First, the despicable chitchat of guns. Second, the crimson sun like a festering wound. Lastly, a blinding white that turned into nothing except the illusion of death. Those were the last things I remember on those barren battlefields of Chesterside Hill. I am Shadow Michael Richard D’Alton.
I am a tall woman, about five foot and nine inches in height; I have skin fair as summer snow. I have a head of short and shaggy gingery hair, more akin to the colour of the warm glow of the setting sun than anything else, so I have been informed. My slender face is composed of sharp angles and hard features; and I have a pair of thoughtful dark blue eyes akin to pools of glistening sapphires.
I was knocked unconscious either by shock of possible blood loss or a bullet that tore into me, the details are very blurred in my mind. What I remember afterwards was regaining my consciousness in an infirmary with a doctor who looked over me in inspection to determine the degree and the treatment of my wounds and injures. I had a gash across my back, a tear through my left shoulder, and a godforsaken scar across my cheek. Something that would draw the attention of strangers and those in question.
Now, the doctor was a young vixen woman who seemed to be on the average side of height, about five foot seven inches; she had light auburn fur that covered her head to toe. She had lavishingly long coffee brown hair. Her face was a cute roundish shape. She had a pair of calm blue-teal eyes that sparkled like sapphires. Attached to the breast of her pale coat, which was faintly stained with blood, was the bronzed name tag with Dr. V. Amadeus.
She did an amazing job of patching me right up - granting me stitches that were well in place - in hopes that my battle scars would heal to a complete degree, as any good nurse or doctor would hope for in its patient.
Taking a look of my surroundings, I saw the other men and women in arms that were wounded either to my degree or greater. I glanced back at my doctor, taking in her face, and I thanked her for her troubles. She returned the favour with a nod and a gentle smile.
I rested back down into my bed where I collected myself and I closed my eyes. I did not want to be a burden on this doctor, who most likely had other patients to attend to, rather than have idle conversation with me.
Strangely, she asked me if I needed anything, and I only asked for a book - The Butterfly’s Eclipse, to be precise. She simply walked out of the infirmary and mere moments later she returned with a copy of the all familiar black leather-covered book embroidered with a silver moth on top of a silver moon and silver words of the title underneath. Honestly, I was astonished to see such a book out here so far from its home where it and I shared in common. I presumed that the black covered book missed its city, Nona, to the same extent as I did.
Indeed I have grown homesick of the vast city of Nona, and all its glory and the familiar faces that I had not seen in over a year. I will go into greater detail of the grand city, the Jewel of the Dwelvan Empire after a few events that transpired from Chesterside Hills to Nona. For now, I must thrust upon you the infirmary and the doctor, whose name was Vada, so she told me. A shy woman who strangely had a phenomenal curiosity towards me and my habits.
The first day or two I just read the book - which I dare say was a well written mystery novel and I have read it time and time again ever since I was a young woman - and caught the occasional wink of sleep, about four or five measly hours in total; but I’d always wake in sweat and fear after having vivid images of the horrid battle field played over, and over in my mind like I had not left it. I heard the lifelike screams of my comrades as they passed to the hand of death by the chitting of bullets. Whenever I dosed into sleep it felt as if I stepped back into that bloodshed warland.
Although, whenever I snapped back into the present from the psychologically imprinted horror Dr. Amadeus would be there bedside to me, observing and making an attempt to calm me from the hellish prison of my mind and dreams. This happened about four times, only getting roughly an hour of sleep per time.
It was strange that no other nurse nor doctor was there in my waking hours to inspect my physical or mental condition, or I was too confined and drawn into my book to even notice any other health care workers that lingered around. I am not complaining to only see Dr. Amadeus as my caretaker, in fact, I was rather joyous to see the consistent face that would always be there to inquire about me.
She never asked any questions, unless it was the curiosity if I needed anything to munch or something to imbibe. I declined her offer of bread or water. I was not hungry nor thirsty. This fact seemed to terrify Vada for she did not want to see me perish away from lack of nutrition.
I was confined to that bed for about seven days. By the fourth day I ate very little and drank miniscule. Nevertheless, I did as the doctor wanted me to.
I had no strength to move my physical-self, except for my head and my arms. Also, my injures stung like a frozen dagger to my warm living flesh. It was a brutal nightmare that I had no escape from.
