An empty husk of a woman cradles her legs amidst bundled bed sheets, soaked in self-loathing. She will find no comfort in herself, alone in this dark room. No soothing words or warm hugs to nurse her wounded pride. She is sick of the people, all of them, their vanity, their noise. Sick of this act. Sick of this life.
Her spine juts out from her curved back, her weary skin melting from her bones as time, like a fire, consumes it. Eyes glazed over, eyelids drooping, unblinking. Is she human, she wonders, or something less than that? Is this normal?
The words of a monster, a murderer, ring in her ears, slice through her like knives, finding old wounds long forgotten. Scar tissue buried beneath decades of pain and anguish. She fixates on the wall opposite, where the last watered-down slivers of daylight have slipped through a gap in the heavy curtains. What comes next? What does she want?
At the edge of her consciousness floats an idea, unformed, uncapturable. The dream of another life. The taste of happiness. Every time she reaches for it, it dissipates like smoke. There’s something more she needs to do. But what? Helplessness blankets her like a heavy duvet, smothering, suffocating, rendering her incapable of movement. Paralysed in her own mind.
Images flicker in her mind’s eye, like a reel of old, grainy film. A baby in the arms of a beautiful woman, both of them bathed in golden light. Long, blonde hair, fresh face, a loving smile but such sad, green eyes. The light fades and shimmers, grows darker, orange like fire. And now the baby is a little girl, maybe eight years old, standing in a doorway, tears in her eyes. A man stands before her, his back turned, naked, ruddy skin covered with thick, black hair, muscles tensed. He raises his right arm, fist clenched, and the little girl screams. And suddenly Lydia is inside her body, screaming too, as the fist disappears with a sickening thump like a joint of meat hitting the floor. She sees her mother through her father’s legs, cowering in a heap on the floor, hiding her broken face. The memory hurt like a symphony of nightmares; her mother was too trusting, timid and willing to be blind to her father’s faults. That fact had always stained itself onto Lydia’s perception of how a woman should not be, even though she deeply loved her mother, her weaknesses included.
The light pulses and fades again, almost to black. The little girl is a teenager, sixteen maybe, recognisably Lydia now. Kneeling on wet grass at the foot of a grave topped with a small bouquet of white lilies. A small, black granite headstone reads, “Rebecca Tune, 1960–1996. Beloved mother. Rest in peace.”
In a blaze of hot, red light the scene changes again. An empty whisky bottle crashes into a wall, narrowly missing teenage Lydia’s head. She flinches and then glares. Daggers in her eyes, at the man who threw it. Her father yells something in her direction, foaming spittle spraying through the air, but in this dream state she cannot hear it. She sprints upstairs to her room, rips open a battered old wardrobe, and begins throwing clothes into a sports bag.
She crosses to the nightstand, where a ruby ring lies next to a photograph of her mother. Her mother’s ring. Amidst the muted tones of this memory, it shines as bright as a red-hot star. Lydia picks it up tenderly and slips it on her finger for the first time. It is a perfect fit. She shivers as a warm sensation flows from her hand right through her body. She has never felt stronger or more in tune with the world around her. This is her touchstone, the moment she will always return to in times of doubt and difficulty. The moment she shed the part of herself that no longer felt right. Priest, her father’s name. Priest, the mark of the monster. She renounced it the day her mother passed. She didn’t want it. It was just the two of them now, bound by spirit, by blood, her own flesh tethered to the ethereal plane by this dark gem. The timid girl, Lydia Priest, was no more. Lydia Tune had arrived.
The image flickers and dies, overwhelmed by Lydia’s waking consciousness. The voices in her head keep multiplying, evil words both real and imagined, conjured and remembered, calling to her in synchrony like a choir. Their voices growing, swelling, deafening, drowning.
With great effort, she raises her hand before her face and gazes through acidic tears at the ruby ring upon it. The crystallised essence of a mother’s love, the only thing she has left to remember her by. Even in darkness it glows, as if the gem contains a life of its own. She is hypnotised, like the victim of a scarlet-eyed snake. To her, it contains the seed of her creation, a mirror of her beginning. The essence of herself. Her family. Her blood. The only voice that she wants or needs to hear: her mother’s. She strokes it tenderly with the side of her thumb as if it were the cheek of a lover.
Keep going, her mother whispers. We’re almost there. We’ve come too far to give up now. Lydia nods, slowly, sombrely, a single tear forming in the corner of her eye. Never let them see your pain, chides the voice. She wipes the tear away and swallows her sadness just as she has a thousand times before. You are ready.
“Yes,” she whispers as the last of the light is swallowed by the jewel’s black heart. “I am ready.”