POV Jane Doe.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. I can't believe it. Penelope Blackwood, the bane of my existence, the thorn in my side since high school, is here. In the afterlife. In MY afterlife.

It's like some cosmic joke, a sick twist of fate designed specifically to fuck with me. Even in death, I can't escape her. The universe just can't give me a fucking break, can it?

I feel like I'm right back in those hellish hallways, with Penelope's mocking laughter echoing in my ears and her cruel smirk burning into my soul. All the old insecurities, all the pain and humiliation, it all comes rushing back like a tidal wave of toxic sludge.

I want to scream, to rage, to break something. How dare she invade my afterlife like this? How dare she ruin my death like she ruined my life? It isn't fucking fair.

But even as the anger boils in my veins, there's something else too. A morbid curiosity, a sick fascination. What the hell happened to Penelope? How did she end up here, in this fucked-up purgatory?

Did her picture-perfect life finally implode? Did all that cruelty and manipulation catch up to her in the end? Part of me is dying (ha fucking ha) to know.

But I can't face her. I can't let her see how much her presence affects me, how just the sight of her makes me feel like that scared, broken girl all over again. I need to get away, to hide, to lick my wounds in private.

So I run. I run like the Devil himself is on my heels (and who knows, maybe he fucking is). I run until my lungs burn and my vision blurs, until I crash through a door and find myself on some bougie-ass balcony, gasping for air that I don't even fucking need anymore.

I grip the railing like it's the only thing keeping me tethered to sanity, my knuckles turning white as I stare out at the endless expanse of stars. They twinkle and swirl, cold and uncaring, a billion miles away from my problems.

I want to scream at them, to rage at the injustice of it all. I'm dead, for fuck's sake. Isn't that supposed to be the end? Aren't I supposed to be free of all the bullshit and baggage of my mortal life?

But no. Even in death, I can't escape. Not from Penelope, not from my own fucked-up psyche. It's like I'm trapped in some never-ending nightmare, doomed to relive my worst memories and darkest fears for all eternity.

I feel something hot and wet on my cheeks, and it takes me a moment to realize I'm crying. Fucking crying, like a pathetic little girl. I angrily swipe at the tears, hating myself for this weakness, for letting Penelope get to me even now.

But I can't stop them. They keep coming, a lifetime's worth of pain and hurt and humiliation pouring out of me in great, shuddering sobs. I cry for the girl I used to be, for all the dreams and hopes that Penelope had shattered. I cry for the woman I'd never gotten to become, for the life that had been cut short by my own fucking stupidity.

And I cry for myself now, trapped in this endless nightmare, forced to confront my deepest traumas and darkest demons with no hope of escape.

I don't know how long I stand there, crying my eyes out like a fucking baby. Time doesn't seem to mean much anymore. But eventually, the tears run dry, leaving me feeling hollow and exhausted.

I stare out at the stars, a bitter laugh bubbling up in my throat. Fucking typical. Even my big breakdown is a goddamn cliché, an angsty teen movie moment played out against a backdrop of cosmic indifference.

The sound of footsteps behind me shatters my self-pitying reverie. I spin around, ready to verbally eviscerate whoever has the balls to interrupt my existential crisis.

And of course, it's none other than Raphael, the pretentious prick himself. But something is different. His usually composed face is twisted with barely-contained fury, his eyes blazing with a wrath that sends a shiver down my spine.

"Jane," he says, and Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, how does he manage to inject a whole universe's worth of paternal chiding into that single innocuous syllable? It's like the opposite of a mom-superpower, an ability to weaponize disapproval on a cosmic scale.

"Jane, what EXACTLY do you think you're doing? Abandoning me in the middle of the biggest celestial gala of the epoch, making a spectacle of yourself in front of the assembled pantheon. Have you taken complete leave of what little sense you had to begin with?"

I groan, thunking my head back against the wall and squeezing my eyes shut. "Raph, my dude, my guy, my little puff-pants principality, I know this might come as a shock, but not everything is about you and your compulsive need to suck the joy out of every room like a fun-vampire with a WhirlyPop stuck up his ass."

Raphael makes a sound somewhere between a teakettle boiling over and an angry cat hocking up a furball. "This isn't about me, you infuriating little tumbleweed of poor life choices!" he seethes. "It's about you, and the fact that you seem pathologically incapable of going five seconds without turning yourself into the center of some asinine drama!"

I cross my arms over my chest, giving him my best sneering approximation of a defiant glare. It probably comes off closer to the look of a near-sighted badger with a UTI, but hey, points for effort. "Yeah, well maybe I wouldn't have to manufacture my own drama if you'd given me a little heads up about, oh I don't know, my fucking high school bully showing up WITH HER VERY OWN MENACINGLY SEXY GATEKEEPER IN TOW!"

