Summary: I try to open the door, to see if anything exists out of this tiny cubicle-world, but my hand passes through the wood. The skin is grey and dusty and I can see through it. I can see through my hand. I must be dreaming.
Moaning Myrtle comes to terms with her death.
Categories: Dark/Angsty Fics Characters: None
Warnings: Character Death
Challenges: Series: None
Chapters: 1
Completed: Yes
Word count: 1004
Read: 916
Published: 12/28/12
Updated: 01/01/13
1. Chapter 1 by goldensnidget92
Chapter 1 by goldensnidget92
Panic.
Where am I?
Who am I?
It’s so black. Black is suffocating. Black is nothing.
Black is death.
Am I dead? I feel nothing. I feel black. Am I dead?
Sound. It bursts through the blackness into my empty head. A steady drip, drip, drip.
If I can hear, then I must have ears. If I have ears, then I must have eyes. I peel them open as though for the first time, and my world of darkness is crushed by the light.
I am still here. In the bathroom cubicle - the same one I was in before. Before what? I am not sure. The memory feels isolated, like an image from a dream, or a person I used to know many years ago. It is not me.
I try to open the door, to see if anything exists out of this tiny cubicle-world, but my hand passes through the wood. The skin is grey and dusty and I can see through it. I can see through my hand. I must be dreaming.
In this dream state I pass through the whole door and feel nothing; I feel black.
Drip, drip, drip. The sound continues, consuming my mind like the final flourishes of some great symphony. What is it? I need to find out. I need to keep away the black.
I walk - although in this dream state my feet do not touch the floor - through this strange familiar room. I know it, but only from before. It is the bathroom I came in to cry. Why did I cry? I can hardly remember. I don’t want to remember. I want to find the music. My eyes move around the room, and I feel like they are clearing, as if they had been covered by gossamer which is beginning to disintegrate now they are being used. Perhaps it is another dream effect.
Then I see - water is tumbling out of the taps and into overflowing sinks. It spills over and splashes onto the floor, creating never-ending waterfalls that spool into puddles on the cream tiles. Or is it tears? Are the sinks crying? I float towards them, entranced by the soft chuckle and slap as the water glides through the air and hits the floor, spreading outward. Soon the entire bathroom is reflected in itself, the sloping ceilings now going on forever.
I want to laugh, and try to draw in breath, but find I cannot. I begin to panic, wondering whether I am suffocating, and the black begins to creep in on me, threatening me with its hopeless emptiness.
The blackness will kill me; this I know.
Suddenly I hear another sound: not the musical delicacy of the water, but the teasing, thistly tones of someone I remember. It shatters the water’s melody, and I am scared. I try to dart out of the way, to hide, but am too slow.
–Ooh, Lady Ravenclaw, you’d better not get caught here; people will think you’re guilty!â€
I look around - am I not alone? Is the ghost of Ravenclaw here as well? But there is no one else except me and the source of the voice. I turn and catch his eye, and the wicked smile on his face slackens into a ball of shock that bounces around in my empty, black brain. Why is he staring at me like that? This is only a dream.
Isn’t it?
I know this creature, bobbing up and down in the air before me. They call him Peeves, and I used to be scared of him. I don’t know if I am now. I don’t know much at all. I have toppled into a puzzle-land where nothing is quite right and I’m starting to think I should get back.
Peeves speaks again.
–You were a student, weren’t you?â€
I don’t answer. What does he mean, –were�
–Why are you here; what happened?â€
His concerned tone assures me that I am in puzzle-land. The Peeves I remember from before has never spoken like this. I want to wake up.
–How did you die?†he asks me.
–I’m not dead,†I whisper.
His eyes become orbs of pity, and I want to shake him, to do something violent to get me out of this dream.
–You are,†he says.
–STOP, YOU’RE LYING!†I shout, feeling like crying, but finding that no tears will come. The panic reaches up from my stomach into my chest and squeezes my heart until I feel it pop and vanish. Then the emptiness begins to grow outwards from my core.
I can see the blackness lapping at the corners of my vision like a tide, and know that this must be it: I am finally waking up. I wait for it to consume me, but nothing happens. The room doesn’t fade and Peeves is still there, staring at me.
Another noise bubbles up over the water; one I do know well. The Fat Friar, my house’s ghost, has come to investigate the noise. He can tell Peeves to leave me alone. I glide over to him in my dream-like, weightless body. His face is painted with horror and pain.
–My dear,†he moans. –What happened?â€
–Nothing!†I say. –I’m dreaming.â€
–Oh, Myrtle.†He offers me a hand, but of course I cannot take it. I never could. He’s a ghost, and you can’t touch ghosts. That’s why they can walk through walls and their feet don’t touch the-
The beginnings of a scream are flashing like fireworks in my lungs and graze my throat as they rip their way up my body. I hear the sound of the water momentarily, before it is silenced forever by the knowledge I now bear. I can only hear the terrible shriek of death, and it will haunt me forever. The haunter becomes the haunted in an eternal journey through the black.
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