1 | the triple hecks
Aurora puffs the matte powder on the apple of her cheeks, smiling as a healthy glow of a blushing maiden camouflages her face. Her mascara coated eyes swoon at the image in front, a soft preening erupts in the silent room. Blonde curls akin to spun gold settled on her head like a cloud, brilliant azure eyes glimmering against a well lit mirror, weaving pretty lies.
"What a dazzling beauty, I am," she whispers to herself, pouting plump lips ever so slightly as if trying to seduce her mirrorself. A finger unintentionally twirls around one of her curls as she coyly makes eye contact with her mirrorself, chin tipping to her shoulder, speaking, "Oh, you mean the Duke has sent me a marriage proposal?"
A dainty hand with slender fingers presses against her lips and she giggles ever so slightly. A sound melodious enough to sell out theaters and live events. Eyes looking as innocent as a lamb, unbeknownst, being fed for slaughter.
"Well then, prithee, I must reject for I aspire to be the Empress!" She exclaims with a subdued haughtiness that one would miss if they did not squint to look at.
The room was dark, if not for the LED wall mirror lighting up her dressing table with a faint glow of yellow and the palladian windows, adjacent to her dressing table, glowing to light, untimed, moments prior to some loud bolt of lightning striking somewhere afar.
The skies were rumbling with a malicious intent, as if avenging the mistreated by destroying the land its tormentors walked on. It made the crystal chandelier that was attached to her roof, sway in a melody of its own unknown. A motion that remained unnoticed to her engaged senses as a small smile creases her lips, excited for tomorrow's headlines.
'HARPER PRODUCTIONS SOLD OUT EVEN WHEN THE GODS WERE RAGING!'
'SUNSHINE WITHIN THE STORM, AURORA HARPER GIVES US ANOTHER HIT SHOW!'
'AN INCOMPARABLE BEAUTY, QUOTES THE PRESIDENT FOR AURORA HARPER'S PERFORMANCE!'
The scent of drizzling rain kissing the dry walls of her theatre brought a romantic flutter to her stomach. A strange giddiness of her impending success.
She is Aurora Harper, a sensational theater artist at the mere age of twenty. In the digital age of movies and media, she single-handedly keeps the true spirit of theatre alive, vehemently refusing to act on the silver as well as golden screen.
Her gaze alone has sold out tickets in seconds, let aside when she sings she trends like there was no other important issue in the whole wide world than Aurora Harper opening her mouth. Memes belived that everything her vocal cords generated was pitch perfect. Her snores were Bohemian Rhapsody, sneezes an Elvis tune and probably farts, as the masses belived to be, a sonorus E-flat.
When she sighed #cheeruprora would trend. When she smiled #weloveyourora would trend.
Millions of people and their small worlds revolved around her just because she was beautiful. People loved her for the way she walked, for the way she talked, for the way she looked. Aurora was everyone's perfect person. She gave them what they wanted in exchange of their love and fed on it like an animal starved.
Aurora was a glutton for paychecks from parched eyes and lonely hearts wanting to play make-belief with her. Roleplaying with her face as their profile pictures. Crying for her when she said that she loved them, without knowing of their existence. Smiling with her when she credited them for some win.
Hers was a shallow existence in a win-win world.
KNOCK! KNOCK!
The door opens with a swoosh and Aurora eyes her assistant through the mirror, walking with strong, ambitious, strides. A clipboard pressed under his right arm and a pen fidgeting around the fingers of his left hand. A chunky pair of headphones were swallowing his neck as consequently he looked like a ringed neck duck.
"The weather is bad," Aurora comments as a greeting.
The man visibly scoffs, "Are you concerned?"
Aurora smiles a pearly smile, swiveling in her chair to face the assistant now. "I wouldn't dare engage my emotions in such petty inconveniences, pfft." Her words are an obvious mockery to his observations.
"We're housefull," her assistant taps on his clipboard, presenting her a page filled with green check marks and signatures.
"Wouldn't expect any less from me," Aurora grins, standing up and letting the hem of her bedazzling ruby dress fall freely to the floor. She indulged in an obvious hairflip, as proud as one could be.
"Have you memorised all of the lines and lyrics?"
"Oh please, has it ever mattered before?" Aurora counterquestions nonchalantly, walking up to her palladian windows and staring outside, fascinated with the blinking skies.
"Aurora! You cannot ad-lib your way through a sci-fi musical! Your IQ is the size of a plastic ruler!" Her assistant whines condescendingly.
Aurora squirms her nose, turning away from the skies to face him with evident confusion, "Why do you know the size of a plastic ruler?!" She questions, exasperated.
Her assistant's eyes widen in bafflement as he lets out a concerned scoff. "Even pre-schoolers know it!" He gesticulates, hands flailing in all directions.
Aurora frowns, before starting to defend her fragile ego. "That doesn't conclude anything. Pre-schoolers do not know the difference between an Opera and an Aria!"
"The size of a scale is seven centimetres," her assistant sighs out loud, giving up trying to make a point.
"Now do you expect me to Google how much that is in IQ or will you please convert it and tell me? Seven isn't all that bad, it is a lucky number but I'd like for it to be one. Number one is the best, isn't it?" Aurora smiles dreamily.
Her assistant shakes his head, waddling in his spot like a duck, wondering if his employer was dumb or was it all an elaborate pretence. The world would never know.
"It, It, totally it," her assistant nods, slipping a hand in his pant pockets and pulling out his phone. "Ah! You're up in seven! Will you look at that? Be on standby please, I'll get going," he informs her, putting the pair of headphones over his ears, much to Aurora's dismay, and blocking out any further conversation.
