10.

~ I felt a strange force roll over in me as I walked down the stairs to the parlor from the nursery. Cobb's wife had locked her precious children in their room and attempted to burn them alive. Why would she do such a thing? What sort of madness had made the woman to act so?

Why was she still haunting them and Mr. Cobb? Why was she still hurting them?

I was so engrossed in my own thoughts that I wholly forgot myself in my wanderings. I didn't even hear Arthur speaking to me as I realized I was in the parlor.
"I want to go back under again." I announced dramatically. "I want you to hypnotize me."

"No." Arthur said sternly. "Last night was too much, especially after what followed."

"I'll be more prepared." I promised.
"No. Cobb, this has to stop. Whatever we're doing, I think we're only aggravating it. These occurrences are growing far more violent with each passing day since she's arrived." Arthur argued.

"Do you want to send her away?" Eames asked.
"No, but-."

"If you want to go under again, Ariadne. I'll guide you." Cobb interrupted.

~ "This is your safe place, Ariadne. A place of warmth and light. A place that other people can not enter." Cobb was saying gently.

I was breathing deeply as his voice lulled me into a trance. A felt my body grow tired as my mind walked the streets outside, up the front steps to the house, and into the parlor. Like before, I saw my sleeping self in the chair. Arthur, Cobb and Eames surrounding me. Hannibal jumped and wagged his tail happily atseeing me arrive.

"How does the dog know?" Arthur asked as the three men looked away from my sleeping body and at the direction Hannibal was staring at.

"Ariadne, this place is your anchor, journey as you please." Cobb said before everything vanished and I was left alone in a cold and empty house.

"Hello?" I called out. A ghastly echo reverberated through the starkly still rooms as I felt myself float.

Crying. I heard crying coming down the servants hall and, my curiosity aroused, I went to see what the trouble was.
I needn't have been shocked to discover Mrs. Robinson seated at her little chair by the fire. The stout woman weeping in her apron.
"Mrs. Robinson?" I asked.

"Oh, it's you." she said drying her face and smoothing out her apron. "What do you want?"

"I came to check on you. I heard you crying." I said as I noticed my voice sounded strange to me. As if it echoed around in two places at once.

"That's kind of you, miss." she said as she stood up and made herself more presentable. "No one has asked about my health in a long time."

I wanted to tell her the reason. Wanted to explain about her passing, but how could she believe me?

"I think they always assume you're well. You're so dependable and steady." I offered instead.
"Well, I haven't been very steady her of late!" she bellowed as she went to prepare tea. "All these uninvited guests roaming about biting at corners and talking about fire and whores. It's got me rattled I can tell you." she said holding back another sob.
"Who says these things?" I asked.

"That woman." Mrs. Robinson whispered. "I dare not say more, miss. She has control of this house now."

The stout woman nodded to the door that went into the dinning room. I looked back to the cook to discover she was gone. The kitchen clean and empty as though she never existed.

~ I wandered into the dinning room. Moonlight casting it's unfriendly glow over the nothingness of the room. I almost screamed when I saw a woman standing there.
"What are you doing here?" she asked me simply.

I tried to think. She was no demon at all. She was a regally lovely woman. Her height was tall and her body delicate. Her face was expressive and spoke of perfection as she looked at me curiously.

"My name is..." I floundered.
"I know who you are." she interrupted. Her eyes looking over me as if I had no right in invade her world. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm just... trying to understand." I whispered as the room turned colder.

I noticed her fashionable dress that hugged her body as she circled me like a cat about to pounce on a mouse.
"How could you understand?" she asked. "How could you understand what is means to be so betrayed?"

"Betrayed?" I repeated. "Who... who betrayed you?"

Mal said nothing as she moved lazily away from me. Her long, swan like, arms opening a door to reveal a bedroom, well lit and in use by a couple.
"No! Mal, No!" came a voice I recognized too well.
"I had come home early." Mal said in her dream like voice. "Dom wasn't expecting me home for another day."

I averted my gaze as I realized Cobb had been in bed with another woman. Arthur's friend embarrassingly covering himself and the girl he was with as he tried to explain his infidelity.

"I found them in bed together." she said bitterly as the doors to the bedroom slammed shut before Cobb could leave it.

"Is that why you tried to kill your children?" I asked.

My sudden bravery finding me.
"Ariadne, come back!" I heard Cobb's voice in the real world.
"I will take from him, all he has stolen from me." Mal said. Her voice dangerous as her eyes suddenly turned to bright, angry fire.
"Not the children. Why did you hurt the children?" I whispered. My senses telling me Cobb and the others were able to hear what I said and were not happy about it.

"You started the fire." I accused. "Why?"

"Ariadne, come back to the parlor." Cobb commanded from the rafters of the empty house.
"To hurt him. To show him what real hurt is like. He wanted his freedom from me and his children, I gave it to him." she hissed as her skin began to blacken from burns.
"He saved the children. He saved them from the fire and left you to die." I said. "He had a choice of saving you or the children, and he left you to burn in the house."

"I wanted all of us to go together." Mal whispered. "We can be happy in heaven."

"No." I said as a fire raceed through the dinning room and quickly went up the stairs.

"No!" I screamed as the demon was laughing at me.

I fled from the dinning room and went back to the parlor. My slumbering body waiting for me as I heard Cobb shouting now.

~ I gasped as I returned to the real world and realized Cobb was shaking me awake.
"Ariadne!" he growled at me angrily. "What did you do?"

Arthur was pushing Cobb off of me.
"Stop it, Cobb." he said roughly as I was gasping for air.

"Whatever she told you, was a lie!" Cobb snarled. Gone was the kind man I had met before.
"Cobb!" I cried out as I remembered all that Mal had shown me. "Mal started the fire that killed her. She tried to kill herself and the children to punish you!"

"What?" Arthur asked in shock. "Punish him for what?"

"For his unfaithfulness. She locked the children in their rooms and started the fire. Cobb saved them and left her to die. That's why she's so angry! She wants her revenge. She wants the children to cross over to where she is, and you to suffer!" I cried.
"No!" Cobb shouted. "I loved my wife!"

But the instant he said it, I knew all Mall had showed me was true.

"You brought this plague on yourself Cobb!" I cried. "You're responsible for the thing that wants to kill those children!"

With an unforgiving hatred, Cobb slapped me across the face so hard, I fell back into the chair.
"Cobb!" Arthur shouted and pushed his friend away. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"She's lying!" Cobb shouted. "She lies!"

"I smell smoke." Eames said softly as the room fell ominously quite.