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"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die." —Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
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IT WAS in the middle of the night where stars and the moon were hiding, the darkness was blinding and the silence was deafening at the whole mansion. That was how a person who suddenly woke up in her room would hear. However, that wasn't the case for Lantana.
A few hours after her tossing and turning around to sleep, she was finally able to do so. She was able to rest for a while until she suddenly felt a strong impact on her forehead that made her crumple her face in annoyance and in pain.
"Who the heck is disturbing my hard-earned sleep?!" she mumbled loudly as she readied her fists to punch as if a gangster ready to fight at any moment.
However, Lantana was immediately silenced as soon as she decided to open her eyes. Almost blinded by the light of the place she was in while her ears were being filled with mellow music and loud gossiping noise, her forehead creased in confusion. That remained until she was able to finally see.
When her eyes were finally able to adjust to the light in front of her, her mouth draped and couldn't believe where she was. It was a hall where a lively celebration was happening! Everyone was eating, drinking, talking, and dancing!
Confused, Lantana tried to ask one of the servers that passed by her. However, just as she was about to raise her hand and call his attention, he suddenly went into her direction as someone called for him, and in a spur of the moment, he passed by her body as if she wasn't there at all!
Because of the sudden thing that she experienced from the previous server, she got more confused. Fortunately, when she tried to look around the whole place, she suddenly saw herself—the old one to be exact—who looked like was trying to find someone around. Behind her was a tall man whose back was the only thing that she had seen.
As she had seen Penelope, she immediately understood her situation. It was a dream that the deceased girl experienced in person—a part of her foggy memory from that night when she starved herself to wear an unclassy dress.
Suddenly, Lantana's interest was piqued. She wasn't clear about the memory of that night yet. She obtained most of Penelope's memory when she first woke up in her new world but soon realized that there was still an incomplete part—that the party's memory was still vague as if a bittersweet kiss of an old lover whose face was forgotten in time.
Lantana, who wanted to satisfy her curiosity, followed the dead Penelope behind as she walked around, as if searching for something. Then, while she was searching, a woman with thick red lipstick and bushy eyebrows together with her lackeys, appeared in front of the startled Penelope.
"I'm sorry. Can you please let me pass?" Penelope asked the leader of the group while cowering her head as if there was something she was afraid of.
The group who blocked the way of Penelope laughed exaggeratedly while they looked down on her as if they were seeing an unpleasant sight.
Lantana, who was watching the happenings, wanted to slap the three girls and beat them up to pulp upon seeing how they treated Penelope but she couldn't. Instead, she had no choice but to watch in silence.
"Hey! You're looking for your fiancé, right? I saw him go upstairs earlier. Do you want to go?" the leader of the girls said to her.
With a look on her face, Lantana immediately knew that something was off with the way the leader easily said something. From Penelope's memory, the girl was always someone who bullied her, so why would she suddenly speak to her and tell her where her fiancé was?
Penelope's solemn look immediately brightened upon hearing information about her beloved fiancé. She was even planning to run towards the staircase until a lackey stopped her.
"Are you sure you want to go?" the lackey said with a smirk.
"Yes!" she enthusiastically said as she shook off the arm of the girl and ran like a kid towards the staircase—which made a lot of noblewomen look at her disapprovingly because of her unnoble-like actions.
The leader of the group shook her head slowly with a smile on her lips. The girls behind her had a grin too, as if they knew something that the naive Penelope didn't.
"Poor girl."
"Truly tragic."
"She deserves it."
After everyone expressed their opinion, they let out a devious laughter which made Lantana nervous and ran towards the direction where Penelope went.
She didn't know why, but even though she knew that it was only a dream, she still managed to lose her breath as she ran herself to the seemingly endless stairs.
When she reached the end of the stairs, her eyes beamed because the back of Penelope was already within her sight. Without wanting to lose sight of her again, she mustered all her strength and ran towards the direction of the panting Penelope.
When she got there, she felt relieved yet only for a short while since the moment she tried to look at where Penelope's eyes were glued at, she felt her body froze as her eyes expressed an intense glimmer of anger that she was suppressing.
It felt weird to her. She never knew them personally and she only saw them once but just by seeing their backs at that dream, she already knew who they were, enough to make her blood boil. However, she knew that getting angry inside a memory wouldn't make any difference. In the end, it was still something that already happened and she was still a spectator so all she could do was to watch every scenery that was unfolding before her eyes and see if there was anything that would be useful while swallowing the bitter aftertaste of not being able to do anything.
