Dead Girls Never Tell

Dead Girls Never Cry

As the needle pierced the skin, that was the beginning, addicted to the needle, than I push the junk into my vein and it's fireworks. Something close to stardust. Something magical. Well, that's how it made me feel. Like I was connecting with god, dancing with the witches that we didn't manage to burn. But all this happened while I was flat on my back on a dirty old mattress, the needle still sticking out of my arm.

I remembered that song as I remember laying my dirty mattress of the floor. The room was bare, wall paper peeling from the water damage and mold. The carpets stain and slightly recked of urine and vomit. But for now this is what I called home.

It wasn't always like this, at one time I had a stable roof over her head. But under that roof was a man that I loved and feared. My father. He was fine when he wasn't drinking. But that wasn't that often. My mother, it seemed, had accepted her life as the abused wife, but I, my friend's call me Echo, left on my 16th birthday and never looked back.

I knew it was the best thing for myself, but leaving my mother behind was extremely hard. Though, I couldn't help her if she didn't want to be helped.

The time had actually flown by. I had spent the years traveling, couch surfing, train hopping, and camping when I couldn't find a place to stay. I actually love the transientness of it all. I had my world in her backpack and I could go anywhere, do anything. Money of course was always an issue, but I got by on under the table work and busking with my fiddle. I made some good money busking in certain cities on certain nights.

And here I was, five years later and hooked on smack. Then that led to sucking guys off for money. I was suprised I didn't disgust myself. I spread my sleeping bag out over the dirty mattress and placed a pillow at the head.

This was my home now. At least it covered me from the acid rain and terrible winds.

It was hard to live outside now, so I was surprised when I found no one else squatting in this old apartment building.

I was tripping for hours, seeing the constellations on my ceiling, connecting the dots, talking to myself about time travel and other dimensions. I wondered what it would be like to not live here, on this earth, but on another one, or a different time period, like further into the future. But most of all I wondered what it would be like if I died. Would anyone miss me like they miss my sister?

I thought about my sister all the time, we were twins, so we were inseparable. We were best friends, we even decided to go to the same college. That was years ago, but I think about it a lot. She just went missing one day, never came home the night before. She just never came back to the dorms.

The police never figured it out. She was gone and there was nothing to even close to a clue. But when a girl goes missing at a college, you get a lot of media. And my mother pleading on air to whomever took Chelsea, to return her home safely.

And now back to the needle in my arm, I felt so much closer to Chelsea, like I could reach out and touch her. But she never appeared to me, it was just a feeling of peace. But this wasn't enough for me to stop looking. It had been three years, and over those years I had collected almost every missing woman report from all over the country, trying to find a link, or a clue. The wall of my apartment was covered in them, faces staring blankly back. Some smiling, some look more like mug shots. And when I was high, their eyes followed me like little dolls.

It seemed awfully bright out for how early it was, what season was it? Here you can barely tell the differences. But my eyes hurt when I opened them, blurry as I stare at the ceiling. As my eyes cleared, I noticed the warm sun was shining in the windows, but that it was freezing cold in the apartment. Even my breath was showing when I exhaled. I wrapped the blankets around me tightly.

Then I started to hear the sounds of the street muffled and the only other thing I could hear was the clock ticking second after second.

Why was it so cold, had they cut my electricity? I was pretty sure I paid them. So, I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around the apartment. It wasn't much, just a bachelor with a hotplate and a microwave she found on hte side of the road.

But as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw a figure in the corner of my room. I thought I was still hallucinating. I closed my eyes hard, and opened them again, and there it was. Just standing there cloaked in black, it's hair long and covering it's face. And that's when I heard the humming. A female's voice. Soft and melodic but eerie, haunting.

Without even thinking, I opened my mouth and said, “Chelsea?”

It took a moment, but when the figure answered, it whispered “Sarah?”

At hearing it speak, I jumped out of bed, taking the needle out of my arm and looked again.

That was my sister's voice. It had been a long time since I had heard it, but I would recognize it anywhere. It was her's. It was mine. And it made my blood run cold. The figure in the corner reached out a long arm with boney knuckles.

With a horrible shriek, the figure flew at me and I swear went right through me. It made my body ice cold but I also felt a strange familiar feeling. I put my hands over my eyes and rubbed them, holding them closed tightly. I thought I was still tripping but when I opened my eyes all I saw was my messy apartment. Nothing missing or even out of place. No one there but me. And that's how it all started.

See, some people are functioning alcoholics, and I was a functioning drug addict. Had been for as long as I could remember. Yeah, I'd wake up looking like shit but with a pound of makeup and a few coffees, I was good to go. But because of this the days seemed to last forever, waiting for my next score.

