Dear Diary,
What do you do when it seems
everyone you’ve ever trusted has betrayed you? What do you do when there’s
nothing left for you to do but crawl into a ball and hope the world is
different when you open your eyes again? What do you do when you have nothing
left to give and the world just wants more from you? Do you cut and run or
crumble under the pressure and let it suffocate you? Can you bail yourself out
with a straw?
The Troll laughed at my story
which left me somehow raw inside. I don’t know if it was everything else that
had happened that day but it was just one more push towards an abyss I had felt
myself teetering on the edge near. Standing on some sort of cliff into a
darkness within myself. Something I had felt tugging at me since I came here,
since I first saw Loki transform, since Vincent had burned that scar into my
neck. It was all leading towards something within myself I didn’t want to feel
or touch.
Maybe it was because of how
hilarious my story was, or because Chantel and I had been sickeningly personal
with our history, but the troll was amused enough at our mentioning we wanted
to challenge Leanne that he let us climb on his back like an elephant at the
circus and took us to Leanne’s home. Caleb too, even though Caleb had just run
around him. Caleb tried to comfort me, oddly. Tried to tell me that things
would be okay. It reminded me of Vincent and I couldn’t look at him.
When we got there, the fairy
queen was standing there, waiting, perfect and horrifying. I could barely speak
to her. Something in me was shriveling the longer we stayed underground, and
besides, her issue seemed to be mostly with Chantel. She was my friend. I
wasn’t going to let her stand there alone and take whatever Leanne had to dish
out. And then Chantel challenged her to a game of truth and dare.
It was a ballsy move. I’ll give
her that. Leanne accepted and asked a Truth of Chantel… to tell her whole
story, to tell the past, to let us all know what she was. She did. And she took
out the book. The book that had been in the hotel room with Vincent and I. The
book that went missing that night. The book that meant Chantel had stolen from
Vincent and I while we were… well, while we were expressing how we felt about
one another without clothing.
I felt a cold stab inside me.
Chantel had gone behind my back and rather than just ask she had stolen
something and been in that room during such a private moment. Of course I
couldn’t trust her. Why would I be able? Despite everything she had said and we
had shared she was just another of them, just another monster ready to take
advantage of me whenever it was convenient for her. She wasn’t so different
from Leanne, I realized, as I watched her tell the story and then challenge
Leanne to a dare. The dare was to have sex with her.
I yelled. I yelled at Chantel
and told her she was crazy. That this was sick and disgusting and fucked up and
nothing was making sense anymore. She didn’t care that Leanne had wanted to
kill me or punish me or had done horrible things to Israel. She didn’t care
because it was what she wanted, a means to an end, and of course that’s all
that really mattered to Chantel. A means to a fucking end.
The two
went off leaving Caleb and I behind. A few moments later the troll turned to us
and said we were free to go. He even offered to escourt us. To take us out of
this place. I weakly agreed and he lifted up the gate and we walked through…
with the troll following. When I blinked and we were in the sunlight of Toronto
again, I realized that the big biker guy behind us was our friendly troll… and
we had just unleashed another hell on the city. My heart sunk and I turned to
him to try what it seemed worked best with fae: To bargain with him.
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