Page 33 of Death Comes for Her
My head snapped up, and I blinked through heavy lids, searching for a light long snuffed out. “Mother?”
Perspiration coated my brow. A tremor afflicted my hands. Each breath punched through my lungs, burning, and burning, and burning…
Burning.
My empty stomach lurched, longing to purge itself of the poison in my limbs. A poison that lingered, a poison that affected every good sense I’d ever had. There would be no escape, because it flowed through my blood as freely as the gods’ ambrosia flowed through the heavens.
Again, the world turned gold, bright, divine. My Mother hummed, a tune she’d sung a thousand times before. I ached, I longed, I followed. The dead enticed, and I swam after her.
Burning.
Red. Everything dripped red. It spilled through the walls, dripping like mortal blood, seeping through the cracks. My foot slipped, yet I stumbled on, leaving a trail of crimson footprints on the hall carpets.
Mortal blood held no consequence for me. Red was just a color. Let it weep from the walls, and I’d continue, uncaring of the meaning.
But gold. Gold was everything.
My life, my insides, my power, my ichor. It was the first light of the world and some ancient being within my skull screamed that gold would be the last.
It was eternal; it was unearthly; it was primordial.
Burning.
“Death is coming…” Mother hissed.
I snapped around, blinking through watery eyes. Red and gold. Red and gold. Spinning, blurred, murky.
“Where are you?” I trailed after her ghost, chasing the comforts of a memory. “Mother? Mother, please.”
Burning. Under my skin. Radiating in my veins. Sizzling in the marrow of my bones. I grasped at the soft, sheer fabric ofmy nightgown, clawing and tearing it as if to peel the unwanted layer from my flesh.
“Death is coming!” she howled like a banshee, and I surged through a door.
A glowing sliver of gold peeked through a veil of red. The sun hidden behind curtains. And I ached for the sun, for the light. I latched onto the drapes, twisting my hands in the velvet fabric, and wrenched it apart with every ounce of strength in my quivering muscles.
I collapsed on the ground, weighed down by layers of heavy red velvet. Bits of clarity blinked through my vision as I shoved the curtains off. Above me blazed six golden wings. Mother’s humming intensified, ringing almost painfully in my ears.
Burning.
When I managed to shove the curtains away from my legs, I caught flickers of the orange and yellow coals smoldering in the fireplace. Her song, her music, came not from the wings hanging from the walls, but from the hearth. On hands and knees, I crawled as if in a drunken stupor toward the fading embers.
“Deathiscoming. Death… Death is coming!”
Moved by spirits, my hand grasped the warm edge of a log sticking out. The opposite end sparked with latent flames. Cool rivers trekked down my fevered cheeks as I rose on shaking legs.
Fading tendrils of dreams left me with a frightening clarity. There I stood in Dante’s office with a hunk of burning wood in my hands. The red dawn at my back and the golden glow of Mother’s wings warred around me.
“Yes, Mother. I know what I must do,” I told her gilded ghost lingering in the corner.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. From the flames we are born and to them we return.
With the return of reality, my heart galloped over fields in my chest. It ran wild, and my blood pumped erratically undermy skin. I sucked in a sharp breath, searching for something to shatter the glass.
My eyes landed on the desk. The corner. The top drawer. I flung myself around the corner and latched onto the handle. Yanking the drawer free revealed a gleaming handle resting prettily on a stack of aged papers. With trembling fingers, I plucked it free, experiencing a rush of power—or maybe just freedom.
Using the weight of the heavy metal dagger, I slammed it into the glass. Thousands of glimmering shards exploded around me, clattering to the hardwood like clinking diamonds. I tightened my grip on the dagger, simultaneously lifting the smoking wood over my head.
Heavy, anguish laden tears seared paths down my face. It was at that moment I held the power to lay my mother to rest in the manner she deserved. All those years after leaving them behind, I had a chance to make something right.
