The Coven Games by Anna Pen-name (most read book in the world txt) 📕

On my twenty-third day at Central Louisiana State Hospital, I finally broke.

My hands moved numbly over the pane of glass, my glassy eyes following the race of raindrops as they quickly sped down the pane.

-‘The Fire ensues, yet The Life shall thrive’-

‘Stop,” I thought, gritting my teeth, my dull nails scraping against the clear glass. I didn’t even acknowledge my roommate, Jennifer, as she slithered into the room, her light little body hardly making a sound as her feet hit the linoleum floor.

“Grace,” she said, and I glanced over my shoulder. She was only seventy pounds, but almost as tall as I was. Her big, alarming blue eyes met mine, and I swallowed the bile that pushed up the back of my throat.

-‘ The Six shall face Death- The One shall succeed’-

“Stop,” I mumbled, a panic crawling into my stomach and my hands fluttering into my lap. Once there, my hands tore at the nails, even though they were already bloody and torn down to the quick.

“What,” she asked, and I looked back over my shoulder to see her coming closer. I flinched as her soft, cool hand met my forearm.

“N-No, not you. I-I… I’m just tired,” I offered weakly, brushing my dark bangs out of my eyes and blinking as a gold dagger glinted at her side. I jumped from my spot by the window, suddenly aware of the knife in her hand. “What are you doing?!”

“Time for distribution,” she said softly, her fine, blonde brows knitting and her shaking hand reaching for the holster. I almost hissed at her, my back pressing against the window and terror eating at my resolves.

Was she a player in the Games? How did she know of my powers? I had been careful not to use them, minus the little bouquet of flowers my mother had visited with, and all I had done was lengthen their life with a little bit of blood.

“Don’t touch me,” I screeched, my hands swiping at her face, my dull nails digging into her cheek. Although there was little my nails had done, her shocked expression said I had a few seconds to escape. Stronger and taller, I shoved at her weak, malnourished body, her little bloated tummy hard against my palms. She fell backwards, into the railing of her twin sized bed, and I took the opportunity to sprint out of the room, my hospital gown fluttering behind me.

-‘The Bow and Beak shall provide a feast’-

-‘The Water and The Fire shall spark a flame’-

-‘Death will touch Life’-

My bare, padded feet propelled me into a medicine cart, and the nurse pushing it wore an expression of shock.

“S-She’s trying to kill me,” I cried, running into the woman’s chest and clinging to her scrubs. “She has a knife! She’s a part of the Games!”

It was a blur when the team of nurses came in, flocking my room, where Jennifer lay crumpled in her bed, shaking and clutching her bleeding head. She had hit it, on the metal bar of the bed, when I shoved her. When the nurse brought me back into the room, Jennifer was holding her little plastic cup in hand, no sign of a dagger or anything that could harm me. Her anti-anxieties meds were scattered and crushed on the tiled flooring of the room.

The blood drained from my face when I realized what this meant.

The nightmares were starting; the voices and the delusions were back.

The Games were starting again.

And soon. 

The girl stared back at me, her wild, hazel eyes holding onto mine. Her dark, mussed hair was in a messy, frizzy braid falling down her back, her skinny, tanned neck left exposed. There, dangling between her breasts, was a ruby amulet that was garnished and older than I was. Her slender fingers moved to her neck the same time as I did, and I watched as my reflection moved strands of hair from my face.

The first day of the last year of high school was terrifying. While everyone was yachting and travelling and tanning, I spent the summer after junior year in an institution. Like, for the mentally unstable. That’s what they called it; not crazy, or nuts, just… unstable. Frankly, the girl who cut up her face with scissors and the boy who refused to eat because he was so paranoid someone poisoned his food, were a little bit more than unstable, but it was the thought that counted. 

 I didn't look like I had spent all summer in a crazy ward, I told myself, although my skin was pale and my eyes were hollow. I ran my fingers against the silky maroon fabric that glittered in just the right light, as it swished around my bony, thin legs and encased my upper body in a silken hug. The dress had been a surprise from my mother, splayed crisply against my duvet covers on my bed, just waiting for me to try it on as I slipped out of the shower that morning. It had fit like a glove, except the chest area that I'm sure earlier in the year would have been brimming with cleavage. Psych wards don't exactly serve gourmet meals; losing twenty pound from my already lithe frame made me look like a walking skeleton with hip bones as sharp as steak knives. 

