Summary: When a young woman comes knocking at the door, a still fragile VHI must scramble to find the answers about a mysterious cult before it takes the life of one of their own
(Horror Week, Day 1 - Cults)
That’s right y’all, it’s Horror Week, which means that VHI is back!!!! I am so excited to be writing Volume #2 at long last, I’m so delighted to have you all to see what I have planned this time around!! But first, the Horror Week prompts, and day one is cults! I really hope you enjoy this and are as glad as I am that I’m writing this au again jsghjkdhfds
[Okay, I rushed through this one despite it being the longest of the bunch. It's my least favorite. Read on A03 here]
When Beca Mitchell was six years old, she almost drowned in the lake behind her childhood home. She remembers, not so fondly, the taste of salt and fish and dirt. She remembers, even more, the forgotten taste and the sudden fear that came with water filling her lungs and clouding her throat. The green water was murky, and the base was slimy, and she could barely find her way to safety.
Her fingers eventually brushed the broken wood dock that had been rotten through at the mercy of the weather. She dragged herself onto the edge, pressing her face against the moon-soaked surface, and she vomited. She doesn’t remember crying, but she was sure that she did. She remembers the anger, the blinding finality of it.
Her stomach hurt now, twenty years later, as she navigated the winding Pennsylvania roads lined with fir trees hammered with reflectors in an even line to catch the sweeping color of headlights. She tightened her grip against the steering wheel until her knuckles were white. Chloe didn’t’ ask if she was okay, she sensed that her wife wasn’t and placed a gentle hand on her knee.
Beca would like to say that it eased her nerves about returning to the estate, but the truth was, nothing would quite dull the ache in her stomach and the burning in her throat. She hadn’t seen the Mitchells in years and hadn’t heard from them other than a postcard stained with a sticky substance that smelled oddly metallic like blood.
It seemed threatening then and it seemed threatening now. There was no coincidence that it came through with extra postage only a day after she legally changed her name to Beale. Her father was a stickler for tradition, and a name change was enough to strike like a hot iron.
“What’s your mother like?” Chloe had asked as the car gripped the shoulder of the road during a, particularly sharp turn.
“Like any other mother, I suppose. She’s nice enough.”
“People don’t usually use that term to describe their mothers.”
She let me drown didn’t seem like the best precursor to a family trip up the side of the mountain to claim the estate. Chloe would see it as a figure of speech, as Beca being dramatic about how large and mysterious her family truly was. But that taste of dirt and bone flooded her mouth once more.
Truthfully, Beca remembers her mother with such vagueness that she couldn’t give Chloe a good answer even if she tried. There was the dense scent of lavender mixed with sweetgrass, and a warmth to her that parental figures often carried with them as if it were a burden. Her mother wore gloves, black silk ones that stretched up to her elbows and contrasted her pale unblemished skin. She never recalls seeing her hands.
Her father had passed away. She got a thick manilla packet in the mail only a month earlier that was stamped with the words “Bronte & Son’s”. It famously lacked any type of odd staining or strange scents- so Beca felt a tad bit safer than she would have before.
She went to school with a Charles Bronte- a man with many faces. Of course, he would become a lawyer, the thought made her scoff before even thinking twice about peeling back the adhesive. She was half-prepared for a summons to court, but instead, it was a finely penned letter informing her of her father’s natural demise, and a request for her presence at a formal will reading.
Chloe had asked her then too if she was okay, and Beca decided that she was. She hardly knew the man and had vague memories of him too fading quicker than those of the woman she called mother. She had nothing to mourn, only something to fear: the estate, the family she left behind, the gritty bottom of the lake behind her childhood home.
The Mitchells were something of a myth in Beaumont PA. They were witches who brewed potions or werewolves that pushed their human teeth from bloody gums, only to have them replaced by pointed dripping canines. To Beca, they were eccentric, and sometimes cruel, but not otherworldly because this had always been her world.
At least it had been until she shoved a few clothes into a burlap sack and set out to find her aunt in New York City. It wasn’t a far trip by bus, and she eventually made her way there after scrounging for a ticket. She never turned back, she fought hard for a normal life, and for fucks- sake she got one.
A beautiful wife, and a stable job, and an uncle who smiled hard enough that it reached the corners of his eyes. He walked her down the aisle and she hadn’t thought twice about inviting her own mother, her sister, or older brother. They would turn down the invitation, she knew, just as she had turned down her true nature as a Mitchell woman.