The doctor had to help me with the act of fulfilling the bare necessities of life. There were few troubles in the transportation of the tasteless food to my pale mouth; but sadly, a minority of the consumables dribbled on me and the doctor had to wipe the spills and stains off of my person like a mother and her child. This gave me insecurities. I felt ashamed of myself on a grand level.
However, whenever I took the shortest glance up at the doctor I could see that she continued to examine me to a great study, not just to my injuries but to my very person, especially towards my eyes, or so it seemed to me at my angle.
I hypothesised that she composed a series of notes on me but I said nothing in courtesy. It was strange, never have I been looked at with such curiosity before in my existence. Perhaps her reason was my venture and close demise on Chesterside Hill, surpassing chittering of gunshots with tremendous luck at my shoulder. Indeed I was fortunate to only awaken with merely those three battle injuries, and none of them any loss of limb or anything that would complicate my way of living to a great degree.
Truthfully, when I was first drafted for such a bloody confrontation I half-expected to meet the same fate as my fallen siblings-in-arms.
The infirmary kept me well, for the majority of the time. It could not cure me of my mental condition which I was ensnared with; but the nurse aided me with the aftermath of each passing slumber. Even the act of being there by me. It was just her very presence that seemed to take the edge off of the consequences of the dream terrors.
I do not know how I would have survived the infirmary if it was not for Dr. Amadeus. I am truly grateful for her presence and strangely her curiosity towards me. As for the rest of those terribly long and tiring bedridden days, I remember very little of them and they were all blurred and melded together in a brume of events that I could not conceded, but I do vividly remember each and every howling night dread that left a stench of fear each time I had awoken from it.
Once the seventh day was dawned, everyone, including myself and Dr. Amadeus, were induced from the infirmary and we were sent across rough terrain by a large, heavy carriage that was draw by motorized electricity. The journey was long and perilous and I vaguely recall fading in and out of reality and dreamly terrors. The bumps and the coarse road must have jumbled my mind of those events. Dr. Amadeus sat beside me through the whole trek as if she wanted something of me like a continuous performance of her study on me optically. We were sent back to the great city that I gladly called home, Nona.
Nona was a city with looming buildings that scraped the grey sheeted skies. The architect of this city was composed of wondrous stonework and enduring steel. It was certainly a city of industry and prosper.
The city would expel great heaps of smoke into the skies that were from the lively factories that produced productivity and most of Nona's wealth. The smoke would shroud the skies in sheets of dull grey, causing the sun to barely peek out of at the city; but the folks didn't care about this. They were busy with their hasty little lives, it was a tragedy. Nevertheless, it was a time of wealth and prosper, and those things do not come to people who aren't busy making prosper and wealth.
Nona was also a city filled with vast cultures and different exotic species and races. Nona was not just inhabited by humans. Nona, and even the continent of Dwelf, was also inhabited by elves, that were tall and fair, dwarves, whom were stout and hearty, and half folk of cat, fox, and wolf, like Dr. Amadeus, whom were more akin to their human adversaries then to the half beasts they were. The humans treated these species as secondary citizens, for the humans thought of them not as pure nor as majestic as them. Most of the elves in the land of Dwelf roamed in the dark forests in the north in solitude from the touch humans; and majority of the Dwarves of the land marched and resided in kingdoms in mountains and deep underground from the eyes of humans. As for the half folk, they lived alongside the humans as best as they could. Some were as equal as humans, but some were lesser to the homo sapiens.
The city was divided into three districts: Bliss - where the supremely rich resided - the Works - where the working class lived - and the Slums - where the dirt poor and degenerates scurried about. Nona was not a perfect city, it was in fact far from it.
The moment we returned we were rewarded with honours and promotions, and then we were sent back to our lives as average citizens as if the whole confrontation had never happened. Majority of the veterans stuck together where they lived in a peaceful neighborhood with their families and themselves, acting as close friends.
I, on the other hand, went forth to live in a humble flat - which I had purchased half an annum prior to Chesterside - in the Works District on a Street dubbed Oxford. Oxford Street was a quiet street, especially by midday, where most of the people would go to their jobs and their work. Oxford Street consisted of mostly apartment buildings. Perpendicular to Oxford was Williams Street, a very busy and lively street littered with houses, apartments, a gargantuan food store, and a rowdy bar named McMillan's Pub where a handful of Oxford Street would frequent, including myself prior to the campaign.
