Well, it kinda creeped me out.. I finished it exactly on October 31st, which was my goal and it turned out to be about 13 pages. Creepy... Love it or hate it, here's the beginning. I'll post more as time goes by.
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The shadows were pronounced, illuminated, by the darkness.
As soon as the lights fell into cold slumber and their heat faded down so they were nothing more than wintry glass, Persephone felt very afraid. Terrified.
It wasn't so much the dark that scared her. She had grown from that phase long ago.
No, it was more of the unknown, lurking where her eyes could not follow.
It was closing her eyes, laying her head back on the pillow, and being surrounded by blankets, that scared her.
As if blankets would really ward anything off, anything in the world.
They would only pin her down and hold her in place while things attacked her, eating her flesh, scratching at her face, sucking up her blood.
She was safe nowhere.
Nobody knew that she had these thoughts. Nobody knew that she dreaded going to bed, shutting off her light. Her parents didn't suspect anything. Persephone had always been called a good actress.
She wanted them to know, though. She wanted them to help her, save her from the things that lurked and crawled, unseen and felt in every bone and nerve in Persephone's body. Every sound made her twitch from her nightly position in her big leather armchair.
This is where she sat, night after night, fighting sleep, straining her eyes until they felt dry and exhausted. She refused to sleep and her body eventually pulled her under into unconsciousness for a few hours or so before she jerked herself back, alerted by a squeak in the walls of a squirrel or mouse or of the wind shifting the house.
Though no one knew of it, she had tried to research it online, in case it was a serious disease, maybe a disease of the mind.
From her research, Persephone had found nothing, except a few warnings on sleep deprivation, conditions such as insomnia, and even a type of phobia all for not being able to sleep or go to bed.
It hadn't always been this way.
Sometime - a long time ago perhaps, but a time nonetheless - she had been able to sleep, to fall with a sigh into her pillows and snuggle into the warmth of her sheets and feel comforted by the squeaking of her bed springs.
She had smiled sleepily up at her parents as they each kissed her on the forehead and shut off the light and then she had let her mind drift off and had closed her eyes, and slept peacefully until an alarm rang into her dreams and she was awoken to a new day, the sun only just beginning to peer over the ground.
But now, it was different and had been so for a while.
Persephone felt alone, so alone.
Alone in a nightly world of dozing humans.
Alone with her thoughts.
Nighttime became the only time where she was truly alive, truly awake.
During the day, she just felt... normal. She was never really tired, at least not that she noticed. Her body suffered the consequences severely. She began to get too thin, to grow dark bags under her eyes, and to pass out during the night. Sometimes she felt faint during the day and other times she wouldn't be able to hold any food in her stomach.
It was a true curse.
Still, her parents didn't notice anything was wrong.
When she started wearing black, they didn't question it, waving it off as a teenage phase.
Wearing black made her feel closer to her precious, frightening night.
Closer to her terror.
There was even a gentler part of her that reasoned if she tried to make herself familiar, to make herself love her terror, that it might disappear.
Instead, it only grew on her until it was some sort of sick, evil feeling that began to transform her into something else.
Nobody seemed to care as her closet changed. It was nothing unusual, especially for a teenager.
Her black clothing stock got larger, with all sorts of variety: black pants made of silky material or black skirts. Black jackets ranging from wool to jean. Black shirts, long sleeve and short, V-neck and snug, baggy and torn. Black socks that clung around her ankles or snaked past her knees. Black gloves that covered her pale hands from the world, except for her fingers which stuck out of the chopped ends like nothing more than bones.
Then there was the white. White bows for her dark-raven hair. White ribbons that she tied up her legs or around her arms or wrists. Large white belts which squeezed around her tiny waist or that hung low over her hips. White stockings laced with black.
Her pale, moon-like skin added to the eerie contrast and her unnaturally dark hair swung around her neck.
Her hair was one of the disturbing things about her.
Just one of them.
It was raven-feather black, with the tints of dark blue and purple set off by the sun that a raven's feathers might have. Her hair like a raven - the bird of omen.
And her name. Granted, her parents were very into Greek mythology and Greek gods. Even their favorite meals originated from the Greeks.
But why would they name their daughter Persephone, after the Queen of the Underworld?
If they were ever questioned, their answer was quick, as if well-rehearsed.
Persephone was responsible for the changing of the seasons, which shaped our whole world when we depended on agriculture to keep us alive. Persephone was important, mystical.
What they didn't talk about was the darker side of Persephone.
But then, parents don't usually have to justify their reasons for naming their child what they did. They had liked the name, that was all.
So Persephone lived in her darker side, feeling very much like that Queen of the Underworld, stalking below Earth and living beside her King of the Dead, night itself.
The clothes didn't worry her parents, but the makeup did. In an attempt to hide the dark, unattractive and suspicious bags that seemed imprinted on her face under her piercing amber eyes, she wore dark eye shadow and thick mascara. Next came the lipstick, the dark red of blood, the only red on her body. Her cheeks were shallow and pale, just like the rest of her. No healthy pink in their color. There was nothing healthy-looking about her.
Her peers called her anorexic and her parents fed her more meals in the day, buying fatty, unhealthy foods to try to add weight under her skin instead of tender, undistinguished muscle and bone.
Nothing worked. Persephone ate, sometimes even eating more servings than her father. She just wanted her parents to be happy, to love her the way she was and not have to worry.
Her stomach never expanded, though. No matter how much food she ate, it stayed twig-thin. Unnatural. Her peers still called her anorexic. Her parents became concerned.
That's when they began to notice something wasn't right about their only child. Something was deeply wrong with her.
They began to silently analyze her, watch her every move. They stood outside the bathroom door when she entered to make sure she wasn't throwing up. They came in to check on her during the night and became disturbed to find her sleeping in her big armchair, facing the dark, glassy window, her dark reflection tinted back to them, but theirs invisible.
Persephone, of course, was never really asleep. Some nights, just to spare her dear, caring parents, she would steel herself and lie on her bed, so cold and terrible it was.
She began to wrap herself in her constricting blankets, though it made her breathing unnatural and fear crawl through her like thousands of bugs underneath her skin.
Her parents eventually began to calm themselves. She wasn't unhealthy. She ate a lot and didn't puke it up. She slept soundly at night. It must just be a growing stage. Aren't all teenage girls skinny?
As soon as Persephone was sure they had stopped coming in to check on her at night, she returned to her chair, which she moved close to the window so that she could gaze out into the darkness and make one with her fears.
When it began to get cold, Persephone wore black sweaters and scarves and two or three pairs of black wools socks, black flannel pajama bottoms, a black hat, and black gloves at night. Sometimes she would move her black leather armchair closer to the window so that she could press her forehead against the icy glass and gaze into the reflection of her own gold eyes or look out across the yard into the dark black of night.
The night was her home and her love.
Still, it was a lonely house and lonely relationship. An empty house and silent lover. She found it hard to pass the time just quietly gazing outside.
So she began talking to the dark blackness of night.
She told it everything.
She started from her birth, and told about her parents.
She started from her various home, and told random facts about her life.
She would laugh to herself at her funny stories and cry all alone at the sad.
She told everything and each night held a different story until she had told the night all about herself.
She told the night that she was lonely.
The moon held no comfort or companionship to her. It contrasted eerily with the night sky but she didn't like the way that it tried to shine some of her beloved dark away into corners. As if it threatened her darkness to move away and make room.
She told the night everything.
And then she asked the night about itself.
And it told her, in its own way.
It sent her someone to tell her. Something, to be more exact.
Something to communicate in its own secret ways with her.
And she understood every single word.
What she learned... terrified her.
