When I was nearly thirteen, my father broke my arm in a fit of rage.
The fear that I felt then was nothing compared to what I felt now. Elise's eyes were damp and overly bright as my eyes flickered erratically around the grand dining room. The walls were a muted grey, accented with swirls of gold embedded in the panels.
A resplendent, magnificent yet wholly disturbing tapestry stretched across the length of the far end of the room. It depicted a scene I could hardly stomach, an image that made sick rise in my throat but that I almost couldn't look away from. It depicted at least nine women, strung up by their necks and utterly nude as impish, distorted creatures danced in a circle around them, fire burning in their eyes. My mind could hardly comprehend the horrific nature of the tapestry, nor the size of it; the women were almost as large as me.
"The Pendle witches," came Thin Man's voice, "A tragic tale," he crooned, but the look of delight in his eyes betrayed his vapid words. Arthur Elderflower sat at the head of the resplendent, carved, wooden dining table, his head almost perfectly fitting into a gap in the tapestry as if he were part of it.
Elise and I stayed utterly silent. Hardly moved an inch.
"So, this has been really lovely, Arthur," I began, "And we'll definitely be back to visit, but we'd love to go now. Nothing against you, of course," I swallowed, "But I'd love a shower. In my own house. At home. Not here."
"That's absolutely fine," Thin Man nodded, "You may leave," he conceded. Even Elise looked up at that in confusion.
After a second of silence, the black haired brute burst out into raucous laughter. It stung my ears like a warning klaxon, abrasive and utterly deafening, his cackle reverberating around the walls like he was everywhere and nowhere all at once. The way his laugh echoed gave me that odd, fearful feeling like when you're a young child and you get lost at a carnival, and you're scared, and every noise just becomes so overwhelming and you come to your own, twisted conclusion that you'll never find your parents ever again, and you'll be trapped by carnival clowns for the rest of your life.
However, the important distinction is that in those situations, you would always somehow find your parents again. They would turn up, sick with worry, and swoop you into their arms, wiping away your tears with a soft handkerchief. Now, though, there was no one. We were alone, and the fear was all encompassing, taking over your mind like a sick disease. The grandeur of the house; the villainous laugh, the dungeons, the candlesticks. I felt like I was trapped in a horror movie and I knew exactly how this one was going to end. One of us, I thought, one person in this room, was not going to make it out of this house alive, and I would be damned if that person was Elise. So my eyes narrowed on Arthur, on Thin Man, on the sadistic fool, as he sat opposite me with a smug grin on his scrawny face.
Then, I blinked. And I blinked again. Stilled in my chair, memories flooding into my brain like they had never escaped me.
I remembered.
It was him. The night I was attacked; that was where I recognised him from. Arthur Elderflower had tried to stab me, tried to murder me, and it was only now that I realised it.
Standing up in a haze of violent, frenzied rage I clutched my knuckles with ferocity, eyes bulging out of my skull, "You fucking coward!" I screeched, "You low-life, no-good, bottom feeder!"
Elise glanced up in shock, eyes wide and fearful. Rounding the table, I snatched a golden candlestick from the centre, pure, unadulterated anger flowing through my veins in a maddening, furied gush of liquid as Elise stood up frantically, "Emma! Stop!"
"You tried to fucking kill me!" I screamed. Raising the candlestick above my head, I relished in the look of pure fear in the man's eyes as I delivered the blow with a sickening thud. His head slumped. The metal connected with his face just seconds before he lifted his hands in fear and a delighted shiver ran down my spine, addictive and euphoric. Blood trickled from the weapon down my arm, and I watched it with delirious fascination until a shrill voice rang out in the thick silence.
"What the hell were you thinking, you stupid, stupid girl!?" Exclaimed Elise, snatching the candlestick from my hand, slamming it down on the wood with a bang, "You just signed the deathwish for my daughter!"
"Elise, I-"
"No!" She shouted, riddled with a level of anger I had never seen before, "What's done is done! He tried to stab you, what, twenty years ago? It's in the past - why can't you just control your impulses for one damn minute?"
A speck of dust floated in the air between us, the only other sign of life in the room. It danced erratically as Elise let out a frustrated breath and a frown began to settle upon my face, "How do you know when it happened?"
"Pardon?" Elise lowered her voice, swallowing uncertaintly, but the damage was done.
"You knew, didn't you?" I whispered, "You knew what he did. And you still let me go to the home you shared with him. Multiple times."
"Emma, I-"
"No, no," I held up a bloody hand, tears welling in my eyes, "I don't want to hear it. I could have died, Elise! I don't want your excuses," Waking slowly back to my chair, I sat down, unsure of what else to do with myself, "I could have died, and even after all that... you still left me anyway."
"You said you forgave me!" Elise cried desperately, "You know I only left because I wanted to protect you!"
"I know," I squinted in the bright light, almost too overwhelmed to cry, "I think that's what makes it so hard."
"Emma," Elise whispered, her chin wobbling.
"Fuck," I ran my hands through my hair, standing up so abruptly my chair fell backwards, smashing to the floor with a deafening blow, "We need to fucking get out of here," I seethed, moving to grab Elise's arm.
Then, a bang. The door swung open and Thin Man began to groan. In walked a woman.
It felt, for a moment, like time stood still.
She was a woman in every sense of the word; tall, lithe and elegant. A corset sat horrifically tight on her hips, stretching out into a deadly black dress, the perfect compliment for pale skin, swooping cheekbones and dangerous, heavy-lidded eyes. She gave the distinct impression of someone that consistently commanded any room she entered. An example of the aforementioned could be this dining hall for the moment her heels first clicked on the floor Thin Man began to stir and Elise and I moved as if waking from a long sleep. After a brief, directed and merciless glare in the blonde's direction, her gaze not once falling upon the man at the table, she locked onto me and if I was not mistaken, she seemed to flinch a little, as if she was shocked at what she saw.
