Fandom: Red Queen, Victoria Aveyard
Level: To shreds
I have a bad writer's block and think my writing needs improvement on many levels, so I'd be looking forward to any kind of clue you have to offer.
The dreams were disturbing, to say the least. Shameful and disgusting. In her dreams, she stood on the white wall again, with guns pointing at her.
In the dreams, she wasn’t alone at the wall. Right and left corpses piled over the ground. Hands stretched out stiff, stained with silver and red blood. Blue lips and dark bruised wrists.
She remembered some of the faces distant. A girl that had been shot as she tried to flee, a guard impaled by a pipe. One small frame throned over the others on top of the pile. Dressed in faded green, a torn shirt exposing ribs standing out of the skin, a picture of malnourishment and starved bones. Empty green eyes stared into nothingness. Her brother bore a bullet hole right through his head, a little point with silver drops of blood drying.
Zella made a suffocating sound, feeling like she needed to vomit.
When she turned to the other side Sara Skonos corpse lay just as quietly as the rest of the bodies, illuminated by the bright white neon light. Her dry lips were wide open, displaying her missing tongue, in a last soundless scream. Something in her dark grey blind eyes spoke of horror.
Dream Zella just stood and stared. At the vivid image of corpses. Smeared brain tissue and guts on the wall.
“On the wall.” The voice commanded. It was not the voice of the guard that had been meaning to shoot her on the day of her escape, but the one of Captain Iral. That was the second clue she dreamed, his existence in the room was wrong. He stood still and controlled, clad in his uniform, his hands folded behind his back. His voice turned her stomach.
For a second the Captain didn’t react. His face flickered and Zella snarled.
“A fighter, that one.” Another voice commented, gnarly as a bark swaying in the wind. When Zella turned her head she saw Lady Arven beside the Captain, dressed in faded and moth-eaten white silk. Another monstrous image, fake and still too vivid to ignore. “Better to take her down like the rabid dog she is.”
“Lady Velx,” the Captain said. His voice vibrated in her inner being, to the core. Knowing how to squeeze inside her thoughts like she did to seize control over him. It was softer than she had ever heard him speak. “On the wall. I am all but concerned about your well being. Do us a favor and turn.”
When Zella didn’t react he moved forward. His hand curled along her neck, hands she remembered well. They had seized her before, but not like this.
They were as strangely gentle as his voice. It made her want to scream but she was too horrified. She only breathed shallow.
“You held promise.” Iral said.
You are not real, she wanted to scream. You are not real and they aren’t dead. They can’t be.
“You disappointed us, Zelly,” Lady Arven said. “Us all.”
She couldn't look at any of them anymore. Instead, her eyes searched for a spark of impossible life in her brother's fragile form.
Captain Irals hand stroked her short curls for a second. A rough hand touching her frail as the ghostly image he was. Then he pushed her forward, face against the wall. Cold silent white stone carressed her skin. "I hope you understand I have to do this.”
A gun found the back of her head. Cold metal resting along her scalp, scraping over it before settling.
With a scream, she woke up.