At a temp job, which was mostly typing and filing, I was kind of a zombie, but I did my work and no one really bothered me. I heard one of them gossiping about me wearing long sleeves all year and never talking to anybody. But that's what my life was, the light had been taken away and I walked blindly in the dark, hearing her call my name.

That whole day, I felt this chill, even my hair stood on end. I couldn't shake that dream, if it was a dream, or a hallucination, or whatever the hell it was. I felt like someone was watching me. Maybe I'm just craving, and I'm seeing things, no big deal. This had happened before, where I had seen and heard stuff while in detox or sometimes while high. But what was so different about this one?

While my mind was off in nowhere land, this cute boy that I worked with came up to my desk and non chalantly asked “Hey Sarah, what are you up to this weekend?”

Since people in the office never really talked to me, I was a little shocked. “Um.... I'm not sure yet,” I replied. This was such a weird day.

“Well... you should totally come to Gina's birthday party on friday after work, we're going to that pub down the street.” He seemed so sure of himself. Did he even know my name, because I had no idea what his name was.

“Yeah maybe.....” And with that he smiled and nodded, then turned around and walked away.

This is such a weird day. I got up from my chair and made my way to the ladies room. I needed a second to myself. I stared at myself in the mirror and splashed cold water on my face. When I opened my eyes, it was my sister staring back at my in the mirror. Her hair was tosseled and dripping wet, and she was dressed in something like a night gown. I blinked hard. But she was still there when I opened my eyes. Her lips were moving but she was silent. I couldn't hear anything except what sounded like bees swarming.

My heart was ponding and I couldn't breathe. No matter how hard I tried to hear her it was useless. She lifted her hand and started spelling a word in the mirror, but it's backwards. She spelled out “FOREST.” What the hell did that mean? What forest? That didn't tell me anything. But I had this strange feeling in my stomach.

I told my boss that I wasn't feeling very well and needed to go home for the day. Since most of the day was over, he said yes. I needed to get home. I need a hit now. I needed to talk to Chelsea.

Once I've set up my gear, I grabbed all the mirrors in the whole aparment building I could find and brought them into my room and locked the door behind me. It was sunset and the light shined beautifully in the room, bouncing from one mirror to the next.

I arranged them all facing my bed, against the walls, there was nothing but mirrors. And this is how I can find her. I was sure of it. I was distracted by so many thoughts, but as that needle pricked all of those floated away. My only thought was of Chelsea. She came to me last time in the bathroom mirror, so why not now. Yet it was oh so sweet, rushing through my veins, that I almost got lost in it for a moment.

But I opened my eyes to the ceiling and instead sat up and starred at the mirrors. To see so many of yourself's staring at you in the eye, it's a bit unnerving to say the least. I lit the candle in my hand and I began to call out to her. Whispering at first, then turning into something like a song. And then I waited.

I waited all night, with that candle in my hand, shaking myself awake. I tried to hum our mum's favourite lullaby but I couldn't remember it all. I waited all night in that cold room, wrapped in blankets. The candle was growing smaller and smaller in my hands. And the smaller it got, the less light I had.

But then I heard the birds chirping outside and the sun rising in the window. Then I looked down at the flame in my hand as it snuffs out. Then I hear the lullaby echoing in the room and I see her smiling face in all the mirrors staring back at me.

“Sarah,” she says softly.

And at this point I am so overwhelmed with emotion I just can't even speak.

“The River,” her voice sounds like water.

“Chelsea, Chelsea, where are you? Where are you? I'm coming to get you.”

“You can't find me here,” she sounded almost afraid.

“Are you in danger? Is someone trying to hurt you?”

“I'm lost. I can't find you.”

“Tell me where you are!”

“Underground.....”

And then she was just gone, like nothing ever happened. All that remained of the event were the burns on my fingers from the hot wax. That's all I remember of that night. The rest was black. Either I passed out from the drugs or my mind is just a blank.

After that is was all books, articles and manuscripts, about this “Underworld” Chelsea had talked about. And after days of researching, she finally found an manuscript written by a man she could not even pronouce, about alternate dimensions and the idea of purgatory. This caught my intersted, specifically because he called it the “Underground.”

This man's opinion was that if a person died in a wrongful way, meaning outside of their destiny, the order gets confused and sends that soul to purgatory until it's rightful time to ascend, or much worse, descend. It was all very interesting and he back it up using mathmatics, physics, scripture, even religion. His theory was sound, but what he didn't have was a way to this world in order to rescue them from purgatory. He had suggested a portal that exist naturally in time and space. That are thin veils through to the otherside.

So this is all my mind could think about, even high I was brainstorming ideas on how to pass through a mirror into the Underground.