Being Anna Marie

Being Anna Marie part 22

Part 22

Haziness superseded my vision as my lids slithered apart, light made obscurity vanish, and what was distorted finally became clear. Tanned fingers pushed tangled curls of ebony from my view as my sight took in the hundred of sketches; one more gruesome than the next scrawled along the white walls. Photos intricately drawn of decaying demons with scarlet eyes, sharpened teeth, blood gushing from deformed lips, flesh falling off bone, emerging from darkness. I rose into a sitting position, crumbled bed sheets surrounding my be stilled figure, my curls falling down my trembling spine as I gazed in dismayed wonderment of my worst nightmares sketched in horrifying detail, showcased in grandeur for all the world to see. It was as if someone had emptied my mind of its monsters, transforming the ghastly into displayed décor, before clearly stunned I twisted to stare blindly into the merriment of a green gaze watching my every move.

“Thought you’d sleep the day away,” Julie whispered happily, hugging her battered doll to her overweight form, her crumpled white jogging pants and t-shirt strangling her plump figure. The doll’s dark tresses had long ago lost the battle to stay intact; patches of its strands gone, dress stained on its small body, its eye missing altogether, and yet still this deranged girl sat in a bed identical to my own, patting this beloved toy as if it were made of gold.

“I’ve always wanted another roommate,” she whispered, her gaze leaving mine, her long red hair framing her chubby face whilst she continued as if my words were unneeded, as if it were the doll she really spoke to. “Never knew it’d only take a fire to get one.”

Emerald lenses flashed abruptly back to mine before her finger gestured to the empty air beside her, “Kylie here thought we’d be alone forever.”

Looking dazedly at the empty spot Kylie was supposed to be sitting in I answered numbly, “I guess I was more exhausted than I thought.”

My bewildered eyes trailed the small room as my legs swung to the icy floor, wincing at the slight ache of my overused muscles. I tried and yet failed to ignore the drawings covering every available surface of the adjacent wall choosing instead to focus my fearful gaze on the glory of the morning sky shining brightly in from the barred in window. And there leaning idly against its bolted shut frame lied my dead sister, gazing intently beyond its glass.

The sunlight lit her blonde tresses up like a corona; her miniskirt, cropped top, and four inch high heeled boots contrasting horribly to her angel like appearance before swiftly cerulean clashed with hazel.

“She is fucking annoying!” Andrea gestures wildly to the seemingly docile girl beside me, “and as crazy as bat shit!”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Julie’s gentle voice wholeheartedly exclaimed in agreement, her remorseful eyes finally reclaiming my own, “those flames last night… The way they just engulfed the building…Those people panicking, and screaming…”

I closed my guilt ridden eyes to the sudden flashes of their faces that seemed to overtake my vision; the smell of smoke, the scent of burning flesh, the sound of their unanswered cries for help, the sight of people being crushed within the crowd. “Yeah,” I whispered weakly, culpability forever apart of my spirit, “it was pretty scar-.”

“It was pretty spectacular!” she breathlessly exclaimed, forcing my incredulous eyes to hastily swing back to hers. Her features were just so manically animated… so gleeful in it’s reminisces of such a horrendous tragedy, such awful pain.

“There was just such a… beauty in its flicker,” Julie’s trembling fingers reached out before her as if lovingly caressing an invisible flame. “There was always something about an uncontainable blaze that seemed to fascinate Kylie and me. In fact we haven’t seen a fire that enthralling since… well since the inferno that claimed the lives of our parents.”