“There it is,” Beca whispered.
Chloe let out an astonished gasp, the house had always been true to its Victorian nature with a long sloping room and siding that had seen better days. Once upon a time it was kept up, with pine needles swept from the tiled roof and a yellow honeyed color to the wrap around porch. The forest was crowding in, and a wrought iron fence with the carving of a demon brandished the gates. That was new. Eccentric, and a little too on the nose for comfort.
The threat of snow was in the air, potent against her lungs as she slowly moved their car up the gravel driveway. A bronze fountain was coated in a thin layer of patina, no longer spitting water from the mouth of a forlorn angel. Brown lake water was siphoned from the very pond she had tasted herself, running in a system of underground pipes.
Beca pulled behind a black Lincoln Town Car that dawned the same ornament as the gates. It was polished, and had license plates topped with blue and sandwiched with a golden yellow. It was her brother's car, she was sure, her mother refusing to get a viable license, or go into town.
She had worn all blackout of respect. It had dawned on her, only now, that it wasn’t a funeral, it was a will reading and any mourning for her father had been done before he was put in the ground.
“This place is…” Chloe trailed off as Beca opened the door for her, her hand clenching the side of the car. She craned her neck as she looked up at the looming structure “Nice.”
“You don’t have to lie to me dear, we’re already married.”
Anxiety had settled deep within her stomach and Chloe eventually had to be the one to knock. Beca kept a gentle hand right on the small of the woman’s back. She didn’t’ know if she was sweating in the fall cold if the clouds looming above the estate made the temperature drop even lower.
The door creaked open and Beca felt her jaw go stiff. Her mother hadn’t aged a single day. Memories of her honey blonde hair and startling blue eyes struck her as it hadn’t occurred before. She wore a russet floral day dress despite the cold, her skin pale and soft. Her stare didn’t’ harden, not instantly. She had seen Chloe first, just like Beca had, all those years ago.
“Rebecca,” she breathed out the words like a sigh “Now, this is a fine surprise.”
She had a purr to her voice that was new- maybe not new, but certainly unfamiliar. Beca could feel her heart in her throat. It was nearly dizzying, the combination of seeing her mother for the first time in ten years, and the cloying scent that flooded from the house. It warmed her, made her ache for the memories.
“And who is this?” She asked.
“Chloe,” her wife said warmly, reaching out a hand “Beca talks so fondly of you.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Come in unless you intend to freeze.”
She turned and walked into the house without taking Chloe’s hand. The woman lowered it with a defeated shrug. Her family, her mother, in particular, was brash when she wanted to be. Beca stepped through the threshold of the house, instantly shielded from the outside world.
There was an oriental rug that stretched all the way to the kitchen, flooded with dull tinted light from the greenhouse. A large grandfather clock that clicked half a second too slowly stood next to a coat rack. There was a dining room to the left, and a sitting room to the right, large mahogany stairs stretched to a landing that branched into different rooms.
Her mother had already weaved to another room in the house. There were no family photos of the wall, nothing but a healthy heaping of red paint that nearly looked brown. It was her to shrug as she closed the door.
“Katherina, who was that at the door?” A male's voice cut through the odd silence.
Charles Bronte hung onto the white trim of the archway that lead into the dining room. He wore a green suit that contrasted against his brown skin. He pulled back his lips into a charming smile that revealed too much gum. “Ah, Rebecca! You are a sight for sore eyes. We weren’t expecting you.”
He hugged her then. His skin was cold and smelled like rain. She was thankful he didn’t’ carry the same rotting scent as the pond. She swore that even from here, in the foyer, that it worked its way to her. She was hesitant in her return.
“Well, you did invite me.”
He fretted, pulling away “Plenty of people get invited to plenty of things.”
She hadn’t been invited to anything other than this. She never blamed them, not for a single moment, she was the one that slid from the window and padded to the nearest station. They didn’t’ feel the need to stop her, that much was true because she had made her own choice.
“Who is this lovely lady?”
“This is my wife, Chloe.”
“Ah, I am pleasured to meet your acquaintance.” He picked up her hand and landed a kiss against her knuckles. Chloe’s cheeks reddened at the motion and she glanced sparingly at Beca as if she had no idea what to do.
