Trinity

Chapter 1-Good-bye Tristan

The orange flames danced above the woods bark in the fire place and its heat caressed my skin. I stood in the middle of what seemed to be the living room—filled with an eeriness attached in its perimeters.

No windows, couches, TV, nor framed pictures. Just a wooden door at the far-left corner behind me and a large oval mirror mounted atop the fireplace, alongside veined cracks which ripped through the hardened walls.

For a moment I perceived I wasn’t alone. I knew without any trace of doubt that she was with me— (the mistress of all things vague to the mere understanding of mortal men).

It was this woman whose hooded, medieval, garnet looking cape swept across the linoleum floor as she strutted towards me, that made me believe I was both a curse and a promise.

Her red cloak covered her eyes, halting at the bridge of her nose while her cherry lips were visible. In her hands she held onto a red wolf’s pelt cloak, having its head look realistic than fake. Its eyes were hazel brown and it smelt of burnt fingernails and dog shit.

“Take it.” she said in an accent which seemed German. Her voice creeped above my skin as her whisper echoed in the living room.

“Take it.”

I was confused.

The brown brick walls around the house were thick enough to reflect the heat that almost seized my breath while I choked on the putrid air.

“This is your inheritance my child. It will protect you” she uttered convincingly.

My throat went sore as I swallowed hard on my saliva, feeling the lump slide through as though I forced a stone down my throat. My eyes squeezed tight in a sour expression and the acridity increased as she stepped down the few staircases leading to where I stood.

She halted in front of me, and my head turned slow, involuntarily, to the right. Her hands stretched forward with the pelt cloak, and my eyes opened to the sight of the orange flames burning furiously like the face masquerades who danced gloriously round the bonfire during the primordial carnival— just as mother described in one of her ancient stories.

Almost immediately— while I felt her close— I didn’t inhale the stench that nearly left me breathless. I faced forward, noticing that I held onto the cloak in my hands and the lady was gone.

I scanned through the wolf’s headdress, in hold of it by the head until the furry cape fell to the floor. It looked angry and outraged as I stared at its despaired face. Its eyes were gored and it seemed to have bled in tears. Yet, just before I wore it, I felt the soft palm of hands rest on the edge of my shoulders from behind. My soul— utterly petrified in shivers— could stir no courage. So I let the cloak slide through my hands until it met the floor, then a chill sweat sprouted along with goosebumps above my skin. My intestines twisted to a knot, as well as a wave of fear slashed through my spines. My feet ran cold and sweaty, alongside my lips which wrinkled due to lack of moisture. I could tell who it was from the smell that resurfaced— same burnt nails and dog shit.

I melted in the moment I turned to see her entire face for the first time, since the night of her gruesome appearance.

Her hair was red— running down her clavicle until it went past her chest. Her head— raised linearly atop the roofless house, stared into the night sky with no moon nor twinkling stars that never twinkled. I could tell her eyes were plain white as she blinked endlessly, and her body vibrated in a way that seemed as though she convulsed.

It was at this moment I realized two strange things. The first being there’s been a sliding window behind me all the while and she had no reflection. Secondly, the sky wasn’t entirely dark, but dusk.

The darkness resulted due to the hundreds of thousands of black Crows which flew above the roofless house, crying in a shrieking crescendo that almost perforated my ears.
A certain wind came through, sweeping off the dust from the floor, alongside the ash that settled in and out the fireplace. The flames were quenched and the yellow lightbulbs, which hung above the walls, exploded simultaneously. I inhaled, shrieking to myself while my heartbeat thud in release of a stinging cold.

Just then, the wooden door began to shake. It banged like someone knocked vigorously, though all the while I’d been here, no one ever visited. No one ever had the courage to visit such a crooked house that looked nearly collapsed to the ground and unbelievably airtight.

The wind swooshed through our hair and she kept on blinking— with her hands still placed atop my shoulders as the door kept banging harder than the first. I was paralyzed.

I felt my soul dissolve into nothingness as I kept looking at the wooden door. I should run through the door— I thought. It must be my only way out.

So I tried running with the aim of turning the door’s handle. But I couldn’t move. The more I tried moving a muscle, the more I felt glued like a statue. I was helpless and weak, just like the poor wolf I held onto.

She chanted in strange words I’d never heard before, and I feared in any moment, the door might shatter in half. Then, in less than a minute, the noise halted. A silence— thick enough to convince me that I was deaf— erupted, and her pale white eyes fell on mine.