Raphael throws up his hands, looking about two seconds away from popping a vessel in his celestial brain-pan. "What in the seven smoldering hells are you on about? What bully? What gatekeeper?!"

I jab a finger over his shoulder, the traitorous wobble of my hand somewhat ruining the gravitas of the gesture. "Penelope FUCKING Blackwood, you sentient lint-trap!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Jane," he says smoothly, his voice carefully neutral. "I've never heard of this Penelope person before."

"Bullshit," I spit, my hands curling into fists at my sides. "I saw her, Raphael. I saw her standing at the back of the ballroom, with her perfect hair and her perfect dress and her perfect fucking smile. And I saw the way you looked at her boy-toy - the one who could be your fucking twin. You recognized him, I know you did."

Raphael holds up a hand, a strange, unsettled look flitting across his flawless features - there and gone again between one blink and the next. "Slow down, Jane. Are you absolutely certain it was this...Penelope woman you saw? Your memories of her were...imprecise at best, swamped as they are with the hormonal riptides of adolescent trauma. But I can assure you, I do not have a twin."

He grimaces slightly, as if the very notion of wallowing in my teenage angst leaves a bad taste in his brain. "Is it not possible that you were simply projecting past grievances onto an unsuspecting attendee?"

I gape at him, my jaw hinging open and shut like a landed trout. "Am I— are you— PROJECT MY FUCKING WHAT NOW?" I sputter, my voice spiraling into an octave typically reserved for calling dogs and the criminally insane.

"Listen here, Touched By An Asshole, I know Penelope Blackwood like I know the back of my own fucking hand - every manicured nail, every cutting barb, every poisoned kiss masquerading as friendship. There's not a snowball's chance in Satan's sweaty ballsack I would mistake her for some random charge, capiche?"

Something flickers in the infinite depths of Raphael's quicksilver gaze - a fleeting shadow of dark recognition before the impenetrable mask of imperious indifference slams back into place.

"Very well," he says, slowly and with great deliberation, as if physically pained by the concession. "Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that your adolescent nemesis has indeed followed you into the realms of the deceased. What then? Will you cower and flee like a whipped dog at the first glimpse of a cruel smile from your past? Allow yourself to be unmade by a mere mean girl wielding decade-old slights as weapons?"

He steps closer, gaze boring into mine with the intensity of a laser drill through a diamond. "You are dead, Jane. Whatever power this Penelope once held over you, it is less than ash and memory now. You have nothing to fear from her - or from anyone else in this place."

A small, ugly part of me quails at his words, the scared and scarred thirteen year old quivering behind a tough-bitch sneer.

Because easy for him to say when he hadn't spent the last three years as Penelope's favorite verbal punching bag, the repository for every ugly insinuation and whispered piece of poison she could drip into a vulnerable ear.

He didn't know what it was to be shattered into bite-sized pieces by the machinations of a budding psychopath in Prada, to have your every dream and desire weaponized against you until you forgot what it meant to feel safe in your own mind.

He didn't know.

Couldn't know, this resplendent celestial fuckwit in his tailored suit and polished snakeskin loafers, reeking of sandalwood and a breezy confidence born of aeons spent looking down on the world from an untouchable height.

What did a creature like him understand of powerlessness, of insignificance, of the corrosive drip-drip-drip of a tormentor's sneer burrowing into the softest parts of you like a rust-worm through tin?

"You know nothing about my life," I spit venomously. "You have no idea the hell I've been through, the scars I carry. So don't you dare stand there and lecture me about moving on like it's as easy as flipping a goddamn switch."

Raphael's eyes flash with cold annoyance. "On the contrary, Jane, I probably know you better than you know yourself at this point. I had the misfortune of being assigned as your gatekeeper, which meant I read your entire file."

"FILE? WHAT FUCKING FILE?!!!!" The words explode from my mouth, my voice raw and ragged, dripping with rage and disbelief.

"What the hell are you talking about, Raphael?"

Raphael's eyes widen slightly, a flicker of realization that he may have revealed too much. But he quickly regains his composure, his voice smooth and measured once more.

"Your file, Jane. The extensive dossier we keep on every wretched soul that stumbles through these halls. Every sordid thought, every pathetic memory, every single vile and depraved thing you've ever done - all laid bare for our perusal. We gatekeepers are nothing if not thorough in our examinations."

I stare at him, my body trembling with horror and revulsion. They have a file on me? Documenting my entire life, my innermost thoughts and feelings, all the dark secrets I kept locked away? The gross violation makes bile rise in my throat. I want to vomit, to tear off my own skin just to escape the slimy taint of their prying eyes.