“Don’t stand there like strangers.”
He turned on his heel and walked towards the kitchen. She assumed that’s where her mother had vanished too but still felt as if the soles of her shoes were concrete freshly dried. Charles was the only outsider she had ever met who seemed comfortable around the Mitchells, at ease. He was providing a service and she was sure that as soon as Katherina had drained him dry, she wouldn’t see him again.
There was a smaller table in the kitchen, pushed up against a wall with a small dish of fruit in the center. Her sister sat on the counter, her back close to the tile wall. Her foot was drawn up against her chest, dark-haired and blue-eyed. They took over the man freshly buried. Her brother looked fondly like Katherina, blonde hair cropped and styled.
It was longer when she left. He wasn’t as filled out and Emilina wasn’t as withered. They both glanced towards the door where Beca lingered. Her jaw ached now, from clenching her teeth. She swore she could taste blood, but knew if any had been drawn it would lead to her demise.
She had cultivated her control. She didn’t believe her kin had. They didn’t’ need to, being this far away from civilization. Her hands were in her pockets, picking at the corners of her nails. “Hi,”
“Hi.” Emilina said.
“Bec’s,” Finnick smiled as Charles had, it reached past his eyes and took over his full expression. He had her in a bear hug faster than she could react. There was a scent of dirt clinging to him, his chest broad and his arms thick like a boa constrictor. “It’s been so long.”
This time, she found herself hugging back. She missed Finn enough to ache, nearly the only one who she regretted leaving behind. He had moved to pull her from the water that day, to bring color back to her blue fingers and turquoise lips. But father had stopped him with a firm hand on the shoulder. That was enough then, and it was enough now.
“Would you like some tea, Rebecca?” Her mother asked.
She hadn’t noticed her by the stove, stirring loose leaves into a boiling pot. That’s where the clove scent was coming from, masking something more, masking nightshade. That’s what had been burning her lungs so feverishly. She squinted at the dark concoction. “No thank you, Mother.”
“It’s going to be a long day, going through all that tedious legal work. Are you quite sure?” her beady eyes flicked between the two in the door “What about your lovely wife?”
Chloe opened her mouth to speak but Beca squeezed her hand and she snapped her mouth shut. In any other circumstance, Beca would have received an open palm slap to the face and a ring thrown at her feet, but the tension in the air was palpable.
“She’s fine, thank you.”
Em scoffed with a devilish smile on her face, clearly amused by the refusal. Her body was blocking the jars, dusty and yellowed, that her mother had plucked the herb from. It was deadly to Beca, but fatal to Chloe. Her mother didn’t make a move to pour herself a glass but switched off the burner.
“Right, well, if you could all follow me into the dining room. I’m sure Rebecca would like to get down to business after such a long drive.”
They had stayed in a hotel down the road from the estate. Chloe insisted that they sleep in the house, but Beca was adamant, nearly in tears, that they don’t. She would front the price for a motel and at the distress, Chloe agreed.
Beca just nodded.
They filed into the dining room, painted a deep cobalt. It would let in a magnitude of natural light if the velvet curtains weren’t drawn. Instead, there was an oil lamp in the center of the table and manila folders set out at every seat like the first day of class. Her family seemed to find their natural spots- leaving two open for Beca and Chloe, closest to a China cabinet that she wasn’t allowed to look at as a child.
Her back was to it now and her childish impulses told her to turn around and get a better look. But she didn’t. Her mother held a cold and unrelenting stare. She twisted the silver ring around her finger nervously. It was engraved, a family heirloom. The only thing Beca had enough sense to keep with her from home.
“As you all know, we are extremely saddened to recognize the death of Patriarch James Mitchell. May he forever run with the wolves.”
Beca found herself repeating the phrase with the rest of her family. Their voices were slow and came out in different pitches. It was a mantra, one that each of them held near and dear. Chloe fought a look of confusion and instead sat quietly, listening.
“The first order of business is beneficiary.” Charles continued “if you could all flip to the second page and read along with me.”
Her eyes threatened to wander down the page, but she held herself steady. She didn’t find it plausible for her father to leave her anything with the estate. She was his estranged daughter who tried so hard to be normal, to fight her true nature and make something for herself. Make a life that wasn’t filled with death and carnage and the stale taste of blood.
