𝖘𝖕𝖆𝖈𝖊 𝖌𝖔𝖆𝖙𝖘 𝖈𝖔𝖆𝖘𝖙 2

where has the night gone? it feels as if it's only been a second. an eyeblink.

surely they've only just arrived, these strangers that szae has rounded up like cattle and herded into this posh club. she can still see the look on the host's face when she'd marched in with a train of beautiful women in tow. he'd slipped her enough coin to catch the first ship off this dreadful island, and she'd tucked it into her corset, promising she'd save it for just that. that she'd only share one drink with these people. she'd brought them here, after all. it would only be decent to stand with them in a row, shot glasses in hand, to toast to a young night and tip back her drink and

now her hair hangs limp from its pinnings. her corset has meandered down her sweat-slick chest. the coins are long gone, she definitely drank them all. but that's just fine. they've bought her passage into the arms of an Angel.

a real one. she has wings. she has soft, dark hair. she does not know where to step or how to swing her hips. szae commands with her hands, placing them on her waist, holding them in the air. she tells the Angel to look at her. she finds that it is always golden hour in her Angel's eyes.

it is not difficult to teach a stranger how to hold you, but szae has always found it difficult to want to be held. (she would rather stream, like smoke, she would rather drift through the fingers of a grasping hand.) she likes the way her Angel holds her. she rocks szae in a way that she hopes will never end.

it ends in an instant. the world outside is searing, merciless, unkindly bright. szae is the caterpillar who has left her cocoon too soon. she tips back her drink and

her angel is even prettier outside her dress. divinity unconstrained. a sacrament of flesh, the liberation of something pure. she would feel guilty for her transgressions against this body, for her unwavering impulse to defile everything beautiful, if she were not so drunk. but anyway, she tips back her drink and

bodies rain down beside her as if they've been brought in with a raging tempest. they swell at her feet like rainwater. she gets the impression that she will drown in skin. her eyes widen in the humidity, the baking heat against her. she really prefers to be smoke.

she blinks and they're in a fancy hotel bed, big marionettes with their strings snipped and their joints dangling. they fold over her pillows and curl off the mattress.

szae wonders in a panic what planet she is on.

who is hunting them.

how many still remain?

is this how her parents looked, powered down and balled like little bugs? their dead faces used to haunt her dreams, but this isn't so bad. they almost look like they're still alive, suspended in dreaming repose.

of course they are alive. she clutches a hand to her chest, her heart pounding like a caged animal fighting for freedom. they look terrible, their eyes are sunken, their skin pallid and gray, but one moans when she moves too abruptly off her bed. she barely recognizes some of them, and one not at all. they're all practically strangers.

she waits, and the tide surely comes in again. the darkness whispers to her in the voices of everyone she has disappointed before. it relishes in the sense of impending disapproval from the people that she is disappointing now. her mind is a marquee, spinning, spinning, spinning, ticking off one transgression after another. she crawls to the washing room, dragging herself groaning over the stained tile floor, and leans her head into the bathtub and waits for the world to stop spinning or for this misery to fucking kill her already.

instead, it goes brilliant. her Angel fills her mind, chases away the shadows. her kindness comes to mind, how jealous she is for it now. how good it would be to have a sweet voice in her ear to forgive her tonight. to curl up in arms that know how to hold her and cry this pain away, cry away the impulse to hurt herself again. her Angel would know how to keep her from falling apart.

or she'd take one look at the state of szae and this well-defiled hotel room and take a sensible hike straight out the door. szae rifles through the grimey mélange beside her: someone else's bra, pants that she wore or borrowed someone missing their own for some reason, little vials that bring back sensations that make her mouth itch. beneath it all is just what she knows she's stashed away. she always leaves a little for herself, just in case. she knows this cycle of pain too well.