“Schlafen” she whispered.

Then I gasped— few seconds before I screamed to myself in the silence, tugging on my curly brown hair until I felt as though I ripped it off its scalp. My head seemed to crush on its own and I could smell blood. My eyes shrunk and my body went uneasy, irritated by whatever thing that made me feel unease. I felt the rush of blood in my veins, which made my arms stiffen. My toes rubbed against themselves while my legs vibrated. Then my stomach went empty with hunger— not for any kind of food but one that made me want to eat my own flesh, having me clench hard on my teeth till my jaws pained.

In this moment, I felt a hand hold me down on the bed with a strong force.

“Take it easy baby, take it easy” I heard in a repeating tone sounding manlier than the lady’s. “Take it easy, just breathe, breathe in Trinity, breathe in!” he repeated for a while until my mind regained its once lost consciousness.

“Take it easy” he said, then my breath steadied. I sat upright, looking into father’s troubled gaze. “I’m here for you, alright! There’s no need to be terrified Tee! It’s just a bad dream.”

A bad dream that never seemed to leave after mother’s death on Aza’s hill.

“Don’t worry my queen” dad whispered, hugging me tight while he kissed my forehead. “Just a few hours more and we’ll be gone. A few hours more my love” I sighed with tears clouding my poor eyes.

I saw the yellow light radiate the whole room. The wall clock struck twelve and the shadows that lurked in the night felt daunting. Sometimes I wondered how my life would’ve been without dad. I always watched how he argued with mother saying Trinity was a more unique name while mother endlessly opposed the notion. But that’s who I was. Both Trinity and Zelda. And I was forever grateful for the opportunity to have names worth dragged on, though sometimes I thought mother’s cause of suicide was because of the silly argument she made with dad over things that never seemed relevant enough.

A week before mother’s death, she kept screaming during midnight and it scared me. I’d run to her room to find her wrapped up in the arms of father as I stared through the ajar door. Two months after her burial, I was left to wonder if mother’s nightmares transmitted to me in a way because it got out of hand.

Mother, nonetheless, was really wise and undoubtedly brilliant. She knew the right things to say and when to say it. She always spoke about how she delighted in watching me grow. Not until she made mention of something that left me in so much thought.

“There’s a darkness that comes with the dark-age Zelda” was what she said to me when I was five, covering my body with my blanky during night time. My bed was wide and long, and it still is. Yet the night was cold and peaceful.

“What age?” I asked.

“Seventeen” she answered, twisting my tiny curls. “It’s when you realize who you are Zelda. It’s when your heart struggles to find a purpose but you still remain clueless as to what your purpose is. But you don’t have to worry” she said. “You’re going to do just fine. Remember, many things will go wrong. And when it does, and you become the flesh eating beast that feeds on the flesh of wicked humans_” she tickled my rib cages which caused me to giggle. “I’ll be there to make sure you’re safe.”

Eleven years later, I kept wondering what was going to happen if I turned Seventeen. And now that she was gone, all hopes shattered regarding my hopeful expectations of having someone to look up to.

Mother was indeed my main source of inspiration, and her stories were definitely the scariest of all. But I enjoyed them nonetheless. The rise and fall of the werewolves in the hands of both gods and witches. Not until I began hearing about the alarming death cases in Tristan.

Once, I was shocked to see mother’s white shirt covered in blood around her torso. The door was slightly opened, as always, and I peeked in from the side, hoping they wouldn’t notice my presence. I feared she was hurt by the rather strange killer that killed mostly at the darkest nights— as explained by father. But I was grateful she wasn’t dead. Father drew patterns on her beautiful brown hair I always admired— which was mostly dark brown at the top and lighter at the bottom, whereas mine was all-round chocolate, long enough to reach my clavicles.

Father also had his fair share of disturbance from me, and he was always there, regardless. Each time he asked what I dreamt of that made me scream, I always told him the same answer that left him no choice but to hold me close in a warm embrace.

‘Mother’s suicide’

Yet it was all about this lady in a medieval garnet cloak that swept the floor seeming as though she was regal.

I could never forget our first encounter— after the news of mother’s death circled Tristan. She was much more terrifying than now. At first I thought she was mother, because they both had similar stature; slim, easy going and very complicated. But in response she said mother had found her place in the great beyond, and she (mother) came through her to speak with me.

