Papers stolen from the head nurse's desk and chalks from the recreation hall littered the floor of the little cupboard of a room where Matilda Sweeney crawled and rocked by turns. The symbols. The symbols were there if only she could just get it right. Tearing at her hair and ticking anxiously, the woman in a thin white gown lightly chewed on her tongue in concentration. Missing something. Missing it. What? She paused, body stationary as she cocked her head and strained her ears for something. Only the shuffle of slippered feet and the squeak of rubber-soled shoes reached her in the little locked room. She sat for a while, how long she couldn't have said, gazing out into the light streaming between the bars of her window. She loved the window. Hated it when they put her into the dark. She curled further into herself and rocked, looking around the room suspiciously. Crumpled pages covered in colours and symbols and drawings lined the ceiling and most of the walls, pasted to the walls with stale porridge. The staff hated it, but they didn't understand it. They didn't see. And today, neither could Matilda.
Flexing her jaw and bobbing her rib cage nervously, she slammed her hand down on a spider that crawled across one of her unmarked pages. Licking her palm she blinked. Not it. Not it. Not it. Shivering, she croaked out her breath again and tried to arrange her thoughts. They drifted from her like strands of cobwebs so old they wouldn't stick. Paste them down, paste them. She tried to, mentally locking them in place, but it was so difficult to catch them. Scratching her scalp and shaking out her hair, she blew out a breath she had been holding again and lurched towards the window, slapping a hand against the wall and scraping it against the whitewash so that the spider she had captured slicked across it in a streak. She bent near and sniffed delicately before darting the tip of her tongue into the remnants. This one. Shrugging her shoulders repeatedly, she shuffled around the floor before bending to collect one of the papers covered in symbols and lines that despite appearing as scribbled ravings to some were filled with the arcane for her. "Mm. Mm." She closed one eye and opened it twice. "C-coffee, M-Matilda, extra s-strength. C-coffee." The memory overlayed the reality of the moment and, coupled with the strain to collect her thoughts made her moan loudly and hunch as she swayed on her feet. No. No, they can't see it. Must finish it. Must. Bravely rallying, she shuffled back to the window and pressed the page to the wall, rubbing the remnants of the black spider with the tell-tale red hourglass on its body into the fibers of the paper. When she removed it a faint blur streaked across the page with a few delicately detailed legs retaining their shape. Beautiful. She rocked and gave a panted "Hm. Hm. Ha.". Chortling to herself, she shook her hair back and crooked the wrist of the hand not holding the page, hand rapping the air. "Mm. Mm. He comes. He comes." She bobbed like a bird, tapping her tongue to her top teeth and blowing out barely audible trilled air. "Ahm, ahm. Ahm, ahm." She dropped to her knees in the center of the room, arranging a ring of pages and studying the room to verify that the complicated web of symbols, the geometry of it, was arranged all as it must be. Must hold the thoughts. Must. "Ahhhhm, ahhhm, ahhhm," she sang tremulously, then continued in broken whispers. Though she was alone and her words were feeble, it was almost as if other whispers rose to join her own from the corners of the room:
"Lines of crumpled spells arranged
In ley lines of sacred geometry:
Detritus of Arachne's fanged
Biting, frightening progeny.
Seethe and burn the pigment veins
That creep across this hallowed floor.
With venom bubble,
Strengthen us double.
We greet you at the door."
As she spoke, the spidery remains did seethe and burn like wood etching until it ignited the drawings and symbols that interlaced and ran around every surface of the room. She could hardly tell if the growing whispers were amplifications of her own mind, her own thoughts... or the others that told her things that only the dreamers, the dead, and the mad among mortals ought know. A misty grey smoke hung low in the room and the whites of Matilda's eyes shone as laughter filled the room. Three firm raps resounded at the door, her right wrist ticking so that her hand rapped against the air in perfect time with the heavy sounds. Inhaling deeply, the misty smoke roiling around her slithered through her nostrils until the room was once more just a little cupboard for locking away the peculiar. Her eyes closed and reopened, a hiccoughing fit of giggles bubbling up past Matilda's lips. She'd done it. She'd remembered. It was done. Done. Done. Done. Her merry, mad mind chanted. She had not, through all the addling drugs and days that rolled into night back into days forgotten her purpose. As she sat laughing to herself the heavy door of her cupboard flung open and, like a porcelain cup she was lifted. Unlike porcelain however, she was jostled and dragged, feet piling papers along with her as she wailed pitifully and struggled. It was no use, however. All that they saw was a manky little room with a single, tiny high window and a lunatic seated inside muttering and twitching to herself. Somehow her nimble little thieving fingers had found their way to something incendiary beyond her usual filched drawing materials. Little did they know. They'd done with her scraps of food on the walls and strange wildness. The burned papers about her room were too far beyond the pale. Pale, pale beyond! Smoke, one nurse had said; though no one else could have confirmed it other than to agree they could breathe the lingering scent. Who was to protest? As her feet raked over the frame of the threshold of the door, her eyes went wide and she lolled her head, body dropping like a weight in the arms of the aides and nurses who carried her on her way. "Greetings! We g-g-greet you! W-we greet!" She shrieked euphorically, raucous laughter followed her, pealing down the corridors of the asylum. They threw her into a chair, strapping her down. Flexing and arching against her restraints, she screamed. It rolled from her throat and stomach as she flailed angrily. Wrath! Strength! Burn... Burn! Across the sharp pricks of rage simmered a persistent emotion, strange and familiar. She knew, of course, like most of her thoughts and emotions - or suspected, at least - that they weren't genuine. Not correct. That didn't stop the torrent of laughter from racking her body again so that she sagged against the chair, rage still in her eyes as those surrounding her felt the ridicule in the gales, recoiling from her. The doctor came, his long metal rods for her dragging across the little sterile tray that held them, scowling with his eyes though she could not see his mouth. Did he smile? Will he laugh, too? She wondered giddily to herself. As the doctor approached she shivered again as a draft moved through the operating theater. Like statues. All statues. Unreal half-humans standing around the edge as they watched the man with steel talons move towards her unimpeded. She felt the cold metal tip of the tool at the corner of her eye, like looking down the barrel of a gun, eyes wide as she remained very, very still with her mouth gaped in a vacant grin. A drip of water fell somewhere in the distance and echoed in the silence. The doctor drew a breath and leaned forward, raising his other hand. Two long, spindly legs covered in feathery filaments arced over Matilda's shoulders from the back of the chair and the doctor jerked back as they touched his sleeve, burning it away in moments. Shadow-y coal form laced with magmatic fragments of molten magic, the creatures rose, its rattling groan hissing by fangs dripping with venom. The heat seared away the bindings on Matilda and she inhaled sharply several times, shaking and rocking as the creature darted about the room, heedless of the cries and pleas of those half-human statues within it. Down the halls could only be heard the screams from where they had dragged her into the dark, and the uncontrollable laughter of Matilda Sweeney, The Mad Oracle who charmed the fiends on the other side of the mortal veil to lend their power to the peculiars who could see beyond the hazy curtain.
Bookmarks