Shrouded Things and Other Lies

“There’s a kind of grief you can bury. And then there’s the kind you have to hide—before it gets asked where it came from.”

The soft carpet, a plush sea of comfort beneath my bare feet, offered a momentary reprieve from the harsh realities of Clivilius. Its fibres pressed up between my toes like tiny, reassuring fingers, grounding me in the familiar stillness of home. A breath shuddered from my lungs as I stepped out of the sanctuary of my room, the door clicking softly behind me. The air in the hallway was cool, laced with that faint scent of lavender and old timber polish—mundane, domestic, achingly safe. Yet safety now felt like a foreign concept, one I no longer knew how to inhabit.

I began the slow, familiar walk toward the bathroom, but each step was heavier than the last. The silence of the passageway wrapped around me, intimate and oppressive all at once. My skin itched with dried sweat, blood, and whatever foul mucus shadow panthers left behind when they tried to tear you apart. I had already scrubbed myself raw once this morning, in a panicked frenzy before returning to Clivilius. Now, I was layered in fresh reminders of horror—dirt in my hair, a smear of ash on my arm, and that nauseating metallic tang that clung to my nostrils no matter how deeply I tried to breathe.

Why did I activate that cursed Portal Key?

The question lashed through my thoughts like a whip, and a burning flush crept up my neck, stinging my cheeks with shame.

"Oh, that's right, I had no choice," I muttered aloud, the bitterness in my voice muffled by the thick air. My tone was dry, almost mocking, as if I could laugh away the truth. The words dropped to the carpet like stones—soft, but heavy. I shook my head slowly, trudging forward.

Each footfall stirred memories I didn’t want: The casino’s impossible glitz, the panic-fuelled chase, and finally, the suffocating certainty that the only escape was through the very thing I had sworn I wasn’t ready to touch.

There hadn't been another way out, had there?

I tried to conjure an alternative, some version of the night where I'd made a different choice. But no matter how I twisted the possibilities in my mind, they all ended the same: trapped, cornered, hunted.

And so I had returned—through the Portal and into the jaws of another nightmare. Now, back in this soft-lit corridor of my own world, the contrast was unbearable. I reached the bathroom door and paused, my reflection in the nearby mirror catching my eye. I barely recognised the woman staring back—wild-eyed, haunted, smeared with sorrow and grime.

Still, I reached for the handle. I needed the hot water. I needed the illusion, however fleeting, that I could wash it all away.

The bathroom door loomed before me, an unyielding slab of wood that suddenly felt like a fortress. I stopped short, jolted by the realisation that my hands—cradling Duke’s tightly wrapped form—were in no position to turn the handle. It was such a small thing, a simple twist of the wrist, yet the impossibility of it landed like a punch to the gut.

"Shit!" The word escaped me in a broken exhale, barely audible, as if I were afraid to disrupt the silence of the house that no longer felt like mine. The echo of Clivilius lingered in every breath I took, souring the air with its violence and tragedy. This was meant to be sanctuary—yet now it bore witness to a death I had carried across worlds.

My arms trembled beneath Duke’s weight, not from strain, but from the sheer emotional gravity of it all. His body, so still, so heartbreakingly light, was wrapped tightly in the bedsheet, as though preserving him in a cocoon of dignity could somehow soften the horror of his end. But it didn’t. The fabric did little to mask the truth: that he, the boldest creature I’d ever known, had been torn from this world in the most brutal of ways.

"Oh, Duke," I whispered, my voice fracturing, raw with sorrow. His name caught in my throat like a splinter. I pressed my cheek lightly against the top of the shrouded bundle, the faint smell of dust and fur clinging stubbornly to the sheet. A flood of memories surged up—him bounding through the hallway, chasing Henri, curling up beside me on the couch whenever I visited, that ridiculous bark of his that never matched his size.

Turning from the door, I allowed my feet to carry me numbly back toward my bedroom, the only place that offered even the illusion of comfort. I couldn’t lay him down in the cold sterility of the bathroom. He deserved better than that. He deserved a farewell, not a fluorescent-lit convenience.

"Why did you always have to be so fearless?" I murmured, shifting his form slightly in my arms. The bedsheet rustled quietly, almost like a sigh. "You know how that always got you into trouble." My lips pulled into the ghost of a smile that never reached my eyes. It hurt to say it—it hurt more not to.

"And now look at you—" I faltered, the sentence hanging broken in the air like a picture frame shattered mid-fall. My breath hitched, and I swallowed hard against the ache that surged up my throat. There were no words that could finish that thought. No tidy ending. No comfort.

Just silence. And Duke. And me.

“Beatrix!" The sharp, piercing call of my mother’s voice shattered the hush like glass. My entire body tensed, jolted by the sudden intrusion of reality, my pulse vaulting into a sprint.

