Little Hidden Darknesses

My eyes opened and I snapped upright. The duvet had slipped off the foot of the bed, leaving my legs exposed. Chills rippled across my skin, a series of tingles. Not tingles, exactly, but jolts of what felt like power. Like fresh air in the morning, filling me up, breathing me life.

I blinked, but my eyes wouldn’t focus in the dark – even with the moon beaming through the window. While its light reached everything around me, I saw no more than hazy silhouettes. Shapes of objects I knew where there, but seemed far, far away somehow.

It felt as though I was wrapped in a blanket. One of those electric ones that warms you from the inside out. But I wasn’t wrapped in a blanket. And the room wasn’t warm at all. In fact, a breeze met my skin. It swept the curtains aloft, allowing them to graze the ceiling.

“Shit,” I said as I realised what had happened. I rolled on my belly and flicked on the lamp on the bedside table. The globe sputtered before it lit, casting the room in bright yellow.

I winced. Not at the light, exactly, but at the lack of clarity before my eyes. The entire room was filled with fog. Thick, damp and musky. Another curse escaped my lips as I staggered out of bed, my bare feet shuffling across the wood, uneven and splinter-prone.

My head snapped toward the window, wide open and pumping fog inside as if it was foam. I ran across the room and closed it. Locked it. Leaned with my back against the glass. I thought of Alejandro’s story and Aillard’s warning. Of how everyone feared the fog, considered it deadly. But the fog didn’t scare me. In fact, what scared me was how little I feared it.

My heart pounded against my ribs, right into my ears. This only worsened when I realised I wasn’t breathing. At all. And I wasn’t holding my breath either. It was as if I didn’t need air. As if I was drawing life from something else, someone else. And then I felt it. Her.

Like an itch at the back of my head, or a chill in an otherwise heated space. I turned back around, slowly, hesitantly. My eyes rifled through the fog, the wispy tendrils that seemed to claw at the window, demanding I let it in, pleading I let it feed me some more.

And even though I didn’t see anything – anyone – I knew she was there, as absurd as it seemed.

I felt Branka in the fog.

Then, as though materializing from my thoughts, her silhouette took shape before my eyes. There, standing in the parking lot. Staring at me staring at her through the window.

Neither of us moved.

Heck, I didn’t even inhale. Each touch from the fog felt like a thousand pumps of oxygen into my lungs. The cleanest, coolest air I had ever breathed without actually breathing.

Moments passed in which I waited for Branka to do something, anything. But she stayed still, motionless.

Her hair whipped around to cover her face and eyes. I couldn’t see much through the murk, but I felt her stare – cold and piercing – on my skin, like needles penetrating my flesh.

Fuck this. First they escort me off their estate, and then they try to intimidate me at a motel? Alejandro was wrong when he said they were scary. Because scary didn’t cut it anymore.

If Branka thought she could threaten me, she was wrong. Eira Vinsant had nothing more to lose.

I banged my fist on the windowsill – “Hey, what are you doing out there?” – and when this didn’t make her take off, I spun around and marched to the door. The velocity of my movement proved too much, and I accidentally knocked over the mirror. Just before it hit the wooden floor, however, I managed to latch my fingers around its frame.

It proved much heavier than I thought and slipped from my grip, but I grabbed it with both hands and raised it to a stand.

I took a moment to breathe, to think about what would’ve happened had I broken it. Mrs Perez would’ve kicked me out for sure. If not for a lack of funds to replace it, for the bad luck I’ve brought upon her establishment. In fact , if she ever found out I let the fog get inside …

Not even Alejandro would manage to calm her down.

A smile crept around my lips as I thought of his face. Those tiny little patches around his mouth, and how he pretended to be cool whenever he covered his face with his hair.

Without intending to, I hugged the mirror. Something clicked – almost cracked – and I gasped. I held my breath as I put it in place and stepped back, about to check for cracks when –

A gasp escaped my lips.

I stammered back at the sight of me: golden eyes and glowing veins, throbbing under my skin. My breath escaped me once again, this time along with my balance. I felt my knees begin to wobble, and soon my weight became too much. I watched as the room travelled upwards before my eyes, as the monster of a girl collapsed on the carpet. And I blacked out.