Part 6
"Everything we see or seem is but a dream within a dream…"
-Edgar Allen Poe
In the early reaches of dawn, when the warring, spirited whirl of pinks and oranges streaked across the barely wakened sky with an unleashed fervor, Jolie returned, half-stumbling, and frozen with frightful drowsiness, to the small, seedy hotel room she had rented in the very slums of London for this special four-day vacation.
Even now, with her essence tattered and ragged from half-a-night spent pondering the mysteries and intricacies of her encounter with that delightful secret man named Riley, she felt no desire to sleep, to fall into that abyss of other people's problems and lies, nothing to hold her back from the never-ending suffering that others managed to inflict with such swiftness on each other. She didn't want to let herself go, didn't need or want to feel the despair of people in such obvious need of help it ripped through her soul with a passion that seared her with the heat of a thousand suns. All she wanted to do- it was so simple really- was to fall, to fade away into some never ending whirlpool of pure and absolute nothingness. She wanted to vanish into that harmonious darkness and never- not ever- feel another drop of pain, never see what wasn't meant to be seen.
It was a hideous thing, this fate of Jolie's. It killed, expeditiously cutting and slashing at a Jolie's core, disrobing her of the innocence and purity that people like her needed like the honeyed, sinless air they breathed. Jolie had never wanted to be this way- had never asked for the shame and aching woe that plagued her sensations day and night. The only thing she could ever recall wanting was to be loved and to be understood. To feel like she belonged…
Fishing in her pocket for a key that would unlock the chipping, gray-black door that led to her hotel room, Jolie felt a certain despondency rise up in her throat and take hold there, a sober, numbing affection that abused her wooden heart. A sigh softly escaped from her lips, reaching out into the door, and beyond the bounds of this earthly realm.
She opened the door and fell on the bed like descending rainfall, rapidly and without pause, trying not to think of the things that would eventually come to pass. The very things that would eventually destroy her, turning her into ice and hate without a hesitation.
She closed her eyes, taking that fatal leap into the unknown, hoping against hope…
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The graceful, dramatic tapping of falling rain hit the ground, every singular drop rolling and breaking like divine tears, whispering their woeful, weak song to any who cared to listen. Ominous, menacing thunder broke in the distance, rumbling and threatening like the low, impossible growl of a wolf on the hunt. Storm-force winds spurred the trees into a delicate imbalance, shaking their lush, green leaves wildly, and pushing their tenuously slender branches back and forth. A low, sultry, cry carried on the sharp winds, peaking in insane sensuality, outlasting even the torrents of the storm, and bringing with it a kind of obscene longing, something hollowly glorious and liquidly hopeful.
Jolie stood, in the midst of it all, water dripping and shattering down her face, mixing with her mascara to form solitary, black rivulets that fell like death from fatigued eyes. Her chocolate hair was thoroughly drenched, every strand saturated with the unendurable weight of water and regret.
There was nothing for miles; no houses or stores, or anything such thing that littered and scattered the earth into a state of dismaying disarray, but only the forest around Jolie with its' trees and the rain, the breath-taking rain that trickled from the neglectful, ashen clouds above.
Jolie had always loved the forest when she had been a child, had always loved its supreme splendor, the way it had bestowed pleasure and love on a child so in need of a simple, kind word. She had once loved the sunshine, filtering through the trees in the afternoon, the way it hit the ground and the leaves, bouncing and shining in an endless play of happiness and joy.
But there was no sunshine now, only the everlasting surge of rainfall, plunging down to the soil like midnight melancholy, running down and around, bemoaning the depravity that had somehow taken root in this land of former elegance and exultation. Jolie couldn't help the magnitude of these woods, its' very core, pervade her sanity, severing her contact with the real world, masking the cool, blank façade of kindness that Jolie had becoming accustomed to slipping on. It was the forest of despair.
A twig snapping caught Jolie's attention, sending her alert senses into over-drive, a new vigilance that was far-too-long in coming. Every sound was magnified, enhanced a thousand degrees beyond the normal range of perception, all in a vain, useless attempt to stop the inevitable wave of the future that would drown Jolie like a lost swimmer caught in a rip-tide.
"Hello?" The tremulous, tenuous strain of Jolie's voice carried over the sounds of the storm, fighting their way to the ear of some other that would respond in kind, and with proper reverence.
The silence that met her greeting was over-bearing, it crashed on top of Jolie, its' enormity adding to the pitch of Jolie's terror.
A swatch of movement near her right- the faintest flicker of blackness floating in the darkness of the trees near the side of the path, its true form obscured by the tempest- caught her eye and had her spinning around, ready to fight or flee, whichever the situation called for.
A tap, a brush on her shoulder, had Jolie whirling, circling to face the terror that had no name.
A scream caught in Jolie's throat, a horrible scream that had her wishing that she would wake, leaving this dreamscape far behind and with it, the hideousness in front of her.
