EDITED 

This chapter is dedicated to rmcneary whose criticism and advice was integral to the way this rewrite is shaping up to be. I got a lot of very helpful advice for the first draft of TQoC but his advice on fleshing out the descriptions and the characters has always been on my mind. Please do check out his excellent epic-fantasy The Path of Fire. 

"Narnia! It's all in the wardrobe just like I told you!"

―C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

(tick toc tick toc time to move)

I opened my eyes. I felt the familiar weight on the bed next to me. And that familiar stench. That rot.

That smell that could only mean one thing.

Mother.

I sat up and fumbled for my glasses and waited for the room to slowly congeal into view. Moonlight spilled through the curtains. Books sat silent in their shelves, waiting for me to open them.

Fat chance, after what was going to happen tonight.

"Just this once. Listen to me just this once."

I turned to look at my mother, whose face was turned away from me. She only smelled of rot. As far as her looks were concerned, she was just as chic and elegant as ever. She was a bit too pale though, and dressed rather too excessively in black. A red choker clung to her neck. Her eyes were dead. Her lips were dead.

She was very very dead.

"Don't want me to make the same mistakes you made and all?" I stood up and my feet sought the rubbery comfort of my slippers. I stood and stretched.

The last time I would ever feel these muscles. Or so I hoped.

I didn't want an afterlife. I didn't want hell and I didn't want heaven either.

"You don't have to do this. You can run away. Run away. I'll be with you the whole time."

I said nothing.

I tied my hair up and took off my pyjamas. My mouth tasted stale but I wasn't in the mood for mouthwash.

I opened the cupboard and picked out a blue dress, cut almost perfectly for me.

"That's mine." Mum said.

Almost perfectly.

I put it on and closed the cupboard door.

I pulled the little teddy-bear off the shelf and found the zipper behind its ear. I pulled. The knife clattered on the carpet.

"What are you trying to prove with this? Do you think there's a day that goes by where I don't regret what I did?"

"Yeah, that's because you came back. You came back when you should've fucking stayed where you belonged."

"You will too. But it'll be worse."

I shook my head. "You're a hallucination."

"I hope you enjoy being a hallucination too. Never listened when I was alive, not going to when I'm dead."

"Well, do you want me to come find you when I'm a hallucination too?"

But she was gone. She did that a lot, nowadays. When I refused just to sit and listen and obey like I used to. The novelty of her being a ghost had worn off long ago. She was just my mother now.

I picked up the knife and closed it.

I checked behind my door. I had my makeup bag, my handbag and my schoolbag. I picked the last one. It seemed to fit.

I opened it out and dumped whatever traces of the previous academic year remained. Not a bad year, all in all. Economics went rather well for me. I considered for a while whether I should wait until after results day to go through with this.

I laughed.

I put the knife in the bag, picked out a fresh cotton towel and put that in as well and zipped it shut.

I was done.

I was halfway out the door when I realized that I didn't take anything to read. I smiled and walked back. I slipped the book in my bag and zipped it back up again.

***

The wind howled.

I pulled my hair free and let it whip around my head. My feet pedalled far faster than I needed.

The city was quiet. The occasional car careened past me and my bicycle shook.

But I kept speeding.

I didn't notice the little black tyre in the middle of the road. I soared.

I fell straight on to the roadside, elbows first.

"Let me help you."

I turned and looked. The full moon was blocked by an angular face. The man had a bald head. He was ridiculously under-dressed for the cold. He stretched his hand out to me.

I took it.

"You have to be careful in the dark, don't you? I mean, It would be a shame if you didn't get where you needed to get on time."

I nodded. "Thank you so much."

He looked foreign. He spoke in English that could come from anywhere. He did not smile much.

"Pleasure."

He walked away and I mounted my bicycle again.

I dropped it when I got to the park, not bothering to lock it. Good for whoever managed to steal it.

I climbed up the incline past the park gates, letting the scent of fresh, dewy soil wash over me. It was cold now and I felt gooseflesh rise along my hand, skirting my bruised elbows.

There was nobody else. Or nobody important, to be precise.

Bushes shook as schoolgirls and their lovers found whatever refuge they could find from their daily grind and abuse at home. Fucking in the dark behind a screen of foliage.

