Aerial

The Thirty-Fourth Chapter

"Sunny?"

What began as a voice of humor and confidence starts to slowly trickle into the suck and swish of a bloody bathtub drain; the surrounding, endless walls of floor-to-ceiling mirrors casting your waxen fearful expression right back at you. Taunting you, mimicking you, exploiting you. Laying you bare and frightened for no one to witness except yourself. The glassy repeated image of your concerned frown slips away into forever, from every single angle. Doomed red lighting continuously hovers overhead, the audibly silent and visually deafening strobe light dances to the opposing pulse of your heartbeat. With ample omnipresence, the disturbing rumbling ambiance of nocturnal animals, wind, thunder, maniacal laughter. The glint of metal being unsheathed from leather and deflecting moonlight. Swarms of bees. Crickets. Moans. A grandfather clock clanging against the stroke of midnight. The rainstick-rattle of bare tree branches in a frigid gale. Condensation from your panic bleeds a foggy mask upon the glass before you, hiding your face for a split second before you weakly call out, "...Harry? I'm serious. Stop messing with me."

Two crimson eyes appear in the darkness before fading back into the oblivion from where they came.

"Wanna play a little, Honeykitten? Yeah?" His voice rumbles out, sloshy, hushed and deliberate against the shell of your ear and you practically beg for him to continue with nothing but a helpless whine, "'kay... don't you make a fuckin' sound."

You've never been trapped inside of a burning building before, but you imagine this to be very similar. Delirium and stunted breathing. Cul-de-sacs that camouflage themselves as an escape, bumping into walls and outwardly bellyaching in frustration. A type of helplessness that makes you wish you could buckle to your knees and simply wait, cowering in fear, hoping someone will swoop in and replenish the oxygen in the room. Your breath trapped between your two ears, swooshing back and forth through a hollow canal. Shadows disguised as the Grim Reaper, blips of clarity mixed with glitches of obscurity. Seeing eternity within the confines of a shiny, persistent box. Either very similar, or the exact opposite of burning alive. It's hard to tell, really.

Sweet-tasting fog seeps, slowly seeps, filling every empty crevice, making you gag on its thick suspense. Clouding your vision and daring you to explore inside of your own mind for paranoid horrors you'd never wish to experience.

One hand tightly grips your throat, his hips pinning you to the vanity inside of your stuffy dressing room. Fingertips snake their way up your skirt, over the fabric of your panties. Cheek-to-cheek, two sets of volatile eyes connected in the mirror before you, "you may ask me for permission to come."

A shudder racks your spine so violently that your shoulders quake, "please..."

Mirrors are miserably familiar to you. As a dancer, they always have been. A love/hate relationship that you find yourself dependent on as a perfectionist, as a woman struggling with today's cultural expectations, as another victim to the terror of perceived nightmares. On trying to accept the parts of yourself that you are told are pretty. On trying to improve the parts of yourself that you are told are ugly. On trying to fortify the parts of yourself that you discern as helpless. Especially after this afternoon, especially right now.

"Can I? Please." Your core sucks on his fingers, dangerously close to toppling from the edge. Your speech is rushed and frantic, finding yourself genuinely needing his permission, his guidance, his approval and his acceptance before you let yourself go. And liking it. A lot, "please, oh god-"

Claustrophobia in a never-ending, dreary landscape. Akin to being stuck on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Nothing but miles of wide-open rolling waves and hot sky in every direction you look, and yet somehow, you're completely trapped. Abandoned in the infinite. Alone with nothing but a circular bad trip of dimly-lit thoughts.