The creak of the stairs—once a comforting sound of home—now struck me like a metronome of doom. Each groan of the aged timber announced her advance, a merciless countdown that propelled my heart into my throat.

Panic surged. The world narrowed to one thought: Hide him. "I don't think we can make it back, Duke," I whispered, clutching his sheet-wrapped form tighter to my chest. My eyes darted from the stairwell to my bedroom door, its inviting frame so close and yet impossibly far. I had no time. No space. No plan.

"Are you home?” Her voice was closer now, its cadence alarmingly measured—too casual, too composed. The kind of tone that always came just before a storm.

My chest tightened. There was no time to think, only react. I turned toward the bathroom, a potential sanctuary in an otherwise collapsing strategy. My elbow struck the door handle with a jolt of pain, the sharp edge biting into bone as I fumbled for purchase. The metal gave, the latch clicking open with an almost accusatory finality.

"I'm having a shower!" I blurted, the words tumbling from my lips in a cracked, high-pitched rush—part excuse, part incantation. I flung the words down the hallway, praying they would halt her momentum, buy me seconds, maybe more.

My heel caught the edge of the door, and I shoved with all the force I could muster. The door thudded shut just as I collapsed against it, back first, the impact rattling the breath from my lungs. I slid slowly to the floor, knees folding, muscles taut with the echo of adrenaline.

Duke's weight pressed into me, his small form unmoving, the bedsheet’s fibres rough against my cheek as I leaned into him. I cradled him tighter, as if I could shield him from everything, even in death.

"That was close, Duke," I whispered, my voice trembling. The words wavered in the air like steam rising off a scalded surface. My breathing came in ragged waves, each inhale sharp with leftover fear.

Outside the door, silence resumed—tense, watchful, like a paused breath. The house, once familiar and comforting, now felt like enemy terrain. And there I was, crouched in its bathroom with a dead dog in my arms, hiding not from monsters or pirates or panthers—but from my own mother.

Then, a sharp knock on the door shattered the fragile peace. I flinched, my body reacting before my mind had time to catch up. The sound reverberated through the tiles and off the porcelain, a sudden reminder that safety was always temporary—that questions, like ghosts, hovered just beyond every closed door.

"Beatrix, is everything alright?” The concern in my mother's voice seeped through the barrier, soft but insistent. I winced at the sound, her words brushing against the raw nerves I’d barely begun to mend. There was something in her tone—something strained. It struck an unsettling chord, one that hummed low and constant beneath my skin.

"Yeah," I called back, forcing a brightness I didn’t feel into the single syllable. My voice felt foreign in my throat, its cadence almost cheerful, too light for the weight pressing against my ribcage. Inside, my heart beat a panicked rhythm, loud and relentless, a wild creature caught in too small a space.

Another pause, then her voice returned, cutting deeper. "Can you come downstairs when you're finished in there? Your father and I need to speak with you about something important."

The words landed with a dull thud, displacing the air in the room, stirring the ever-growing ache behind my eyes. Something important. That was not a phrase my mother threw around lightly. And to say it now, here, after everything… the timing made my blood run cold.

"Can't it—" I tried, but my voice cracked like thin ice underfoot. I swallowed hard, but the lump lodged in my throat refused to budge. Whatever they needed to say, it clearly couldn’t wait. My brain flooded with possibilities, each more absurd or catastrophic than the last.

"Sure thing, Mum," I replied eventually, smoothing the edges of my tone with deliberate care, casting a veil over the storm inside me.

Silence followed. Long. Unsettling. A silence that stretched just a second too far, like a held breath or an unseen stare. Was she still standing there? Listening?

Just in case, I moved quickly. With trembling arms, I eased Duke's body toward the shadows—the narrow nook between the bath and the vanity, partially obscured by the washing basket. The tight space was small, but enough. Tucked away, swaddled in his stained shroud, he became, for the moment, invisible to the world.

I reached for the taps and twisted them hard. The shower sprang to life with a gasp and a hiss, spewing a stream of cold water that echoed sharply off the tiles. The sound filled the bathroom, a shield of noise to mask the hollow truth behind the door.

"Thanks, Beatrix," my mother called, more distant now. The finality in her words lingered like a punctuation mark, underlining the inevitable descent into whatever confrontation awaited me downstairs.

My gaze dropped back to Duke. The sheet wrapped around him had shifted slightly in the move, revealing a streak of dark crimson across the fabric—an unsparing, ugly reminder. I drew in a breath, but it snagged in my chest. My lips pressed into a grimace that threatened to unravel into a sob, but I held it in, teeth clenched, nails digging into my palm for restraint.

With deliberate slowness, I crossed to the door and turned the lock. The soft click of the bolt sliding into place offered the smallest measure of control, a fragile boundary between me and the gathering storm outside.

For now, at least, the world would have to wait.