⠀ It was my first Friday night in the convent. I think that’s where it all began because I secretly started to see thing that weren’t there. A storm started to rattle at my window. Worse, I could see shells all over the entrance to the garden. They have been making me uneasy since I dropped them earlier in the day. I shall go retreat them before it's too late, I thought. March sun was already long gone and the rain was getting heavier. Cacophony of wooded creaks accompanies walls chipped all over in mint and auburn, doors with no doors and pink and white curtains in the shared kitchen. But with the first step on stone tiled floor of basement comes only a silent hum of running machines and cave-like waves of smoothed rocks polished by time, charged with lack of light. As keys turn and make ways for the wet of the early storm I see my shells scattered in pieces. Clumps of dirt tag along. What a poor name, I think as rain knocks on my cheek while their accomplice slams the door. I lock them wondering how something can be dry and damp at the same time. Now I ascend with deadening of lamp lights making the world a notch hazier each step until the night finally blinds me whole. I grip the yet unknown banister tighter with my hands without shells. Only a tiny screech each. Then a pale and empty left hand shoots from behind. Hair not of mine brush against my shoulder as their owner barks into my neck. I feel the cold outline of each fingers on my nape as I notice that they are almost blue. But only almost. They have no weight, shape nor a form, all shatter but can carve out a precipice, they say, and at once we are standing only atop soft glow of waving snow covered hills breaking under our feet as what remains in your fist turns to smithereens, but be brave, they are weaker than a blue and black speckled stallion and softer than the unripe pine seedling. I have never felt a bigger terror. A scream would help but they then tell me it’s fine to go back to sleep. Freshly washed and dried linen drapes over and I hear the world is quite so I oblige. But isn’t the blindness of the night a sheer horror, I protest but none is there to reply. Where have I left my broken things? Whence I woke, the puddle was of my own blood. Worse, I was with my feet rooted over smelted cobbles. Three girls with matted ponytail and a valour passed me as if it was nothing. All sway and speaking of language I do not understand. Everyone around me looked like they were a family but I, languid and salient, letting the crimson line being dragged along my left inner thigh. I hurriedly look back in search for a left hand, blue and black with chipped crust of a weathered paint job but none were as pale. And all would murmur, I appointed watchmen so you to not fall dizzy, listen to the sound and know the candle still burns.
30/05/2026