I had a bit of a life these last two weeks: work, job interview, linkin park concert, more work, moving out for good of the apartment, moving back in, buffy trivia party, school closhes shopping, etc. So, I am trying to be greatly cool by giving long ass chapters to you to deal with while I am gone. Or when I am dealing with the harsh reality of writer's block that this story keeps provoking.
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Victoria moaned and sat up. Immediately, the worst headache ever came to her as she did. Dizziness also took control of her as she closed her eyes to the pain of the world around her. When it eased off of her a bit she opened her eyes.
She knew it was too quiet to be where she thought she was. She wasn't in P3 anymore. Instead, she was in her old house. It was the one with all her childhood memories and last the place anyone she ever knew had been alive.
She stood slowly and looked around herself. It looked perfectly normal. It was a bit vacant now, but it looked just like her old house. Of course, a rare episode in Limbo a month ago had shown her that places could come as well as easily go.
It was just like the last time she had seen it. For a moment, she wondered if she somehow had been sent back in time for some reason. Perhaps, she had forgotten something here or maybe there was a real reason that this place seemed to be haunting her.
She was inside of her living room. The couch was there inside of its plastic wrap so it wouldn't be ruined from moving, there were tons of boxes everywhere in piles on the red carpeted floor, and the windows were completely bare of their dark red velvety curtains.
She had loved those red velvet curtains as a child. She had played in them every chance she could get when her parents didn't yell at her for doing it. She used to pretend she was a princess and they were her royal cloak.
Now, they were folded and inside one of the labeled boxes nearby.
Moving had been hard. She hadn't really wanted to do it. She had wanted to stay there forever. She loved that house more than anything, but she knew that in order to keep her sanity she had to let it go. If she lived there she knew she would only dwell in the past instead of taking full advantage of the present and soon to be future.
She had had to leave the place.
Sure, it held memories that she wanted to preserve. Sure, it was the most welcoming place on earth for her besides the Halliwell's Manor, but here... here was where the memories lie. Not only did the memories lie there but they also took over the place. Just by being in it now she could hardly stop them from coming into her mind.
It was in this room that they had placed the christmas tree. It was here that she had told her father, sister, and stepmother that she was getting married to Mark. Here was the place her sister and she would make tents and play castleroma. Here her father had cried for the first time when he found out her mother had died.
Everything important had happened here. Her family and she had so many memories raging inside of this room that spanned over the time they had lived inside the house. It was this room that they lived in most in her memory.
This was why she had moved. Her memories haunted her. She had heard a little wives tale as a child from her mother about a girl and all she did was live in her past. She never enjoyed her future because the past was so welcoming to her. The girl never grew up because of this.Victoria wanted to grow up. She wanted to be able to live. She hadn't had that chance before because of Andrew's godforsaken curse, but now she did. She wasn't going to abuse it like the girl in the wives tale
She slowly walked over to the bay window and looked out onto her backyard. She was going to miss it. She had spent so many lazy summer days back there. Most of anything she was going to miss the veranda. It had been her favorite place in the whole world also in her whole life. Now, it was still beautiful but she would never go near it again. It was tainted now. Because of all the death that surrounded her home, it was tainted.
Death must have had a field day on her wedding day. He had taken everyone there including her fiancé without even leaving any survivors. Besides the various wars, a few rare plagues, and Titanic, he must have loved being at her wedding.
"Victoria." a whisper invaded the air around her like perfumed jasper on a rainy day.
She quickly turned. Her back against the window, she looked for the source of the whisper. No one was there. It was getting dark in the room. There was no electricity here since she had turned it off. Soon she would be in the dark in her abandoned, haunted house with whoever else that was there with her.
Whoever it was had brought her here for some reason. She didn't know if it were to toy with her or to kill her. She didn't know and she hated not knowing. What she hated more then that was the fact that she couldn't see who it was that was playing this reindeer game with her.
Her violet-blue eyes scanned the room for something. Anything even. Just some random shadow that didn't fit in with the rest, or the rare movement of the figure who was there with her in the silent house.
No one was there though.
What she did find though was a flickering red candle. The candle was rare. It's flame was not golden like normal candles it was a silvery-white color that belied its age.
It sat on the last box she had packed up before moving out. It sat quaintly dripping wax all over the boxes surface before it slowly rose in the air and dipped a little. The dip made more red candle wax fall onto the cardboard boxes lid and reminded her of someone trying to get her to follow them.
She had no other choice. She had to follow it. Curiousity of who was screwing with her was playing more over her mind then the repercussion of it all.
"Victoria," the whisper resounded around the room again.
