[P] demons that never disappear

[Eulalie]

Eulalie LOOKING UP FOR HEAVEN WAY DOWN  HERE UPON THE GROUND She moved listlessly, robotically, weaving through the streets on subconscious memory alone. Her earth brown eyes look ahead but did not see, glassy and haunted. The thing she always feared had happened. The thing she prayed would never happen that night she saw him at the festival here, in this very place she called home, had come to pass. Eulalie had run into the man her parents had sold her to when she was young, out in the sands with nobody around to stop him or make him go away. His dark form was a shadow in her mind, a demon in her heart. She walked, and she walked, with no direction in mind. Her steps echoed a lonely tempo through the empty late night streets, and eventually she found herself outside the library, wearily looking at its heavy doors. Finding she was not ready to return to her bed, to look at another and pretend to be strong when she felt like she had been dragged back to her days in chains, the ivory and gilded woman pushed her way through the doors of the library. It was dim inside, lit only by a few stray candelabras on the walls. In her shock and stupor, Eulalie did not consider that there may be someone else inside. Someone who she knew worked late and often in the library, comfortable among the shelves and books. She merely wandered through the aisles, dark, troubled eyes sweeping over spines without reading titles. There was nothing in this library for her but a hope of comfort, a temporary shelter from the truth that waited for her, scratching at the walls wanting to get in. Nothing was alright. Would it ever be alright again? Would he ever stop haunting her, now that he knew she was somewhere, living, going on? It was a crushing, suffocating weight, the thought that she might never be free of him. The library became blurry as tears filled her eyes, warm rivulets running down her cheeks. Everything she had pushed away, everything she had paved over and left behind with her new life bubbled to the surface. Her fears, her worries, her dread, it all balled up and settled in her chest, sitting on her heart like an oozing, consuming black. The first cry that escaped her was strangled, a breathless, desperate sound. It was as if all her demons were clawing themselves free of her skin, unleashing themselves. She first dropped to her knees, and then eventually laid the rest of the way down, her shivering, quivering legs unable to support the weight of her body. In that moment, Eulalie had never felt more alone. "speech" @Somnus

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