She fought back a scoff. Her father was but a memory but he was always one for dramatics. Finn’s eyes were hard as he stared at the words with enough intent to burn a hole through the paper. Em looked nearly bored with herself.
“You’re kidding me,” Katherina hissed.
“Please, Miss Mitchell, I beg of you not to read ahead.” Charles sounded desperate “It’s James’s wishes that we all-“
“Damn his wishes, he’s dead.”
She held up a perfectly manicured hand. They were almost like claws, those red dripping nails of hers. They could easily split flesh. It was enough for Charles to snap his jaw shut with a dull thud. His father would have held a stronger resolve, but even the astute greats stood a small chance against the family.
Katherina’s eyes were filled with indignation. It gave Beca the same cold feeling of water filling her lungs. She couldn’t cough it up this time on the side of the dock under the moonlight. Instead, she met the darkened stare with one of her own.
“He’s left you everything, child.”
“I’m quite aware.”
“You’re not one of us.” She tsked “You haven’t gone through half of what we have.”
That one stung like salt in an open wound. But she feared her mother was right. She hadn’t been one of them for a very long time because she craved normalcy enough to get it. Chloe’s hand found her knee under the table. It squeezed with reassurance.
“You drowned me in the lake.” Beca’s words were calm. She spread he fingers out on the wooden table and focused on getting the even amount between them. “You let me choke on water and mud until I couldn’t anymore. You watched.”
“It was necessary.”
“Was it?” Beca was standing now. Both hands on the table. She had slammed them down hard enough to shake the crystal decanter that rested with water next to a lantern spurting blue fire. “You knew damn well what you did that night.”
“You had to carry on the legacy-“
“The curse?”
Her voice was strained. There was a silence that clouded the room, save for the large grandfather clock that ticked loudly in the foyer. Beca suddenly felt feverishly warm. It was being back in this house, with people too much like her. The ring wouldn’t be enough this time, she feared, the scent of nightshade and sweetener coiled in her stomach.
“What was it that time, mother? A party trick for your unseemly friends… a demonstration? Get the girl mad, see if she can escape the hands at the bottom of the lake. Is that all?”
An eerie silence fell over the room. Charles toyed with the page of the will that none of them had finished reading. Her sister had her jaw clenched hard enough to shatter teeth, but she too looked away, looked to their mother for some ounce of despite rescue.
“It was no party trick, child.” She narrowed her stare “Do you not remember that night as clearly as the rest of us?”
Beca swallowed the dry filmy taste on her tongue and searched her memory. She had felt dread the second she had stepped out of their car. The only salvation she had was Chloe, Chloe who didn’t’ even spare her a glance.
“I… remember you holding me under the water, how cold it was. How shocking it had been. For a moment I didn't think you would let me back up until my lungs were entirely filled with dirt. It was seconds but felt like hours.” Her voice shook.
“Before that, do you remember what happened before that?” Finn asked.
She shook her head in the shortest possible motion. She didn’t. There was a rush of dark purple linen and wine that nearly overfilled the fine crystal glasses with sloshing bloody red. The adults were drinking and she peered through the rungs of the oak stairs, longing to be there by the fire, out of the shadows that were cold and unfamiliar.
“We’ve lived in exile from the town for years, decades now, in order to assure the safety of the town. It would have been easier to move, to follow you to your aunt's house but we figured you were less dangerous if you were isolated. And you were.”
“Dangerous? I’m not- I’ve never hurt anyone.” But the words came out weakly. “Chloe?”
Her wife cleared her throat and glanced up with red-rimmed eyes. “Sometimes you disappear.”
“what?”
“Things end up dead. Little things. Miss Monroe’s chickens, or… her cat once. But the next morning you don’t have any memory of it so I don’t bring it up. I’ve never brought it up. But your family- they know something more. Don’t you? Know how to stop it?”
“You killed one of the guests at the party that night.” Charles Bronte spoke up, finally weary of the words he had been scanning this whole time. “My father spent the better part of a month forging documents, creating a trail to make it seem like the man you had slain just left. But he didn’t leave.”
Em had the ghost of a smile on her pale lips “He’s buried out back.”
Her mother had advanced her, and though Beca felt an intense need to pull away. She didn’t’, not as the woman’s perfectly manicured hand lilted her chin, the other smoothing down her hair that was still sprinkled with the least bit of winter.