I lived at a two story, red-brick apartment building that had a peeling brown door stamped with a tarnishing 757 stamped on the top of it. The building had four oak windows; the one to the top right was where I lived. Apartment “C”. It had an olive green and a brass C bolted onto it.
It sat near the corner of the street called Oxford, which was laid in The Works. My apartment building was stuffed between a triple-decker apartment, which was at the corner, and a miniature shop, that the people of Oxford Street slanged it as Nana’s.
Now, back to my rooms in which I resided.
When you enter through the olive green door you are immediately greeted to the living room. The living room was a large, square-shaped room with mahogany red walls and a pinewood floor. In the living room I had two leather armchairs facing each other, yet adjacent to the noir mantelpiece where I would strike a roaring fire underneath on those late, sleepless nights or those frosted cold days. Between the two chairs we have the scratched-up walnut coffee table. I saw on the left chair while I had guests and companions sit to the right.
To the left of the living room I had the dining-kitchen area and to the right my bedroom and the bathroom. The dining-kitchen area. A room with hazel walls and a blank ceiling - with a faded orange stain smeared on it where myself and my confidant had dispense it. An interesting tale for another day. The room was a box-shaped and it was medium-sized, not quite as large as the living room. The metallic sink was on the left hand side of the room and the hand-me-down fridge on the right of the sink. In the middle there was the tall walnut table and four chairs rest beside it. The oak counter resided beside the sink.
The bathroom. The only room on the left down the short, mahogany red hallway from the living
room. The bathroom is by far the smallest room of seven-hundred and fifty-seven C Oxford street, with the capability to only hold three people at once without it being cramped and crowded, unless somebody steps into the bathtub. The floor and the walls were composed of white wood, the floor is tiled and the walls were paneled. The room was rectangularly-shaped. The room was furnished with a porcelain sink, with a borderless mirror overhead, a porcelain toilet to the right of that sink, and the bathtub accompanied with a showerhead overneath, to the left.
At the end of the hallway there was my room. A majestic square-shaped room - in comparison to the other rooms of his apartment - had auburn walls with birch borders. A hand-me-down queen-sized bed with mahogany sheets slept at the furthest side of the room, facing the entrance of the room. An oak bedside table sat at the right side of the bed balancing a jade green lamp, and crimson curtains were behind it that led to a window facing to the side of the building where I could feel the warmth of sunlight whenever I woke up each morn. At the wall to the left of the bed there was an oak bookcase chock-full of wonderful and colourful books that I had been collecting for quite some time, ever since I was an adolescent girl, and possibly even prior. In front of the bookshelf there was a cherry wood desk lodged up against the corner and an oaken stool in front of the desk.
It was certainly a wondrous home that I wished to live until my final hours. Regardless, a niggling fear played in the back of my mind that kept me in reality, and I would not be able to pay for the next rent for I had no work following the affair of Chesterside Hill.
Unless I had work in recent days I would have to relinquish 757C and live either as a tramp or live with family. I prefered the latter; but I was unsure if I was fit to see familiar company, like my brother, Wolfgang D’Alton or my confidant, Marcus Holmes.
Readjusting to civilian life was broadly difficult. For the first week and a portion of the next, I barely ate, and I rarely sleep. It was not the worriment of work that prevented me of such things, but it was the dismay of the dark flashbacks of the war land that were scorched into my mind as if they were branded.
I had not even bathed once since the infirmary; the grease and the grim was beginning to congeal to my scalp and body, and it made me disgusted of myself.
The scar on my visage was healing rather nicely, only aching whenever I grazed it. My shoulder and my back injuries were completely different tales: they were not healing in a correct way and they yelled with pain whenever I shifted with the slightest of movements. After the eighth day, I confined myself to my bed in where I would indulge myself in literature for alleviation from absolute boredom and complete depression.
With lack of proper nutrition and a lesser amount of sleep than recommended I found myself losing a considerable amount of weight. I never was at the exactly healthy weight in standard terms, either being too slim or, on the occasion, where I was overweight, like my first year of college where I took a study of electrical work. I do remember the small pot belly that formed on me.
Nevertheless, I diminished to an extremely unhealthy weight. My cheeks became gaunt, making my cheekbones sharp; my ribs became scarcely visible; and my hips stuck out like thorns on the stem of a rose. My limbs became lanky and the bone pressed against the skin; and my skin became a sickly pale.
