather jacket, but when I strip down to my underwear, I turn toward the eyes.
“Do you mind?” It’s as if they hesitate, but eventually, the eyes close and the room is bathed in crimson. The extra light from the walls is enough to keep me from falling backward. I take off my underwear and step into the bathtub.
The water is pleasant, and the warmth immediately makes my skin prickle with goosebumps. I see a small bottle at the edge of the tub. I take off the cap and sniff. Narcissus scent. It has nothing to do with the artificial flower-scented soap in the psychiatric ward.
I pour some into the water and let the cleansing bath soak me.
I take a deep breath and submerge myself.
In the past, this is how I escaped from reality, and now I plan to do the same.
I want to forget those black skulls waiting behind the wall.
Maybe I’ll forget the whole world that awaits me outside.
Underwater, my muscles relax, and my thoughts quiet.
“What do you want, Lotte?” a pleasant voice says in my head. “To remember or to forget?”
I smile.
“To forget,” I manage to say, with bubbles carrying my words up and out of the water.
“Are you sure?” the echoing voice asks. “How can you know you truly want to forget when you’ve never really remembered?”
Something is not right.
I open my eyes and catch sight of a dark-skinned woman above the tub. Red hair cascades down into the water. I push myself up, but the woman presses me back, sinking her sharp claws into my chest.
I run out of breath, panic floods me, and I desperately thrash around. My lungs fill with water. The woman leans down so her lips touch the surface.
“Think it over until we meet again,” she says, then lets go of me. I burst out of the water, coughing, and I fall out of the tub, arriving on all fours. I clutch my throat, retching, and search for the woman, but she’s gone.
Did I imagine her? No. I can’t keep telling myself that. I know I’m not imagining things anymore.
That woman was here, and she either wanted to kill me or warn me about something.
What do you want? To remember or to forget?
Who wouldn’t want to forget that they ruined their family?
Who wouldn’t want to forget that their brother died?
Or that demons, they had assumed were imaginary, kidnapped them?
I pull myself up and reach for my clothes, but they’re nowhere to be found.
I spot a white, silky fabric on the bed.
The room is mercilessly large, as if running from one end of an auditorium to the other.
The dress on the bed is white. It drapes over me like a sleeveless waterfall when I put it on.
The sandals underneath are light brown and simple, but feel sturdy enough to run in.
I decide not to take them off, even in my dreams, in case I need to flee from something.
The eyes open now that I have the dress on. I shudder as the color of light chillingly changes to brown.
In the corner of the room, I spot a bookshelf. Are things like the monsters growing out of the ground here?
I’m not sure what I want. I can’t run away from here, and if I did, where would I go?
Back to the psychiatric hospital? In the last few days that I have spent in this bed, I have decided that there is only one thing I can do: I have to get knowledge.
As much as possible, to know what is happening around me.
With that thought, I walk over to the mahogany-brown furniture.
The books are dusty and old. I run my finger over them, until I feel a tingle in my palm.
It was a for a moment and likely I had just imagined it, but still, I take the sunshine-yellow volume.
The letters are foreign, yet beautiful. It’s evident that every well-thought-out word was handwritten.
The illustrations are breathtaking. I run my index finger along the rough page, hesitantly, as if the letters may wear off from my touch.
I come across various drawings of monsters, depicted with such detail it is as if someone had encountered them.
Most of them appear to be mythical beasts, with some taking on a human form, like Darya.
The black box drawn on the last page of the book captures my attention.
The same tingling sensation as before runs under my finger, but it fades away so quickly I continue to think I might have imagined it.
Held by a woman, gray smoke rises from the box.
Various creatures take shape from the smoke, their forms hard to discern.
Human-shaped beings with wings. The ink may have blurred over the years.
Initials align next to the drawing, and my heart skips a beat when I can make out a word: demon . Then another: box .
I stare with my mouth agape, feverishly trying to find the words.
If I can understand some of them, it means the effect of the medication is wearing off, and soon…
I hear a thud and drop the book from my hand. It lands on my foot with a loud bang. I hiss in pain. The wide iron door suddenly swings open, and I no longer struggle with the pain. Blinking more in disbelief than fear, I’m otherwise frozen.
