28 Angels Have Acne Part 3

The compact hospital seat squishes beneath Noe and Daniel as 'A Guide to Zirathean Myths and Legends' sits open on their laps. 

Leaning against each other for warmth, they shift through the pages that read:

When an Ephrene makes physical contact with their soulmate, the soulmate's current state can overwhelm the Ephrene to an extent enough to cast them into it - resulting in a signifying fainting spell. The soulmate and Ephrene alike enter an alternate subconscious. Within this subconscious where only memories, hopes, and emotions of the fated exist, soulmates experience a shared reality called the dreamstate.

Feng Mian and Rosalind lie unconscious, sprawled over Jinn's bed and still holding his hands.

"Can three souls be paired together?"

"Such a phenomenon has never been recorded," Noe responds.

~

Tall green grass continues to brush against Rosalind's upper thighs as she leans forward and collects Jinn's form into her arms. She embraces him with all the love she has left in her body.

"Oh..." Jinn gasps.

"You're scaring him," Feng Mian grapples Rosalind's shoulders and shudders in disgust at the rush of emotion she has at that contact. "Nor do you deserve to touch him. You're the reason he's like this."

"Like what?" Jinn questions as Rosalind lets go of him. He does not know he is in a coma. "Wait, who are you people and why are you so beautiful?"

The two Ephrenes remain silent.

"Please, don't answer all at once," Jinn humorously grins.

Feng Mian's eyes stick to the space between Rosalind and Jinn. She does not like the situation in the slightest. 

"This is never going to work. The Omniscient made a mistake. YOU can't be my soulmate," Feng Mian points at Rosalind. "The three of us together are incompatible. I understand him and me, gentleness and humor, that works."

"I haven't seen much of the gentleness you speak of in you," Jinn gestures to Feng Mian, "except that you haven't assaulted me yet. Your aura actually feels a bit violent right now if you ask me. But, what is my opinion anyway?" Standing up, Jinn lightheartedly slides the issue away. Dusting the refreshing dirt off his clothes, he raises his eyebrows in question, "Maybe we can start with introductions? I'm Jinn, nice to meet you."

Rosalind smiles, "Hi, I'm Rosalind."

Feng Mian scoffs, "My soulmate has been stuck in this field for years because of you and you have the audacity to smile?!"

Rosalind shoots Feng Mian a glare, "Can you just calm down. He's my soulmate too and judging by your reactions, you're experiencing the same spark for me as I feel for you."

"Unfortunately, you and I might be soulmates too," Feng Mian grits her teeth. "This is insane. This doesn't feel like 'love' at all," she spins around and grapples her hair. "Surely the Omniscient made a mistake? WE," she points at Rosalind again, "are incompatible."

"You're the one who once said that the Omniscient never makes mistakes. Stop complaining. We're wasting precious time with our soulmate all because of your disbelief."

"Precious?! Since when did you become sentimental?"

"Since when did we switch roles, Feng Mian?" Rosalind steps away from her but Feng Mian immaturely gets all up in her face. 

"All this time I've been calm because I knew my soulmate was waiting for me, because I was waiting to meet Jinn and have our happily ever after. Now I find out that I have atrocious you as a soulmate too and my hopes and dreams have been crushed. Forgive me if I'm not my usual self," she concludes sarcastically.

"It's n-"

"Shut up!" Feng Mian orders her. "I'm not done talking."

"Hey, can we all just chill for a second? It doesn't feel nice when I see you rejecting her so..." he splays his arms in their direction and steps forward in comfort.

"Aha. Aha," Rosalind chuckles and disgorges the crack in her neck. "What?" she pulls full force in Feng Mian's direction almost causing them to fall onto the ground. 

"Guys, come on," Jinn reaches towards them.

Simultaneously, Rosalind pulls a punch, Jinn flings a hand between them, and Feng Mian moves to coax Jinn away from their scuffle. Instantaneously, their limbs collide and they tumble away from their shared reality once more. 

A leaking tap periodically sounds through the cold, dark basement they sit in, cement pounding their bottoms' bones to dust. 

Rubbing his tingling forearm where they had touched, Jinn asks, "Where are we?" Only Feng Mian is beside him. 

"This must be Rosalind's memory," Feng Mian deduces. 

"Memory?"

Muffled sobs come from a corner hidden by darkness.

"Hello?" Jinn calls but no one answers.

Again, a heart-wrenching sob carves their hearts out of their chests and yanks. Their attention shifts onto the table at the corner of the room.

Pushing off the ground, Jinn and Feng Mian step further down into the stale basement that reeks of depression and peek beneath the singular table against the walls.

