Chapter 18: Rising Tension
Shelley deserved the darkness. In the end, it didn’t matter what Phantasia had said or done, because the world had made its opinion known. She pulled her knees closer to her chest and tried to stifle the sobs gathering in her throat. If she were alone in the black prison, she would’ve let her emotions free, but Shelley wasn’t alone. She was there with her.
Shelley couldn’t see Kaori, just as she couldn’t see her own arms clutched around her legs, but she knew she was there. Sometimes she could hear Kaori’s muffled crying, or the sound of her bangles, belts and straps clinking as she shuffled around in her corner. Assuming it was a corner, of course: Shelley had no idea where they were, only that it was pitch black, there was something wooden behind her, and she could sometimes feel things crawling up her leg or landing on her face. Part of her was glad she couldn’t see a thing.
“Joel, where are you?” Kaori asked herself for what must have been the hundredth time – Shelley wasn’t counting any more.
“He’s not going to show up, you know,” she replied.
“Of course he is,” Kaori shot back, and Shelley could feel the glare from her dark eyes, but she wasn’t convinced. She had enough experience of her own with the ginger-haired musician.
“He just runs away when things get difficult,” she said, “He’ll just abandon you for someone easier,”
After all, that’s what he did to me.
“Joel’s not like that!” Kaori protested, “He only dumped you because you’re too clingy,”
“And you’re not? ‘Oh, Joel, when will you come to save me?’ You’re always like that. Like he’s some kind of knight in shining armour,” It wasn’t like Shelley to be bitter or talk back to others, but the confinement was doing something to her, bringing out a repressed side she would have rather not acknowledged.
Kaori was quick to retort. “Just because you weren’t good enough for him. I heard what you were like. Too clingy and too frigid.”
Shelley felt her lips curl up into a sneer and she felt an uncharacteristic urge to lash out at the darkness and hope to claw Kaori’s face. “Frigid?” she spat, “Because I’m not a slut who’ll sleep with a guy behind his girlfriend’s back?”
“Give it up, it was practically over by the time I slept with him,”
And then the brief explosion of anger receded, and the thoughts in Shelley’s head were replaced with familiar self-loathing. “So, you really did…”
“Six months ago,”
It was an old wound, but one Shelley had never healed, and the confirmation of her fears just opened it wider, allowing a plethora of negative thoughts to seep in and infect it. “He’ll do it to you as well, you know,” she mumbled, “He likes submissive girls.”
It was obvious, however, that Kaori wasn’t swayed by the acceptance of defeat in Shelley’s voice. “It’s only because you treated him like shit,” she continued to argue, “All you ever cared about was yourself! Joel’s told me all about it,”
That hurt Shelley more than anything else. She’d done everything for Joel, she’d always put him first and never cared about her own happiness, but he just thought she was selfish? “Yeah,” she said, her voice muffled as she buried her head into her arms, “’cause he’s gonna tell the truth, isn’t he?”
“I believe him more than I do you!”
It was no good. Kaori wasn’t listening to a word Shelley said. All she wanted to do now was help her, warn her of the inevitable. After all they’d been through in the past… “I thought we were meant to be best friends?” she said.
“Well…that’s all in the past, isn’t it?” said Kaori. Shelley could imagine the Raven towering over her, self-righteous and self-assured. “Maybe you should stop living there and get over it. Joel’s mine now, got it?”
Shelley slipped further into her comforting little ball and rocked back and forth, as she struggled to think of something to say. She wished she could make things right again, like when they were best friends; to have things how they used to be before that grinning guitarist with the facial piercings and cool tattoos came along and tore them apart. What possible thing could she say to make things right? Was there anything she could do to save her ex-best-friend from making the same mistake she’d made? Or was it really all over? Was Shelley really just clinging to the past like a sad, deluded loser with no hope for the future?
The door crashed open and threw the room into blazing light. Shelley shielded her eyes and begged the darkness to return. In her temporary blindness she could hear a scuffle and Kaori’s protests. When the door slammed shut and the cold darkness returned to comfort her, she was all alone.
Just like my life. She chuckled at the irony.
***
