As Maria’s Fangs Descend Towards Her Throat, Everything Seems To Slow.

As Maria’s fangs descend towards her throat, everything seems to slow.

She had known about what was meant to occur before you died. Things were meant to slow like this, were they not? Her life was meant to flash before her eyes, and then she would go wherever there was after death.

The fangs sink into her, and her throat is fully pulled from her neck.

Her head goes limp, turning sideways onto the table.

In the corner of her vision, she sees a silhouette.

It looks rather like herself, if her form were that of a blank and formless hole in the fabric of existence. It walks forwards on nonexistent legs, inducing movement in the folds of a nonexistent dress. It looks at her with eyes that do not exist. It opens an impossible mouth.

‘AGAIN.’

She lies on the table.

As Maria’s fangs descend towards her throat, everything seems to slow.

She had done this before, she knows.

The fangs sink into her.

‘AGAIN.’

She lies on the table.

As Maria’s fangs descend towards her throat, everything seems to slow.

She had done this before, she knows.

The fangs sink into her.

‘AGAIN.’

She lies on the table.

As Maria’s fangs descend towards her throat, everything seems to stop.

Maria is frozen, jaws open and unresponsive.

Her employer too is frozen.

The ‘furniture’ is unmoving.

‘NOW.’

Everything seems to speed up.

The furniture rots and decays. The table upon which she lies breaks and gives way. Dust collects on every part of the room. Maria and her employer go hollow and desiccated, gaunt skin stretching over bone, before they disintegrate and join the debris on the floor.

Everything seems to return to normal.

She somehow intuits that she has been in that room for several months.

She picks herself off of the floor and returns upstairs. The house is in such a state, but whatever this is will surely help her to maintain it.

And when that is done she can reach out, and try to find out more about this world she was utterly oblivious to.

She sees the silhouette again.

She nods her head at it, and before it winks out of her vision and returns to within her, she swears she sees it curtsy in response.