Within its shadows, they cannot see anyone or anything moving.

"Hello?" Jinn whispers as not to scare the sobbing girl any further. Her wails continue. 

"I don't think she can hear us," Feng Mian places a hand on his shoulder and shares comforting eye contact with him. 

GRRR.

The metallic basement door grinds open. 

The sobs die out.

Black boots pound against cement stairs. A man of broad shoulders and tight face comes into view, cheekbones sharp against the night as if chopping even its frightening nature into submission.

The only rays of dim light that pervade the scene come from the exit door, or rather, the sobbing girl's entrance.

"Rosalind," the man sweetly slithers out the girl's name. "Rosalind, your mom isn't in good condition. They say we only have today left to see her. Come out before it's too late."

Still, Rosalind remains bundled beneath the table, too terrified to lift a finger. 

"It's all your fault, you know. If you hadn't been born," he nears the table and bends his knees to leach a smile in Rosalind's direction, "she wouldn't have stopped giving me what I wanted and I wouldn't have had to punish her."

His teeth glint in the darkness. 

"Come out, now!" he pulls a small body from its hiding spot and drags it across the cement. 

In her cute Church dress and red ribbons, as red as the marks across her face and arms, a tiny, eight year old Rosalind screams, "Daddy, stop!" 

Her father kicks her in the stomach and her eyes blow wide. She cannot manage to paint her agony by screaming out; her body is in shock.

"Aren't you going to apologize?"

Little Rosalind cannot hear him above the rush of blood beating into her ears.

He kicks her again. 

"Apologise for being born, you rat!"

Banging her head against the corner of the table, Rosalind falls into unconsciousness. 

"That's the problem when they're small," her father comments to himself, or another voice in his head, the answer is uncertain. "They pass out too easily."

Letting Rosalind's body weightlessly crumble onto the ground, he shakes out the tension in his hands and stomps out of the exit.

A sudden transition is made in Feng Mian and Jinn's vision to a scene in the same basement but years later.

Rosalind, about fifteen years old now, pulls her bleeding leg across the ground. The bruises on her face have grown bigger and the pain in her eyes more piercing.

The table she used to hide beneath is in pieces in the center of the basement. A gashing wound paints the leg of her black pants purple.

Gritting her teeth, she stretches her body and extends her hand into a hole in the wall, expertly fishing out a stone slab. It is slightly serrated at its edge. 

Using her elongated nails, she manages to silently sharpen the slab. It must have taken a year to get it as smooth as it is then and she continues to thaw away at it. If she cannot decapitate him with it in one strike, she will never escape.

Scampering feet catch her attention and she hurriedly pushes the slab back into the gaping crack in the wall. In her haste, her left knee collides with the cement floor and agitates her wound.

Rosalind audibly whimpers.

The basement door explodes as her father stomps onto the scene.

"I heard you crying out just now. How many times do I have to tell you to shut up?!" he screams. 

Rosalind remains silent, her sobs and tears have long run-out. In her periphery, she sees a rat, that must have shuffled its feet across the ground and caught her attention, scurry out a hole at the end of the basement.

Grabbing her head, Rosalind's dangling black hair whips through the air as her father shoves her up into a limp sitting position. 

SMACK. 

"Shut up," he tells her.

She keeps her eyes trained on the ground and lets her head fall forward. 

Again, her father pulls her face up. 

SMACK. 

"Shut up."

Annoyed by her lack of reaction, her father digs his fingers into the gaping hole in her thigh. 

"AH," Rosalind's mouth cranes wide open as she tries to tackle the rising voice in her throat. 

SMACK.

"Shut up."

When her father is about to land another slap upon her purplish cheek, he hesitates. Something is vibrating against his own thigh, a cellphone.

He sighs in agitation but pulls himself together.

Taking the call, he pushes Rosalind onto the ground as he answers the mosquito-like voice against his ear.

"Hey, dude!" her father feigns friendliness and smiles as he walks up and out of the basement. "Yeah, I was just recycling some trash. You know how bitchy the government gets when you don..." 

The door shuts.

Rosalind shivers uncontrollably in the dark, the warmth of Westville's everlasting summer does not come to her. In anger and lust for escape, she stares longingly at the hole in the wall. One day soon, she shall put use to that weapon.

Jinn wipes away the tears that incessantly pool in his eyes as Feng Mian bites back her own salty faucet. Collecting the shattered pieces of their hearts, Feng Mian and Jinn lie on either side of trembling Rosalind and put their arms around her. But she cannot feel their love.