Silver Skin

34

Wicked tales
~
Accalia
~

"Don't bother trying to escape. These gates are made of pure silver and if the vampire compels any guard, they will be starved of blood and then staked." A guard cooed in explanation.

The lock clicked and footsteps retreated, the boots echoing as a reminder of what will be.

There were no other voices to welcome them, no other bodies but their own and if shadows were stalking along the hallways, Accalia didn't bother giving them a body to cling to.

Rats scampered by walls, squeaking and scavenging for food. The pests rounded the lavatory attached to the wall, racing to the chains hooked into cement, but they would come up empty-handed.

The smell of decay briefly passed Accalia by, along with smoke and coppery blood. She didn't even look at the other dungeons and if anyone accommodated them, her senses grew used to the smell and to the bleak lighting that brought hues of burnt orange.

She only knew the promising certainty of being held in the underworld.

Deep down.

Ever-nocturnal.

In a place where you weren't forgiven, weren't given safe haven and were unable to fixate on catching graces of light simply because there was none.

There was no hopeful expectation of revival, of redemption. You sat in horrid bleakness with no faith to wish you well.

Faith was difficult to see, it was something to be felt, a soulful light to bridge through the darkness and leave a stark supernova to burst through the black hole, leaving no room for doubt or second-guessing.

In a secluding, sneaky place in the underworld, there was no shape, no looming entity or celestial being that could bring even a slither of hope.

Accalia was depraved. Starved. She had no faith, not a glimmer of it.

Her bare back was pinned against the stone walls that had overgrown in dirt and moss. Accalia stared blankly ahead.

Her arm was beginning to ache after hanging lifelessly upon her knees, but she couldn't move. She had to think to blink.

Blink.

She couldn't bring herself to even as the heat began to bring pain to a layer of her sight just so she could blink. Blink it all away.

"Would you like to hear a story?"

"Huh?" Accalia slurred, her eyelids tiredly closing and opening back up to ensure what she heard come out of Alexene's mouth was true. Her senses weren't functioning, delaying in slowness.

The shadowy figure of the girl came closer and that dress swept around her like a pool of blackness. Alexene stared blankly back, her red eyes dim and perilous, matching the atrocity this dungeon brought. "I have a story and I would like to tell it."

"What the fuck for?" Tala sneered rudely.

She was the closest to the cell door, leaning against the stone wall as her body reflected brief rays of flames and light from the torches outside. Her smoky, angular eyes found the vampire before travelling over to Accalia, a flicker of pity drowning out the sheer bitterness that showed within her.

"I like stories," Erisa announced from the corner of the room, covering her dress over her bare feet as she leaned her chin on her knees, cool eyes penetrating a hole into Alexene's head. "Let's hear it."

Their makeup had distorted their most prominent features, dresses were in shambles and high heels were kicked to the side.

Alexene sat up straight, crossing her legs over the other and her ditzy, preppy dress haloed around the demonic creature as she slipped out of the shadows where they could catch a clear image of her.