I stared at the array of makeup lined on my vanity tabletop. In the hospital, makeup was almost as easy to find as the lost city of Atlantis. Quitting my morning ritual of creams and liners and shimmery shadows cold turkey had made these once familiar friends seem alien. Gingerly, I grabbed hold of the eyelash curler, squeezing the clamp and reveling in a time when it was the least complicated thing ever. I never thought I'd be this grateful to see Smashbox and L'oreal crammed on every available surface in my bedroom. 

My eyes travelled from the makeup treasures to the photographs and postcards and little glass perfume bottles that were pressed against the vanity mirror. Shakily, my fingers curved against the edges of a certain stainless steel picture frame.

Our cheeks were pressed together to a point where you weren't sure where he ended and I began; his stubble was golden against my tanned skin. It was taken last year, at his parent's lake house during a party that ended with two girls going to the U.R., and a wild fire raging on the deck. Needless to say, that was one of the last nights I suffered through normal teenage reprimand, because from then on the voices started and things started slipping.  Like Brandon. 

I don't know why I kept the picture right there, our eyes half-mast in happiness and our cheeks flushed from alcohol. It was only a reminder of how things could have played out: I could have kept my spot on the cheer squad, I could have gone to prom with the guy who I was sure was the love of my life, I could have given him my virginity before we both applied to Louisiana State University, I could have had a normal life.

With trembling fingers, I set the picture frame back on the vanity, hoping closure would come as I stepped through the green double doors of my high school that morning.

And then, I laughed at the thought. Closure mocked me when my grandmother was dragged off to the looney bin; closure maliciously watched as my father walked out on us. Closure was not my friend. Her cousin, Comfort, was just as foreign.

‘Comfort is for the weak,’ Death whispered icily against the shell of my ear. When my eyes flew to the mirror, I could almost see his reflection taunting me: pale everything, except for the black cloak always draped around his broad shoulders. An eyebrow ring, curiously enough; a smile that made my skin crawl, yet with what emotion I wasn’t sure.

I inhaled shakily, the trapped air rattling around in my lungs, and stared determinedly in the mirror.

“You are not real,” I hissed, imagining Death’s profile next to my own. I could almost feel his skin on mine.

‘Naïve Grace,’ he clucked, shaking his head. ‘We’re as real as you are daft.’

I blinked, staring only at my enraged expression and a crack in the mirror that wasn’t there before, and tried to contain the rapid breathing I could have sworn I had under control moments earlier.  

I’m insane.

I’m going-

“Grace hurry! You’ll be late to school if you take any longer,” my mother’s voice called impatiently from the stairwell.

I’m going to be late.

~~~

Our green Sedan pulled up to the drop-off site, and yet my mind was back in my bedroom, quipping with Death and imagining a different life for myself. When we finally rolled to a stop, my eyes registered familiar faces in crowds, the green grass of the front lawn. My heart promised to stop in my chest, half-lodged in my throat.

“Mom, it’s not too late. I can go back home, and enroll in online classes,” I said half-heartedly, my eyes following a huddle of golden, spandex material that moved in a whirl of glitter and big bows. The cheerleaders; my old friends.

“Grace,” my mother sighed, a frown pulling at her features as she cupped my cheek lightly. “Sweetheart, you know the doctors suggested you go back to school. They said staying locked up in your room all day isn’t healthy.”

My mother never added her opinions into the myriad of excuses she fed me. The doctors said you should eat. They doctors said you should go outside. The doctors said to take your medication. The doctors know best, Grace.

Just for once, I wished she would just say it: Grace, I’m worried, and as your mother, I’m ordering you to eat/have contact with the outside world/take the pills as big as my pinkie finger without a complaint.

“Moi? Unhealthy?” I tried to ignore the reflection her face cast on the glass of the window: horror and shock, like she thought my joking about my mental health was a sign I was losing it.

“Gracie-“

“I know, Mom. I know. I-I promised I would try, and I am. Look,” I said, gesturing theatricallly as I opened my door, “I’m leaving my room. I’m getting out of the car, and I’m going to go to my first hour class.”

I grabbed the lunch she had managed to pack between finding her reading glasses- which had been perched on top of her head like a majestic crown of near-sidedness- and going through files before she presented her case to the court that morning. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was part of a pre-nuptial stuck between two slices of bread, peanut butter, and honey.

Ironically, as a defense attorney, my mother was otherworldly, and was probably considered a deity in her firm; my grandmother, an acclaimed voodoo priestess extraordinaire, was actually otherworldly- or so I had been told from a young age- but was a bad apple on the family tree.

While my mother was an admitted work-a-holic, she had been trying her hardest to give me a schedule as I returned home from Central Louisiana State