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12 blurring the fact and the fiction
Mercy doesn't remember the last time she was awake. Faintly, she knows that she isn't, but for Mercy it's getting harder and harder to tell. She's in her dream-version of Siken Lane, trapped in her bedroom. She can't leave, the maze of winding halls once again blanketed in shrouded darkness. Mercy can't risk getting lost in her own subconscious for the rest of her short existence. Outside her window, her blue truck sits in the driveway. Illusion waves from the driver's seat and her nose furrows. It's covered in vines, the arms winding through the tires and body, holding it close to the earth. She couldn't take it even if she wanted to. Mercy closes the window. It creaks beneath her fingers, white paint flecking onto her grey-stained hands. She sighs.
Across her room, resting against the white wall, there's a golden mirror. Mercy has never had a gold mirror in her room before. It's large: her entire body could fit within its reflection, the glass lined by bright yellow gold. At the top it rises, arching with vines and a figure at it's crown. Dionysus, something whispers quietly. He's curved with serpentine vines twisting around his ankles and up his legs. She laughs, approaching it without caution. This mirror won't harm her, Dionysus is of her kind. They are the same: Mercy and him. Both are intertwined with the unstable balance of madness and ecstasy, walking the line frequently. He is a part of her as much as she is a part of him. They are kin—built of the same broken marble, chipping as each moment passes. They are equally as underestimated, called by other names. Dionysus is more than just a god of wine, and Mercy is more than just a King. When Mercy stands in front of the mirror, there is no reflection. The glass swirls, revealing a fracturing image.
Ronan Lynch is slumping in the passenger seat of Kavinsky's latest Mitsubishi. Mercy sucks in a breath, unsurprised but still disappointed. He's surrounded by beer cans and green pills, Kavinsky in the driver's seat. She's familiar with the broken recipe that disrupts your usual grip on reality. Pill. Beer. Dream. It's simple, easy to grasp but harder than assumed to use. She thinks of white pills dancing in Kavinsky's fingertips, the first iteration of their kind. The green pills seem to be the new and improved version.
