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The Sins of a Saint

Death Dance


Sleep was hard to come by on the nights before she would leave. It was her normal start to a good tour; tossing and turning all night. Her brother always blamed it on nerves. And she would usually roll with that if it wasn't for the dream Aurien had that night that chilled her to the bone.

It was so strange and out of place compared to her usual batch of short, pointless imagery. She couldn't shake it from her mind. Even going outside to sit on the front porch, that also doubled as a balcony, and smoke a cigarette didn't help. Aurien could still see it. It was on a loop in her head.

Everything about the dream felt eerily stagnate at first. There was no breeze rustling through the dense forest. The pond in the center was a flat plane of black glass that reflected the night sky. Not a single creature stirred below or even came up to shatter the surface. And all she could sense was the smell of iron that lingered in the air.

But the most unsettling of all was the utter lack of noise.

There was no shrill symphony of crickets or the singing of frogs. The bats over-head weren't clicking, and their flapping wings made no sound. Not even an owl or fox dared to call out into the night. Aurien even found herself thinking that if she were to attempt to speak, she would choke as soon as she parted her lips
.
She remembered her lungs feeling tight. There was no sense of temperature, but she felt a sure discomfort; As if she were trapped in a muggy room without windows. The panicked confusion from knowing that she was outside and there was no reasoning behind that came shortly after. Even thinking of it in the present gave Aurien anxious pinpricks in her stomach.

There was a large, flat-topped rock that stretched out a few yards into the pond, starting at the shoreline. It was like a natural boardwalk that only remained a few inches above water level. And at the very end, looking out into the inky black water was where she found herself sitting, cross-legged.

She was so close to the edge that if she were to only extend her arm, she could have easily made a ripple in the water. She could have made things right again. But there was a voice in the back of her mind, speaking slightly above a whisper: don't touch the water. She didn't hesitate to take that in stride.

Dream-Aurien had leaned forward, fixing her palms firmly on the rock's surface in front of her, for balance. She felt determined to find out what was going on, despite the growing lump of dread in her throat. But what she saw was not what she expected.

Just thinking back on it, Aurien clenched her jaw and began to worry at her nails. Even in my dreams, I just gotta know everything. Geez.

There was a woman looking back. A small, round face being nearly consumed by a dark mass of disheveled hair. Shapely lips that had lost all their color were settled beneath a straight nose, almost blending in with the ghostly white skin the woman had. Dark crescents rested snugly beneath large, bloodshot eyes, wet with tears and smeared makeup. The shadows cast across her features gave her a severe look of horror and misery.

Sunken and sickly were the words that came to mind while gazing upon that girl's face. Aurien, at first, thought it to be her reflection. Because it was, in fact, Aurien. Only, when she furrowed her brows at the sight, it did not mirror the gesture. But instead of being scared by this, like any normal person would have been, dream-state Aurien was simply confused. She pondered at the woman in the black glass, tilting her head and making faces; on the off chance that she was just being silly. But all the woman did was blink the tears from her eyes.

While Aurien focused on her alternate self in the water, she was late to realize that noise had returned to the world around her. It grew steadily, drifting in from the depths of the forest like pollen riding on a gust of wind. Only, when Aurien tuned back into the world, it wasn't the sort of noise she was expecting.

When the sound was quiet, it was easily mistakable as leaves brushing against one another. However, Aurien was able to hear it clearly soon enough.

Whispers. Familiar voices of her friends and family whispering through the trees. Icey fingers of fear clawed their way into her gut as the sound grew. This isn't right. Something's wrong. What's happening?

It didn't take long before the words were decipherable. And instantly, tears sprang to her eyes. Failure. Coward. Alcoholic. Wannabe. Pitiful. Talentless. Useless. Junkie.

Her body lunged forward involuntarily, hands slamming back into the rock. Pain rocketed up her arms and a panicked hopelessness bloomed in her lungs, burning its way into her veins. Aurien was forced to look back at the lady in the pond. She was forced to look at herself.

Beneath the surface, something stirred. Aurien could hardly make out anything past her reflection, but she knew it was there. And for some reason, figuring out what that thing was had given her a sliver of hope. She was sure something was down there. If only she could see past her.

The woman looked the same, and yet different than a few seconds ago. Or had it been hours? There were bruises on her face now. It was a black eye, not bags of exhaustion as she thought earlier.

She deserved it, a harsh voice growled. The voices grew into normal speaking tones now, but Aurien tried to focus on the face. Her lip was busted, and the blood formed a stark trail down her chin and neck.

She's just throwing herself a pity party, another one hissed. Her eyes were filling with tears again. Aurien was shocked. She's mirroring my actions now. That's my reflection. That's me.

The voices were now shouting. Bellowing obscenities that were getting worse by the moment. Her throat burned, and her ribs ached. She was doomed. She felt abandoned. She felt lost.

Junkie, a familiar voice began to shout over and over, but she couldn't place who it belonged to. No, I'm not. Not anymore, she tried to fight it. But it persisted. And that phrase was all that was in her head as she was rendered immobile, being forced to watch as everything unfolded in front of her.

A single tear slid down the plane of her nose and fell. She held her breath. The voices were silenced.

The black glass shattered into smooth, even ripples, breaking her reflection into fragments for a single moment. But that was enough. She saw it. In the depths of what seemed like an eternity of darkness, she saw it.

Pale skin. A pretty smile. And a pair of striking blue eyes. Dream-Aurien gasped, immediately knowing who it was.

But as soon as she opened her mouth, Aurien jolted up from her bed in a disgusting mess of sweat and tangled sheets. And, of course, with waking, the mere memory of the dream began to disintegrate by the second.

Sitting outside helped. She liked it to be quiet while finding her sanity. That, and it was guaranteed that Alex was inside, pissing and moaning because he was too lazy to pack his things the night before like Aurien had. Now he was racing against the clock, and no one wanted to listen to that. So, she proudly piled up her bags to her right before sitting down in her usual spot and dangling her legs off the edge of the balcony.

She continued to struggle with trying to remember who she saw in her dream. Aurien stared at her shoes, swaying back and forth while straining her memory. It felt like it was dire to know what her brain was trying to tell her. It was obvious that the person in the pond had been the one who injured her. And, for whatever reason, she needed to know who it was; in case it was some kind of premonition dream or a message. Cryptic as all hell, sure, but you take what you can get. On a normal day, Aurien didn't really believe in those sort of things. But as she sat on the concrete porch outside of her apartment in that half-lucid state of tired, she wondered if she should.

The morning light finally began to touch the sky, signaling that moments of silence, such as this, were about to become few and far between. They had to leave soon, and she took a breath trying to enjoy the last moments of solitude.

"They said they're pulling up now," Alex announced, the door clattering shut behind him, holding his bags high enough to barely miss the top of his sister's head.

"Did you lock it?" Aurien snapped, fully aware that he almost hit her, and slightly peeved that he interrupted her last moments of introspection. Something she would have to get used to again, she realized. She hoisted herself up using the top bar of the railing and began slinging her bags over each shoulder.

"Dude, I always lock the door. We've been living together for two years now, Ren. Try and keep up."

"Fuck off, let's go," she rolled her eyes, pushing past him in an exhaustion-fueled rage as soon as she spotted the bus pull up to the curb.

Notes

It has officially been a whole year since I have touched or even thought about this story. And I feel that I've had quite enough time to give you guys something I think you'll love. So, thank you for taking your time to read this new, and hopefully improved, Sins of a Saint.

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-Gabrielle The Saint

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