Pretty Faces and Dark Places

by Rose B Mashal

  With a sigh, I got out of the tub and went straight to a fluffy towel I found on a hanger. The material was something I’d never seen before, but it did the same thing the towels in my world did, so I didn’t care, nor have the heart to think one more second about it.

  I wrapped the towel around my body and walked from the bathroom to the walk-in closet. I dressed in the only color that was there to be worn, but another pair of jeans and strapless top. I wasn’t that surprised when I looked at my back and saw no trace of open wounds, because the pain was already gone. I found only a dark shade of blue where the base of the wings used to be. I wasn’t really confused about the reason why my wounds had healed so fast, thinking that maybe it was a demon thing.

  After I brushed my hair, I walked back into the bedroom. Andrew was still nowhere to be found, and I felt the familiar feeling of longing that I always had whenever he wasn’t around, the same feeling that had become my best friend for the past year.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I just walked around the room, which was the only thing I’d seen in the underworld since the converting. My legs took me to a side wall that had rows of framed photos. I was pretty curious to see what was in those photos, wondering if it would answer a question or two out of the numerous questions I’d had since I left the woods; I now realized that the painting I saw at the cottage was speaking of the converting process.

  I was wrong. The photos actually made more questions rise in my head. There were faces I was already familiar with, faces that belonged to Andrew’s family. All of them looked like wedding photos from the way every couple was posed – facing each other or facing the camera with their cheeks pressed against the other’s, with their smiles and happiness showing on their pretty faces.

  Their clothes were all black, though with different designs and different materials. Some looked silky, some looked as if they were sparkling and others looked as plain as you could ever describe those elegant clothes as being. The darkness of their wings was an even deeper shade of black than their outfits, if that was possible.

  I was able to recognize Andrew’s mother, and I wondered if she had one day been a human, or was it he who had been the human who had turned into a demon.

  I also saw a photo of Mathew, pausing to study his features that hadn’t changed from the ones I’d seen on that Halloween night or on the milk cartoon. The only thing that had changed was the look in his eyes. They didn’t look at all evil or as bad as what I could see in his mate’s eyes; they were kind of – sad. I wondered if it had anything to do with his human life, or if it was just something my mind had come up with that was far from the truth.

  Another photo made me stop the slow, lazy steps that I’d been taking as I gazed from one photo to another – it was Sophie. My heart ached and my chest swelled as I stared at her picture with William, their eyes gazing lovingly at each other and their smiles matching as they posed the same way human do when they say their ‘I do’s.’

  I couldn’t get over the fact that I was looking at my best friend’s wedding picture, a wedding that I had never attended or helped her prepare for, like we’d always dreamed of since we were little kids.

  My throat was tightening and I wanted to cry, but of course I still couldn’t. I tried my hardest to tell myself that I should be happy for her and grateful that she’d found life, even if it was nothing like we’d expected. At least she was with her soulmate and she was happy, even if there were dark wings attached to her back. What more could I want for her other than that? I just wished I’d been there to share her happiness and witness one of the most important moments of her life. But I guess you can’t always get what you wish for.

  “She wanted you there; she missed you very much,” I heard Andrew saying from behind me. His voice startled me. It wasn’t scary or anything; his voice was still this beautiful velvet, kind and caring, but it was just that I hadn’t heard him enter the room or approach.

  When I looked at him, he offered me a small smile, but I didn’t return it or offer him any kind of reply. I just moved on to look at more photos, not really looking at anything anymore, just trying to avoid him. Yes, I did have feelings for Andrew and he mattered to me, but I still couldn’t get over the fact that he had tortured me that way.

  “You don’t want to speak to me?” Andrew asked.

  I didn’t reply, but I was actually happy that he’d finally come to this realization and knew that I wasn’t very fond of his company, even if it was far from the truth. And while I disliked hearing his voice all miserable that way, it didn’t prevent me from giving him the cold shoulder.

  “Please, forgive me, Maya. I had to do it,” he tried again, his words sounding sincere, which made my heart tingle, but I still said nothing, using the silent treatment as my weapon. What he’d done made me very sure that I had no power over him, that he was much stronger than me.

  I tried to block him out of my hearing, gazing some more at the pictures hanging on the wall in front of me. I couldn’t understand – it was very odd how all of the photos looked exactly like the photos I’d seen all of my life. They looked just like humans posing to take photos, as in any other photo I’d seen before in life – the only difference was the black clothes and the wings that everyone had.

  Another photo of Sophie and William made Andrew’s words about her wishing I was in her wedding sound again in my ears. I wondered how true his words were. The Sophie I knew would’ve killed to have me in her wedding. She would miss me if I couldn’t make it and would feel awful if she knew I wasn’t going to be there. But the Sophie I knew also wouldn’t sit back and watch when chains surrounded me and my hands were tied as I was tortured with birds, or was it bats, or whatever creatures eating my skin.

  But to be honest, I couldn’t really blame her. Most likely she had no power to stop it or control it. I guess that a part of me only hoped that she’d objected or asked them to stop. Anything.

