I was sleeping comfortably until I heard the sound of a TV playing in the background. I didn't pay much attention to it initially; loud cheers echoed in the background, followed by what seemed like the commentary of a sports commentator.
He was talking extremely fast and would sometimes burst out in excitement, screaming along with his co-commentators, but when I tried paying attention to their words, I realized they were just making random noises.
The sound they were making seemed as if they were speaking my language, but no real words were actually spoken.
The more I tried to ignore them, the louder the cheers grew, and before I had had enough, they all came to a stop, replaced by a static noise.
"If you're not watching anything, turn off the damn TV!" I screamed at the top of my lungs as I got fed up by the static noise, but no one responded.
Fuck it.
I quickly turned around and got off the bed only to notice something strange: the room I was sleeping in wasn't my own; the room I was sleeping in felt similar. It reminded me of my old bedroom.
Everything was similar, but there were many differences, from furniture we never had to consoles I never played to a computer I never owned.
As I ventured outside to turn off the TV, those similitudes kept on increasing; the corridors were made, just adorned differently. The door to the guest room was locked instead.
What is this strange dream?
No matter how aware I was, I couldn't wake myself up.
Eventually I grew enough courage to head downstairs to shut down the television, putting an end to the static noise, and along with it, all the lights of the house shut down.
I felt my heart freeze in place.
T-the lights… Why?
Immediately I tried to turn the TV back on, but that didn't restore the lights of the house.
As the TV got turned on, its display broke; each shard was displaying the same scene, but each of them was slightly different.
The day I got killed, the man responsible for it was killing me in a variety of ways; each fragment was a different way, and in every outcome, my father sacrificed himself to resuscitate my body, even if it meant handing me all of his demons and turning his body to ashes after he was rescued by the Scarlet Devil.
From there I saw a variety of different outcomes all at once; whenever I died again in one of those outcomes, the fragment of the screen would permanently turn off.
"Hello? Can anyone hear me? Elena? Mr. Hilliger? Can anyone hear me?" That voice echoed throughout the house.
Lucifer's voice came from upstairs.
When I turned around, I saw a copy of me rushing towards that door to help him.
No!
I already knew the outcome of that memory, and so I rushed to try and stop her.
She was worried; after all, Father had been treating him every night for the past couple of weeks in an attempt to cure his strange condition. Every day he would wake up confused, as my father would make sure to erase those memories, but this day he sounded genuinely scared.
No, open that door! Just let him die! Elena, stop!
I tried to shout, but my voice didn't come out, so I rushed as fast as possible. I even tripped on the stairs and bruised my shin, but I kept on climbing the stairs.
I reached her just in time as she was opening the door. I put my hands over her eyes and pulled away from the door, but it was already too late. There I saw once again my father with a nail in hand standing next to Lucifer's bed.
"No!" I managed to shout before darkness spread from Lucifer's body.
It quickly covered the walls, and like in the shape of a thousand hands, it reached out to me, turning everything black.
I immediately woke up; my mind couldn't possibly recreate what had happened afterwards…
The nightmares were slowly appearing more and more often; the same accident was beginning to repeat itself.
Those intrusive memories were slowly trying to creep their way into my head; they were making their way into my eyes, forcing me to see them. Whenever they rushed to my head, I felt powerless as I was forced to witness the memories of my father.
This damned power.
I was clutching my head with both hands; it felt as if it were about to explode, and I was trying my best to keep it together.
"Young lady?" The new butler that was assigned to attend me reached me from behind, using his hands to massage my temples.
"Can you go fetch the new batch of pills that came yesterday? " I asked him, pushing his hands away from me.
The bandage I used to wrap my head had come undone during the night; it was still lying on the pillow, so I grabbed it and tightly wrapped the top of my head so that it wouldn't feel like it was about to explode at all times.
"But my lady, those pills are meant for the—"
"Shut it, I'm not in the mood for this; it feels like my head is about to split in half. Just take those pills and hand them over!" I shouted at him while clutching my head.
I saw him about to open his mouth to say something back, so in a fit of anger I grabbed the lamp standing on the nightstand and threw it at him.
Go! Fuck! How long are you going to stand there?
"Stop touching me!" I shouted to all the other maids even though they were nowhere near close to me.
I could feel something twitching beneath my skin, slowly crawling from my feet upward; the more they crawled up my leg, the deeper they dug their fingers into my flesh.
"Hurry up!" I screamed as a bunch of dark hands covered my face.
Images of my father flashed before me; on the day of the incident, he happily smiled when he sent me to school, and then everything was set ablaze.
I tried to summon the power of that demon to drive him out of my body but simply couldn't. The more I tried to summon his power away, the more he tightened the clutch he had on me. It was replaying the incident right before my eyes.
No, please stop; I don't want to see this anymore.
