Page 31 of Carnival
“Your dream?” I ask.
“No, silly,’’ she giggles again. “Your dream.’’
“It looks more like a nightmare, if you ask me.’’
Another giggle from her, and I’m desperately trying to hold my vomit back. I have never, ever felt as scared as I’m feeling right now. Realistically, I could kick her and make a run for it, but something tells me that this child is an entity so dark that I’d get swallowed whole before even getting the chance to properly kick her.
“Well, it’s your dream, so it’s up to you how you see it.’’
I blink, trying to understand her words. I don’t even notice her inching closer to me until the mask is a single inch away from my face, and I suck in a deep breath. My eyes dip down, and I see the girl floating. She’s actually fucking floating.
If I wasn’t scared before, I sure as fuck am right now. Everything in me is telling me to look away, but I’m aware that the moment I dare to do so — this nightmare will turn into something much more wicked, and more disturbing, and I’m scared I’ll never wake up.
“Who are you?”
Another obnoxious round of her giggling fills my ears. The sound scratches my brain in all the wrong ways, especially since I’m looking directly into the dark abyss of her eyes. There’s no humor in those, just a black, deep hole that’s slowly starting to suck me in. Almost as if it’s mocking me, my inability to resist and to pull out of it on my own.
“You don’t remember me?”
Her voice is child-alike, innocent, the way you’d expect a seven-year-old to sound, but I know better. The intonation behind the sweet voice is filled with mockery, taunting and daring me to ask more. Her bloodied hand reaches and starts playing with a strand of my hair, twirling it around and leaving the red prints all over.
“No,’’ I whisper, voice cracking.
“How weird,’’ she mumbles, voice taking a deeper, darker edge. “Because it was you who killed me.’’
My lungs collapse at the words, wind getting knocked out of them. Suddenly, I cannot breathe, I cannot think or even see what is happening. Her small hands are wrapped around my throat and surprisingly, she’s strong as hell.
Her cheery laughter turns into a demonic sound, rough, deep and bone-chilling. My eyes snap shut, tears running down my cheeks as I try to wiggle my way out of her grabby hands. Instead, she lifts me off the grass, holding me in air and squeezing the sides of my neck, effectively cutting off my oxygen.
A loud gasp comes from me, my heart hammering in my chest. I can’t stop the tears from sliding down my cheeks, I can’t prevent the sheer fear that slithers into my body, coiling itself around my heart and spreading its poison through my veins.
I open my mouth to speak, yet no words come out. It’s like my tongue has started to swell, barely fitting in my mouth. I force myself to open my eyes, and a loud scream pierces through my lungs, the only sound I could muster.
The little girl’s mask has fallen off, and instead it’s a decayed body. Body fluids start trickling down her face — or what was leftof it. Her eyes are as black as they used to be, her teeth rotten, the grin widely spreading on her face.
The instant smell of the dead hits my nose and I recoil, her skeleton hands holding my throat even tighter. The fluids splash all over me, a few droplets falling into my mouth. A wave of nausea builds in my throat, and I’m unsure of how to prevent vomit from coming out. Soon enough, her body is nothing but a skeleton, with her hair still wet, still messy with dried, wilted daisies in it.
“You killed me, Rosalie,’’ her voice is loud, nearly bursting my ear drums. “You don’t get to just forget about me, you don’t get to just block it out and live your life freely. You’ll pay for what you’ve done.’’
I can’t respond. I have so many questions I want to ask, so many things I need to have clarified, but then she brings one of her hands, her long, skeleton fingers sharp, dangling in front of my eyes. Carefully, I follow every movement she makes, terrified of even trying to move an inch.
In an instant, pain unlike any I’ve ever felt pierces through my body. It’s sharp, instant, and all-consuming. My screams are loud, but her laughter at the pain and misery is louder. Her finger is embedded in my eye socket, right in my pupil.
She drops me to the ground when she pulls her finger back, my eyeball on her finger. I lie down, writhing in pain, feeling as if someone’s just skinned me alive. It’s getting too unbearable, and the moment she starts hovering over me, I scream again.
I’m not sure if it’s pain or fear, or perhaps a mix of both, but it slips my lips before I can stop it. And the sound only fuels her need to see me bleed, her hands starting to claw all over myflesh, drawing blood wherever she can, using me as her personal torture doll.
The screams don’t seem to reach her, and my desperate pleas don’t stop her. If anything, they encourage her to continue, to dig through my flesh and start pulling out my organs.
Even after I pass out from the severe pain, she doesn’t stop.
She wants to kill me.
And she might succeed.
???
My entire body is aching.