  My vision blurred slightly and I felt a headache approaching, but before I could dwell on it, I felt the stinging pain in my back, the same pain I’d felt right before my wings came out, and I groaned.

  “Are you okay?” Andrew asked with concern.

  “My back,” I breathed.

  “That soon?” he questioned, then I felt him approaching me.

  “W-what is it?” I moaned as the pain started to grow greater.

  “The new wings are coming out,” Andrew explained.

  “New wings?” I put my hands on the wall, steadying myself because the pain was so much I felt as if I was going to fall.

  “Yes, Beautiful, they grow again, though I didn’t think it’d be this soon. This time the feathers will be black like they should’ve been,” he said, and I felt his hands as they reached for me.

  “Don’t!” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Maya?” he sounded hurt.

  “Don’t touch me!” I ordered through my groans, my head bent down and my eyes clenched shut. My arms on the wall were the only thing that was keeping me on my feet.

  “Please, let me just hold you,” he begged.

  “Don’t touch me!” I screamed. I was going through all of this pain again because of him, because he’d pulled out my first set of wings just because they had white feathers. The pain was making me want to break something, but I knew that it’d be over soon.

  When the pain became unbearable I kneeled on the floor, feeling Andrew as he did the same. I sensed his worry through the sound of his breaths, which sounded like he was moaning along with me, as if my pain hurt him.

  My fisted were clenched tight as I felt the wings coming out of my back. My groans were somewhat controlled because I knew that the worst had ended, since the wings already had broken the skin. And finally when it was over, I stayed in that position trying to catch my breath and embrace the feeling of no more pain.

  The last thing I expected when I sat back on my knees and looked at Andrew’s face was to see his eyes with no hint of green or white in
them. They were pitch black, his wings spread out on both sides of him, his fists clenched tight. When he opened his mouth to speak, there were scary fangs that made me gasp from the look of them, rather than at the words he spoke with a voice that sounded nothing like the warm voice he always talked spoke to me with.

  “White feathers!”

  Oh, no!

  Andrew looked scary, and my first thought was to run away from him and never look back. However, I knew that wasn’t something I could do; I didn’t know the place and I doubted I could take more than one step before he would be able to catch me.

  My second thought, the one that was much bigger and argued with my mind to make it true, was to stand up and go to him, hug him and soothe him, just to get him back to his normal self again, because the one that was standing in front of me was anything but the Andrew I knew and had made love with. This one was a stranger, scary, frightening. This one was a demon at its worse.

  But then when his words sounded in my ears again and I started to realize what they meant, I knew that my first thought was the right thing to do.

  “No!” I screamed as I stood up, taking a few steps away from him in a hurry. My small wings hit the wall behind me eventually, informing me silently that I was trapped. “Don’t cut them off, please!” I begged, knowing full well that Andrew had only taken them out so I could grow another set of wings with black feathers. Now with him saying that they were once again white feathers, I knew that he was going to pull them out, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear the pain if he did. I was already still suffering from the growing process.

  It was like Andrew was in a different world, and I could be mistaken, but it looked like he not only wanted to cut my wings off – no, it looked as if he wanted to attack me as well. I had no idea why or what I’d done to make him that angry. I had no power over the color of my feathers – he must’ve known that!

  Andrew took a step in my direction, and I was so terrified that I couldn’t help but scream at the top of my lungs. “Andrew, please, no! Don’t hurt me!” I cried out loud.

  My cry was like pressing a button that controlled Andrew’s body, because his wings closed and his eyes changed from pitch black to beautiful green in an instant. It was a seriously shocking thing to see.

  “Maya!” he choked out. It looked as if he was about to say something more, but before he could say it, I heard the door opening. A woman entered the room, looking shocked and worried at the same time. “I heard screaming,” was all she said before her eyes landed on me and she gasped, taking a step back.

  From her voice, I was able to tell that that woman was Kathrin. She was the one who’d stopped us when we were going into the woods last year, the one I knew to be Andrew’s sister. And I didn’t know if it was a good thing or not that she had entered the room, but given the look in her eyes – I knew it couldn’t be good.

  “White feathers!” she gasped the same words that Andrew had said earlier. I found it strange to see the terror on her hard features as she kept taking steps backward until she was out of the room, still looking at me with a horrified gaze focused only on my wings. “I need to tell my mother!” she said before disappearing again. I knew she would be informing her mother of what she’d just seen.

  “Kathrin, no!” Andrew shouted as he ran after her, but when he made it to the door and looked for her, I knew that she was already gone. He punched the door with a clenched fist, and I could sense that anger was dominating his whole being.

  I knew right away that nothing good was going to come out of this – not just by the look on Andrew’s face, but also because when my first wings had come out and Andrew saw the white feathers, the first thing that he thought to do was the same as Kathrin just ran to do – tell his mother. But then Andrew came back and told me he couldn’t do it, though I didn’t know why – I knew that to him it was a bad thing.