What? When did I get surround sound? She wondered in dark humor as she walked to the red floating candle. There she looked down at the wax over the cardboard box.
The candle instantly started on its path to its owner. She followed it as the hair on the back of her neck rose. The idea that perhaps this was only a ghost of one of her dead relatives come to get its revenge on her had approached a climax in her mindset as she followed it.
Whoever it was they knew her house well.
She followed it around the dark wood doorway to the pale green hallway that lead at a slant to the staircase. There it descended the steps as she stood at the bottom.
Her hand rested on the top darkly smooth wood beam. Upstairs would be darker then down here. She wouldn't be able to see half of the things up there. She'd always hated her hallway at night. There just had always been something so very creepy about it.
She'd always believed it was haunted. Well, if it wasn't then then it was now.
The candle stopped on its ascent and wiggled in the air trying to get her to come along with it. She watched it. She knew she had the power to go up those very stairs. She had the willpower as well as the magical power to destroy whatever may be up there. It was just the fact that even as a child she had hated that hallway and now here there was a candle floating around trying to lead her up into it.
"What do you want?" she called up the stairs to the red candle. Red wax filtered off of the corner of it and landed splattering over the dark wood stairs. It wiggled again as if to get her to move faster up the stairs to get killed.
Yeah, like she was up for that.
She waited at the bottom of the stairs and looked around at the shadow infested house around her. Her house felt different then it had before. Something was here with her. Something that was strong and undeniable. She didn't want to meet up with it anytime soon. She wanted to be at P3 with Chris and Piper hanging out at the bar still.
Her luck was nonexistent though and she stayed in the same place she was. She knew she could easily blink right out of there. If that were possible. Right now she didn't really know if she were dreaming or not. She had never blinked anywhere while asleep so she didn't know what kind of damage she could create with that. Plus, if she still was at P3 and others saw her just disappear there may be many questions needing answered to that that she didn't know how to answer without causing mass hysteria.
Her best bet no matter how much she hated it was to ride this out. To try to figure out if this were only a dream or if it were true.
"You," the voice answered.
"Great. How many stalkers can a girl have in a lifetime?" she whispered bitterly.
Then, she ascended the stairs since there was nothing else for her to do. She wanted to know who wanted her this time. She wanted to kick his ass.
She also wanted to make sure of one very important detail. She wanted to know that this stalker wasn't Andrew. She wanted to make sure he hadn't somehow figured out a way to come back to her again and take her away from everything she had tried to piece back together.
At the top, the candle waited a moment for her. Then, it took off faster then her eyes could manage and it flew through the door at the end of the black hallway.
The door she knew well. She had traveled to it many a time in her life. The door lead to her bedroom.
Right now, it was hard to deflect all the memories that were spasming inside of her brain.
Going into that room would be like asking for it. That was her room. It was the place her mother had told her bedtime stories, where her sister and herself had made up great stories of trapped princesses that they played out, it was the place her stepmother along with her father had told her they were getting married, it was the place Mark had last talked with her before their wedding day.
Of all places to go, she didn't want to enter that room. She slowly approached it though. She had made Chris pack everything inside of it for her, she had made him bring it down to the living rooms chaotic box mess just so she didn't have to be inside of it.
She touched the white door and took a deep breath. She wouldn't let her fear take a hold of her. Especially, not when this was the only place that the evil could be. Weirdly, she felt like knocking at the door in her hysterically bubbled mind.
It felt like a strangers room she was entering after everything that had happened.
"Come in," the voice told her.
It was a cold voice. It was an impatient voice. It was a man's voice. She knew that much. She also knew the voice well. She couldn't place it as of now but she knew it. She felt like she knew it more through her dreams then her real life.
She pushed the white door open. Quickly looking around her for something. Anything to figure out where the voice was coming from. She found nothing. Just an eerie room with her canopy bed still in it standing there in the dark moonlit room.
"Come out, come out wherever you are," she called into the desolate room.
No movement came. She was still there alone. She was still alone and desperate for something to happen. When it didn't come out of the shadows anger drilled through her familiarly as she stood in place at the center of the room. Whoever was playing a game with her was going to get its ass kicked once she found them.
"Marco," she called out in a last attempt.
When nothing happened she shook her head and turned to the doorway of her room. She started for it, but before she reached it it slammed shut in front of her face and instantly locked itself from her. She had only taken one step before she was thrown by some unseen force straight backwards through the air where gravity took over and she flew towards the bed. There she landed hard on her back as she looked around the room.