"I don't think you will be going anywhere," came her voice, as deadly as the brooding look upon her face. It was almost horrifying, the way that her face held absolutely no expression; it wasn't harsh and unkind, nor soft and gentle. It was simply blank, and it chilled me to my very core.
"Josephine..." Elise whispered, and it was only then that I saw her face. The blonde was a wicked shade of white, holding the appearance of someone who had just witnessed a murder.
"Elise! How lovely to see you again, darling," drawled Josephine, her face barely moving as she spoke, "It's been so long."
"I should have known you would be here," Elise hissed, unconsciously stepping closer to me as Josephine began to smirk, striding confidently towards us with the distinct prowl of a tiger approaching it's prey. She was a beauty untouched; not marred by age, however that did not mean the years had been kind to her.
As Josephine drew closer, certain aspects of her appearance seemed to convulse and change, and where I had previously seen an hourglass figure with alluring curves, I now saw clothes clinging where they shouldn't and hanging loose in odd places; jutting collarbones and skin so white it held shades of blue.
It was those harsh, severe and eerily stretched features that revealed her relation to Thin Man long before she spoke. A thin, pointy nose; a jutting chin, wide, slanting eyes. They were almost the spitting image of each other. She waltzed over with an effortless saunter, approaching us as I regarded her with intense trepidation, standing utterly still. The woman, Josephine, slowly walked in a circle around us, and whilst Elise made sure to keep the raven haired intruder well within her line of sight, I stared resolutely ahead, fixating on a grand oil painting of a plump and rather plain girl.
Then a hand was tracing along my shoulders. Josephine appeared in front of me, and it was then that I first saw her eyes up close. What startled me at once was how shockingly Stygian they were. Black and devoid of colour, they seemed to suck in light instead of reflect it. Billowing clouds of volcanic ash regarded me with a stare so intense it felt like looking into the dead sun. My cheeks were burning up; I felt feverish and unsteady on my feet. The silence was choking me, grappling its hands around my throat, twisting and screaming until my mouth ran dry.
"Take a picture, it'll last longer," I shot dryly, glaring at Josephine. The woman had been staring for a long time, and reacted more than five seconds later than would be socially appropriate.
"I wouldn't consider you in a position to make such... impudent comments, Emma," She sighed lazily and leant back against a chair, folding her arms across her chest beneath a neckline so low it bordered on debauchery.
"You know my name," I raised an eyebrow, "How?"
"Oh, I've known your name for a long time," she gave a wolfish grin, popping each syllable, wrapping the words around her tongue in an irksome and vexatious way, "Emma."
"Listen," I growled, "Cut the crap, knock-off Bellatrix Lestrange - Where's Isla?"
Josephine let out a laugh so dead and unfeeling it sent shivers down my spine. Her burning animosity towards me was evident as cold, unfeeling eyes gave me a flickering, disinterested once over, "Why don't you cut it out, Emma," She snarled, "As I am not relishing the tone in which you are currently addressing me with."
Then something caught the light, and terror reared its ugly head within me once more as Josphine twiddled a knife between her fingers.
"Put that away, Josephine," Elise spoke up, and something in her voice made me flinch, for I had not heard her speak so harshly in a long, long time, "Stop your theatrics, it's quite unnecessary. You are only embarrassing yourself." She raised an eyebrow disapprovingly - that struck a nerve. In one, quick, swift movement Josephine's body was pressed against my back and there was a knife against my throat.
Elise didn't even flinch.
"You talk a lot of shit for someone with nothing to bargain, Elise," growled Josephine.
"Always so vulgar," Elise sniffed, her back rigid and her eyes focused, not on the knife but on me now, "I am sorry, little dove, Josephine appears to be having some sort of mid-life crisis."
Dove. The word echoed in my brain as cold metal caressed my vocal cords. It was the code word; Elise was asking me to trust her, trust that I was safe. That Josephine wouldn't hurt me. It was a hard pill to swallow in more ways than one.
"You bitch!" Josephine seethed, holding the knife a little too hard as it sliced my skin ever so slightly, blood beginning to appear in small dots.
Even after everything, I still trusted Elise. Even with a knife to my throat, I followed her blindly. It was sickening, wasn't it? How utterly, hopelessly and incredibly in love I was. Love was a disease, I realised. The only cure was death, because only in death could I ever stand a chance of moving on. Often, in my darkest moments, I craved that. The idea that I could just leave it all behind, waste away into nothingness, let my soul fade and disappear so that I would never be heartbroken again. But then Elise would smile at me, and I would remember how that made me feel, like hope and trust and everything good in the world. It made me think of evenings spent in her arms, of sand between my toes, of the sun on my back and the wind in my hair. It made me think of Isla, Rita, Mary. Of Rachel. Finn. And then I realised I could never leave that behind willingly. So the knife stayed flush against my throat, and Josephine's breath tickled my ear fleetingly, cold and bitter.
"Bitch?" Elise echoed, and it was a guilty pleasure of mine, hearing such a foul word drip from her honey lips, "Oh darling, you don't know the half of it."
That was the thing about Elise. You could burn her house down, get her fired from her job, hell, you could push her down the stairs; but once you interfere with her family...
Well, Josephine and Arthur would surely soon find out.
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A/N - Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Be sure to drop me a follow so you can see my announcements whenever I post a new part ;)