His Bloody Bride

Chapter One: The Otherworld.

CHAPTER ONE

Blood. It's all I can smell. Its warm, coppery scent fills me with curiosity. Slowly, it becomes suffocating.

Snow. It's all I can feel. It numbs me; my arms, fingers, toes, back. It sedates my senses and leaves me staring at the sky as snowflakes catch in my hair and weigh my eyelids, lost. The snow embraces me in its coldness, freezing me from the outside in but somehow, it doesn't feel like that. I see the snow. I see my fingers turning white. I can feel the cold wrap its haunting arms around me. Beckoning me to close my eyes.

Relax, dear. It will all be over soon. Close your eyes.

A voice that seems familiar tells me, and I know because of the familiarity how dangerous it is to listen to it.

"Maria." The sound of another familiar voice calls out to me. I know the voice is calling out to me because I'm the only one who's sitting on the concrete bench. I turn my head to the direction of the voice. A man stands there looking at me curiously, his blood red eyes look more like rubies than real eyes. His brown hair is slicked back with a few strands falling forward. He's wearing a thick coat, protecting himself from the cold.

Frost.

All my insides scream for contact with him. I know his name. I know him. I stand up and walk towards him. I then proceed to let my fingers trace his well defined jaw, "How am I able to touch you? How are you real?" I whisper.

His hand slowly rises, touching my fingers that is still on his jaw, "That's because I am." He whispers back.

I pull my hand back, "You aren't real. I know you aren't." I say out-loud as if saying that out-loud would make this man disappear but it doesn't.

Frost doesn't let go of my hand, instead he walks closer, "You know I'm real, Mary."

All at once, I feel a surge of memories rush back. Each one unique on it's own, each one fighting for a place in my already foggy consciousness. I scream in agony the only word that comes to mind, "No!"

My eyes snap open and I look around, breathing heavily. My heart is pounding against my chest as if ready to jump out of my ribcage. Not again. I glance at the clock I have by my bedside. Seven in the morning.

My head pounds away like the rhythm for a song I don't know the words to yet. Every time after a nightmare like that I always wake up with my head hurting.

I move my legs from under the covers. "They've started again." I mutter. My heart sinks at the possibility of what this could mean. Why? I don't stay to wallow in my own lack of control over my own body.

After I take my bath and get myself ready, I walk down the stairs.

"She did it again." I hear my mother whisper to my father in the kitchen. I stop halfway down.

"What do you mean?" my father asks.

"She was talking in her sleep. I heard her last night. She screamed. I panicked, checked in on her, she was quiet. So I walked closer and all of a sudden her mouth started moving, I could hear her voice and she was speaking some foreign language."

"What do you think we should do?"

"I scheduled a therapy session with Ms. Camel after school for it. I think the therapy helped her deal with whatever is happening with her before."

"That's the problem, Lillian. We don't know what's happening to her."

My mother sighs, running a hand through her greying brown hair. "When did it start becoming like this? I thought we were finally able to put everything in the past. Now I have to live my life in fear of my daughter again. It's like she's a damn demon, Henry. I'm surprised she hasn't murdered Matt and Isabelle what with all the time they like to spend with her."

My heart wrenches in pain hearing my mother's words. I decide to walk downstairs and interrupt their conversation because today, I'm not in the mood to listen to their ramblings on how they fear their child and how my mother thinks I'm an abomination.

As if I hadn't already heard enough of it as I was growing up.

"Morning, Mom! Dad!" I chirp walking towards the kitchen as if I hadn't heard anything.

My mother looks at my father guilty, "Good morning...Sweetie." She says. I grab an apple from the fridge and rinse it in the sink. "Will that be your breakfast?" She asks. I nod in response, "Honey, you know you need more than that. I'll make scrambled eggs for you if you'd like."

I shake my head, "Nah, I'm fine with the apple." I lie with a big smile plastered across my face so they don't realize I know what's going on.

I'm not even hungry actually and if I could, I'd just leave for school but I know if I did that, they'd start getting suspicious and I didn't want them hounding me right now. "I scheduled a session with Ms. Camel today." She states nonchalantly as if this were something as simple as a dentist's appointment and not a psychological evaluation of her daughter's mental health.

I stop at the threshold of the kitchen, turning back, I look at her confused, "What for?" I ask, acting oblivious to her reasons for doing so.