Her attacker hadn't even shown himself the whole time. Her heart beat hard inside of her chest as she sat up on her bed searching for something or even anything. Her attacker was invisble to her. She was screwed.
"Alright, stop playing games. You wanted me and now you have me. Now, let's get this over and done with," she yelled at the pitch black shadows around her.
"Always so impatient, Victoria." the voice responded.
It came from a corner in the room. She quickly turned on the bed to see who it was. There was only a mirror in the corner that she could see before her. Inside the mirror, she could see her own reflection of herself sitting up on the bed and searching the dark room for anything. Right now all she could see was the dark black figure of herself.
"How would you know?" she asked.
"Because I've watched over you your whole life."
"Sure," she responded as she glided off of the bed and started over to the corner with the mirror hoping to find what she was looking for.
"You were given to me to watch."
"Oh, sure. Are you going to pull that I'm your guardian angel and I have been looking out for you you're whole life, believe in god and he will save your soul stuff on me. Because I know for a fact that no guardian angel would just kidnap it's client and then use force to keep them in the same room with them. Plus, guardian angels aren't the type to come out of the closet so to to speak. So, you had better figure out a new cover story before I figure out where you are." she informed him getting to her feet and brushing herself off.
"Or what? Are you going to kill me?" the voice laughed around her. "News flash, Victoria. You can't use your powers when you are unconscious, which you are. I have control here not you."
"So who are you to me?" she asked.
"I am no one to you. I am everything to your life."
"Nice little play on words, Mr. Riddler. How about you give me a clue. Huh? Make it easy on me while you hold me captive."
"I have many names."
"Yeah, well so do I when it comes to different lifetimes."
"I have been here since the beginning of time."
"Okay, and yet you have been hovering around me? Let's face it my life was plain out boring until last month. What did you find so interesting?" she asked.
"You."
Victoria raised her eyebrows and shook her head. Great, just great. Some guy was stalking her again. He had been stalking her her whole life which meant that he had to be a pedophile and here she was alone in her house with him. In her bedroom, no less. I wonder what he wants, she thought sarcastically as she moved far away from the bed.
"I almost had you. This very day is the anniversary of your death," the voice whispered.
Okay, who would know that?
Victoria shivered as cold spread through her body. All the people she knew and everyone she was related to was dead. No one who had known about her death fate had lived through the wedding. Plus, Andrew, the one who had cursed her in the first place, was gone now. He had died a month to this day.
So who the hell could this be?
He'd said he knew her her whole life. Which just couldn't be true. Not unless he was a stranger, of course. Even then he wouldn't have known her. He had to be lying. He had to be fucked up and think she was someone else.
"Okay," she said slowly still searching. "So, you have known me my whole life? Answer me this then, what's my middle name?"
"Angeles."
"Alright, lucky guess. Was my mother at my wedding?" she asked.
"Trick question. She died when you were four. In the cemetery with you right beside her."
Panic erupted through her as she searched desperately for whoever was there with her. Her middle name he could have found out easily through old mail lying around the house or something. Her mother's death and her being beside her at that moment he couldn't.
She tried to make a reasonable answer to how he knew so much. She easily came up with one. Well, maybe if it was in the newspaper. Maybe, the fact that her mother had died with her child beside her in the cemetary was news worthy.
She tried to calm herself and tell herself he knew nothing about her but what was politicized or what he had found around the house.
But he drenched that hope with his next roughly spoken words.
"Child, you will use your magic again. I'm sorry for the circumstances that will lead you to it. But fate must be answered to. You're cursed, Victoria. You will never know what love or happiness is. If you do feel it for even the slightest moment you will pay dearly for it. I'm sorry, my baby. I can't help you at all.
"I love you, my baby. Don't forget that ever. I'm just sleepy, baby. Mommy, just needs a little rest. Now, sweetheart. I want you to dial 9-1-1 when I start to sleep. Tell them.."
Victoria stepped backed into the canopy bed hitting her shoulder hard against its golden frame. Those had been her mother's very last words to her.
As he'd said her mother's words, she had been transported straight back to her side. Her mother's hazel eyes had been gleaming and they had been so sad. She had warned her the only way and the best way that she could.
She had told her that her future held death.
Her mother. He had been there for her last words, but she hadn't seen him. She'd been a child worried about her mother and doing what her mother had asked. She had never seen anyone in the cemetery with her.
He was invisible though. He could have been there the whole time and she wouldn't have known it. He could have been there inside of that house watching her every moment of every day without her even considering it.
He was invisible he could be anywhere, do anything, and he could get away with it.
Ewww. He could have even been there watching her when she took showers. What a pervert.
