Hi everyone! I'm looking for some feedback on the first chapter of my writing project. I want honest feedback, but not to cry (in other words, please do not absolutely tear down my self-esteem without offering anything constructive).
Thank you for your time!
CHAPTER 1
For just a moment, the world did not exist.
Lucille spun in the sunlight, her silk practice gown twisting around her liquid body. This was a routine she knew by heart.
Her leg carved an arc through the air; her wrists touched above her head as she lifted off the ground. The piano followed her every move, crescendoing to fill the spaces left between each pirouette. Then came a series of quick staccatos as the song transitioned into something harsher. Lucille struck the floor with pointed toes. Once. Twice. On the third strike, white flashed in her vision. Muscle memory continued the dance, sloppily. She could have continued forever, but the piano died out, ending on one low, incomplete note.
The chair scraped across the floor as Miss Monotta stood. The room fell into place—the cracked open windows letting in the sultry summer breeze, the glittering chandeliers casting ephemeral fireflies onto the mirror walls, and the marble floors now so limited before her.
She was real once more.
“Lucille?” Miss Monotta said.
Heat touched Lucille’s cheeks. “Sorry, Ma’am. I don’t know what happened.”
Miss Monotta held her gaze on her for a moment with those piercing blue eyes.
Go again, Lucille filled in the words for her. But the wrinkles around Miss Monotta’s eyes creased—Lucille remembered a time when she’d been younger, and those wrinkles had not existed.
“Perhaps it is time for a break,” Miss Monotta said.
Lucille blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Your recital draws near. You mustn’t overwork yourself.”
Miss Monotta was tightfisted with rest. She allotted Lucille only momentary breaks when her toes bled through her pointe shoes or her nails cracked enough to force her to beg. Now, it seemed like some sort of trick, as though her ballet instructor sought to discipline her laziness.
“But I must be ready for my recital,” Lucille pressed. She kept her voice clear because muttering was unacceptable.
It was a big recital, perhaps the grandest in which she’d ever performed. Viewers would come from all across the Kormani Republic to watch the solos. It was her chance to make a name for herself as a ballerina, to be noticed outside of the familiar city of Khoyes.
It was all she wanted, to be known.
There were nights she’d spent lying awake in bed, wishing so badly for it that she couldn’t understand how she did not already have it. She’d stare at the sky, thinking that if she could trade the moon for her dreams, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Then all the bandages on bruised and bleeding feet, and early-morning practice, would be for something.
Miss Monotta flattened a palm against Lucille’s forehead. “It’s time for your medicine.”
There was no arguing. Lucille nodded and sat down against the wall while Miss Monotta searched through her bag for her kit.
“How are your migraines?” Miss Monotta asked. “Better?”
“Worse,” Lucille grumbled.
Miss Monotta’s lip twitched. “Worse?”
Lucille nodded as her instructor pulled out a syringe. While she prepared it, Lucille tore open an alcohol pad and rubbed down her shoulder. She’d been taking the injections since she was ten. By this point, she was certain she could do it herself. And with the injections’ capability to wash her migraines away, she wanted to, at all times of the day.
Miss Monotta pressed the needle to Lucille’s arm. “I’ll see to it that your prescription is strengthened.”
Then came the prick, pushing deep into her flesh.
***
A pale, lifeless brown.
Lucille stared at her desk, at the lines that snaked through the wood. Professor Talet’s voice droned on from some far-off planet—all Lucille heard was the high-pitched ringing that came with the absence of Miss Monotta’s piano. It was another side effect of her medicine. Hopefully, the new one wouldn’t be so tiring. It always made her feel heavy, like her sinews had been replaced with lead.
Blinking slowly, she forced her eyes up to the swaying world. A group of students whispered towards the back. A serpent had slithered in through her ears, hissing each of their s’s insufferably loud. Lucille squeezed her eyes shut.
The dark pulled her into an all-white room. No matter how many times Lucille blinked, she could not block out the glare of bright lights above.
“Are you sure she won’t remember?” It was the familiar voice of her Father. His silhouette cut into the light.
Then she was back in the classroom. Lucille snapped upwards, looking around to see if anyone had witnessed what she had. But the class went on as if nothing had happened, each row of students scribbling down their notes.
This wasn’t a regular symptom. She’d had ocular migraines before, but they were always just flashing lights and blind spots. It never created images, and certainly not voices. Her head was pounding, splitting down the center as though someone had taken a cleaver to it.
Lucille stood.
“Miss Rorouse?” Professor Talet said. His voice was too loud. Every eye turned to her and her heavy thumping heart.
“I’ll be right back,” she said—or rather slurred.
Before the professor could say anything, Lucille was pushing through the row of students and stumbling for the door.
The empty halls fell silent as the door swung shut behind her. All signs of life came from Lucille’s polished shoes squeaking against the tiles.
She couldn’t tell if her face burned from humiliation or something more. Either way, she just about fell into the washroom, grabbing onto the sides of the sink to keep upright. It was still her in the mirror’s reflection, though strands of hair stuck out of her bun and the darkness beneath her eyes had deepened. She grabbed her hair tie, pulling it free and letting honey brown curls fall down her shoulders. Phantom tension remained, pulling at her skull. She imagined what it would feel like to have all of her skin peeled off.
The sink hissed as she turned it on. She must have been overworking herself. She should have asked Miss Monotta for a longer break earlier, while she was still in a generous mood.
Lucille dipped her hands beneath the cold stream of water and splashed it into her face. She stared at her reflection, then the water droplets catching on her lashes and dripping down her pale, quivering chin.
That was all it was. She was only tired because she could not afford for it to be anything else so soon before her recital.
Miss Monotta would have a remedy; the stronger prescription she mentioned earlier. Lucille clenched her jaw, craving the prick of a needle. Even if it didn’t wipe away the fever, it could ease the symptoms enough that she could still dance.
Drawing a shaky breath, Lucille dried her face with a towel. She straightened her shoulders and left the washroom.
Please still be here.
Hers was not an exceptionally large school, and Miss Monotta typically stayed after her sessions with the other ballet students.
Checkered floors stretched through the halls she staggered through. It went on infinitely.
A shooting pain ran through her, born at the back of the brain. Gasping, she dropped into a crouch, holding her head, rubbing her temples. It did little to stop the migraine. Everything was too bright.
Class would end soon and everyone would see the pathetic heap she was on the floor. They’d all stare and laugh and spread their rumors and she’d never leave her house again.
Someone touched her shoulder. Lucille jolted, smacking the hand away as she whirled. She was back in that white room. It was a quick flash, but this time she saw something long, silver, and sharp.
The vision blinked out to the woman in front of her.
The nine-fingered cleaning lady stood with wide eyes and a trembling lip. And it dawned on Lucille that she’d just hit her.
“I’m sorry!” Lucille fumbled with the word. “I didn’t mean to…”
This wasn’t the nine-fingered cleaning lady. She was younger, the wrinkles that’d once marred her face smoothing out like someone had filled in the ridges with ceramic.
The cleaning lady screamed so suddenly that Lucille flinched. The nub on her pointer finger was bleeding—then from it emerged white bone. Red wrapped around the bone, arteries and nerves next. Then finally skin, crawling over exposed flesh and sealing it off like a wax coating. Before her eyes, the nine-fingered cleaning lady grew back her missing finger.
There were stories about her, how she’d lost her left pointer. Some said it’d been an accident with bleach. Others, that she’d fended off a school intruder while working late at night. Father had said it’d been the result of an animal attack.
Lucille grabbed onto the wall and retched.