“You remember me as a beast, one who held you underwater, but darling. I was trying to wake you up- to snap you out of it. You were feral, wild at the taste of blood. Our intention was to keep you hidden, keep all of you hidden.”
She wanted so desperately to grasp onto her sadness, to her disbelief. There had to be a lie somewhere, a mistruth in the matter of human and animal. But she had tasted the blood and the satin, and the rain that night. Tears dripped from her eyes at the loss of her father, at the loss of her humility.
“You must stay here,” Her mother pressed, using the pad of her thumb to wipe away a watery tear “Both of you. Leave the city.”
“If you all would have let me finish, I could have gotten to the second condition. Beca, the house is yours. Everything is yours. Under the condition that you live the rest of your days on the estate. In your father's words, it’s only going to get worse.” Charles said.
“You mean I won’t be able to control it?” She waved vaguely at the room around her “Whatever the hell it is.”
“Dad couldn’t. Not at the end.”
She nodded at Finn’s words before pulling away from her mother entirely. Chloe said motionless at the table. She stared at the water in the decanter and watched as the ice melted and the level rose close to the top. Condensation blushed against the wood.
Beca placed her hand softly on Chloe’s knee, kneeling in the most non-threatening way she could. “I think I have to stay. You don’t have to, I would never make you give anything up for me.”
Chloe’s dark blue eyes flashed towards Beca, glazed over a dark “Please. Darling, I fucking hated that cat.”
Bemily Week Day 2 - Secret Agent & Day 5 - Superpowers
AND
Pitch Perfect Horror Week Day 1 - Cults
Beca's always been able to see and hear dead people. A traumatizing and inconvenient ability, sure, but after years of dealing with ghosts and learning to control her powers to help out her occult-obsessed friend Stacie and her tacky medium business, she's got somewhat of a handle on the situation.
That is, until a particular, persistent, motormouth ghost drags Beca into an absolutely chaotic shitshow — full of doomsday death cults, black budget supernatural investigators, blood rituals, and several near-death experiences — that she really didn't fucking ask for.
Ever walk into a sandwich shop and get handed a pamphlet preaching the words of a higher power? All you wanted was turkey on rye, but now, suddenly, you have a new life purpose and a group of similarly dressed (honestly good-looking) people smiling at you. That's right- Day One of Horror Week is Cults.
Make Sure to tag your posts with #HW2101 so we can find your masterfully creepy submissions and Reblog them. We will be on the lookout all day!
[I feel like I was just doing this last week instead of last year. Here is my half-hearted attempt at writing something spooky, like cults! You can read it on A03 here!]
It had rained three days before Emily ran through the woods. The sun, hanging high like a broken Christmas bulb, had dried the ground that it touched. There were thick canopies from aspens, barely changed from orange to red, that made the soil under her feet cold and slippery.
She could smell her own sweat, her own blood spilling from her knees, and the souls of her feet. But she stopped for nothing, for no one, not even herself as a stitch made itself known in her side.
Blood rushed past her ears, and for a slim moment, she regretted the way she had chosen. The forest stretched further than she anticipated. She had never been past the perimeter before, not alone. She hadn’t paid much attention to figure which way was directed towards the road, and which lead back to the people hunting her.
Hunting. It was a sharp word that poisoned her thoughts. It would be easy, so damned easy, to pull herself back into the delusions and the warmth that so heavily contrasted the cold of the dirt below her. But then again- she had remembered, fuzzily at that, the people who told her she could leave whenever she wanted.
It didn’t’ seem like that now. She reached the end of the line, not a road paved in asphalt but a hewn wall of ivy and vegetation. Her hands pressed through it to cold brick. It was too high to scale, too sturdy to push through. She could smell diesel gas, burning her already torn throat. There was something there. She didn’t know what, couldn’t, but it was something.
“Fuck,” she whispered, turning to face the forest behind her. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
She had nothing to hide. They had tracked her all the way here, following her path of brambles, and torn fabric that hung from dead branches in surrender. She hadn’t felt it before, the million little cuts that were littering her body. With her stillness rang her pain.
“Emily, such language.”
Her breath caught, back pressing against the leafy wall. They knew how to hide, how to shadow themselves within the autumn-born trees. Her eyes darted back and forth, seeking aimlessly for the family that followed.
