Mella hears a voice
Mella stood alone in her small cabin on the ship listening as the storm outside raged. She was staring at the candles. They were flickering from some small draught in the room. She could not stop staring at the tiny dancing pillars of light. Suddenly the candles blew out and she was left in the darkness.
She closed her eyes tightly hoping that when she opened them somehow the light would be returned. But the things she saw now when she closed her eyes were more horrible than this momentary fright so she opened them again.
It was then that she smelt it, the now familiar scent of rotting flesh. She felt bile rising in her throat as she clapped a hand to her mouth and retched. The smell surrounded her, suffocating in the small room, the foul breath of the crypt.
She fought the rising panic but could not bring herself to make any noise. Then she heard it… the hiss of an exhale and a cold breath on the back of her neck.
“Mella, vous êtes belle”, a hollow voice whispered. “Attendez-moi. Je viens pour vous”.
There was noone in the room with Mella, she was alone and yet she could hear him speaking words she could not understand, she could feel a presence there with her. She wanted to scream but she couldn’t.
She rubbed her eyes frantically and when she took them away from her face it was gone.
She wondered if it had been anything at all, if the voice had been real. She knew what the other women said about her, she had heard their whispers and seen the way they looked at her. She did not feel right herself. It seemed to her that her grip on reality was forever loosening. She could not sleep anymore without nightmares haunting her and even the daylight no longer soothed her fears.
She relit the candles and knelt down beside her bed clasping her hands. She knelt there and prayed silently for a very long time. This was the only comfort she still had, the only time her head was not filled with horror was when her mind was on prayer. At these times she felt calm and unafraid but this never lasted very long.
She sighed and began to take the pins from her long black hair, until it flowed down over her shoulders.
She undressed and put on her nightgown, shivering in the still cold room. Gingerly she sat on the edge of the bed, her body drained from the terror that had visited her tonight.
She lay in bed trying to convince herself that she had imagined it. Perhaps it had only been the wind whistling through the small cracks between the wood of the door, it was not like she had heard actual words. And the smell could easily have been some dead rat rotting in a forgotten corner of the ship.
She could not shake the feeling of uneasiness however and sleep did not come to her for a very long time.
Thanks for everyones advice on the pictures… I fixed them up and they look sooo much better now =)
Wow, that was creepy! Poor, poor Mella… I have the feeling it’s not going to get any worse for her. Or any of the others…
I’m not a big fan of French, but I’m glad you’re using it. I can use my boyfriend as a translator… haha. Much to his chagrin! I wonder what she is supposed to be looking for?
I can tell you’re just winding up. I can’t wait until the real action takes place! Though I pity the poor sims it happens to.
Hey Mao… yeah my French is really quite terrible and I was trying to supplement it with some online French-English dictionaries. I think that what I have said could possibly have more than one meaning so I am just going to clarify here what the voice was meant to say (and for the non-French speakers). Basically what I wanted the voice to say was “Mella you are beautiful. Wait for me, I come for you”. If anyone reading this is a master at French (or your boyfriend Mao =) can you please tell me if I got it horribly wrong.
Hehe… it is so good using boyfriends as translators… I am always trying to use mine as a walking Swedish dictionary.
There will be real action I promise… but yeah, I guess there will be a significant winding up phase too (but that just makes it better when the real action happens right? =)
Poor Mella. Hopefully she will be able to get past the horrors she has seen.
According to him, you did it right. He just had issue with attendre… couldn’t remember what it meant, haha!
I love tension/winding up, so yay! I can just see this all building into something really awesome, so of course, I’m anxious to see what exactly it is. All I know is, those poor folks on that island…
Wow! Poor Mella seems to be personally haunted. Either she has brought something with her, or there is something on the island that is able to torment her with her own past experiences and/or fears. I only wonder now whether the men who raided her convent were French-speakers?
My husband is French and I’m fluent in the language myself, so you can ask me if you need any help. The French you have is correct, except that he first calls her “tu” and then calls her “vous”. You should have “vous êtes belle” to be consistent. Also there should be a hyphen in Attendez-moi, but that’s definitely not a big deal.
She *is* beautiful, by the way!
Yeah poor old Mella… she has been through a lot of horrible stuff.
Thanks for the help with the French both Mao and Lothere… I really appreciate it. I might need to ask a bit more in the future too so thanks for the offer Lothere. I wanted the voice to be in French but I wasn’t sure I could pull it off because I only have some school French (really kicking myself for not paying more attention at school with languages especially now that I am living in Europe =).
Oh and Lothere… I can say that the men who raided the convent weren’t French speakers.
So I hope you all don’t mind if I change the French line… I want it to be correct. I am not in the habit of changing stuff once I have put it up on the blog but I think in this case it is justified.
Oooh…creepy. And somehow sensual, however wrong that is for a nun.
You’re really ramping up the suspense, Verity. I love it! Mella handled herself better than I would have. I would have run screaming from the room. haha
And Mella looks beautiful with her hair unbound. Growing up Catholic, I always wondered what nuns look like without their wimple.
Sydonie… I guess the whole voice thing is a bit sensual… and definitely creepy =).
Yeah Kara… I think she would have screamed if she could but she doesn’t really make any loud noises like that now. Somehow I don’t think all nuns look like that under their wimple =). I have to say actually those things are horrible… hot and itchy. I had to wear one when I was in the sound of music at school and it was awful. Somehow I don’t think I looked anywhere near as good as Mella does.
I’m sure they don’t look that good at all. Especially after having that wimple on all day long. Talk about some serious hat-hair! LOL
As for the French, I took a year of it in 9th grade (only 30 years ago now) yet I really liked having to struggle my way through to understand what the voice was saying. Nice little touch there.
Hehe… yeah CeeCee… I think the hat hair would be something atrocious.
Hmmm so the voice says, “Mella you are beautiful. Wait for me, I come for you”. Sounds like maybe she lost a lover during that time, and the remembrance of his death is haunting her? Such a good post, scary!