• Voices. No, one voice. Clear and bold it seemed to be expediently enterprising less than humane dealings with…itself? The tenor tones were familiar and instilled a shiver into the spine of the adolescent woman and she was only disgruntled even more when she could not place beneath her slender fingers as it danced to and fro before her nose then fluttered away into the feeble light that had penetrated this eerie dream. Releasing the previous struggle for memory the voice was analyzed cautiously.

    It was callus and perturbed as the ounce of grandeur withheld any traces of counterfeited charity with the utmost gravity; that being so, a touch of chagrin laced the words. Some mistake was to be kept in reticence however the /thing/ was obscured from the vision of the girl. In fact it has suddenly become apparent to her that a somber gloom had fallen about her as a blizzard would stratagem weary explorers in frigid shadow.

    Despite the visual tranquility, the voice’s fading throngs launched a silver bullet of pandemonium into the heart of the girl who seemed to notice no abnormality when not a single thrum issued from her hollow chest. How could she recognize the moment when faithful Death had made love to her body when a greater conscious trauma was overtaking and slaughtering any sliver of hope of transgressing this torpid, numbing darkness? Innocence seasoned her flesh as she was soon fed to malicious shadows of deafening silence that crushed her timorous skeleton in tirade of ear-slitting emptiness.

    Her joints were locked into moratorium-like anesthesia as creatures of unexplainable deceit tore at her unfeeling flesh voraciously. Caught in this painless stupor of animals about her body she could only contend with herself to quarrel with Silence. No matter the multitude of repeated phrases and wistful queries that dripped from her wan lips she upturned not a single answer, nor did her opaquely blue oculars depict any recollection of the onset of this with visions of a life before this suspension from reality. Her own identity was lost to her.

    A sharp crack of dawn’s imaginary bell tolled bringing her back to herself, to her room in her modest abode. Her roommate seemed to be going through her things like the wretch always did when she was out but why would the blonde martini server dare rummage when her dark haired company slept? This voice was not the same as the one before…the woman’s vocals had been damaged by one too many a smoke and late night expositions as it muttered candidly to itself.

    “Come on Alice, I know you have /something/ in this hell of a drawer,” the blonde looked triumphant as she pulled out the delicately set diamond necklace from her ‘untouchables’ dresser with an exclamation so sardonic the abhorred Death frowned upon it and wished to steal it away from his nuptial room of his most recent one-night stand with the dead girl.
    Alice, her sleek black hair falling about her shoulders as she sat up angrily, appeared horrified as she observed this.

    “Star No! You know that is mine!” she scrambled out of bed and snatched the heirloom of her family from the other woman with vehemence so great it should have burned the burglar called Star. Glancing down into her pale palm to lovingly inspect the last memoir of her deceased parents, an obstreperous scream emitted from her lips. Star neither heard nor felt a thing; the diamond remained in her grubby hands. Alice understood little of what this was but continued to grasp for the one material object she had ever worried about, to no avail. In a panicked rage, more focused on the fact that she seemed to be nonexistent, she began to rip the room apart; smashing items only to find her fingerprints had never even brushed their surfaces in the first place. What was this hell?

    In a last desperate attempt to be known she unhooked the vanity mirror and swung it at Star with unnatural strength and silver maniacal tears her eyes glues to it as shattered into oblivion and the last of her composure cracked. The vanity mirror was unharmed and rested still upon the wall. Suddenly it seemed to bend to her wish though she had given up as the animals began to eat at her body once more crawled into her chilly bed, crumbling within her seemingly immaterial self; the vanity’s latches snapped and the cheap wood splintered upon the floor, the glass flew. Alice screamed insane with confusion and stupid with fear.

    Star had screamed as well when the sound shocked her into self righteous persecution. She dropped the necklace with uncanny haste and leapt out the door with damaged and bloody heels; heels cut by shattered glass. The remaining girl was shocked this bit of comfort calming her enough to wipe away her all too real tears. What had happened? The glass bit into her hardened feet as the wan figure retrieved the diamond with a look of wonder. She could feel no physical gestures but could in fact lift her possession and clasp it around her neck without it slipping from her grasp.

    The realization of knowing who she was had not startled her in the slightest. It was only a dream right? This is a dream? Her mind was lethargic and repetitive at this moment but the logic had appealed to her common sense. The word dream had become poetry for her in the past minute as she wandered out of the apartment repeating the syllables with adoration. Her pajamas seemed not a problem for public, why bother changing from the dark shirt and baggy sweats? It is a dream, she giggled, dream, dream, dream. Nothing matters. She was a raving lunatic, a princess in the world that seemed to ignore her. Dream. It does not matter. Nothing matteres. More words lodged themselves into her head telling her it was nothing, she was fine. She was sleeping, a peaceful gentle sleep.

    Death would have nothing of these lies spoken to his beloved. He latched on to her with unsubstantial hands and pushed her gently into the alley she had been taken not so long ago his beautiful bone white face frozen in time; old and young. Evil and Good. He whispered to her in a silvery voice reminded her of their time together…of the living man that had stolen her from this very spot. Death instilled the face into her mind granting her the answer to the voice in question.

    She remembered. There is no time to mourn, no time for anger, Death hissed charmingly. Find the man. Stop him from stealing my job from me…only then may you rest with I, your husband. Then he departed leaving her lonely and full of longing for Death to return. The emotions rushed back. Not a dream? Alice shuddered but obeyed her master wholeheartedly beginning her search for the man; the man that had taken her to death. She had to thank him.
    Immediately.