Next thing I know I was back on the ground. It felt colder then I remembered. My raw skin welded to the ground with sweat. Even when awake I could still see Anne as she spoke to me. The streak of silver sword that she clutched in her hand. The flow of her head's black glossy hair as it sat in her lap. Her dark locks spilling over her lap, waves of hair dripping down her skirt like black blood. At first glance she seemed like perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world. However on a moments glance you could tell that there was something horrifically wrong. Her features, although beautiful, seemed unnatural and doll like, as if made from glass and clay. They did not fit together right. She had painted-on eyes that were an unnatural serpentine gray. Her nose was small, with strangely shaped nostrils that looked like thin, upward sloping slits, giving her the appearance of a horrible creature. Her cheeks were sunken in, like the fat was spooned out. They gave way to a pair of over dramatic cheekbones, so pronounced that you could see a sharp ridge of bone protruding through her maggot yellow-white film of skin. They were also a bit too far down on her face, as if her face had melted and her features sunken down. Her lips also looked painted on and 2-D. Her skin had the dull gleam of wax. It was smooth and had not a wrinkle. It seemed hard like stone, as if it could never move or make a facial expression other then the strange doll-like gaze it held. Her body was strange also. The way she sat with her arms and legs bent too far and her waist twisted to much. Her back was hunched, tightening the satin of her gown over her shoulder blades. Her fingers were too thin, each digit about an inch or two too long. She had a six finger on one hand, it was about three inches longer then all the others, and as skinny as a pencil.

Cora was next to me. Her slippery ghostly hand clutched mine, although I could barely feel it. It seemed like a wisp of cold air cupped in my hands. A wet cloud that had settled around me. I could see her crying. Her twinkling tears the same pale shade as her face, like her very skin was melting and beading of her cheeks. She looked at me with soft and moist eyes. "I'm so sorry... I would not wish her wrath on anybody...". She paused and gazed of into the distance with a sad wretched smile. "I hoped that I would be the last to find it. But hope is like a bird with hollow wings. Light to carry and construct but incapable of flight, yet lighter then the truth. Perhaps I prefer it, charming in it's fakeness isn't it? Perhaps the most romantic kind of lie." I looked down at the ground. I felt ashamed and embarrassed for her in her sadness and desperation. "Watching you is like seeing myself again. You are me once more Ethel. I won't let myself die again. Not again."Cora's voice seemed horribly old all the sudden. Broken down and dried up. "I was in love." She whispered. "He was perfect. He told me he loved me. Maybe I was a fool to believe him. He never came to my funeral. When I died I hung around waiting to be found. My spirit just sat in my burned up body waiting for somebody to see so I could leave. I would hover above the world, ware the clouds meet the sky sometimes. I would look down. Nobody was losing a night of sleep over me. That's love for you. As fake and flowery as hope." I bit my lip. "You were in love?" Suddenly Cora's death seemed even more tragic. "Yes. It was fantastic. We said we were like Romeo and Juliet. We promised each other that we would wait to die until the other was ready. That we would leave at the same time. He said he wanted to marry me. He would leave a single rose on my doorstep. He was poor. Mother would not have unproved. So every morning I would run out to the doorstep to fetch it before mother found it. I told him to stop, but I secretly loved it. There is something so striking about one Rose instead of a bush of them. Their beauty gets lost in translation doesn't it? He lied though. We left at the same time. We were no Romeo and Juliet. It was a one sided tragedy, only I suffered. He married up pretty fast though. All that I missed! Oh god! I was never a mother... oh I wanted to be one so badly! I had this silly dream that I would be this fresh young April bride and we would get married in the country. I missed so much. I can never get it back."
Cora was silent. She sat there. It was such a pity, Cora seemed like the marrying kind. The kind of girl who you can easily picture in a veil and gown in the countryside. I thought about myself. Nobody had ever loved me. The silent girl in the back of the room at school. I would miss everything, my first kiss, getting my drivers license. I had more to lose then Cora. I felt everything, my future, my dreams, slipping through my fingers and shattering on the floor. I had only one purpose now, to survive.
"So how would I do it? How would I stop her?" I pleaded. Cora looked at me with empty eyes. "you will start to become mad soon, experience seizures of pain at random, at Anne's will as she slowly eats you from the inside. It is said that the answer to her defeat lies in the visions you will see as she takes over you. I would tell you what I saw if I could remember. When I died all the memories of my visions disappeared. I obviously wouldn't be in this state if I had figured the mystery out. "