Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap.
The pen was just a dead stick in her hand. A mute metronome. Each tap was a second shaved off her contract, a heartbeat closer to the moment the company would cut her loose and sweep her out with the rest of the trash.
'come on, something, anything' A flash, an image, his smile.
But it was wrong. Not the sunshine grin. It was the stiff, waxy smile he'd worn in the casket. The one that had whispered to her.
A cold sick weight dropped through her chest, pinning her to the chair.
That was the image her mind offered? Not a memory, but a corruption of one?
'No. No, rewrite it.'
She lunged, at the page, a frantic, starving thing. Her hands moved, scribbling not words but warding spells.
For a moment, the ghost stayed quiet, held at bay by the screech of pen on paper.
Then the ink would curdled. The letters bled, swimming into a single pulsing accusation.
'Failure. Fraud. Ghost. '
"Agh, Dammit" The 100th crumpled sheet joined the graveyard, each ball a headstone for a self she could no longer be.
The room tilted. Not a metaphor. The floorboards yawned open like a grave.
'What's the use?' The question was a pit. She was already at the bottom.
She dragged a hand through her sweat damp hair and her caught her own gaze in the mirror.
For a split second, it wasn't her.
Ari's face stared back. His yellow eyes clouded. A perfect, blooming rose on his shirt.
Her heart lurched, a physical slam against her ribs. 'No'
'You were supposed to be the strong one'
The voice was a judgment call, delivered from her own throat.
She recoiled like a whip crack had gone off behind her eyes. Her head jerked back, teeth snapping shut on the tip of her tongue.
Blink.
It was gone.
Only her own pale, wide eyed face remained in the glass.
The metallic tang of blood was the only real thing in the room.
Her phone pinged on the desk, the sound absurdly bright. She flinched, swallowed and winced as the movement sent a fresh, bright sting through her tongue.
She shuffled over, a message from Örn.
'Production meeting, 1 sharp.'
she read it and threw her phone aside, the gesture fueled by a dull, throbbing anger that pulsed in time with the pain in her mouth.
'Another stage for my humiliation'.
She dressed in a blur, her tongue probing the ragged edge of the wound against her teeth. The taste wouldn't leave.
There it was. The tinnitus, the glitches. As she drove, her ears rang louder, a high pitched scream harmonizing with the persistent, iron taste of her own panic.
The road warped.
One second, the lane veered left. The next, right. The streetlights smeared into glowing tendrils that reached for the windshield.
A year ago, a glitche like this would have sent her pulse skittering, her hands clawing at the steering wheel as if she could physically wrestle reality back into place.
Now, her hands stayed at ten and two. Her breathing didn't hitch. She observed the distortion with the detached interest of a scientist watching a predictable chemical reaction.
Her head throbbed, a dull familiar ache, a souvenir from last night's meeting with the floor. She leaned back and slammed her skull against the headrest. Once. A dull padded thud. Twice. Harder. The sharp bright burst of pain behind her eyes was a clean line through the fog. A welcome distraction.
'It's not enough'
The other thoughts, patient as a snake in the dark behind her eyes.
'You let him die'
She shook her head. A sharp negation.
Arriving at the office, was like walking into a silent film. Her brain had switched off the audio. Colleagues moved through the lobby in a pantomime of greeting, lipsoving,teeth flashing,hands waving, she saw the shape of the sounds, but heard only the constant inner ringing hum. It was like watching life from inside a thick aquarium glass.
She floated into the conference room. Bodies flies past, setting into chairs wigh rustles and creaks that registered as faint, distant pressure changes. The buzz in her ear thickened, a sonic wool stuffing her skull.
A mouth moved at the head of the table. The managing director's. She watched his jaw work, the practiced cadence of a man delivering a verdict.
Her name sliced through the static.
".....Njáll."
Her eyes snapped up, colliding with a pair of dark ones already fixed on her. Laurus. The data point registered: high-value stimulus. Challenge. Then faded into the white noise.
The MD's mouth was moving again. Words detached, floating in the air between them.
"…hear a single word I just said?"
She blinked. The world pulsed at the edges.
"What?"
"You haven't delivered a play in a year.You have four months left. Do you understand?"
A fact. A date. The guillotine she'd built herself. The information dropped into the static and dissolved.
' I understand'
She felt the room's attention like a change in barometric pressure. A low murmur rose and fell. She let it wash over her, her focus drifting from his moving lips to the whorls in the wood grain of the table. Each line a path to nowhere. The sound receded, leaving only the familiar, insulating hum.
When the MD asked if she had anything to add, she shook her head. An autonomic response. A muscle twitch.
She didn't notice the room empty. Not until a shadow fell across the table, blocking the fluorescent light.
A voice, familiar in a way that bypassed memory and went straight to the marrow:
"Hey, Astrid."
A single, clean spark fired in the frozen circuitry of her mind. A synaptic flare, old and deep. Her spine stiffened. Not with anger. With recognition. A predator's scent on the wind.
Her lips moved. The correction came out flat, automatic, devoid of heat:
"It's Ásta."
She lifted her head. Met the dark eyes. Laurus.
Laurus' POV
She looked like a derelict building.
The Ásta Njáll I knew was a study in controlled expression. Her hair whether a sleek fall or an artful storm of black, was always a declaration. A component of her architecture. Now it was a chaotic spill. As if the blueprint itself had been crumpled. Clothes hung on her like shrouds. But the eyes... The eyes were the true defacement. Not guarded. Gutted.
"You look terrible," I stated. I waited for the arch of a brow, the slight tilt of the head that would precede a dismantling retort.
Her gaze held mine, saw nothing and dismissed it
"Yeah."
She walked away.
I stood, the expected feedback loop broke.
'Was this a new tactic? A null strategy?'
I caught her in the hall.
"No 'welcome back'? No critique? Have you finally conceded?"
Nothing. Not even a flicker.
"Your silence is more damning than every review" I said falling into step.
"It suggests you find the spectacle beneath your notice. Or perhaps beyond your capacity."
She was silent. It was a solid object between us. I moved in front of her, blocking her path. The instinct was physical, childish.
'I should make her see me'
"Look at me, dammit."
Her eyes lifted slowly. They didn't snap to mine in challenge. They drifted, unfocused, and landed somewhere on my chin. The vacancy in them was a shock.
"What no clever remark? " My voice was lower, tighter than I intended. " No 'go to hell Laurus'? Nothing? "
Her lips parted. For a second I thought I had her. Then they closed. She took a shallow breath, as if the act of speaking required calculations she couldn't complete.
"Cat got your tongue?" The taunt was weak, juvenile. It hung in the air between us, pathetic.
She blinked, a slow reptilian shutter. Then she simply... Stepped to the side.
Not a dodge, not a dismissal. The way one steps around a piece of furniture. An obstacle of zero consequence.
A cold, clean slice of panic, sharp and entirely new, cut through my frustration. I turned.
"Ásta?"
She paused. Didn't look back.
"Welcome back,"
she murmured, the words dust dry and utterly meaningless, and continued down the hall.
I stood frozen. The hum of the office, the drag of flats and the click of heels on tile, the murmur of a phone call it all receded into a high-pitched ring. My own reflection in a dark window stared back, a man in an expensive suit, standing alone in a hallway, looking utterly foolish.
My hands, which had been curled at my sides, went slack.
"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.
For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
-Friedrich Nietzsche.