“Stay back,” she said with as much authority as she could muster. It wasn’t much. It came out as nothing more than a defeated cracked sound that would draw pity from anyone. “I’m warning you!”
“You must be cold, leaving the house with no shoes like that.” Chloe stepped from the vibrant crimson of the trees, lifting a sculpted eyebrow, she fretted “It wasn’t wise.”
It was wise enough. She hadn’t thought much before slipping out the back door of the farmhouse and running across the clearing in the waning daylight. They had been distracted, washing dishes, and tending to the nightly feedings of the animals. It was easy, and she had calculated enough to leave, just not enough to grab her shoes.
“Where are the others?” Emily asked.
“There’s no one else, just me.”
The woman was approaching her like she was a wounded animal on the side of the road. She had her hand up her fingers pointing towards the ground and her shoulders slumped. Chloe was winded chest heaving. She kept her eyes on Emily, tracking her.
“That’s a lie. All you do is lie.”
Emily had eaten dinner quickly to get away. She had placed her plate in the sink and climbed the carpeted stairs all to be alone for only a moment. It settled uncomfortably in her stomach at this point, bile in her throat. Chloe stared at her, sized her up with intimidation.
Even now, after the both of them tramped through the woods, she found the woman beautiful and alluring. It was what drew her into Chloe in the first place; in the small diner right at the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Her car had broken down, it was cold, almost like it was today, and she placed a warm quarter from the breast pocket of her coat into Emily’s palm, touch lingering a tad too long.
“You can call your family if you’d like.” Chloe had said over a burger that was half-eaten. There was a big glob of ketchup that watered over the cold fries on her plate. “But I think I have a better idea.”
Emily was dumb and naïve and wished that she had that quarter now so it could turn into a key. One that would break through the wall behind her. Her breath was beginning to cloud in front of her, eyes tearful. She should have called her mother.
“We have never lied to you, Emily. Everything that we’ve offered, you’ve wanted. You’ve known.”
She clenched her eyes shut, heart still pounding in the small of her throat. Chloe was so good at this, at talking her down when she felt like she had been shackled to one place taut with religion. She felt the sun here, striking hot against her skin, making her sweat despite the cold. Engines continued to rush behind her, nothing blocking her view but a hewn wall.
“You said I could leave.” She gritted.
“You can, Sweetie.”
Chloe had moved closer in a moment of obstructed view. Her voice seemed to be mere inches away, the scent of dish soap and clover tearing through the forest's natural wind. Emily slowly opened her eyes, drew in another gulp of air. Chloe looked so heavenly in the sweet dusk.
“It’s cold out here.” Chloe pressed her palm against Emily’s cheek. She leaned into it, sighing heavily, hating the comfort it provided and the way her body betrayed her because of it. “We can get you back to the house, get you warm. Take you to the station in the morning.”
The station. She remembered vaguely passing three of them on the way up here. It would be a long walk in a quickly cooling dusk to get to any of them. The police station would be her first stop, a good Samaritan would feel comfortable taking her there. It would be harder to get to the bus station or the train station. At this point, she wanted nothing more than to get over the wall.
“I,” She swallowed the cotton in her mouth “I can’t. I’ll get there myself.”
Chloe smiled, and it seemed genuine, if not mocking “Emily, it’s getting dark. These woods are no place for a girl like you at night. You’ll get turned around. You’ll freeze to death.”
Freeze to death.
The detriment of the statement dropped hard and fast but ebbed away at the deeper reality. If she went back to that farmhouse she would die. It would be swifter out of some twisted mercy that they believed was right, but she would die.
If Emily ran along the wall, eventually she would hit asphalt. Maybe she would live, and maybe she wouldn’t but that maybe was enough for her. “I’m sorry, Chloe.”
The girl’s eyes hardened like the flip of a coin. Emily could feel the coolness of the quarter against her palm in that moment, going from head to tails. It made her throat tighten. Her body was buzzing and dripping cloudy blood.
“We’re sorry too, Emily.” Her voice was a broken whisper.
It had rained three days before Emily was buried in the woods. The ground was soft and mailable and earthworms writhed as they fought for sunlight. The tip of the silver shovel broke through soil easily. It wasn’t much of a task- Chloe decided, wiping her hand against her brow and smearing a marking of black on her skin, to make her problems vanish like the inevitable payphone in a roadside diner.
