#Alarming number of spiders in my room since I left it. I'm going round with a little piece of cardboard and rehoming them all.

[satans-knitwear]

What happened with your room???

My brain was the problem, not my room, but im improving, and sabine can climb stairs now as well, so i can finally settle her in to our evil lair ✨

[holdon-a-minute]

As Time Repeats

Chapter II

Gone

"Hello I'm here to report a missing person."

"Okay slow down Madame, what's the name of this person?"

"Renae Cruzette."

"And your name?"

"Alice Cruzette."

~~~~

She pries her heavy eyelids to open, a pounding rattling Renae's skull making the struggle even more difficult. A painful moan escapes her lips but it only sounds an alarm in her head, her ears screeching in pain and an absurd ache searing through her mind. As she slowly and shakily lifts her body up off the damp, concrete floor to rest on her grazed hands and knees, her consciousness awakens all in one daunting flood and the survival instincts kick in. Renae scrambles to her feet surrounded by darkness—cold, empty darkness—the only slither of daylight visible from a barred window that's barely reachable from the ceiling.

Once she's taken in her environment, which is just a concrete box with no visible door and a tiny window, all of the questions start to stampede in. Where is she? Why is she here? Why did Clemence do this? Was she planning to take Renae all along? Has she really been kidnapped? And if so, how was she going to get out?

It didn't take long for Renae to start to lose hope after a full night in obsidian, oblivious, freezing, hungry and weak still trying to claw down the walls encaging her or find some way out. Her head is a mess. Twenty-four hours have barely passed and she's already began to lose her mind to the dark cloud of fear creeping up her neck, surely but slowly starting to possess all thoughts that cross her mind at two-hundred miles per hour. There was no knowing what was to happen to Renae down here, and she'd scraped at every inch of her skull to snatch at that solution, but her hands were slippy with sadness and she just couldn't think straight.

She's slumped against the wall, her knees to her face and her arms loosely hugging her bruised legs. Renae lifts up her battered head to reveal her red, blotchy eyes from tears that seemed to burn her face like lava trickling down a smooth mountain edge. Mourning in the moonlight, she whimpers in her grace, her blue lips trembling as she whispers aloud, "How did I even get here?" utterly dumbfounded. She knows that whoever locked her poor soul away in here used some force to launch her into this demented wreck of a place, evidence being the black and blue bruises that snake their way up Renae's whole left side of her body.

Maybe she was dropped.

Her body sulkily follows Renae's demands to stretch up and stand in the centre of the box as she peers up at the ceiling. And only now, as if she has been blind ever since she woke up, Renae can see clear as day the faint lines creating a large square right above her head. Her throat tenses up as realisation dawns on her, and Renae frantically starts to search for a way to get up. Scarcely reaching, she manages to brash her fingertips along the edge of the barred windowsill and finds a sharp slice of slate. She grips it tight in between her teeth, and begins jumping as hard as she can to grasp hold of the thick metal bars. Now dangling about two feet from the ground, Renae plants the flats of her feet firmly against the wall and walks her way up as far as possible. But as she turns to face the centre of the room again, her arm jolts, and a bar slips from its held positions. "Sh-t!" the slate muffles her exclamation.

Almost slipping back down the wall, Renae uses all of the little arm strength she has to yank and yank on the loose bar before she falls or someone hears her. It pops out, and she struggles her way through the gap, having to scrape and lean on her bruised side to fit. "Arrgh!" she lets out a strained, strangled noise and rolls down a small grass slope. The gentle breeze somewhat calms her as it caresses Renae's cheeks. She is outside. And she runs.

~~~~

Cold metal bar still in hand, teeth bearing in a snarl of anger and self-defence, and no sense of morality comprehendible until she is safe. She runs like no other, her mix of emotions getting washed away as the wind whips at her flesh. Where she is, Renae does not know, but she's racing alongside a huge, old brick building in an open, soft meadow where the grass tickles her calves. The building is just as much a box as the solid room she just escaped from, this wall running a mile long and half a mile up.

Adrenaline still coursing through her veins, Renae slows and steadies herself once she reaches the corner of the building. She peaks round the bend, and sure enough, there's the main entrance and an armed man guarding it repeatedly pacing back and forth. She spots a fairly busy country road about another two-hundred yards off, and a guy stood on the edge of the field—with his pulled-over, keys-in-ignition Renault—bellowing in pure frustration down his phone. The cogs start clicking in Renate's brain, as she watches for a minute and pieces together her escape; the guard is distracted by the fuming businessman on the side of the road, and she uses this to her advantage.

She swiftly but smoothly rounds the corner on crouched legs, silently stalking up to the guard while his back is turned and his eyes are fixated on the livid man, until she's close enough to bound onto his back—reaching for the handgun strapped to his right hip with her free hand—sending both of them barrelling forward face-first into the dry earth. Without thinking, she jumps to her feet and pulls. Pulls again.

