Don’t let in know you’re scared.
Alice could feel the words breathe life into the abyss that enveloped them. Tendrils of smoke from burning candles gyrated around her; whispering something foreign and all too asphyxiating. With a head filled with oddities, she fabricated the house into something that was alive. A beast, with rattling floorboards and murmuring fires for watchful eyes. Each door they passed, threatening in the way they were closed; she could only imagine what secrets each one held.
She was almost tempted to wander off, and take a little glimpse through the gaping locks. But she knew that she was in the company of something far more enchanting; the girl that commanded this all with the mere twists of a tongue. The enchantress with her perilous air and possessing gaze, luring the light behind her with a mere glance. It was how Alice came to be there, after all. A glance.
“I’m not scared,” she said this with much doubt in her little voice. It’s effect, flat and pacific. What character she seemed to have, came undone in this alien realm. Mysteries despite belief, did not belong in mysterious places. They belonged in towns like Coolsville, where the mundane forced you into being something more interesting. It was the mysterious places that reverted one into their primal form, an embryo, reaching to curl back up into their mother’s womb. In mysterious places, you were stripped of the backbone the world built for you, leaving you with a wishbone, a pliable bone, which demanded every drop of whatever will you had left from snapping it yourself. Only in mysterious places were we desperate creatures.
Each room she was led through, the further and further Alice fell down the winding rabbit hole. She wondered if the changing rooms would ever stop— this thought was silenced just as they were swallowed up in the tar black space; it felt endless despite how compact it actually was. “Where are we going?” She wanted to ask, the panic in her rising. She was never comfortable in the dark. Even though she was found oh-so-often wandering in the devil’s hours of the night, she was always watched by the moon and followed by its glow.
The light all-encompassing, fizzled out her own light out. Leaving Alice as no more than a subdued object that merely reflected it. The porcelain belle felt herself being drawn closer, that even her idle hand acted on its own accord. Placing her reaching, willowy fingers across the doorknob, she softly covered its owner’s hand. At the touch of skin and not something metallic, Alice hesitantly pulled away. Biting down on her lip, her blonde waves veiled her embarrassment. She was being childish, she was aware of this, but she found difficulty in being anything else.
Enjoyment perhaps wasn’t the correct word, amusement didn’t quite hit the mark either. But there was something about leading fear into those who often floated through the world. Something about bringing the unknown of the world to them, that would bring the most gentle of smiles to Sabrina’s face.
It would be easy to argue that was the way she was, the way the house was. An enigma, a secret. Something that could indulge in fear. Alive. Breathing. Seeming.
The shop- it was bigger than it seems from the outside. A box, inside a box, inside a box. Or better yet, a maze. With too many doors and rooms that all managed to connect to each other. Only seeming large once you were inside because of how easy it was to get lost in this breathing place. If you didn’t know where you were going, the doors would seem to change on you, leading you right back to where you were. And the exit, near impossible to find.
A Salen was an essential part of the labyrinth; a guide, chaperone. The exact reason everything around stemmed trepidation.
The grip of Alice, the delicate touch from her hand as they both held to the knob left her eyes gazing upon the girl. But in a place like this, where the walls always seemed to be watching, it perhaps would have been hard to tell.
Cruel however, it would have been to keep the blonde in those rooms for too long. To keep her in her current state out of levity.
Opening the door was jarring, the light from the room that lay on the other end spilled into the door they stood at. Sunlight it appeared, but in the frosted windows it almost felt artificial. It was a strange thing the dark musters though, making the mundane seem so much more. It’s true what they say- they shadows play tricks. Because the room they now stood in, with too bright light pouring in, prying away the shadows, left it looking- ordinary.
“Take a seat,” Sabrina gestured into the sunroom. The thing barley big enough for three people, and the couch that rest against the back wall. All above them, overgrown with plants, herbs, ingredients. Watering cans, and utensils surround scattered on the floor and the bench along the wall that seemed to fit in perfectly.
“This room won’t bite.”
