Secrets Never Known

AnnaBelle heard the front door open, but didn't move. She hadn't moved in three days. Somehow the facts that she was neither hungry nor had she needed to use the restroom didn't bother her. And why should they? That dream had perturbed her immensely.

She was dying? How could that be true? How could the planet be killing her? She could feel it, though. In the way her throat was sore and scratchy, in the way her body temperature was slowly, but surely dropping, in the way she was always tired and exhausted anymore. She could feel it in her bones.

Her bedroom door opened and she tried not to cring as her mothers snippy voice said, "AnnaBelle, get up. We need you to help put groceries away."

Anna turned her head to stare at her mom, but said nothing.

Her mother's eyes widened. "AnnaBelle, you look horrible! Are you feeling alright?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "Get out of my room," she muttered.

"Excuse me?"

"You've never cared before so why would you now?"

Her mother took a step forward. "What did you just say to me?"

Anna felt the blood boil in her veins. She sat up, though doing so made her feel incredibly nauseous, and glared daggers at her mother. "Dimitto!" she yelled.

Suddenly, her mother was thrown back. AnnaBelle heard her shriek, but paid it no mind. The bedroom door slammed shut.

Everything went black and AnnaBelle fell back onto her pillows, into unconciousness.

--

It was the sharp turn around the bend. It was the body hitting the pavement. The bullet smashing through flesh, the arrow hitting the target, the words clicking.

It was the sound of the drums.

AnnaBelle scrambled away because it wasn’t the soft tapping of flesh on metal, it wasn’t the impatient thump on fabric, or the thunderous mutters of numbers. It was the clear, close, personal bang, bang, bang, bang ringing in an ear that she never knew she possessed. The feverish, deathly, burning beat that wouldn’t stop. It was everywhere.

It was in her head.

AnnaBelle wanted to scream or rip out her hair. She wanted to claw at her skin, dig ditches into her very brain. But she could do nothing but sit there, the ground beneath her growing steadily colder. It was before her. A single moment where she knew she had time to talk where she knew the sun was rising and morning was coming for her just as surely as the Grim Reaper would one day make its way across a graveyard to have her head.

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

He was moving in a frenzy. The Madman had launched himself – pounced on the controls with the blankest look she had ever witnessed on his face. A look that was slowly slipping into something different; something panicked.

The ground felt like ice. AnnaBelle felt like everything was flickering. Were those footsteps on stairs?

The Madman slammed both hands angrily on buttons and controls that AnnaBelle could no longer see. She held the most helpless feeling in her chest and in her limbs. She had to say something, had to scream at him or she would go insane. She had to demand the drumming stopped.

Wasn’t that the distinct creak of her broken bedroom door?

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

The Madman seemed to reflect her own urges. One hand had left the control pad to desperately grip his short hair. His fingers pulled and ripped, trying to tug the sound from his mind, trying to silence it forever because he needed them to stop. Couldn’t they please stop?

Just this once? AnnaBelle’s own mind agreed and insisted.

Pounding, pounding, pounding.

There.

The sharp cry of children at play that was so out of place here.

“AnnaBelle.”

No. That wasn’t him. It wasn’t his voice. He never spoke to her and it had been that way for
year upon year, dream after dream.

Her Madman pulled the hand away from his head and put it back to the task of shakily manipulating the controls. His face tore in pain, his eyes swam with something new.

Her world shook. She could feel the hand on her shoulder, invading her one sacred place. Her Madman lashed out at a lever, missed, and slammed his fist against cold metal.

The drums wouldn’t stop, but AnnaBelle finally found a voice. Scratched but determined the words left her mouth, rising in volume until she was screaming for the banging to stop.

It seemed to be his breaking point too. He spun from the controls, both hands gripping his head, scratching, pulling, tearing.

Stop, stop, stop!

Even before she heard the ripping slide of metal rings on curtain rods and felt the sharp sting of dawn she could hear her Madman mingling his own desperate words with hers.

Won’t, won’t, won’t!