One brilliant, emerald eye beamed out at Jolie from a thin sheen of dampness, the other concealed in a mass of scarlet blood, still wet and gushing from a bloodstained wound on the forehead. The rest of the features were also covered; hidden by the blood of a hundred different wounds all over the face and head, except for that one impending eye, staring out in a murderous dejection. Dark, jet-colored hair was styled in a short cap reminiscent of the thirties or forties; ebony curls clinging to the bloody face like longing and desire. The figure was fragile and petite, radiating a homicidal vulnerability under the prim and bandbox navy dress that was stained with an abhorrent crimson. A single, silver ring, in the shape of a dahlia shone like pale faith, emanating out to Jolie in waves.
It was a young girl, or had once been, sometime in the far-reaching past. What was left of her, what was left of the girl that surely had previously been alive, was a mutilated fate, a gory nothingness that made even the most jaded soul want to turn and run in horror.
Jolie could not speak, could not move, could not breathe. Every nerve cord was ablaze with a dreadful fear, passing away into sheer panic, on fire with a shock that would be endless. She wanted to run, to scream and dash into the safety of recognized consciousness, to end this insane nightmare.
"W-w-who a-a-a-are you?" Jolie's voice trembled like a thousand leaves in the wind, unstable and vacant.
The girl looked at Jolie for a bare minute, studying her with that lone, emerald eye. A sense of quietness colored the situation, both girls hanging in the balance of each other- neither trusting nor accepting.
"I…" Jolie began to say something, anything that would help or alleviate the mystery enfolding them.
"No." The girl shook her head, uttering the only word Jolie had ever heard her say. Her voice was a timeless sonata, something that broke hearts and mended them all over again in the space of a second.
"Excuse me?" Jolie was almost too bewildered to say another word, too stunned by the voice of this enigma of a corpse, to say anything more, but the individual question lodged its' way from her heart to her mouth in a sort of obscenity.
"No more." The girl shook her head again and placed a finger on Jolie's mouth, leaving a smear of red upon Jolie's lips like a seal. "No more at all."
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When Jolie awoke, hours later, hopelessly entangled in the winding, interconnecting strangles of the crisp, blue bed-spread, every inch of her skin was either burning with intense, heated terror or drowning, slowly and languidly, in cool, sudden drops of sweat.
Her hands were shaking, shaking so hard and so deeply, Jolie didn't ever think they'd stop. A tremor racked her spine, running viciously from the base to her skull, enrapturing her in its scintillating madness. Trembling, wracking sobs were just moments away, her gold-green eyes already filling with haunted, unforeseen tears. Her chestnut hair stood wildly on end, but she didn't bother to smooth or touch it- it seemed completely pointless in the light of this new, startling revelation.
Jolie didn't dream like most people did, in ensnared, fractured memories or metaphors twisted until they resembled flighting passes of passions, but when Jolie dreamed, she dreamed of people, people that needed something. She dreamed the dreams of people long dead; their bodies rotting in their graves in a cemetery in some desolate place she knew little of. Jolie carried their burdens, the heavy, rolling weight of them, and made them hers, sticking them in her heart like a dagger slicing home.
Usually these dreams, these apparitions of the past and souls, did not strike her for they were already gone, too far away and unreachable, that to help would be insanity preying upon the sane, a house of cards tumbling down like a waterfall of disease, unhealthy and unclean. It wounded her true, to be honest, but nothing more another night, another dream would not cure and some new vexation would fall upon her without reserve, clamoring for the aid of one who knew not what to do.
This dream, though, this soulless carnival of wreckage and loss, was close to her, and not yet beyond her reach. She could feel it, tugging at her in a way that she could not deny or ignore. The feeling of the girl, The Lost One, was crawling under her skin, producing agony in heart and mind simultaneously.
The girl needed something from Jolie, needed some absolution from a problem too worldly and costly to bear herself, needed some relief from a riddle to complicated to realize. Was Jolie the sort of person who could turn her back on this? Could she ignore and continue on with her life? What was Riley's part in all this? Did he even have a part at all?
Jolie watched the flickering night-lights of the city blink on and off, over and over, caught in some timeless circle of ecstasy, never slowing or stopping. The shockingly white piece of paper lay on the beside table beside her, winking and fluttering with the breeze of the open window. The black, black ink stared up at her, the bold hand of the aristocratic boy mocking her in the semi-darkness. (0)20 7836 4343 ...(0)20 7836 4343 ... The numbers began to roll inside her head like a mantra, fusing themselves to her memory.
Jolie wasn't a heartless or cruel person; she didn't disregard what was in clear need of assistance and aid. That being as it was, she cast her gaze on the ancient, beige telephone lying haphazardly on the small, folding table opposite the bed. It was the only way, in Jolie's estimation, that could ever possibly rectify this sphere.
Casually getting up from the bed, still dressed in the clothes she had worn at the coffee shop, she took a seat in out-of-place, black wicker chair, and picked up the receiving end of the phone, the piece of paper clutched in her hand.
(0)20 7836 4343… She dialed it with an unusual apprehension, that feeling of foreboding compressing her of reason. Was this the right thing to do? Why did she feel so worried, so nervous? What did the girl mean when she had said…?
"Hello, may I help you?" A friendly, benevolent voice lit up the other end of the line busily pushing its' way into Jolie's world.
"Yes, I need to speak with Riley Lennox? Hmm? Yes, I know it's late but it's urgent…"
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