Cora S. - D6

The white lights were bright, but they were not heaven. There is no salvation for me. The Peacekeeper shoved her harshly through the front doors of the old, withered hospital, her bones crying against the tile as she collapsed to her knees, again. She was all too familiar with his brutal hand; he struck against her disobedience in all the right places, where only the clients would see and choose not to care, as long as my clothes were gone. She had cowered time and time again, pleading him to break her shackles and free her from Hell's birdcage, but no such miracle could happen without violence. I told him no, no more. I've had enough of the nights with strange men and their filthy beds. He had smacked her across her pale cheeks, demanding more and more and more. Bravely, she said no again, and he kicked me till my ribs turned purple. She would never be pretty with bruises like this. Never. "You'll never be beautiful without this job," He would always say. He's right.

She didn't look back to witness his triumphant smirk. "Have a good life, whore." His voice was a blanket of permafrost and she shivered beneath its wrath, the lights still blaring bright as a white sun. She wondered if she would ever see the darkness again. Maybe the darkness will leave as he shuts the door behind him. His shadow vanished as the door slammed shut, trapping her within this new, foreign prison with white walls and eerie silence. A woman in scrubs appeared, then, flinching at the sight of her disheveled form crumpled on the floor.

That was when the questioning started. An interview, they called it, as they admitted her into their "home."

"What is your name, young lady?"

She liked that. The dirty men never acknowledged her as a lady, just property. "Cora Scarrow."

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Where are your parents?"

"Gone."

"Do you know where?

"No. If I did...I'd be there, instead of here."

"How long have they been 'gone'?"

"Awhile."

"Can you be more specific?"

"I..I don't remember. A few years ago?"

"Where did you live after that?"

"With friends."

"What kind of friends?"

"A Peacekeeper's friends."

"Can you tell me more about h -"

"No! I don't want to talk about him. Please..."

"Alright, we won't."

The interview seemed to stretch time and space itself, leaving her weary by the time the physical testing commenced. In private offices she was weighed, measured, examined in the nude from head to foot and tested for vision, hearing, and blood defects. She was poked and prodded until she couldn't bring herself to flinch at their touch. She knew every reason why the Peacekeeper had dragged her to this place, but the doctors seemed puzzled by this decision. They had yet to understand what who they were dealing with, even after the personality evaluation. She knew they were trying to crack her open like an egg, to spill all of her juicy secrets and read them until they found her ticks and weaknesses. But she was not an open book. Despite their odd hospitality she did not trust them, she didn't trust anybody. Not her guardian, not those men, not the nurses, not even herself. Trust was not worth the faith or the risk. People only hurt you in the end, no matter what. It was a life lesson she learned long ago, when her parents vanished without warning. She suspected it wasn't an accident.

"She's totally clean, Doc. She's not sick, not even mentally. She seems perfectly fine. Maybe a little antisocial and scared, but who knows what she's been through with those bruises? She definitely checks out, though. I mean, she's not normal, but she's not like the others either. She's nice and calm, just a little shaken."

Cora could hear them discussing her evaluation in the other room. They were wrong. She was a mental case, they just hadn't seen the ugly sides of her yet. Maybe they won't have to. If she could avoid her deepest fears, anything was possible. She just had to be careful, take precaution, check every room she walked into and hide in the shadows to avoid looking at her --

"Are you ready to see your room, Cora?"

The nurse smiled at her, clipboard clutched to her chest. So, they had decided to keep her here after all. It's shelter, that's all that matters. She nodded and tailed the nurse down the empty corridors that smelled of sterile wrappings and hospital gowns. She could've sworn she heard the faint echo of a scream come from somewhere, but she ignored it and approached the door to her new room with high hopes. "Here you are," the door creaked open to reveal a space rather small and undecorated, with no windows or skylights or anything connected to the outside world. It was a prison with a mattress and white bedspread waiting for her to crawl into like an insect into a spider's nest. She wasn't sure what to think of the bareness, only that it meant shelter and perhaps a shred of comfort after her miserable ordeals. The nurse ushered her inside, seemingly eager to unveil the secret delights of this "special" room, and pulled her along to give her the grand tour. That's when she saw her.

