"My, my, love. Are you sure you want to leave such a cruel world behind?"
Far beyond the horizon, clouds gathered-throbbing, budding, menacing. Time was slipping through their fingers. "What can be worse than this?"
A slow, wicked smile split his fa...
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"To be or not to be."
To be or not to be.
"Shakespeare, hamlet."
A pair of stark blue eyes narrowed into slits.
"Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble."
Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble.
"Macbeth."
A sharp sigh came. "You aren't retaining it." Rosalie's temples throbbed, the gnawing sensation behind her eyelids grew sharper with every blink. Deeper whenever she closed her eyes. She grasped the spoon set beside her coffee mug and began stirring the muddy liquid. "I don't feel well," she muttered. "Is it that time of the month?" Ryan asked, draining her tea to the dregs. Freckles smattered the bridge of her pert nose, a beauty mark on the corner of her lip. "It can be an ass." Again, Rose's temples throbbed. She'd spent all day learning those plays and yet every time her mind wondered to them, she came out blank. "Earth to Rose," Ryan dipped her eyes, pulled a face. "You've been so spaced out recently, what the hell's the matter with you." Everything, Rose thought. From the corner of her eye she caught a subtle glimpse, something dark that wobbled and slithered. And when she looked, she bit her tongue.
Crows.
Crows.
Crows.
"I started my period this morning," she said, dragging her eyes away from the dark mass fluttering just behind the windows of their favourite café. Ryan's blue eyes darkened ever so slightly, her friend's forehead creased. Conversation over. Ryan was one of the few, if not only people in the godforsaken town of Mistward who cared little about Rose's...strange behavior. The first time she asked Rose to hang was the first time Rose saw that cobwebbed man tucked in the corner of her room like a lingering curse. Ryan didn't see him, but Rose, little twelve-year-old Rose, described him in all his horrific glory. She'll never forget what Ryan said afterwards. I'll protect you. And she did. God, she did. And so, the duo came to be. The strange, haunted girl with drawn eyes and red hair, and her rebellious best friend with one too many piercings, far too many tattoos and bleach blonde hair with the entire rainbow streaked between the strands.
An old, hobbled looking man in a white and grey apron waddled over, gifted both girls a smile. "Are there any cakes left, Mr. Vaughn?" Ryan asked, sneaking another piece of red velvet into her mouth. "Didn't you say you're on a diet, miss Moor?" Ryan paused mid chewing, her words muffled. Mr. Vaughn barely understood her, he just pulled a narrowed face and then turned to Rose with a smile. Set a mint tea in front of her. Its cloying sweetness drifted to her nose like incense.
"Oh, I didn't order this." "It's from the gentleman over there," he winked. Both girls glanced over his shoulder, to the table just across from them where a brown-haired man in a tight white shirt sat sipping bitter coffee. She knew he felt them look at him, but he retained his composure. Gazing out the adjacent window as if lost in his own world. Ryan sank back in her seat and pulled a not-so-bad-is-he face. Rose felt her chest strain at the thought of a handsome stranger buying her a drink, it sounded absurd. It was absurd. She wasn't the type to warrant attention, nor was she the type guys chased. Pale was just a nice way to calling her sickly, slender was a polite way of calling her starved. She was no beauty, though Ryan continued to demand that she was, but Rose knew the truth. And maybe it was that realization that hurt more.
