A Rose Painted Black || The Distortionist x Reader

⊱ ──.⋅Chapter 9⋅.── ⊰

"And Every night, the red lights
Will burn like your eyes
Our time is never
'Cause we'll live forever"

»»-------TBM-Play With Fire-------««

7 July

The walls and floors of the ballroom were a sickening mirrored pattern that shifted at every step, and at every chime the tune played. Masked couples danced in sync and I followed their steps, dancing with a figure that wavered like embodied static, which I felt a sense a deja vu with. My gown was old-fashioned, crinolined, and heavily frilled. I curtsy to begin the next dance, and then rise and open my eyes to find that the figure disappeared, leaving me in the middle of the circle of rotating couples.

I bit frantic, I look around as if I lost my place in this world.

The dancers appear ghost-like as they seem to float in the blanket of fog that creeps in like a deadly flood. A spotlight slowly illuminates me.

The dancers slowly fade away.

The chime gets quieter and quieter.

It is a hazy, shifting, space of black and white with the light above my head. I turn around and stop.

It is a grave. A grave with my name.

In some type of distance in this nihility, church bells reverberate, in not the sound of Sunday mass, but in the sound of heartsore funerals. Specks of black start at the waist of my dress and slowly spread.

A gloved hand touches my shoulder. It's the same silhouette as before, the one that wavered, but this time had something like Christopher's hair and more features I was able to recognize.

He takes my hand in his, he spins me around in dance for a moment and then stops me. He runs a finger against my cheek that tickles lightly. He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me in closer. He leans down and I close my eyes with puckered, waiting lips. And then--

One pillow I threw to the ground, and the other I screamed into.

Why did it have to end there!?

I plopped back down onto the bed with crossed arms.

Is that really how much I want him? Enough that he's in my dreams, and it aches when I wake up and he's not actually there? My governess and mother would disapprove heavily, with how I wanted to be more than friends with a boy I hardly knew.

Trees knocked against the walls, and the wind howled lightly and pushed against the balcony's doors as if it wanted to escape the harshness of the outside world. I closed my eyes, seeing as I still had two hours I could sleep in for, and cozied up against the blankets.

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

All I could hope at that moment was that I wouldn't get caught. I told my parents I wanted to check out a bookstore I'd seen in the town, my point was taken, being that the books at the library at the residence were a tad outdated--some very, I could speak about them with Miss Bennet--that I had nothing to add when my cousins would speak about current authors and their books. It worked, so there was that. Again, If I should start sneaking out at night instead--occurred to me.