Death. What happens after it? What lies beneath the surface?
Poor Arielle Daniels stumbled through dangerous hoops to figure this out. She wakes in a new place--the Void--and discovers that what waits after death are layers, dimensions, and sadly...
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Still doing her best to avoid any eye-contact with Benny's battered corpse, Arielle glanced up at the balcony. She cringed as the usual pain pumped through her stomach and slithered up to pound in her temples.
Oh, she wanted to go up there, to confront Penelope and demand to know her reasons for such brutality. But would she survive the trip? Would she make it to that bedroom without collapsing in agony or losing consciousness from the nausea? And could she keep her cool when facing such a horrid, hopeless creature?
Maybe Penelope was a demon. Kylie had accused her of it, Benny had mentioned it, and now it made sense to Arielle, too. She had to be, with her tough-to-read expressions and her tendency for anger over problem-solving. With her blown-out-of-proportion temper and her vague explanations that left too much room for questions. And her reaction to those questions, when she'd clearly invited them in with her nonchalance and her obvious knowledge about everything. For a ghost trapped in the Void, she was too aware of her surroundings.
Arielle trudged a few feet forward, focusing on the stairs. Gritting her teeth, she realized she had to concentrate, to push through the pain. She thought hard about succeeding, about no longer suffering. She thought hard about things that made her happy—Jade, Stella, her father, her favorite books, coffee, sweet treats. All these should have infused positivity in her; a strong force to fight the negative sensations swelling in her gut, the hammering in her skull.
But nothing worked. She remained hunched over, grabbing her belly with one hand and massaging her temples with the other.
"Fuck." She growled, though the sound came out as more of a soft whimper buried beneath her pain. "Penelope, dammit, get... out here!"
To Arielle's surprise, a door upstairs opened, banging against the wall. When she looked up, she found Penelope floating behind the balcony railing, arms crossed, her mouth twisted into a sordid smirk.
"Oh, hello there." Her smirk widened. "You called?"
Even from below, Arielle had no trouble noticing a serious change in Penelope's appearance. Her blood-red eyes were still there, still so vivid and violent that they made Arielle shudder. But her clothes had changed—she no longer wore the punk-rock T-shirt or the grungy jeans with the stained sneakers. She looked straight out of another era, another century; with a lengthy white dress that covered her feet and frilly sleeves that dangled over her hands. And those claws from earlier were lengthier, sharper, deadlier. Her hair was the same inky shade, but sleeker, cascading over her shoulders and unevenly cut.
The view was familiar to Arielle, but in her agony she couldn't place it, couldn't figure out who or what it reminded her of. She sucked in a breath of air, but instantly regretted it, as it smelled of dirt, despair, and death.
"Can you..." She gulped once, twice, three times, her fist tightening from the dryness in her throat. "Can you explain this shit? Why are you so... angry? Why are you... killing people? I thought you... I thought we couldn't, as ghosts. That we had no means to murder."
