Eve's Hollow by Charles Bedlam (best free e reader .txt) 📕

Estelle clapped her hand over mouth as she couldn't hold her breath any longer. She did her best to silence her breathing and she held her gun close to her chest. For a minute or so it stared into the store, then moved on. Estelle decided to remain off of the streets for now. She thought that she would have better luck traversing the rooftops as she did before. Inside of the store she sought a way up.

She wondered why all of the mirrors had been covered up. The store was massive, maybe the size of a department store. Yes. A department store for mirrors. Though, in it's run-down state, it had more qualities of a warehouse than a store.

Weaving her way through the clustered mirrors and stacks of crates, Estelle found it increasingly difficult to see. Further away from the street, there was even less light. After a while, her eyes adjusted about as well as they could have. After wandering around for an indeterminable amount of time, Estelle saw a red “Exit” sign on a far wall. She thought that perhaps there would be stairs there. Paranoia of something attacking her in this darkness clumsily hurried her to the door.

She opened it and found just what she had been hoping for; a staircase with roof access. Like the rooftop stairwells, this was was wide and very tall. However it lacked the glass walls and roof. Estelle skipped steps as she ascended the stairs. Estelle counted a total of seven staircases that she climbed. Seven stories she climbed. Then she came to an old wooden door.

As she reached for the knob, a dark, suffocating tension manifested around her. She was cold now. Not like when she was in the snow. Cold as in dead. Estelle didn't want to open the door, but it was far too late to turn back. She forced herself to grab the knob and enter.

On the other side was a very long, very wide hallway. Many more mirrors were packed into this hallway. Only these mirrors were not covered. Just as before, all sizes and all shapes. Tall, small, wide, round, square, distorted, different colored frames. This was a collection that no doubt took many years to accumulate. Estelle still felt as if it was difficult to breath, but she continued, hoping for another exit sign.

Just as she stepped away from the door, heavy metal bars blocked the way back. She spun around, heart thumping. Her morale sank as the realization came over her. The only way to go was forward. She tried not to look at the several dozens of reflections of herself. She never liked looking at herself in the mirror. Self esteem issues birthed by her father helped cause this. As she moved deeper into the maze of mirrors, she found that her legs began to ail her. Her body felt heavy. This- suffocating feeling was familiar.

A red glow came about the area that she was walking into. Briefly excited, she thought that had found the exit. Strangely, the light didn't seem to come from anywhere.

“It's good to see you again,” a young voice hissed from the darkness.

Estelle immediately drew her gun and pointed it in all directions, looking for the source of the voice.

“I'm hurt that you want to shoot me!” the voice said mockingly. “Seriously though, that won't do you any good.”

“Who are you?” Estelle shouted. “Show yourself!”

“Now I'm really offended.”

The voice moved from nowhere to behind her. She quickly turned but only saw her reflection staring back at her. She looked around and so did her reflections.

“Where?”

Estelle looked between the mirrors, above them and on the ground around them.

“I've been here the whole time,” the voice said just as Estelle figured out what was happening.

Standing straight up with her gun at her side, she and all of her reflections turned to her immediate left to, with fear, gaze into a mirror in which her reflection gazed back with a malicious, sadistic grin.

“Remember me?” her reflection chided.

“My dream...”

“Was it really a dream?”

The pressure was greater on her small body. She struggled just to stand. Estelle remembered the dream that she had during her stay at Grigori Estate. She remembered the weight of being chained down and her sadistic reflection.

“Who are you?” Estelle asked.

“I'm you, stupid.”

“You're the opposite of me.”

“I suppose that's as close to right as you'll come for now,” said the Anti-Estelle. “I'm very impressed that you left your father's estate. Impressed because you've thrown all of your faith into someone you don't even know.”

“You don't have to tell me-”

“Yes, I do. I do have to tell you because you spend all of your time and hope on someone who, for all you know, could be dead. You should rely on you. Just like you did, escaping the estate.”

The Anti-Estelle walked closer to the glass of the mirror. Estelle looked into her eyes and staring back at her were small orbs of gold and orange; a fiery stare. Estelle's own eyes were very dark much of the time, ready to swallow anything she sees to commit it to her memory.

“I'm leaving,” Estelle said, turning and walking away.

“You think you're leaving me?” the Anti-Estelle asked. “You are me.”

Estelle stopped dead in her tracks.

“I'm am not you,” she said staring at the ground.

“Then why do I appear when you look in the mirror? Tell me, do you think the Punished have gotten him yet? I mean, you saw that slaughter in courtyard. Stop trying to pretend like you're so innocent. You're not so different from your past life. And you're not so different from me.”

“You don't decide who I am!” Estelle shouted. “That's up to me now! I left the estate because I didn't want my life to be what it was before! Damian Grigori in Eve's Hollow only proves that my second chance is real and I'm taking it.”

