Clockwork Demons
"and the sound of silence, forever resounding…"
Tessa glanced up at the pounding clock, her vision clouding from days of sleeplessness. Nightmares had chased her from the absurdity of her dreams to reality, and she could not prevent her lost mind from wandering…
A little girl, her lustrous black hair skimmed with dark red, smiling so dazzlingly at Tessa that even her lips twitched upward…
Tessa pawed at her head, as if physical pain would diminish the anguish residing in her skull, but could not lunge free of the hallucinations that barred her escape…
Her rough, feminine hands encaging Tessa's, her lush lips parting to utter the words that even now broke Tessa's heart: "Don't worry, we'll be best friends…best friends even if I die…"
The prickling pain that shot through Tessa's eyes and pierced her trembling heart warned her of tears, and she woke from her stupor, but not from the dreamland that encompassed her so completely.
"Don't cry, Tessie, don't cry…I'll go to heaven and protect you from there…I'll be your guardian angel…"
The tears threatened to escape through the crack in Tessa's will, and she hammered her resisting mind against the table…
and finally the hallucinations stopped. Tessa had remembered her dear friend, remembered the howling flames embracing the house she had resided in, remembered her screams and yells as she cried for someone, someone to quench the fire…but all for nothing. They were all gone, burned to ashes, as her Aunt had said, but she now had a tingle…a tingle in her heart that signaled maybe, just maybe, her dearest friend was still alive. "Please," prayed Tessa, "please, please, please be alive." The throbbing in her chest inflamed, becoming an aching, piercing pain that caused black splotches to dance before her eyes. Hope burned like a single flame in Tessa. Maybe, just maybe…
The doorbell rang.