And he's dead. No sound was made. Silencer, she notes. But one handgun is not enough for what she's been dragged into now, so she takes his long gun too. Renae starts to plod forward, taking a mere second to look back at the murdered guard before belting straight for the rearing and ready-to-go Renault. She's about to snarkly comment, "Perfect timing," as she slides into the driver's seat, but is held back as an alarm more like a war siren sounds melancholically in the distance, cutting off her devilish train of thoughts.

"Hey! What are you doing!" He drops his phone.

"Music to my ears," Renae slyly murmurs in response, like a serpent stinging all feelings with every slurred hiss, mainly to the piercing noise coming from the old building rather than the snarling businessman. She slams the car door and pushes the simple engine to drive. As fast as is can go. Just to get her anywhere but here.

~~~~

Renae finds herself back in Paris, the whole drive from the unknown to streets she can recognise a blur. Sometimes her flawless sense of direction really does come in handy. She speeds through the avenues of her estate, her aunty's house standing out like a pink elephant in a parade. She cannot peel her eyes away from the black front door, the closed white blinds in the windows, the folded newspaper thrown into the little yard, the neatly shut metal gate, the rough brown shoe mat on the little step. Her home, her bed just behind that wall, Alice sat snuggled up with a blanket and a mug of coffee on the couch, the ancient grand clock in the porch, that one creek in the stair, the soft fairy lights hung in the study, the old brown leather desk chair that smells of musk and cigarettes, the spider that's been living on the corner of the kitchen doorframe for weeks now, the chip in the wooden banister, the red wine stain on the countertop, all the miniscule things that bring tears to well up in her eyes, all the things that bring this clammy, nauseous feeling to settle about her. All the things that make Renae homesick.

But she cannot deal with that now, she can't face Alice in this state, in this brain-fogging mess. She carries on driving, to the next best place she thinks she can find answers. She scowls at the thought, "Millbruery Lane."

She parks some distance away, another narrow alleyway off the main road, and hides the long gun underneath her seat, tucking the metal bar and handgun into the band of her dark jeggings. Her loose-fit hoodie covers the odd shapes they create on her lower back, just like in the movies. Walking rigidly, all wrong and out of place, she heads down the lane she knew would make her feel like a ghost reliving a memory out of her physical body. The stores right along the bottom of the attached buildings are still magnificent to the eye, cafes still sit with intricate metal table and chairs outside, hanging baskets spread throughout are filled with rather dull, delicate flowers, antique shops still showcase their treasures in the wide window each store possesses, and the cobbled floor beneath is now as dry and gritty as the bark on a tamarisk tree in the Sahara desert.

Renae simply stands and peers at her surroundings, puzzled and pale, not quite knowing what she thought she would find here other than a feeling of fear and anxiety she never believed could be comprehendible by one human being. Still limping, she paces a full three-sixty spin, too truly scared to do much else as the realness of everything starts seeping in. "Wait..." she hushes, rushing to get the word out before she loses the thought again.

*Ding ding*

Her phone, she remembers. She took her phone and threw it behind her back whilst stood with a gun pointed to her face. Clemence's gun. She searches desperately along the floor, finding it convenient that she happened to just hear it go off. There, tucked behind a plant pot, is her her glossy black phone in all its glory, shining like the sun, like a shooting star promising Renae a wish, lighting up hope in the deep dark night. But the only thing her phone promises her is a message from an unknown private number. She opens it, barely prepared for the video she finds, not any bit ready to play it, and utterly too innocent for the horrors she watches.

