[ONC Round 1 Ambassador's Pick 🍷]
Rose Veretta is the heartbeat of the nation. Her smiles on magazine covers are worth a million dollars and to just get one of her clicks was to die for. People loved her and she loved her audience. At least that's...
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//Mentions of Suicide//
For Rose, everything had always been like a diorama since she was little. She would stand by the glass screen, staring at things that unfolded before her. An observer in her own life, watching the wheels of time move, enhancing things, destroying things, making things and breaking things. But even though the scenario before her changed, she didn't. Because all the changes only took place behind the glass screen.
The perfect little suburb changed into a big flashy city just like the red curtains of a theater morphed into a 3D screen. Her torn rag-like clothes changed into sweaty unwashed theater costumes and ultimately into million-dollar dresses woven in the finest silk by the most expensive pair of hands.
This diorama of hers was perfect. So much that she learned that the only emotion worthy of it was a smile. No other emotion would be suitable for the blessing that was bestowed upon her. It didn't matter if she was always standing in front of the glass, looking inside.
She was raised in a children's home. The walls in the desolate place were always painted a dull gray, making the inhabitant's mood even duller. That was probably why so many of her friends escaped those dull rooms, leaving her behind.
When she was five years old she had a big sis. They weren't related by blood of course. The big sis would often care for her, comb her hair, save her seat during meal time and even tell her stories at night. But one night, her big sis slept without telling her the story. Rose slept peacefully that night.
But when the sun rose the next morning she opened her large midnight eyes, faced with the body of her beloved sis hanging from a rope attached to the ceiling. She had felt very confused, tilting her head and continuously pacing around her big sis. She would call out for her(the only thing she could speak at the time) and try to reach her feet by jumping as high as she could but the girl wouldn't even blink her eyes open.
Finally, she had given up and gotten mad, puffed her cheeks, and went to call the head mother. She had clutched the skirt of the old lady in her tiny fist and dragged her to the shared room. The memory was burned in the back of her mind so vividly that she couldn't believe it herself even after twenty-six years. The head mother had screamed loudly, leaving Rose a little bit startled, and then immediately covered little Rose's eyes and carried her out of the ominous room. The days following that had been weird. She couldn't understand why the big sis didn't hang out with her anymore.
But she grew up in the same room for fifteen more years and the walls whispered to her the secrets that the big sis had hidden in them.
Robin was the exact opposite. She had realized long ago that, unlike Rose, the world wasn't her diorama. She was the diorama in the world. There were glass walls around her that were impossible to break. She was the perfection in this corrupt and ruptured world. The entire world beyond her see-through walls was gray and she was red. It was her duty to color her world.
When Rose would listen to stories at night, Robin would sneakily put an ear against her walls too.
Big sis confused her very much but Rose seemed to like her. The stories she told her would always start with fairies and princes but they would always end with demons and witches; Bloodlust and depression. Rose had never told her not to tell her these stories. She was a weird kid, why would she want to hear these things? Weren't they sad and scary? They scared Robin very much. She wanted big sis to just shut up.
Rose never spoke a single word, all she spoke was the word sis that big sis taught her. Robin disliked how stupid Rose was. But what she hated more than her stories was silence. The sound of big sis's voice would soon lull her to a dreamless sleep. But she would be woken awake by Rose's whimpers at night. She would be crying in her sleep, probably dreaming of the creepy stories that big sis told her.
Rose made Robin angry because she liked big sis too much for her own good. The older lady would sneak in chocolates for Rose and feed them to her. Rose didn't realize at all when big sis would creep in her hand below her skirt or when she would pretend to kiss her cheek and 'miss' by accident, landing on her lips. Robin felt disgusted and wanted to take Rose to a bath and scrub her to the bone.
When the girl died, more like, killed herself. Robin felt nothing. Rose was looking up at her in confusion, her kid brain wouldn't comprehend what had happened or maybe she just didn't want to accept it. But Robin knew precisely what had happened. And for the first time, in the gray world beyond the glass, she had seen color. She struggled hard to maintain that color even now, twenty-six years later.
Except now, the diorama of her person could also hear screams of agony and see expressions on the faceless people. It was like she was a doll inside a box who had been given life to. But people dying wasn't pleasing. It became pleasing when those died who had wronged her Rose. Those pests deserved worse than death and Robin was showing mercy on them by bestowing them with such grace.