I did not look.

What I was going to do was going to be even more obscene. Even more filthy. Even more of an antithesis to the culture we inherited.

Stars were washed out by city lights. The higher I climbed the better I could see the buildings. Tall, unholy edifices that rose into the sky. Juddering cranes letting the top one percent use their ninety percent of the cake to make modern Babels rise even higher and higher and higher.

The park rose to an apex. A peak. A little bench, overlooking the city.

I walked slowly towards it, kicking my shoes and letting my feet bask in the softness of the wet grass. Crickets chirped and street dogs barked.

Nature overlooked the urban mess below me.

But the colours were beautiful, of course. Absolutely beautiful.

Ambient, soothing lights. On every building. The lines of cars that sped either way. White and red.

I sat. I picked up the knife and I looked at the colours.

I couldn't stop looking.

I saw fire crawl up the buildings, seeking out their corporate roots and surging up. Overtaking. Eating alive.

Comets fell from the sky.

Monsters smashed manmade structures.

The city was being destroyed.

I held the knife up to my neck.

I felt bile rise up along my throat, bubbling and foaming. My head began hurting. I felt dizzy. I did not notice when the vomit came.

Long strings of yellow liquid oozed out of my mouth and puddled on the floor in the mud in front of me.

My guts hit refresh again and again and again.

I expelled as much as I could.

"Rather untasteful, all in all. But a little...shall we say turbulence, is to be expected."

A cat sat in front of me. Average sized, brown and a little chubby.

"You're a fucking cat."

"I do other things as well. I eat and shit and talk to people and all that. It's like if I call you a reading human. You surely do things other than read."

I vomited again.

Into the cat's tuna.

"Well, that was uncalled for. I really did not mean any harm. Just trying to be personable and all. Perhaps we should start with introductions. I'm the wayside prophet. The storyteller of the streets. The one nobody listens to. Call me Nostradamus."

"You're a cat."

"And you're a girl. Short for your age. Rather too slender so you're obviously not eating right. Rather attractive if you go by human standards. Short-sighted. Impeccably dressed. For a warm summer day. Name unknown for now."

(in a strange assault on senses behind bookstore cabinets beyond old sane men selling boring books to bored kids with maths and free pornography on their mind eye bonded with him over old bollywood magazines)

"Priyanka Chopra."

"Not a real name, is it? But I am satisfied with pseudonyms. With false identities. Nothing in a name here."

I stood and looked. There were no buildings anymore.

No.

Too many buildings. Moonlight bounced off the endless sea of nearly identical skyscrapers stretching out into every direction. I was still on the park bench.

But the architecture of the place was all wrong. Trees where there should be none. Nonsense landscaping. And no joggers and strays adding to the sounds of the night.

There were no sounds of the night.

"Where is this place?"

"The city. I, however, prefer to call it the in-between. A sweet spot between..."

"Between?"

"Never mind. How are you feeling?"

"Nauseous. This must be a nightmare of some kind. Probably a nervous breakdown."

"In more ways than you know. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction for you. Free of charge since you ruined my tuna and all."

"Sorry about that."

"Tuna abounds here. Don't stress. Now stretch out your left hand."

I stretched out my hand. Nostradamus padded up to it and licked my ring finger.

"You keep secrets from yourself. Time for something a little more...invasive, shall we say?"

He bit.

I screamed a little. It hurt, but not as much as I expected. A bleeding little stump sat where my finger should have been.

I bit my lip.

"You're not shocked by this at all?" he said, after finishing off with my finger and dumping the bones in his tuna tin.

"Dream. Nervous breakdown." I muttered.

Pain came and went. In waves.

"If that's how you want to deal with things. I'd put some pressure on that if I were you. Now, as for your prophesy, I managed to squeeze one thing out from the currents. You were sent here for a very specific purpose."

"What purpose?"

"Priyanka Chopra, you were sent here to die."   

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. If you did, please don't hesitate to hit that vote button if you feel so inclined. If you don't, let me know why in the comments. A little constructive criticism goes a long way, as the readers of the first draft could testify ;) 

So help me make the third draft even better. 

Cheers!