Chapter 1 - Rapture
"What do you mean, request denied?" she cried out, anguished.
Her shoes were caked with blood. There were neat cuts on her arms – battle scars. Drops of sweat glistened on her forehead, rolling down her porcelain face. She was a brunette; her chestnut hair contrasted and thus accentuated her fair skin. It was messy now, strands stuck together with some blood in her hair. Her eyes were dark – dark, in the sense that they were jet-black, and that they could tell anyone that looked into them of pain that had scarred this girl. She was undeniably beautiful, but not the conventional beauty that the average John Doe could comprehend.
The smirking man thought she was beautiful. A single flower among a bloody battlefield. Twisted, wrong – but so beautiful. Pain-filled. Powerful. He, himself, seemed so wrong against the chaotic scene before him. A smiling man, adorned with a monocle in his blind right eye, a Victorian suit and a top hat.
"Trust me, my dear, we cannot fulfill that wish of yours. The target is integral in our…little group's plans." He says, tipping his hat to shadow a widening grin.
"You have no idea. You have no idea who I am, what I've been through what I want. You have no right….no right to turn down my wishes for someone as insignificant as that person." She mutters, defeated.
"Oh, but do you really know what your true desires are?" he counters, with a tone mixed with amusement and satisfaction. "Come with me. With us. I'll show you what you really want. What you really can do on your own. I'll show you what death really means, my dear; what it means to us and what it means to everyone else in the world. I'll show you how to sleep and be reborn as the true person you really are."
Lily slammed the grey locker door and picked up her school bag, trudging through the corridor. Her head had been pounding incessantly throughout the morning, and she wasn't sure if it was because of the blistering heat outside or that there were too many people around her. If you even counted raucous, dirty-mouthed and know-it-all teenagers as "people."
"Back to the best days of our lives, eh?" chirped someone with a high-pitched voice behind her, increasing the number of throbs in her head.
"Go away, Sarah."
"Well, unfortunately or fortunately, princess, I was in your class last year and unless you developed a contagious disease over the holidays – by which I'm going to force you transfer out in light of my extremely delicate being – you're stuck with me again until the end of the year." Sarah replied, unfazed by Lily's unfriendliness.
There's nothing princess-y about me, idiot, thought Lily. And you're going to find out why very, very soon.
The shrill of the bell shot a sharp pain throughout Lily's head.
Ms White was your typical teacher. She attempted – note the word – to be a second mother to her students ("The school is practically your second home so I guess I'm your mother here!"). When she heard casual gossip about a possible new couple in her class, she would immediately go to great lengths to impart her motherly wisdom to the couple to ensure their happiness and welfare was accounted for. ("Are you sure a few love letters with poor allusions to Romeo and Juliet are more important than As on your report card?"). One day, she boldly proclaimed herself as the school's answer to Mother Goose, not wanting anything ("Not even a rich husband who would elope with me to the Bahamas!") but ensuring her students were well taken care of. This had unfortunately become a running joke among the boys in Lily's class, who would honk and quack when Ms White was teaching. ("I see you all have been studying Biology in detail recently! Keep up the good work in using aural studying strategies!")
Lily, "unfortunately or fortunately", was not spared from Ms White's motherly intentions. In fact, Ms White particularly invested copious amount of time on Lily, attempting – note the word – to make Lily the same Lily before everything had begun.
Things were probably about to get worse. Or better, for Ms White.
A sign that the year had begun was that Ms White would encourage – force – each of the students to go up to the front of the class and share a "fruitful experience" that they had during the holidays. Most of them would simply mumble about a family trip to France, China or Australia and the tourist attractions that they saw. Sometimes someone would mention something exciting about the group that they were in, but only rarely.
By the time Lily got up to the front, half the class was pretending to look interested. Ms White's eyes lit up as she hoped to feel proud of whatever "fruitful experience" Lily had during the holidays, in spite of the sarcasm and dagger stares she got when she spent time with Lily.
Lily scanned her classmates. Most – all – of them did not even know her well. They did not even know her at all. Last year Lily would have laughed with them about something remotely immature. Lily was not sure if she was even happy before everything had begun. She glanced over and noticed Robert, who as usual had his head down, refusing to look up, his face filled with what she did not know if it was anger, sadness or disappointment.
Her face was grave.
"You really want to know what I did? I joined The Black Carnival. The assassins."