Excerpt: Join Me In Death

She could hear shouts from around her. People were calling to one another, inviting them to visit each other’s booths with gleeful tones.

No, she realized, her eyes adjusting. They weren’t. Though it was nighttime, there was just enough light from the flaming torches to see the booths and tents before her. Colors were bright and melding. Greens and purples – reds and blacks. A circus, she recognized.

An acrobat dressed in red and blue somersaulted past her, and into the crowd of performers and merchants before her. Without hesitating, she stepped forward into the festivities – and it became even more obvious that they were shouting to her as they crowded closer.

Bodies were too close – she could barely push forward without encountering a hand, an elbow – even a knee. Words melded together – melted more like. But she did get the meaning. She shook her head, brushing past them, not willing to open her mouth for fear one of the gypsy-like women to shove one of their pastries into her mouth. She was supposed to be somewhere – but where?

Almost in answer to her thoughts, the crowd before her separated, and she felt like she could breathe again. A tall man, all in black stepped before her. She remained still, even as he bowed to her. Her breathing was irregular and became even more harried as he pointed to a tent of deepest red.

She took a cautious step forward, and then another. The crowd behind her began shouting again to her, but they weren’t at her now, touching her. She stepped forward until she could read the banner hanging off the tent’s vermillion walls. The scripted writing pushed her forward again – a mirror hall was what she was looking for, she now remembered. Why now, and not before wasn’t important – she had found it now, and that was enough.

She ducked around the tent’s flaps. Her heart was pounding like an elephant’s hooves and she paused to breathe, taking in her surroundings more carefully.

There were mirrors – she should have expected that. More than expected that. But there were actually hundreds of mirrors – all the way up to the tent’s canopy. When she craned her head to look up, she felt dizzy. It hadn’t seemed that high from the outside.

She swallowed and stepped forward. Instantly she was reflected, a hundred times over. Her arms instinctively crossed over her chest. Whatever she was wearing – modest wouldn’t be a word to describe it.

She took a few steps forward, trying to find the way to whatever it was she was looking for. But instead of a way out, her reflection met her.

She grimaced, and turned to the right – and there was the same. Now baffled, she whirled completely around. Her reflection was the same on all sides, and if she didn’t know better she’d say there was no way out.

But there had to be a way out. There always was a way out. Besides – she had come in, there had to be a way out.

She tried to find the direction she had come in – but even when she ran her fingers over the cool glass of the mirror, there was nothing, not a single break in the glass, not even a seam between what should have been panels.

She was trapped.

Her knees buckled and she hit the ground. They ached from the impact, but she ignored it. She searched the glass again – she knew this wasn’t right. There had to be a way out, there had to be. She wasn’t supposed to be her she was supposed to be somewhere….

She let out a frustrated scream, and it echoed off the walls. She looked, almost fearful towards the glass, and it shattered, piece by piece falling to the floor and around her.

She could have sworn she heard laughing from behind her as she woke up, grasping at the necklace around her neck.

She took in her surroundings – her room, in her condo, with Jamie snoring a few doors down from her. She took a deep breath to calm herself, and making the decision right then and there.

She’d tell him tomorrow – almost everything, she’d tell him tomorrow.