At the balcony, two people standing side by side together were seen while the moonlight reflected on their bodies. The man beside the woman had his arms placed tenderly around her shoulders while the woman, who was like a snake that wouldn't let go of its prey, had her arms wrapped around the stomach of the man.
At that point, they didn't look like ancient people with ranks to Lantana. Seeing them, she couldn't help but be reminded of all the cheating television shows that her grandmother had watched in her life on earth. They totally resembled all those cheating couples. Dignity? Nobility? They had none of those. They looked nothing but even less than trash to her.
They seemed to be talking but from where Penelope was standing, she couldn't hear them well. So Lantana, after calming down, confidently went closer to where they were standing, knowing that her presence would never be discovered.
Penelope carefully went closer too, using the darkness around the hallway to her advantage. That action of hers made Lantana wonder if Penelope wasn't exactly clueless about the things that happened behind her back and if she was just simply trying to turn a blind eye because she loved the man and was willing to accept him even when he was cheating.
'Suspiciously, the first floor was brimming with lights. How come the second floor was so dark that the two snakes even managed to sneak out?'
Though Lantana was filled with disbelief and suspicions, she shrugged it off for a while as she heard one of the snakes speak after a long time of acting as if they were in a totally melodramatic movie.
"Hmm, Lord Hubert, I'm sorry for being paranoid but are you sure that Lantana was really able to eat the cookies that you sent her? Were you able to see it yourself that she ate them?" the woman said in a trembling voice with a worried expression.
"Yes. I'm sure of it. You don't have to worry about that damn pig. Ha! I bet whatever I give her, she would still end up excitedly eating them, even if I feed her poison," the fiance said, overflowing with confidence, as he snickered.
"Anyway, let's just enjoy this night and treat it as a pre-celebratory party for removing that big obstacle in our life," the man softly added, speaking in a tone filled with assurance to the woman, as if the crumpled expression he showed when he mentioned the deceased was just an illusion.
Then, the man suddenly took one of the glasses placed on top of the railings and took a sip on it before he expressed a sinister smile.
The woman did the same afterwards before she suddenly leaned towards the man, tiptoed, and attacked him with a kiss.
Lantana, not wanting to suddenly watch a vivid porno in front of her, decided to just leave since she felt like she already heard everything that needed to be heard. However, the moment she managed to take a step back, the cheating couple started to speak again, something that perked up Lantana's ears and almost made her burn in so much hate.
"Say, how effective do you think that person's poison was? It wasn't only colorless and odorless, the effect was also delayed for one day. Don't you think the person who invented that was just simply a genius? I can't believe we could finally be together after a long time!" Mistica dramatically said in between their kisses.
"He is definitely a genius! Who would have thought that a poison like that was the only solution to our problem? No one would suspect me at all…"
The moment that Hubert finished saying his last word, Lantana's scenario suddenly changed. That time she saw Penelope who could not even walk properly, strode in the mansion like a totally drunk person while her tears were falling nonstop, swaying around in every step.
She even saw Emily and the butler who welcomed her home, trying to help her as she went to her room, but to no avail, though Penelope was drunk, she was able to push away the two as if they were just flies that she could just motioned to go away before she was able to miraculously enter her room which was stationed at the second floor.
As soon as she laid her back on her bed, Penelope's body started to shake strongly.
All the mess that Penelope did was witnessed by Lantana who stood at every corner like a ghost. When she saw the happening with Penelope's body, she forgot for a while that she wouldn't be able to touch her and decided to run towards the bed.
However, suddenly, before she could even take a step back, she was stopped as an excruciating pain was already starting to rise in her body that she only felt at that time.
First, she felt her mouth burning to the point where she wanted to cry and wail so much but she couldn't because she didn't even have the strength to move. Afterwards, the pain suddenly spread inside her and felt as if her internal organs were being dissolved by acid little by little which made her wish for the grim reaper to come take her immediately instead of breathing any more seconds in the world while suffering in an inhumanely way.
Was that how Penelope felt when she was dying?
Hah. Probably not. Lantana thought Penelope was more broken at that time. Not only was her body like a decaying plant. Not only her internal organs were burned up slowly as if to torture her before she totally stopped breathing. Probably, what pained her the most was that her beloved fiancé and trusted friend were also cheating on her and were the one who killed her.
Lantana felt as if it was really her who was dying and thought that after it, she should be able to wake up already. However, her expectation was short lived as the moment she opened up her eyes, a warm sun that was about to set was what welcomed her.
Though, she was sure, the original Lantana died at night.