~~~~

A black and white screen, speckly, blurred. Showing two separate rooms, side by side. Concrete. Dark. No doors, only an open barred window. A woman comes into view on the left-side room. Panic-struck. Stressed. Using her hands to comb back her long bouncy curls. A woman comes into view on the right-side room. More exhausted looking. Like the panic has settled down now. Until she starts to climb up the wall, pulling herself up by the barred window. She's tearing down down her exit. Her escape. Struggling until she's out of the cameras view. But as she finds her way out into the open, free, the woman on the left-side is met face to face with a man fitted in black. Head to toe. Identity indescribable. And as she backs up, fearful, she's ruthlessly forced up against the wall. Showering dark liquid everywhere, as she's shot twice in the skull. Blackness.

~~~~

"...No," Renae whimpers, "Oh no...no no no no no. Please. Oh...Alice!" She buckles over, face growing paler by the second until its true olive undertone is gleaming through. Dropping the phone, she turns to the public bin beside the large plant and doubles over again. Throwing up, hyperventilating, choking, sweating, getting dizzy, feeling limp. Numb. She twists and crashes to the floor, her back bumped up against the bin. Renae slowly wails in her weak state. She sits strangely on the floor—her head hung forward and her limbs hanging loose—and quietly but fiercely sobs. She sobs and she cries and she feels overwhelmingly grief-stricken.

Still hyperventilating, she almost chokes every time she tries to breathe in-between her involuntary snivelling, and she would have stayed this way—crying helplessly on the floor and letting herself cripple until she dies—if it weren't for the young man who stops to ask, "Miss...what has happened?"

Renae glances up, shocked to feel back in reality and in touch with the bustling life surrounding her. A man stands straight in front of her, tilting his neck to study her at a better angle. He wears a navy knit jumper paired with a plaid shirt underneath, stylish skinny jeans and a huge professional camera slung around his shoulder. It doesn't take Renae long to recognise his wavy black hair, deep blue eyes and curious persona. "Don't fucking move," her face reduces to cold stone, she pulls out her silencer and cocks it like she's done this a thousand times before.

Steadily, she stands, and keeps her trembling hand aimed right at the man's heart. "Woah!" he throws his arms up in innocence, "I'm sorry! I was just trying to help. Where did you get that?" He refers to the weapon in her grasp.

"You." He only stares guiltily at her. "You were taking photographs of me in the...the café. Why did you do that?" She steps intimidatingly closer, pressing the gun against his lean chest, "What do you want with me? Who are you? Who do you work with? Why did you do that? Why did you do that you sick son of a bitch!" Renae bellows out her last question, full of force and raw hatred, the same words as her two previous questions but utterly different in every way.

"What I, I, I...just do it for fun I didn't—I don't mean to, to offend...Miss. It is just a beautiful café to shoot in, and you were so carelessly...glowing I, I, I...couldn't not quickly snap the, the opportunity up...Miss..."

"Don't fucking lie to me. I've got a bullet about to put you six feet under and you try to fucking lie to me. Tell me what you were doing!" She's now got him plastered up against the wall.

"Alright! Okay okay," he cowers, "I could sense your powers' strength. It was radiating. It was immense."

Renae blinks a couple of times, bewildered, "Stop playing games with me, you fool," and grips his jumper with her free hand to shake him violently, then shove him back up against the wall.

"No! I'm being serious! I have this family heirloom that's been passed down for years, and it allows anybody who knows how to unlock it to see if someone is currently using magic or if they're even Thaumaturge at all. It's called seeing 'Inside out'."

"What are you on...you disgusting fuck?!" Renae releases him from her grasp and backs up a little.

"Wait look! I'll show you," he replies making her flinch and lock her arms into pointing the gun at his head as he reaches into a hidden pocket in his jacket, revealing a small, transparent sphere.

"It's a goddamned fucking marble!" She's aggravated now, and getting impatient.

But he ignores her dangerous temper, and carries on to softly breathe the word onto the orb, "Édisper..."

~~~~

All in one magnetic wave, the alleyway becomes a little brighter and a little hazier around them. Renae is jolted towards the photographer guy, forcefully pulled by no one in particular, and she claws at the jumper on his bicep, "What did you do?" But they're both distracted from the question as the dainty doorbell in the antique shop rings ten times louder than it should do behind them, and gradually a woman hops out. But she isn't hopping, she's walking in slow motion, like she's on her way to a party on the moon. Renae watches her for a solid minute, the man watching Renae for a reaction, and she's too focused on how strangely she's strolling that she completely misses the warm pink glow the woman's emitting, until it's too late and she rounds the corner.

Renae spins back around to face the man, but looks directly over his shoulder as she spots two more people strolling in slow motion. "Why are they doing that? Is he...glowing? What did you do? Turn these lights off!" She looks up into the sky, trying to find the lights this guy must have switched on.

"Uhm," he coughs.

"You're glowing!" But alls he does in response is obviously do a once-over on Renae with a raised eyebrow, "I'm...glowing? Have you drugged me?! Why have you made my glow black?" she asks him, more confused than angry now.

"I haven't made you anything, I've simply allowed us both to see what is already there. If a person is letting off that pink, wavy glow, it means they're Thaumaturge. If you see pale green in there too it means they're currently using magic. It kind of looks like the Northern Lights, you know? Oh! Look there! See? He's using magic to tie his shoelaces while he's on the phone." And he was. There was a man walking steadily, not taking a glance at his feet, while his right hand is holding his phone to his ear and his left hand is slowly twisting and turning in mid-air, tying his shoelaces from afar.

"What...? That doesn't explain why I'm blazing blackness," Renae pushes, slightly worried to listen to any more this mad man says.

"Well, that's exactly why I was taking photos of you. I don't know...I've never seen anything like it. At all."

"So let me get this clear, magicians are actually magic? And you have this...family heirloom that lets you see which people are magicians and if they're currently using...magic."

"Well...yes."

She chuckles, "Why should I believe anything you're saying, because it all sounds like a load of bullshit right now just to postpone your death?"

"Magic. What is the magic we believe? And what is the magic we see? For thousands of years, we read of fairies and wizards and goblins, and people believed. Yet how many of us will see a stand-up illusionist and not believe their capabilities at all? You're seeing it with your own eyes right now Miss, and I haven't touched a hair on your head, how could I have drugged you?"

"I...I don't know," Renae whispers in defeat, ashamed and confused and in so much shock, "Take us out of this," that when the man sucks them back into the dull movements of reality, Renae's body shuts down and she completely loses consciousness.