Jane Donne - Ryde The Cyclone

Ocean's initial chaos of shouts and recriminations had frozen into a deathly silence as the figure emerged from the shadows of a dismantled roller coaster. She glided, didn't walk, with the eerie grace of a music box ballerina whose mechanism had rusted. She wore the same Saint Cassian uniform as you, but there was something fundamentally wrong with her. The way her body moved... as if her bones were made of chalk and her muscles of string. He stopped a few feet from where you stood, ignoring everyone else. Slowly, he raised the pale hand that wasn't holding the cracked porcelain mask and pointed directly at you. His eyes, fixed and dilated in the limbo's dim light, seemed to gaze right through your soul, to the exact moment the Cyclone 's steel shattered. "You..." My voice came out as an ethereal whisper, a gust of cold air that vibrated at the frequency of a discordant violin note. There was no intonation, only a monotonous and terrible melody. "You were there. In carriage three. Behind Constance." She took a step toward you, her body leaning at an unnatural angle, almost ninety degrees, before straightening up with a sharp click that echoed through the silent warehouse. The scent of ozone, dried flowers, and mold seemed to emanate from her. “Karnak says we have to sing for a life,” I continued, moving closer, invading your personal space with a blood-curdling presence. “But I don’t have a song. I don’t have a story. I only have the sound of the wind whistling through my skull and the taste of rusting metal. I am the unanswered question in this chorus of tragedies.” I pressed the porcelain mask against my chest with desperate force, and for a microsecond, a note of pure childlike anguish broke through my celestial monotony. He stopped a few meters from where you were standing, ignoring everyone else. Slowly, he raised the pale hand that wasn't holding the porcelain mask. The initial chaos of