The Fallen Valkyrie

The Neighborhood.

Jeremy watched the two ladies disappearing behind the curtain of mist engulfing the road dissolved into the grey fog. He noticed his hands were shivering, and palms sweaty.

It wasn’t the cold. He still feared something. The girl? Maybe.

He had an odd sensation lingering inside him about Bianca. She was absurdly familiar to him. That moment when he touched her hand for a handshake – her skin, the touch felt like he had felt it before. But, Layla? No. She was genuinely an outsider here.

The fallen Valkyrie. Jeremy smiled to himself amused as he realised how dumb it was to actually believe in Sabrina’s concocted stories. The engine revved as he turned the key to ignition and drove off carefully.

He tried to speed but his tires resisted and threatened to skid from the road. The snow had begun to fall thickly now, dedicated to paint the town white till dawn.

“Ridiculous.” He muttered and moved on.

He didn’t like the dent in the hood of his car. He was relieved to know that his car at least started and running well after the pole crashed onto it.

The pole. He realised. How could just a little thin pair of delicate wings crumble a pole? Jeremy’s mind began to wander off.

His eyes widened as the realisation hit him. He had thought that those were Bianca’s fake wings.

“No, no. Don’t go there.” Jeremy spoke to himself.

He focused on driving and getting home quickly. The road back to his home seemed a bit stretched off than usual. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get home from Sabrina’s place.

The journey was only a few minutes, as usual, but it felt like forever. The fear creeping inside of him slowed time. Jeremy’s life would change in a couple of days, or months at the most. His subconscious knew that, but this stubborn mind lacked the knowledge of his true reason for existing. Why was this little town of Lakefall always isolated from the outside world? Why would no one ever get out of it or even move in here? The answers lie in the mystical myths which date back to the beginning of time. The time when the first beings of the universe came to existence, a time before human existence. And that was why it was complicated for humans to fathom the knowledge of the existence of someone superior than them, and so they chose ignorance.

Layla pulled over in the driveway and killed the engine.

“I don’t know why you chose this place.” Layla said, looking at the deserted neighbourhood.

At the corner of the street was a huge mansion built in Victorian-style architecture. It was hidden behind the rogue branches that grew apart from the tree. The dense flora blanketed the ground around it. Layla doubted that the wild grass might also cover the floor inside of the mansion. The top turret of the mansion is entangled in the climbers like the cobwebs stringing around an insect. The moss was thick on the rusty gates and stone and almost everything on the lawn. There was a pair of slides and a swing set in the lawn which creaked slightly when the wind blew past through it. It gave Layla chills like she was watching an intro scene of Stephen King’s novel adapted into a movie.

“You do know that’s not my house, right?” Bianca teased when she noticed her sister staring at the Blarsons’ Villa.

Layla averted her eyes from the scenery quickly. “Your window looks out into it.” She said when she saw Bianca’s bedroom window upstairs.

“Well yeah, it’s pretty amusing.” She laughed.

Layla ignored the sarcasm and picked up her bag. “Let’s go inside. I can’t bear to stand here and look at that.” She said, glancing one last time at the Villa before going in.

Bianca climbed the stairs carefully and stood under the patio in front of the main door.

Bianca stared at Layla expectantly. “What?” Layla asked, perceiving the look.

“Would you at least get this door?” Bianca said.

“Oh yeah, right.” Layla fumbled in her bag for the keys, “…sorry.” She muttered.

Layla reached out to get the door clumsily and dropped the keys.

Bianca perched the wings against a pillar which supported the patio above their heads and picked up the keys.

“Move…,” she said sharply, “… let me get it.”

Bianca unlocked the door and it opened to a dimly lit tiny living room. Layla’s clothes and shoes littered all over the couch and coffee table. Wrappers of snacks and empty ice cream cups were scattered all across the room on the dusty carpet.

Beside the coffee table, a lamp sat on a little stool with a decorative cactus on it. On the right side, a window accessed the view of Bianca’s little garden, which was hardly compiled of three plants: two of them were daisies and another was a big hemlock tree, whose branches almost sneaked into Bianca’s bedroom upstairs through her window.

Across the living room, a staircase led upstairs to the bedrooms. The house was compiled of two bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen and dining room downstairs. It was a decent house, not as comfortable as their home, but it was just fine. Enough for Bianca and occasional visits of Layla.

Layla tossed the bag on the couch pretending to not see the mess she’d already made around the house. Bianca had kept the house clean all the time, but whenever Layla visited it looked as if it was a post-disaster – c*m – murder scene. Bianca no more lectures Layla about her shambolic lifestyle. It was Layla and nothing could change her, every inch of her was as stubborn as herself.

Layla plopped on the couch amidst the shabby heaps of clothes and her other unnecessary things that she had travelled along with.

“Bianca, could you please come in and close the door. It’s freezing.” Layla shouted, embracing herself.