Then a ray of light came to save me, in the form of the new butler. He had returned with the bottle of pills in hand and quickly put it in my mouth for me to swallow. I felt the pill sizzle in my mouth as it began to dissolve the moment it made contact with my saliva.
It didn't take a long time for the effect to take place, making the invisible hands disappear as well as the headache leaving behind a sobbing mess.
After I managed to composed myself I finally wiped my tears away.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't myself because of the pain." I said to immediately apologize to the many maids and butlers serving me.
I tried bowing down, but the butler with animal ears stopped me midway.
"Don't dwell on it; it was something out of your control. I've already warned the madam; from now on you'll receive some weekly doses of Ashen to deal with your symptoms," he announced.
The name echoed in my head for a little while; all the memories regarding that resurfaced, all the barely able-bodied people I saw, snorting that rainbow power as if it was a drug, barely able to do anything by day, too entranced in finding new ways to get that miracle drug.
Am I… going to become like them? No! Anything but that.
"I—is there any other… medicine?" I asked the butler.
The butler solemnly shook his head, and so did the other maids.
"Demonic influence cannot be warded off easily, young lady. I know this may seem like a lot to digest, but you don't have to worry about anything; you'll be taken care of by the best specialists in the field. I'm sure they'll be able to find a cure eventually." He said, getting on one knee, gently petting my head with a calm and reassuring smile.
Those words did not comfort me in the slightest…
"We spent enough time idling around; today we have some guests coming. Make sure the lady is prepared to face the dignity of a noble. He said before leaving the room, leaving me in the care of the many maids.
Lately more and more individuals with animalistic features keep appearing inside the mansion? I wonder where they come from; I never heard of hybrids like that back in the Fracture.
I saw many kinds; some had retained more of their human side, like the maid accompanying Diego or the one serving me. The only thing they had gained was a tail and different ears; their sense of smell also seemed fairly acute.
Then we had people like the gardener, whose head no longer resembled that of a human.
After a thorough cleanup, the many maids led me downstairs, towards the main hall, where a desk was prepared with the supplementary study material needed to pass the next exam. There was also a barely alive teacher waiting there with a steaming cup of coffee in hand.
He looked ancient; his skin was so loose it seemed about to fall off; his wrinkles were so big and ran so deep that his face was barely even visible. He tried to mask his old, decaying body odor with some flowery perfume, but I could tell he had almost both feet on the grave.
Next to him was a large, unstable pile of books that the servants were helping pile up; he could barely keep his back straight, and his mouth was trembling so much I didn't know if he was trying to talk or was just trying to keep his lips closed.
"Who the hell is this man?" I asked the butler following me; I was so surprised by that man's appearance I couldn't hide the tone of disgust in my voice.
"Young lady, hasn't anyone ever taught you that it's rude to point fingers at people?" The elderly man replied as he tried to stand up.
His voice seemed strangely full of energy.
It was a pitiful sight for the eyes; the man didn't even have the strength to keep his back straight. He needed the help of the nearby maids to stand, as his legs were clearly too weak to sustain his own weight.
Just sit down, please; you're only making things look worse, and you're also inconveniencing the maids that have to take care of you. Whose idea was it to take this senile old man out of a retirement home?
"This man is going to be your physics teacher. The madam has noticed that in your report card you haven't been doing well on the subject, so she decided to hire the best teacher there was to—" Before he could elaborate more and humiliate me further in front of the pile of walking bones, I put my hands over his mouth to shut him up.
I saw the gray-haired butler smirk beneath my hands.
Fine, I get it; he was probably a renowned teacher or physicist, but this is a little too much. Couldn't you find someone that doesn't look like they could die at any moment? I feel like if someone ever tries to prank him, he could die of a heart attack.
"So, for how long do you intend to keep me waiting? " he impatiently asked me while trying to stand upright.
He apparently forced his body a little too much, as he quickly groaned in pain; a part of his back was hurting, and the maid quickly came to the rescue, allowing him to sit back on his chair while they began massaging him.
Once he recovered from the pain, we spent the next hours painstakingly going through much stuff I barely knew about: numbers, formulas, stuff regarding objects being attracted to one another, 9.81, and other stuff I couldn't possibly fit in my brain.
Man, this is hell.
The way the man was teaching was insufferable; he would hand over a test paper and order me to fill it up as he explained the lesson. Then, once the paper was filled, he would stop the lecture, flip the paper, and reveal the other side of the piece of paper, containing only open questions.
What is friction?
What causes friction?
If I put a wooden cube on a metal surface inclined at 49°—
What the hell are these questions? We never touched this stuff at school. Why am I studying something that I don't even study at school?
In the meantime, I could hear Leo being dragged outside. He was lucky; the only thing expected of him was to stay physically fit. That's why he just had to train. I could feel constant gunfire coming from outside as he and his maid were battling outside the house.
I wish I could just… No, I don't think I would like to spar, but that is probably ten times easier than just having to be stuck here with this pile of wrinkles.