  “Andrew,” I called his name in a low, shaking voice. I was too scared and terrified, and my heart was thumping against my chest as if it was trying to come out. I was choking and my breaths were tangled. I didn’t know what was to come and I couldn’t think of any way to prevent me from going through whatever was in store for me. I only had a hope in the green-eyed demon in front of me – the one that was looking at me with so much passion that it sent warmth over my heart and a hint of comfort over my mind – that he would protect me from any danger that might come upon me.

  Andrew took slow and carful steps towards me, as if waiting to see if I’d try to run away from him or if I’d stay in place. I did the latter, not moving an inch. And when he figured out that I wasn’t going to go anywhere, he stood right in front of me, reaching out with both of his hands to hug my face. So many emotions were in his filled-with-sadness eyes as he spoke with that tender-yet-deep voice of his. “I’m so sorry, Beautiful Maya,” he apologized.

  His words that I thought would calm me down actually did the complete opposite – they scared me even more. Because it was the same words that he’d spoken before when he was about to pull out my wings.

  “No!” I pushed his hands away from me. “You can’t just keep cutting my wings off, Andrew! It hurts so bad!” I whined, sounding like a little child who didn’t want to get a shot, though I wished it was that easy. It was a million times worse to have someone dig their fingers into the freshly cut and deep wound that was in your heart.

  The sadness in his eyes was hurting me, maybe as much as what pulling out my wings had felt like. It was really confusing to me to admit to myself all of the feelings I had for Andrew, but I couldn’t deny that seeing him so miserable made the whole world gloomy in my eyes.

  Not a moment after I spoke the words, I saw the woman I knew to be Andrew’s mom enter the room, and just like her daughter, she took a step back with a gasp when she saw me.

  “What the hell?!” she questioned out loud. “What made her feathers white?”

  And I thought they wanted her here for answers …

  No one replied, of course. I didn’t know the answer, heck – I didn’t even know they could grow from my back at all, let alone why my wings had white feathers.

  “Andrew?” she asked for his attention and reply with just a call of his name.

  “I don’t know, Mother. They just grew this way,” he replied, his head bent down. His form spoke volumes of how broken he seemed to be.

  “It can’t be, something must’ve gone wrong,” she said, taking a few steps in my direction with her eyes focused on my wings, though she was still careful to keep some distance between us.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I tried to defend myself, even though no one was accusing me of anything. I just felt the need to protect myself, by clarifying that I had nothing to do with it.

  Andrew’s mom didn’t pay my words any attention. She studied my wings closely, a frown of distaste plastered on her face. “It’s coming from the roots,” she said. I had no idea what she meant by that, but then she shouted, “Kathrin!” and her daughter came from her place by the door to stand a few steps away from her mother.

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Get her to the Converting Room,” she ordered. My eyes widened, but – I thought I’d already gone through that?!

  I couldn’t do much other than struggle when two men entered the room after Andrew’s mom left. Kathrin asked them to take me to where I knew would be the Converting Room – where I just knew I would feel even more pain than everything I’d felt since I came to the underworld.

  The two men were much stronger than me and my struggles were nothing that affected them whatsoever. My arms hurt from all of the pulling and my legs hurt even more from all of my useless kicks, but what hurt me the most was my heart – my heart that was crying for Andrew to save me. Only Andrew’s heart never heard my pleas – if he had one, that is.

  Was this love for him? He’d said he loved me. Did that mean that he liked for me to be in pain? That he enjoyed seeing me afraid of the unknown? Did hurting me please him? I didn’t know
, but I guessed yes. After all, he’d watched me while the converting went on with a big smile plastered on his face.

  In just a minute or two, I was again back in the Converting Room. Once again I was tied to the cross, but this time I didn’t have the large audience from the last time. I could only see Andrew’s family: his siblings and his mother. They were watching as the two men – demons, or whatever – tied me to the cross and collared my neck, pulling me by it to bend down, my legs straight and my face facing the floor.

  I wasn’t naked this time; I was still in the jeans and top. I still wondered if they’d bring those bats again to eat my skin. The fear that was consuming my every sense was so great that I almost passed out, or wished I could.

  I kept begging and asking for mercy, pleading with them to let me go and pleading with Andrew, whom I could see with the corner of my eye as he sat in one of the chairs with his shoulders hunched down and his wings looking somewhat smaller. I couldn’t see his eyes to know if he was looking at me, but from what I could see, his head was facing the other way, as if he didn’t want to witness what was about to happen. I wondered what had changed that.

  To my surprise, I saw Andrew’s mother as she came closer to me. I didn’t know why she didn’t take a seat on her throne-like chair, but I knew that I didn’t like her near me.

  “We will start by pulling out the feathers and see if there are black ones underneath,” she said, I assumed to the two demons that had tied me up, her voice stern and her tone commanding.

  “No! No, please, don’t!” I cried out loud. “Andrew! Help me!” I screamed and pulled at my restraints, but it was no use – they were very tight and secure. Before I knew it, the torment began.