The funny part was I believed very much that indeed her words were true. Until I realized how much I let stupidity take the lead.

She offered me a gem that day, stating that mother wanted me to have it, though I’d never seen mother wear it before, or maybe I hadn’t noticed. It was crystal white with an orange tint glistening from within.

“It’s a Hecatolite” she said as she handed it to me. “It’s very precious.” I gazed upon her moving lips and beautiful celestial nose.

“Take it, Trinity.” she commanded, and I did, looking at its beauty while it glowed in my dark brown eyes. But while I gazed upon it, I heard a sudden crackle which didn’t come from the cinders in the fireplace, neither did it come from anywhere I thought it would— for the room was as empty as the pages of my mind.

I inhaled the scent of burnt papers and my body felt warm. I looked up, facing the mirror above the fireplace, in sight of my body engulfed in fire— burning reddish flames which had a semblance to that of a molten lava— blaze in my eyes alongside the strands of my hair.

I screamed loudly while I threw the gem on the floor. Yet she smiled partly in her cherry glossed lips. Her cheeks creased up to the side of her nose as she vanished in a swirl of ash dust.

I jolted in sight of father, who held me down on the bed in agility, right before I regained consciousness. I inhaled a certain scent relative to that of melted plastic, and his face covered in sweat.

Not for long, I realized my blanky was burnt in half, and I saw the black crust thicken on the sides. Apparently, the burn was as a result of the necklace and the bad dream. But what dream could be so real, affecting ones reality?

None of us could explain what was happening to me. The doctors didn’t find anything wrong, as far as they were concerned. So they put me under observation for a week in their custody, and I was just fine. But after I was discharged, the nightmares came back. And each day that passed by, up to this moment, her appearance filled me with constant consternation.

I went insane for a while.

I couldn’t concentrate in class whenever we were taught in St. Mary’s school, here in the volcanic islands of the South Atlantic Ocean.
It seemed as though no matter where or whom I turned to, I always felt her energy. She was everywhere and nowhere; roaming, smiling, giving and passing messages I began to feel dubious of its relationship with me.
It became clear that she was a threat to my existence and I couldn’t do a thing about it because I thought no one would believe me. Who’d believe that a pale white woman followed me everywhere I went, even in my wildest dreams? Dad never believed in the supernatural. Hence, if peradventure I told him the truth of everything, he’d think I began taking drugs with Presley and his male squad of six, at the close on the hillside. Then he’d send me off to nun Raquel in order to be watched after in the cloister— so I thought.

Yet my silence invited her a bit more than the norm.

Once, and I remember so vividly, she reached her peak of utmost upheaval. I knew without any trace of doubt that I was mad.

Charlotte, a very dear friend of mine who had honey blonde hair and freckled cheeks, stopped by and walked me to school on a cloudy morning. The clouds were grey and the air was cold, smelling of dust and rain as we heard the clash of water from the ocean. Everyone looked normal as always. Mr. Randy sat on the edge of his boat mending his fishing net, while his three children played around it like it was their home. Mrs. Jay swept the frontage of her house and Mr. Hez (short for Hezekiah) walked down the narrow road with his clarinet— which he played at the end of the oceans shore where he could be alone and feel at peace with himself, though my mind was set at sea as to why he lived so lonely with a wife and two kids.

Just as we arrived Mr. Kauffman’s grocery shop, I saw her. Her smile filled with an eeriness of the grave as she picked up a red apple from the wooden cart. Her eyes were covered, and her white teeth— having long canines— bit into the side of the red apple while she held it with care in a way that it wouldn’t get scratched by the long maroon nails which looked more like thick, sharp claws.

“Watch out!” Charlotte exclaimed, pulling me close to herself.

“Watch it kid!” the grumpy, not good-looking, rider with a shaggy gray hair above his scooter yelled. Yet Charlotte wasn’t willing to take it easy on me.

“You’ve got to pay attention” she scolded in an accent almost sounding British. I wasn’t in the mood for one of her boring scolding. I turned back again as we passed Mr. Kauffman’s shop and she wasn’t there, though I felt her energy so close. Of course her appearance was always a gong show, and it wrecked my countenance, not to mention how much my mind took laps in a maze, while I thought of what to do about it.

I faced forward, trying to mind my business, and then she appeared; four feet’s ahead of me. Almost immediately, I fell to the floor— breathing heavily in fear with the knowledge that she was after my life. I couldn’t avert my eyes from her horrifying smile.

