When Regina woke up, her windows were still dark, but her alarm was blaring in her ear.

A mechanical chirping sound accompanied by a fake piano that was a few octaves too high. The noises crawled inside her head, acting like a jackhammer, and making her feel like she had a massive hangover. Despite the fact that she had drunk exactly one glass of wine before bed.

She groaned, remembering the jack and coke her uncle had handed her after the assault by Aunt Rose. But even combined, they shouldn’t make her feel quite that miserable.

No time to lay there and scroll.

Only time to roll out of bed and get her ass ready. Heaven forbid the Proper Witch Brigade arrive at the scene and Regina not have every single fucking thing available. As if doing it during daylight hours didn’t afford them a few luxuries — like supply runs.

With a dose of rage running through her system, she got through a shower, put a 2nd version of the stiff black dress on, and gathered supplies.

Rose petals. Salt. Holy water. An entire bundle of incense, and her last bundle of sage.

At the top of the box, she placed items of her own. Cards to help her divine and a bottle of oily liquid that she had readied during the last full moon.

She was certain the peanut gallery would pipe up, and she smirked as she put the lid on, smug in the knowledge they didn’t matter. Her faith didn’t come from them, and it wasn’t their ceremony.

Hands full and mind occupied, Regina took in a deep breath and walked out the door. It was a 20-minute drive down to the morgue, and then another 15 to the cemetery. She would bet 50 bucks that her aunts were already standing around the mausoleum, groaning about how late Riley’s daughters were.

As she hit the first red light, a part of her wished they lived somewhere perhaps a little less progressive. It still felt weird to her that they performed this ceremony first thing in the morning instead of in the cover of darkness. Thoughts bounced around things she couldn’t control — one of her most common pastimes — until she was in the parking lot at the back of the hospital.

The city morgue, for all intents and purposes. The doors opened in front of her automatically, and a security guard on the other side made her sign the top sheet of a clipboard and gave her a sticker to put on her shirt. She wouldn’t be there long, but there was no point in arguing with bureaucracy.

Current events notwithstanding.

Through a well-lit lobby with several tall, plastic plants around the corners, and Regina was crossing the threshold into a hallway. Long, and not well lit at all. The first time she had come through the building she had been squinting, and for some reason, it had gotten worse. Every other light in the ceiling was out, and the dark carpet absorbed half of what remained. Trying to see through the dimness made her eyes hurt.

When she looked up, the flickering halogen bulbs seared into her sockets, and when she looked down the old 80s style pattern on the carpet made her stomach turn, and it rolled the cup of iced coffee with it. The walls on either side were painted a slightly textured white, without a single painting or decoration on them, and the hallway went quite a while between the main lobby and doors to offices or labs.

Regina blinked, clenching her jaw, trying to make sure her stomach contents stayed in her stomach. Although they were only closed for maybe half a second — although she suddenly wondered how long it had taken took her to blink — she appeared at the first door available. It sat on her right, and it wasn’t the one she wanted, but the frosted glass had a brilliant light pouring through it that distracted her entirely.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Sometimes it felt like the hallway was miles long, but she didn’t think she had been moving all that long. And the office that lay behind had never been that bright before…

She had only been in this part of the building twice before, but for her memory to be this incorrect didn’t sit right with her. Her feet stopped moving at all, stuck to the ground, and she could turn away from the yellow glare in front of her. It moved toward her, calling her name on some wavelength her ears couldn’t hear.

She inched forward, one hand reaching out in front of her. The only thing she could think about was pulling open the door, even as the sparse lights around her dimmed even further. A breeze from somewhere impossible kissed her cheeks and whispered in her ears.

*Regina,* it called. *come*

*Daughter,* it murmured. *leave the earth to fools.*

There was a tiny explosion above her head, and one by one the pitiful light all the way down the hallway went out. The only thing she could see, or think about, was the door. It was a portal to another world. An earth that needed her, desired her, craved her, and she wasn’t sure how to fight back. Or if she even wanted to.

It was an easier place. A dark place where her needs were put first and responsibilities be damned. The darkness fed the information to her soul, and she felt her will turn to jelly in an instant.

“Regina!” a deep male voice yelled, shattering her concentration and startling her at the same time.

She blinked, body still frozen in place — eyes searching the dark pane of frosted glass in front of her. It was almost unremarkable without the light coming from behind it. As she looked upon it her brain realized the rest of the lights had come back on.

She hadn’t fully registered it at first. She had barely registered the vision of them shattering, hadn’t questioned for even a second that the world had melted around her again.

“Are you okay?” the voice came again, much closer this time.

She shook her head, trying to shake off the rest of the…

whatever the hell it had been.

Next, she shifted her eyes in their sockets. Most of her body felt heavy; her limbs were magnetized to the strange door to a boring and cluttered office. As she tried to look at the source of the voice, however, she spotted a tall, thick figure in her peripheral. The image sped her heart up, and even though there was something familiar — common even about the voice, the fact that her body wouldn’t cooperate had panic settling in.

The man moved closed to her, his feet shuffling along the dirty carpet as they bore his weight. “Regina…” His voice lifted like he had more to say, but silence followed her name.

Regina cleared her throat. An action that took every drop of will in her body, but the act seemed to free the rest of her and she felt her shoulders slide down as she took her next breath. She looked like an insane woman standing there staring at a locked door; there was no doubt in her mind about it. With a swallow to ready herself, she spoke at last. “Yeah.”

She turned, trying to pull a normal face on her body as her eyes slide over the very person she spoke to. “It’s been a long week, I guess.” She had no idea if her voice sounded normal. This had been the 2nd incident in 24 hours, and she wasn’t sure what normal would look like when this whole ordeal finished.

The man raised an eyebrow at her and seemed to be pondering her words. After a moment he gave a small shrug like it threw the last 5 minutes out the window. With that, he turned around and waved her along to come with.

*Business as usual,* she thought, and forced her feet to move, thankful that there were no further arguments. Her heart was still beating forcefully inside her chest as they walked the last dozen feet to the lab which sat through a set of double doors on the left.

Compared to the hallway, the lights on the ceiling were like staring at the sun when she glanced up at them. The glare bounced around on the metal tables and pale counters and didn’t ignore the white-tiled floor — held together by dark black grout.

A memory flashed through thoughts of her mother forcing her and Renee to help bleach the kitchen floor. No essential oils, no herbs, no magic, real or imaginary. They had done it normal and clean (the only way, Regina eventually found out), to learn the value of their mother's hard work. It would teach them not to take other people's labor for granted, and it also taught Regina that black grout wasn’t actually black.

It was usually just neglected. The thought sent a shudder throughout her body, and she begged her mind to let go of the image. No good things collected on the floor of this place.