It was a labour to breathe and I felt sick to my very stomach. I had not felt the warmth of the glowing sun on my skin for what seemed like an eternity. It remember I secured my curtains from the sun once I restricted myself to my living quarters.
I had not done any work, only skimming stories, just seeing words instead of the clear-cut images that sang and danced in my head whenever I gazed at the contents of literature. The words seemed tasteless, emotionless, only seemingly to be something mathematical and logical that is not meant to be observed with appreciation or with an artistically creative mind.
Following the eleventh day of isolation, I became deeply depressed. Many suicidal thoughts clawed through what little sanity I had left to spare, screaming at me that I had no more point in living on this world. In a strangely luck yet fortunate sense, I had no energy to attempt anything physical. I found myself staring blankly at the ceiling of my chamber.
In my dejected state I envisioned a young girl with a noose around her slender neck, dangling lifelessly from a dark oak tree. Her skin was a deathly pale; and occasionally, she swayed in bitter winds of midnight. I often wished that the girl was myself.
I envisioned this minutely, and the thought shrouded my mind in an empty darkness where the light of hope seemed to be a fantastical construct like a majestic man told to falsely aid the sleep of children.
My stomach constantly pained me with hunger and it snarled and growled at me to demand me to get some edibles in myself. Sadly, I could not find the strength nor the determination to heave myself off of my bed and from the maddened vision of a girl who succumbed to suicide. I simply just laid in my bed.
My mind and my body slowly degenerated with each passing day. After the previously mentioned week and a half my mind soon fell into ruins and my body thin shrank thinner than a lath. I could not even form a thought that I could commandeer as my own, the depression had seized complete control of my mind and in so little of time.
It was even a struggle to keep my eyes ajar, but when I closed my eyes flashes of the terrors of Chesterside would burn through my mind like a wild blaze. Those flashes would always spring me back to the waking realm and the demised chamber that I once called home. I was living in a flesh-binded prison where I had zero belief of the continuation of life and living.
The world and time span around me as time passed, and it was all melded together.
When my eyes would flutter, even on the slightest instant, time would jump by hours, shifting from the golden sun of the afternoon to the silver moonlit nights. Though, I could not see the lights of the moon or the sun through the crimson curtains that harshly sheltered me from them, I could faintly hear the motorized engines of the coaches on Williams Street that bristled and roared in the late morn and afternoon, and they purred and cruised through in the evening and night. They simultaneously clashed with each other. I had no record of which time I spent in consciousness and which I spent in the instant of unconsciousness. As a matter of fact, I hypothesized that the noises were just a mirage of my imagination, and that is the story that I seemed to be sticking with.
Then, the faint noises of Williams Street ceased on from happening and I had no concept of time, even if it was distorted, plus a fabrication of my mind’s dark fiction. I came to a point where my stomach felt no pain from the prolonged hunger, my mind numb from the frosted touch of depression, and I sensed no grease caked me for it was in a vast amount. I did not know if this was a phenomenon that was possible.
Subsequently, my eyes soon closed shut like a door shut from a winter cold, and I woke up in a strange location. I awoken in a realm of shadows and murk where everything was an inky black. Thick white fog loosened across the ground that reached knee-height where I could not see even the slightest glance of my feet. This place seemed supernatural, outside the norm. The air was a horrid chill with the faint whiff of fresh ash. I could feel every pulsing vein and creaking bone in my body and I was flooded with the warmth of my skin. An iced mist clutched to my breath, as I was exhaling what looked liked to be steam from a locomotive.
I eyed my way through this bizarre land and everything was a reprise of itself, never seeming to change, except I saw things in the distance, what looked like to be shadowy figures that pranced and waltzed in the distance, but I saw them in flashes for mere seconds: it was most likely my eyes playing tricks on my psyche.
In confusion, I began to trek through fog but I kept my precaution in suspect for anything that might jump from the low fog or the murky shadows and bombard me and my astrayed state. I always glanced behind and around myself in paranoia of the shadowy figures. I felt eyes laid upon me, their eyes, of course.
I still traversed through fog and shade for many a moment and I felt neither weary nor weared as I thought myself to be. My footsteps echoed with each stride like in a long, hollow hall.
In truth, it was odd. In my heart I felt as if I was in a place forbidden where none a soul would dare to even enter, and yet, I felt as if I was in a place in both time and space where I was destined to be, where I have arrived at the correct place at precisely the correct time. It was indeed a strange feeling where they both clashed in together in my heart.