"You had no right," I say hoarsely, my voice shaking with barely restrained fury. "No fucking right to invade my mind like that. To dissect my life and display it like some kind of twisted museum exhibit for your sick amusement."

Raphael lets out a patronizing sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "It's not an invasion, Jane, it's standard protocol. We need to understand the miserable excuses for souls in our charge, to predict your needs and manipulate your path through the trials ahead. Your file is simply a tool, a means to an end to control you."

A harsh, brittle laugh tears from my throat. "A tool? Is that all I am to you, Raphael?"

Raphael's gaze sharpens, his posture stiffening. "You have no concept of what's at stake here, Jane. The immense powers at play, the precarious balance that must be maintained. I'm trying to help you navigate this purgatorial nightmare you've found yourself in, but you fight me at every turn with your insolence."

"Help me?" I snarl, stepping forward until I'm inches from his face. "By deceiving me? Manipulating me? Throwing me to the wolves without so much as a warning of the fresh hells that await? You're not helping me, you sadistic prick, you're toying with me for your own twisted amusement."

"I have never lied to you," Raphael says icily, his voice tight with barely restrained malice. "Every action I've taken has been for your own good, your potential salvation. But you're too blinded by your own selfish, hedonistic desires to see the truth."

"Selfish?" I let out a crazed, almost hysterical laugh. "That's fucking rich, coming from you. You don't give a single shit about me, about any of us. We're just disposable playthings to you, insignificant pawns to be moved around your sick chessboard."

Raphael's hand suddenly shoots out and grabs my face, his fingers digging into my skin with bruising force. He wrenches my head up to stare directly into his eyes, stormy with contempt.

"You know nothing of which you speak," he hisses, his breath hot against my cheek. "The sacrifices I've made, the aeons I've toiled in service of the greater balance. You're nothing but a ungrateful, petulant child, throwing a tantrum in the face of forces beyond your meager comprehension."

I tear myself from his iron grip, my skin crawling from his violating touch. "Go fuck yourself," I spit venomously. "You're so full of shit, I'm amazed your eyes aren't brown. You're no noble guardian or benevolent guide - you're another sadistic ass getting his rocks off tormenting the damned."

Something dark and menacing flashes in Raphael's eyes, his perfect lips twisting into a cruel sneer. "You thankless little whore," he growls, any pretense of composure gone. "You're meddling with powers you can't begin to fathom. I could utterly destroy you with a mere thought, erase your miserable existence like the insignificant speck you are."

"Then fucking do it already!" I scream, my voice cracking with anguish and fury. "End this bullshit, finish me off once and for all if I'm such an intolerable burden, you spineless sack of shit!"

Raphael regards me with pure disgust, looking at me like I'm the foulest thing he's ever seen. "Typical. You'd love that, wouldn't you? The coward's way out, the pathetic easy escape. You're weak, Jane. Pitiful. Unworthy of the opportunity you've been given here."

"Opportunity?" I laugh manically, on the verge of mental collapse. "You think this unending hell is some kind of gift?"

"Oh spare me the melodramatic self-pity," Raphael scoffs derisively. "You're not the only miserable wretch who's ever suffered. The only broken doll with a tragic past. You're not special Jane, just another pitiful, damaged soul."

"Shut your fucking mouth," I whisper, my voice trembling with barely restrained anguish. "You have no goddamn idea what I've been through, what I've had to endure and survive."

Raphael circles me slowly, like a tiger toying with a helpless deer. "I know all your dirty little secrets, Jane. All your deepest fears and weakest points."

"Stop it," I say, my voice low and shaking. "Don't you fucking dare—"

But Raphael presses on, relentless. "I know all about your daddy issues, your desperate, pathetic need for male approval and validation. I know about all the worthless men you've let degrade and defile you, just to feel anything other than the screaming void inside your own head."

"Shut up!" I yell, tears burning my eyes. "I'm warning you, Raphael, shut your goddamn mouth right now or I swear to God—"

A twisted smile curves Raphael's lips. "But we both know that's not your deepest wound, is it Jane? No, that honor belongs to your dear, sweet Penelope."

Raw, jagged agony rips through me at the mention of her name. "Don't," I choke out, my voice strangled and desperate. "Don't you fucking DARE! I'm begging you Raphael, please..."

Raphael's eyes glitter with sadistic glee, knowing he's struck a nerve. "I know all about that night, Jane. The night that shattered you into a million broken shards. She watched, didn't she? Your so-called best friend?"

A wounded noise tears from my throat, somewhere between a sob and a scream. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the images, the memories. But they rise up anyway, dragging me back down into that hell. "Stop. Please, God, just stop. I can't - I can't bear it. Please don't make me relive this. Have mercy..."