“That's fine,” Anti-Estelle said. “But are you sure his presence doesn't mean that the life you had before was actually the life you were meant for?”

Estelle's heart skipped a beat. Speaking of fate and meaning, Estelle had never considered that her old life was what she was meant for. She only ever focused on the fact that she would get to start a new one. Did his presence in the Hollow mean that her dream of a life without him was just that; a dream? Could it mean that she had a second chance to please him? The red light seemed to grow dimmer and Estelle felt the darkness creeping around her, reaching for her with invisible fingers.

“That's really fucked up,” Estelle said, looking at her counterpart with tears in her eyes. “That you would say that. That's how I know I'm not like you. Yes, I have bad thoughts. Yes, I can be selfish. And sometimes I do think I'm like my past life... But I would never try to destroy someone's hope like that! There are a lot of things I'd be willing to take for myself, but I would never steal someone's hope away!”

“You're so naïve,” she said with a mocking grin.

There was a slight pause as a new fire of her own burned and sparked in Estelle's belly.

“You're a bitch.”

Estelle drew her gun and shot at the Anti-Estelle, shattering her mirror. The gunshot echoed through the room. She must have hit something else because sparks flew out in the distance. For a moment, the red light flickered, then shut off. The lazy sound of a backup generator hummed through the air and dim florescent lights came on, illuminating the room. Estelle's heart was thumping. She looked down at her gun, still smoking, then at the mirror, annihilated.

The Anti-Estelle had failed to change Estelle's way of thinking, however she planted the seeds of doubt deeper than she wanted to admit. She felt shaky and very angry. She was having trouble focusing. Had she gotten in over her head? One thing stood out for sure to Estelle through her meeting with her counterpart: she was in need of assistance. The Anti-Estelle was right in saying that she was naïve; naïve to think that she could take on the monstrous task of finding a single warrior in a gargantuan city. She only knew one person in Eve's Hollow that she felt she could turn to.

Estelle located the next stairwell to get to the rooftops quite easily in the illuminated room. Her body hurt from being under pressure before. Her legs ached with every step up she took. Eventually she made it to the roof of the building. As she expected, there was at least one skybridge that ascended to a higher building. She made her way up, not encountering any evil and only having her sorrowful thoughts to keep her company. The thoughts were so powerful that it was like the Anti-Estelle was strolling along next to her.

From a much higher vantage point, Estelle was able to make out a building that had not been completed. From that building, she saw several cranes; including two that looked very familiar. Estelle knew that from where she was, she would be able to make her way back to the residence of Baron Ransley. Ransley seemed to be a genuine person who did want to help her. He thought it was foolish of her to seek out the samurai in the first place, but she she relied on the gentleman in him to show through and step up to her aid.

Already exhausted, Estelle painstakingly climbed up and down the skybridges of Eve's Hollow with the best sense of direction that she could muster. She encountered only one of the Punished on the rooftops. She had already passed the crane that she leaped to to escape the hoard of the creatures that had been relentlessly chasing her. From where she was, she easily knew the way to Ransley's residence.

At this point Estelle's body throbbed in pain and her breathing was heavy. When she came to the rooftop, just one other roof stood between her and her destination. The bridge that she needed was blocked by a lone male Punished. He had been slumped over a garbage can when she arrived at the top of the landing. Upon hearing her steps, he lurched up like a mummified marionette with invisible strings. He turned his glowing orange eyes at her. It took him a moment, but he slowly made his way toward her.

The entire time that Estelle had been traveling, the images and words of the Anti-Estelle repeated in her head like waves thrashing in a cave. By the time she had encountered the lone Punished, she had grown weary of forcing herself to view her situation optimistically. She was mentally and physically exhausted, psychologically tortured, and weak. She hated feeling weak and that's all she had ever been since she came to be. Weak to the Punished. Weak to Ransley. Weak to Grigori. Weak to Mike. Weak to everyone.

Self-directed furious anger filled her up and her heart began to race. Her face felt hot and every attachment that she had on her feelings was severed. She reached into her pocket and drew her knife. The curved, unused blade shone even in the darkness. Ransley had told her that this blade was most likely sharper than anything she'd ever used before.

The Punished lumbered toward her, incompetent and completely ignorant of the circumstances around him. Instinct drove this ugly ghoul and nothing more. Estelle's compassion had drained from her body and in its place, a dangerous curiosity began to form. It wasn't the kind of curiosity a child would have. It was a very adult curiosity to know what what domination felt like. Fear had pushed her through the dirt of her emotions and she came out in an underworld that she wanted to control, unlike her fear. Confidence and arrogance rose within. Her eyes narrowed and she held her knife firm.

“Diiiiiieee...,” the