"Fine," the blonde snarls to his retreating back, "I'll google it myself." She holds the trail of her ruby dress in one hand and paces to her phone that was placed on her dresser top. Her green-room was silent again. She looked dazzling in the mirror and somewhere afar- something creaked.
Like a nail dragging against glass.
It makes her involuntarily grind her teeth. Just then, another stroke of lighting illuminates the skies, light almost blinding as it flashes through her windows. Aurora, caught off guard, looks away, guarding her eyes with her hands, but when the windows go dark, her green-room doesn't.
Confusion.
She spots a looming shadow overhead, out of the view of her mirror. Reluctantly, she cranes her neck up and screams when she finds the chandelier hanging off a thin chain, a mere centimetre above her face. One of its crystal shards waiting to pierce her eye, the others ready to stab her whole.
And the moment comes when thunder follows his lit muse and finally strikes on her ears, resorting her to darkness.
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Bubbles.
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Searing like warm water against cold metal.
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Burning, in her nose.
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A struggle to live as she feels herself choke.
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Coughs, violent and dry, as if scratching her lungs against hay.
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Her neck jolts, as a force pulls her head up.
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Her eyes burn when she forces them open to light. So much light. Ugh, was she dead? Was this heaven? Did she really make it to heaven nonetheless? With all that cleavage she used to show and bikini photoshoots she participated in because they were a fan favourite?
Did she really make it?! Did Sunday church and the monthly donations really redeemed her of all her sins?!
Was she a good person afterall?!
Does God really only cares about one's soul?!
She blinked her eyes as a smile fluttered to her lips. Her surroundings were abundantly lit with candle stands holding seven burning candles glittering like stars on a pallette. The walls were covered with tapestries of royal blue and dull gold. In front of her were three bejeweled thrones, somewhat like the props from when she had acted Macbeth, and on them sat three deities.
Was heaven plagiarizing Shakespearean sets now? How odd, she didn't believe Heaven to be stuck into a 16th century aesthetic. She had imagined it to be more — technologically advanced and well, cloudy. And harp oriented.
Oh well, expectations were never set to be upheld.
"Is she up?"
"Yes, Your Grace."
Her eyes squinted towards the sounds but before she could focus on anything, a hand reached out and grabbed her face, rubbing it with a rough cloth as if it were sandpaper against a discarded wall. What - the - actual - flippityfuck ?!
And, upon instinct, Aurora shrieked and swatted the intruder away.
"Excuse me, are you cleaning your 1909 bumper truck's pigeon-shat windshield?! For goodness' sake this skin is worth millions! Keep your slimy paws off me!" The former blonde snarls as firmly as she could.
But something felt odd.
It wasn't her powerful voice that came out. And the woman wasn't whimpering for the abhorrent deed she had committed. Heck, she didn't even look angel-esque.
Instead, what came out of her throat was a squeaking noise akin to a five-year-old's tantrum and the maid-looking-woman scowled at her like a mother whose child just suggested to drop out of school and start twitch streaming to make a living.
"Shut up and start confessing, you haybrain!" The woman jerked the towel on Aurora's head, thrice, before the little girl started screamed again. Why was she being flogged in heaven?! Wasn't heaven supposed to mean that she made it for good?! Absolute freedom- where are you?!
"Stop it! Andrew! Where are you?! There is a mad woman on set—" her words dried out when her eyes finally refocused to the strange crowd she was standing amongst.
They were not luminescent like heavenly beings as fabled back on Earth. Heck they looked plain, quite ordinary, and stuck back in the renaissance era. Double Heck, the people on the thrones were not deities whose features she couldn't figure out prior, curtsy her burning eyes, but they were just creatures of God-like beauty. Aurora's jaw hung in awe as she admired the pink haired woman sitting on the throne, looking as regal as all of Aurora's dreams and wishes. Her eyes glimmering a soft silver as she coughed ever so gently.
Ah so beautiful!!
Beside her was a bearded man, with soft brown hair, quite her age, who rubbed her back while whispering something in the woman's ear. His jaw was sharp, his features were dazzling and eyes a brilliant emerald - as if straight out of pinterest.
Aurora resisted to drool all over herself.
Beside them, on the smallest throne, was a small boy - looking around five to six years in age - swinging his feet to-and-fro, big cyan eyes piercing through her soul and an excited smile directed toward her...?
Aurora looked left and right as murmurs rose, triple heck was the strange reflection that was cast in the bucket of water sitting before her.
It was of an odd girl. Quite plain, if bluntly put.
Chalky black hair stuck to a wide forehead housing bushy black eyebrows and the saddest brown of eyes one could ever witness back on Earth. The brown and sunken eyes of expelled students or drug addicts.
Aurora tilted her head in confusion and so did the person in the water. Aurora's eyes widened and so did the person's in the water. That person was small, quite around four or five years, with chubby cheeks and thin lips. Aurora opened her mouth and the person in the water did too.
Horror settled in her eyes like free real estate as a sinking sense of realisation weighed her down to the marbled ground. She looked up to a gold embellished ceiling with floral patterns and coloured glass and hanging chandeliers glowing like stars.
If she was dead— where the fuck was she now?!
Where the fuck had her soul teleported to?!
Who the fuck was the person in the water?!
"Iris Bernadette! Confess to your crimes right now! Did you steal her highness, duchess Arabella's necklace?!"
Crimes? Duchess Arabella? Necklace?!
As if being plain wasn't a death sentence on its own- she was a thief too?!