Mounted on the wall with a shimmering golden border carved of the cheapest metal was the door to her nightmare world: a mirror. A simple mirror, just a few inches taller than her at an unimpressive 5'5" with cracks in the corners and rust withering the borders. Pure, unadulterated instinct prompted her to stop and gaze into her replica, the reflection that always stared back until the inevitable happened. What she saw was a pretty girl; chestnut brown hair, dark eyes, creamy skin, a curvaceous figure. She noticed even the smallest details, like the thin hairs of her eyebrows and the narrow shaping of her chin. The men had always told her that she was pretty, before they ravished me like savage animals. The Peacekeeper had always warned her that her beauty would only last as long as her profession, that her lights would burn out the instant she betrayed him. Did she regret it? No, she never would, she was tired. But had her beauty burned out like a shorted light bulb? Only they can tell me. Everything else lied to her. Her eyes, the mirrors, they all told a different story. She was always beautiful at first, but it never lasted. Nothing was ever eternal

Her nose was the first thing she noticed. It was enlarged, reddened, and swollen, and the longer she stared the larger it seemed to become. A narrow crack formed in the middle, and she gasped. Smaller fissures sprouted from the first, crawling and crawling until her hands trembled in fear and the sides of her nose chipped. Then, in one chunk, it broke off, and she screamed.

"Cora, what's wrong?"

Webs dyed with black ink crawled across the sides of her temples, reaching for her eyes like microscopic tendrils until they seeped beneath her eyelids and invaded her scleras. The black ink pooled until her pupils blended and her irises lost their colors to the darkness, shimmering maliciously as the skin around her eyes chipped and peeled to reveal the reds of vessels and whites of bone. She screamed and screamed and covered the exposed cartilage of her nose with her hands, soles glued to the floor despite her heart's will to look away. The ink dripped from her eyes like black tears painting cracked cheeks and the streams did not stop. Her eyes melted, and strips of her dark hair began to fall out until the once beautiful woman that had stood before her was no longer recognizable. A hideous monster. As her skin began to liquefy she barreled past the nurse, who tried to desperately to soothe her, and tore the mirror away from the wall.

"IT'S NOT ME!" She hurled the ancient thing across the room and watched its face shatter into fragments that taunted her with flashes of her own melted skin. She backed herself into the nearest corner and buried her face in her hands, desperately feeling for soft skin and hair to make sure she was still whole. She's supposed to be me, but she isn't beautiful, it can't be right. A team of nurses barged into the room and surrounded her with syringes in hand. She tried to bolt, but they restrained her by her arms, which were still solid, not melting and stuck the needle into her veins, injecting her with the substance that would ease her anxiety with a dose of weariness. She stared pleadingly at the panicked nurse as her knees gave out. "It's not me, right? You saw her, is it me?" A black haze surrounded her and her vision tunneled. The nurses hoisted her up as she teetered on the edge of consciousness. "Please..." But the nurse didn't answer her. They never did.

"Body dysmorphic disorder, that is the only way to explain it, sir."

"No, this is the worst case I've ever seen. It's not just that. She's insane. She doesn't just imagine that she has deformities, she actually sees them. She's hallucinating."

"How can you be sure?"

"Were you listening to a word she said? She said she saw her eyes melt. How else could you explain that?"

"Do you think the anxiety is amplifying it?"

"No doubt, but we'll have to perform more tests. Conduct more studies. We have a lot of work to do if we want to understand this one."

"So, she does belong here after all."

"Oh, yes, she does. She is no different than the others."

The doctors walked in and found Cora conscious with her knees pulled up to her chest. She stared meekly at them until they approached her on both sides and smiled.

"Welcome Home, Cora."