I turned my head back in view of what was beyond, and I saw nothing but fog and shadow. I turned back and I was startled by a peculiar and indeed foreboding substance: I descried sixteen figures that stood with heads bowed as if ashamed. They all wore silken dresses and pale lacen veils that were cast overneath their faces. They held bouquets of frail pale roses that were stained with crimson.
I assumed that they were all brides in waiting to be wedded, and I took a moment in viewing to make an accurate deduction of them. In candor, I was no detective and even the most simplist of things will pass my eyes; but if I focus on something I generally see what others might pass on as unimportant. I especially have an eye for people and I can habitually see abnormalities in the acts of people; though I still do not get civilization and people as a whole, and I fret when I am around groups of looming strangers. That is why I prefer the company of myself opposed to others. I am also emotionally absorban where if I see someone sad and tearful, a loved one, or even just a mere acquaintance, or even a stranger, I start to grow misty-eyed and sorrowful as if I feel their pain. Normally, I leave for I do not want to feel said pain of others; but one rare occasions I embrace the person in hopes to give them comfort and easement, especially if they have lost someone that was dear to them like kin or a close friend.
I soon began to deviate closer towards the veiled brides as I glued my eyes upon them with such curiosity. I stepped up to one of the brides and I hesitated to remove their headdress for I was unsure of what I would see. She made no sudden movements as if I was not in the proximity of her. I took close note of her and I perceived nothing of the supernatural. So, rather gingery, I uncovered the veil and I beheld her face, or where in place her face should be. Her face was a blank canvas that was pale as dead winter and it left her facade as an emotionless husk as if she was ripped from her individuality and silenced with her own flesh. The other feature of interest was a smear of scarlet in place where her lips should be.
I stepped back in instantaneous shock and disgust; yet still keeping an optical awareness towards the faceless bride. I glanced around at the other brides in question and concern if they had met the similar fate of the blank person of the bride. In slight haste and worry, I elevated the masks of the other brides and identical horror. All seeming to be ensnared by skin of their own with a mark of scarlet that stood where lips once stood, till I met the last bride of sixteen, for her visage was something more trepidation than the other newlyweds. For the sixteenth bride was the canvas of myself. Blank. Smeared with scarlet at the lips. Pale. It was like I was staring into an unwanted mirror that showed a distorted horror of oneself.
I could not bear to peer at my bridal-self but I could not hoist my eyes away from the surreal horror. Then, she looked at me with all-too-familiar sapphire-like eyes with a pale face that I once called my own, and she extended her arm, dropping the pale roses and they were lost in fog. She pointed at me with a slender finger that seemed to be blemished with crimson just like the roses. Her mouth grew wide and gaping and in her mouth were a set of yellow-stained teeth that had flecks of brown carelessly dotted across; she held a rotting tongue of black in her decaying mouth and her gums were a diseased red, and I swear that maggots and worms burrow and slithered within them. I painfully cringed at the viewing of that. Then, with her hot, stinking breath, she screamed, “You!” You was the only words that she screamed at me, and the You shivered down my spine and rang in my ears and pierced my mind like a bloodening knife.
I was confused by the single word, but I soon grew scared for the You seemed foreboding and rather ominous, like it if was a single worded message, a code. I wanted to ask what she mean but I could not speak, as if I could not move my mouth. I tried to feel my lips but I felt nothing by smoothed skin. I had lost my mouth. I began to panic and tear from the horror, and I guess that I was to meet the same fate as the fifteen brides, excluding my already bridal-self that seemed to have a face of her own. I could feel my face starting to melt into a blend of just a featureless finish of my face. I felt the skin close against my nose and my nose itself gone as if it was not there before. I began to feel less and less of myself, and soon the only thing I saw was darkness of no hopes and only fears for my eyes had become absent from my face. My head bowed against my will for I had none and I felt like myself no more. I was only an empty husk.
Then I woke up. A gasp of breath. A sudden realization. I was no longer in the inky black darkness nor my apartment of 757C Oxford, I was not even in Nona. I was back on the bobbling motorized carriage beside Dr. Amadeus who looked at me with such worry.
“Are you alright?” she asked, caring.
I simply nodded. I felt that my throat was dry and my mouth seemed to not have the ability to form even the simplest sentences. My heart raced with such intent. What had just happened to me in Nona and in my own home was just a conjuration of my imagination. Had I gone mad?
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