I thought Darya was coming for me. Instead, the black-haired woman whom I saw in my dream, turns her porcelain face toward me.
It wasn’t a dream. It was real.
A light blue snake crawls on the woman’s head. It reveals the red eye on the hairband, and all of a sudden, my breath is cut off.
The room blurs, and the light from the eye blinds, as if an imaginary axe were splitting my consciousness.
I open my mouth to scream, but I can’t. My brother comes to mind.
I am angry with him. They believed him, not me.
I hate my father. He never could handle the situation.
I hate my mother. She was never there for me.
I hate my sister. Better at everything than me.
If only I could hit her, if only I could grab a knife and…
My breathing becomes jagged at the thought, and guilt lashes me like a whip. Trembling, I raise my palm to my eyes. Under my pale skin, veins become dark purple. I slowly turn my palm and witness my nail beds change into a blueberry hue. My legs don’t move. I stiffen like a statue.
The woman just stares and smiles. She lowers her head as if assessing her victim, her pupils dilating. In her red eye, I notice black veins, and her scent resembles the humid air of a reptile house. Maybe that’s why it’s hard for me to breathe near her.
The blue snake in her hair hisses, also directing its yellow gaze at me.
This color… the lamps in the room are like this too.
The woman turns her head left and then right while her lips part and she hisses in a deep voice.
Instead of stepping, she slithers towards me.
I can’t see what’s happening under her long black skirt.
She might be floating above the ground. Slowly, deliberately, she approaches, as if guiding.
“Sylla!” a man’s voice thunders between me and the woman. The blue snake moves on her head, obscuring the view of the red eye.
I can breathe again. I turn my head. The orange-haired figure, who had stood in front of Nathan in the café, is in front of me.
“Leave our guest alive!” the man says, and the woman elongates her neck unnaturally. My eyes dart between the two figures as I massage my neck.
The man with orange hair waits, his eyes confidently resting on Sylla. She turns around and silently departs, her black dress trailing silver sparkles.
As she leaves the room, the man runs his eyes over me.
He wears a black, tight-fitting outfit, with yellow spots here and there, like a circus ringmaster.
A green cloak is fastened by a button under his left shoulder.
He looks hardly older than me. With his narrowed eyes, purple lips, and orange hair, he is dreadfully handsome.
Suddenly, I regret not having my dark purple lipstick on.
“It seems we can go now,” he announces, opening the iron door wider.
“I…,” I start, feeling confused. “Where are we going?”
“To the Kraldem,” he replies, and I easily translate it as Demon King . Does that mean the effect of the medicine has worn off?
“What language are you speaking to me?” I ask him.
“Filizian,” the man replies indifferently, opening the door wider still. “So, you must understand me when I say that if you don’t follow me now, I’ll leave you here. And the other demons won’t be as kind as me.”
He turns away from the room. I hesitate for a moment. If I step through that door, I’ll end up in a place I don’t know. I’ll be following him into the world of Darya’s demons. What if they hurt me, sacrifice me, kill me, eat me?
The growling of the man makes my pulse jump, and I quickly jog after him. The answers I seek will not be found in books, but from these people.
The dark corridors glow red, and I rub my upper arms against the cold to warm up. The man – the demon – strides forward with such long steps that I have to run to keep up with him.
“What’s your name?” My voice echoes off the knotty, mud-colored walls. He sighs as if my question pains him.
“Lizander.”
A strange name, but he is strange too. I didn’t remember him like this from the café.
There, he had been standing beside Darya with a broad, excited smile.
Something is off about him. I notice lines of weariness beneath his eye tattoos.
His pulled- back, faded brown eyes glow, and his skin is healthily sun-kissed.
Despite the unusual details, he still appears somewhat human. Our eyes meet.
“What?” he asks tensely.
“Nothing,” I say, looking away, but then I add, “I’m Lotte.”
“I know,” he says, quickening his pace. “There’s no demon or angel in this world who wouldn’t know who you are, Lotte Olson.”