Illusion leans close, breath cold against her neck. "It is time."
With another huff, Mercy propels herself away from the windowsill, her feet hitting the safe, cold wooden floors of her bedroom. The cord of her headphones pull from her ears, ripping the sound away. She spins on her heel, slamming a hand down on her alarm clock and wrenching open the door to her bedroom.
Ten minutes later, Mercy stands alone in the threshold to the Illusion. Behind her, the outside world is quiet—compromised of the silence of isolation. In front of her, comfort is nowhere to be seen—shadows gracing the wooden pews where her mother is hunched over like a dark shadow in the holy light. Mercy's hand rises, settling against her chest. She eyes the flecks of grey sparsely splattering her forearm.
Tywyll never truly leaves. It is a disease; an infection that clings to your tissue and seeps itself into your blood. A poison. It is the deep-seated beginnings of Mercy's resentment. In frustration, the redhead presses her thumbs onto the flecks, pushing for them disappear. But they refuse to relent. Like tiny constellations, they dot the skin between her freckles. Some days Mercy thinks about taking a pen to her arm and connecting the dots. Other days she imagines blood—digging into the small flecks and making them disappear. Those other days, she wakes the next morning with a black switch knife in her hand and the thoughts hunched over her shoulder like a devil. Illusion whispering in her ear with a curdled grin. Pushing her nails into the skin one last time, Mercy shakes herself off and steps through doorway into St. Agnes.
Circe King, in all her glory, doesn't flinch as the doors slam closed and Mercy's footsteps echo on the flooring. She does not look up. Her head remains bowed over linked fingers, resting against her chest, below the cold silver cross. Circe has always preferred solitude—the quieter, isolated mornings before the bedlam of Sunday Mass. The quiet is filled with whispers, she always said as she cradled a young Mercy to her chest, the whispers of Gods and men alike.
Mercy does not hear God in the quiet. Nothing is silent. She slips her headphones over her ears as she walks to drown out the voice.
The rising sun casts multicoloured light through the churches window, red casting softly onto Circe's contorted shape. Without a word, Mercy places herself beside her mother. She's careful to leave space; half a foot between their respective bodies. The shadows shift in the corners of the room. She cannot hear her mother's prayer—the swift words falling into the space between, trickling like water into the cracks. But still Mercy, out of a dying respect, bows her head and clasps her hands.
"God can't hear you."
Mercy barely holds back her flinch—the knee-jerk reaction to pull away so visceral that her teeth slam together, bone against bone grinding. Her headphones slip down her head, falling around her neck until the pads rest against her cold skin. Music continues to vibrate through the speakers: a quiet yet persistent melody.
"God will never hear you," Illusion wastes no time settling into the pew, fingertips brushing against the cheek of Mercy's bent head. "Only I hear you."
Mercy doesn't move. Her head remains bowed and while every bone in her body screams at her to move, she stays seated. Pressing against the white star-shaped scar that flecks her collarbone, Mercy breathes in deeply and longs for the weight of her locket on her chest. It was a cold comfort. A protective ward.
"What do you want, Miss Mercy?" Illusion asks. "What do you pray for?"
A shift is felt in the air—Circe's slow look to the side, eyes narrowing closely on Mercy's headphones as she continues her prayer. Mercy's hairs raise. She fumbles for her phone, hitting play on the music with a slight wince and pulls the headphones over her ears. On her other side, Illusion grins.
"Did you think you could block me out?" They drawl from their crooked mouth—the words dripping off their tongue like poison through Mercy's headphones.
Shock courses through Mercy's veins. She flinches so violently that her phone slips from her fingers, hitting the floor of the Church with a violent crack. Mercy doesn't see the screen shatter but she can feel the shards beneath her Doc Martens when she shoots from her seat. Vehement curses seep from her mouth before she can catch herself, flinching again but this time from the thundering glare that her mother fixes onto her face.
"When are you ever going to stop being so irresponsible." Circe snaps, pulling the headphones from her daughter's head, her nail's catching Mercy's braids. "This is why I can never trust you."
Something twinges within Mercy's chest. She pulls away, yanking her headphones from her mother's hands and slips them around her neck, causing her phone to clatter against the ground once again, the cord disconnecting. The glass of her phone shifts precariously as she steps over it carefully, leaning down to pick it up. Mercy runs a finger over the broken screen, barely feeling the tiny pieces as they dig into her skin.
"It wasn't my fault. Something scared me." Mercy looks up to her mother. "I need to get this fixed."
"You broke it." Circe states. "You have to find your own way to fix it. Call it your punishment for the harm."
Illusion watches in amusement, swiping a dress shoe over the glass. It shifts slightly, but Circe doesn't notice to fixated on praying for her daughter's rise from disgrace. Mouth twisted into a snarl, her teeth sharp against the pink of her lips, Mercy rises from the pews.
"I don't need your devices to speak to you," Illusion laughs. They taps Mercy's bowed temple as they stand with her, chuckling as she moves away. "I'm always here."
They button their suit jacket, following Mercy out of the pew.
"You can't leave," Circe says, eyes dark and levelled. "We haven't finished."
"I'm done." Mercy snaps, and with that she stalks from the doors of St. Agnes.
The air is cold, on the other side, as Mercy slams open the doors to reveal the crowd readying for Sunday Mass. Embarrassment crawls up her spine at the stares; all eyes fixated on her, widened with surprised contempt. Like she's a devil standing amongst the children of God for simply wrenching herself from the clutches of her demons. Hugging her jacket closer to her body, Mercy takes the shattered phone in her hand and the shadows over her shoulder, and treads the path away from St. Agnes.
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📍welcome to the shit show! i promise next chapter will be longer but i hope you guys enjoyed!!!!
