Her eyes are empty,

Blank, like a window that stares out unto a world of nothingness.

Milk pale are her chill hands. I take one into mine, the iciness burns me and involuntarily I shrink and drop her hand. She does not show any sign of caring.

A statue, she seems. In the glowing candlelight, she is a being angelic, not made of the crude stuff of humans, but ethereal, like marble and light, shadow and air; an alabaster-cheeked sprite.

But her heart is dormant and empty. Before where the earthly golden glow of love and delight flourished, there is an indifferent pale grey, a softly moaning wind in the night that wails words of neither sorrow nor joy, merely of existence, cold existence.

In the shadowy hall there is a noise, and clamor and a whisper. My heart gives a deep thump, and I know who has come. I can nearly hear the blood dripping from the voices; murders. Assassins and rapists from the fiery depths of no place that I know.

She blinks, and inhales deeply. Her marble white bosom rises and falls. The red velvet mantle falls from her shoulders onto the stone floor. I cannot tell whether she hears their whispers or not.

She gives me a small twitch of a smile, and for a moment, her eyes are focused upon mine. She extends her arm and places a trembling hand upon my shoulder. I flinch, and yet am filled with a strange reassurance. She does see me. The pale of her eyes was upon me for a fleeting blink, and that has filled me with a flame of love.

Whispers? No, they are wails. Moaning, hating and loving misery, their own and that of others, and all the while lusting for the thrill of blood. They are cries of all that brings pain.

With a shudder, she falls against me. Her face is torn in feverish fear, or what I perceive as fear. Gasping, she mumbled foreign words into my ear, rasping sounds and exclamations. My heart is wrenched; I cannot quell her panic.

“My dear, my love. Don’t shake so, my love! Can you not see me? Hear my voice.”

She gasping and gives a weary moan, falling from my limp arms against the wall. Her eyes float unclosed and shut in rhythm with her unsteady breath.

“Your tongue…! Speaks…of what I cannot see. Where is aught at all but blackness? Nothing! Nothing…!”

She claws frantically at the air in front of her, her eyes distantly searching for something that isn’t there. It brings hot tears into my eyes.

Suddenly, a thought comes to me. I wonder why I had not known it before.

“You can see them.” I meant for it to be a question, but the answer is evident; she sees, yet cannot feel, and no one around her can perceive what she does.

And it drives her to insanity. To desperation. To this.

She gasps for the last time, and nods, though her eyes never meet mine. She smiles, a twitchy, sudden smile. A fleeting smile that does not reach her eyes, and with a shudder, is lost.