My eyes bulged lightly, in sight of how she vanished in the same swirl of ash dust, and Charlotte turned with a frown while she halted. She was fed up with me, and clearly she wasn’t the only one. Everyone was fed up with me in Tristan, for they thought my actions were just an act I pulled off so as to get their reaction. So I had to live on with myself, owing no explanations until everything wearied me out.

Dad mentioned, after mother’s burial, our departure from Tristan to a city in the ends of Aslith— a city rooted in the country of Phantom, several miles before the western Canadian coast. This was the birth place of my parents and I didn’t object his decision. As a matter of fact, I wanted leaving Tristan and all its problems behind.

“There we can find people like us” he said. “Nothing makes sense anymore. Not after your mother’s death”

So I was definite that nothing was ever going to be the same when we finally leave, though I hoped and prayed that this woman who kept appearing wouldn’t tag along.

School ended that day and Charlotte decided to stay behind in the library, so she could work on math assignment. I didn’t despise the idea. Instead, I walked home alone certain that no matter what, her answers were the same ones that ended up in my sheets.

Not for long, a dog resembling a huge German shepherd passed by, and I watched it hop as it moved through the coarse brown, sandy floor. Then another dog followed, and another. And the more I noticed how different they all varied in sizes and fur color, I halted. A warmth passed down from my chest to my feet as I stood aware of what was happening. Yet they all marched, a whole raft of humongous beasts as tall as me, up into the mountains in a straight line, until I turned in sight of one with a red fur stand next to me.

In this moment, I saw what they were. They weren’t dogs at all, but wolves. Terrifying, horrifying beasts whose furs were unique in their own way. I turned behind me, and the numbers kept adding. Some had icy blue eyes with white furs, and others had black; with a touch of blue hair passing through the back and sides. Some had deep red eyes, while others had dark lime eyes with brown furs in all shades.

My eyelids shut close, and I stood static for someone to tell me I was dreaming. But no one came to my aid. I was all alone at the lonely road, and their howls were loud and deafening, inviting a fear that brought my soul to the dread.

In time I opened my eyes resuming the same sight I saw. But this moment, the terrifying lady transitioned from being a full wolf into a human being. She stood on her hind, howling until her back formed a hunch, right before it straightened, with her large rib cages reduced in size.

Her claws sank in while the tip of her fingers bled, and the hair that once covered her body vanished tentatively into her skin. She stood— face down — and a red lightning struck the floor in front of her. Her cloak mysteriously appeared the way it was and my poor heart couldn’t take it.

I watched how her wolf like face slowly took shape. Her suture broke slow in a reform till it attained normalcy without her flinch or show any trace of pain.

“You’re my prophesy, Trinity!” she said while she stretched her left hand towards me with her bleeding index pointed forward.

“You are my blood and flesh, my bone of bone and breath of breath.”
And watching all these strange occurrence happen beneath the thundering clouds made me wonder who I really was.

Was I sane? Was I a part of something I didn’t know of? Did I sell my soul to the devil by mistake or was I totally out of my mind?
Then a hand— I didn’t know where it came from, pierced in from my back as it held onto my sacral vertebrae. I screamed until I was out of breath.

I could smell it— the blood running down both nostrils like a running tap before I fell to the ground unconscious— feeling the hand rip out the bone from behind. Regardless, I believed the wolves still marched beneath the thundering clouds.

How I got home that day was a mystery, and in my fragile heart, I dared not ask about what happened, for I dreaded the thought of me standing in the midst of marching wolves. Yet she kept coming, nonetheless. Whispering, smiling, and tormenting my mentality.
“You don’t have to watch me all night dad” I said in confidence knowing nothing about what was going to happen next.

“Don’t bother yourself about me. I’ll just lay on the couch and wait for your alarm” dad replied in sarcasm. “Goodnight my love."

“Goodnight.” I replied and he closed the door behind. I covered myself with my blanky, turning towards the yellow lamp, and all I could think of was the wolf’s pelt cloak the mysterious lady in red gave me before I woke.

It was so real to be a dream, for I felt every damn thing she made me feel.

Pain, horror, agitation.

It wasn’t enough until it was all over. And although I was sure it was midnight, I couldn’t wait for the sun to rise up on my face again, for this was the only way I believed that I was destined to live in the land of the living; and also a reminder that the nightmares I had weren’t real. Especially nightmares as such.