Slaved to a Devil [lesbian] novel Chapter 33

I took in her beautiful blonde hair framing her porcelain skin, holding so much beauty and captivation with her black eyes encapturing so much power. When scouring the massive mansion I had found a room that held portraits of Elizabeth for every different decade, some being painted like the one from 1874 to a printed canvas from a year ago. Each of the gorgeous blonde with the year markings and her name at the time.

The room seemed to be held captive by numerous spiders and dust bunnies, floating around in the open air like thousands of dandelion stems traveling with the motion in the room. My rummaging through each canvas didn’t help the dust to settle at all, as more and more specs clouded the air in an attempt to clog my already tight throat.

It had been a year since I had stepped foot in this house. I hadn’t imagined myself returning after I was sent to my home town by police after Lauren’s death. I don’t remember what had happened after I was asked to leave the room by Liz, but maybe it was because I chose not to remember.

The memories I held onto, however, were of Lauren’s eyes. Despite holding the joy that they had, I still felt haunted by them. After Lauren’s last breath, the blackness in her iris’ receded and became a golden hazel, reflecting the sunset pouring through the shattered windows. She looked beautiful, even with her transformation back to human and her blood seeping from her chest. She looked relieved and in a way free.

I had remained frozen in that position for hours, holding Lauren’s body close to my own, long after she had drawn her last breath. Those caramel brown eyes kept open and directed towards my own, almost as if she were just looking at me the whole time; admiring.

Eventually Stephanie and Liz had arrived the next morning and found us in our frozen positions on the floor. Unfortunately Stephanie had entered the room first, causing her to unleash a scream and fall to her knees in shock of finding her boss in the position she was in, with another dead body lying across the room with an envelope opener lodged into her heart.

Thankfully Liz had a clearer head and had slowly and gently joined me, taking a hold of both mine and Lauren’s hands.

“I know it hurts Elise,” she said softly, her own pain with the loss of the one person who had given her a new life after her attempted suicide, now lying dead infront of her. “But we need to leave, it’ll be easier to explain to police when they arrive.”

I had no interest in speaking to police, though, or talking at all as I’ve barely spoken more than a few words since that day. I also took no interest in finding out what Liz had done to cover up the two’s supernatural deaths, or supernatural death since it was pretty clear by the envelope opener how the Witch had died.

I even ignored the news reports on it, although I had tuned into the progress of Saxon industries since Lauren’s death, knowing that she had worked hard to sustain and refurbish its place within the stock markets. As Lauren had told me in one of the last conversations we had, Turner Manufacturing hadn’t taken long to claim bankruptcy and sell to Saxon and Davids’ incorporated which was now run by a man named Mason Abermathy.

My return home hadn’t been too special from what I can remember, with the two months that I had been away from home not having done much for my family. Obviously they were worried and hadn’t stopped looking for me, but my father kept up his alcoholic tendencies, my mother and stepfather went back to work almost immediately afterwards leaving me to grieve for Lauren alone. It was probably best that way anyhow. I didn’t see a way of actually explaining my pain and loss of my captor and love to anyone else without them thinking that I had developed some form of stockholm syndrome.

I could tell that my mother wanted to ask me what had happened but she seemed to choose better of it or thought that the sooner everything went back to normal then I would forget what had happened. It didn’t work out that way, since I still feel like my heart was torn from me.

I guess I never really escaped after all.

“You know,” Liz says from the doorway, interrupting the deafening silence of this room filled with images of her, basically a physical representation of my mind most days. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to grieve for so long. She knew what she was getting into and the love she had for you showed that she only wanted you to be happy.”

Liz had decided to move into the mansion since she no longer had the money to live in her apartment, but I don’t think she was complaining since Lauren had offered her a place years prior. She maintained the property after Stephanie and the other maids and servants left, understanding that they would need to be quiet about what had happened, for their own sake anyway.

“She left you something by the way,” she continues, noting my refusal to talk. “I’ll take you to it.”

I nod my head, keeping my eyes focused on those black pools painted into a mounted canvas. Hearing her retreating footsteps in the distance, I pull myself away from the dust ridden space and follow her to wherever she decides to take me and to whatever she’s bound to give me.