But there's no mercy in Raphael's pitiless gaze as he pushes the knife in deeper, harder, twisting brutally. "She stood there and watched as they violated you. Watched them rip away your innocence and destroy the very fabric of your soul. And she did NOTHING. Your sister in all but blood LET. IT. HAPPEN."

A guttural, animalistic wail tears from the depths of my being as I clamp my hands over my ears in a futile attempt to shut out his cruel words. My legs tremble violently, threatening to give out at any moment as I fight to remain upright, to not crumple completely under the onslaught of the merciless truth.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! STOP IT, PLEASE JUST FUCKING STOP!"

Raphael looms over me, his head dipping low, blonde hair falling forward to shadow the cruel, pitiless depths of his icy blue eyes. He reaches out and seizes my chin in a brutally tight grip, wrenching my tear-stained face upwards, forcing me to meet his gaze.

"She betrayed you, Jane," he says almost gently, his voice a cruel mimicry of sympathy even as his eyes shine with vicious triumph. "Penelope abandoned you to your fate. Let you be violated and broken. And now, seeing her here again... It's like reliving it all over, isn't it? You're right back in that room. Helpless. Alone. Shattered beyond repair."

Something in me snaps, the last fraying thread of my sanity severing with an almost audible twang. Blinded by feral, unholy rage, I lash out with an inarticulate shriek, putting every ounce of my anguish and fury and shattering despair behind my fist as it smashes into Raphael's perfect, sneering face.

But instead of the satisfying crunch of pulverizing bone, I feel only blinding, searing agony exploding through my hand, up my arm and into my very soul. It's like punching a mountain, like my frail human fist had slammed full force into an immovable wall of marble.

I stumble back with a thin, animal whimper of pain, clutching my ruined hand to my chest. Hot tears pour down my face as I crumple to the ground in a broken, devastated heap, my entire body heaving with great, tearing sobs.

Raphael towers over my broken form, his perfect features twisted into a mask of cruel disdain and perverse enjoyment as he witnesses me fracture into countless, razor-sharp fragments. Despite my desperate pleas, my anguished warnings not to dredge up the most intimate and devastating trauma of my past, he had ruthlessly ripped open those barely-healed wounds anyway.

With calculated cruelty, he has taken the most shattering, soul-destroying violation I have ever endured and hurled it back in my face like a weapon, flaying me alive with the unbearable agony of it until I'm nothing but a raw, bleeding husk of endless torment.

These scars, these jagged fault lines in my psyche - I hadn't been born with them. They had been carved into me, etched indelibly by the betrayals and brutality of those I had once trusted. Just like Penelope, Raphael is blaming me for the unspeakable things that had shattered me, for all the ways life had broken me down.

But I hadn't always been this way, this bitter, broken shell of a person. Once, before the world had chewed me up and spat me out, I had been whole. Innocent. Filled with hope and light.

I hadn't come into this existence without a heart. But it had been ripped out of me piece by agonizing piece, until only a gaping, festering void remained. A void Raphael seems hellbent on ripping open even further, until nothing is left but dust and echoes.

I can't take anymore. The agony is too great, the torment too cruel. Folded in on myself in the fetal position, whimpering and shuddering, I pray for oblivion, for the void, for anything that would make this unbearable suffering end.

But I know in my shattered heart that it never will. This is my hell, my eternal punishment. And Raphael will be my tormentor until the end of time. Unless...

Raphael kneels down next to my sobbing, snotty mess of a face. "Do you finally comprehend the futility of resistance, Jane? There is but one way to escape the oblivion that awaits you. Triumph in the trials, and be reborn unburdened by the scars that define your pitiful existence."

He grabs my mangled hand, the one I'd stupidly tried to break against his annoyingly perfect face, and holds it with a gentleness that makes me want to puke. Suddenly, the blinding pain vanishes and my skin is back to its frustratingly flawless self. Just peachy.

I hate his pretentious, smug guts. But damn it, the bastard has a point. I'm dead - worm food, pushing up daisies, doing the eternal tango with the Grim Reaper. Whatever mindfuckery and betrayal Penelope had carved into my fragile little psyche back then... well, that belonged to the old Jane. The naive idiot who died broken and alone, courtesy of her so-called best friend.

I have to let it go, to strip her talons from my heart one blood-crusted barb at a time and rise - if not above, then around the howling chasm of my own damage. I have to be bigger, meaner, more magnificently monstrous than anything she could throw at me, real or remembered.

And if the day comes when I finally have her in my sights again, when I can wrap my hands around her slender throat and squeeze until the light dims in those cutting, quicksilver eyes? When I tear into the pale perfection of her breast and rip out that malignant lump of coal she calls a heart, raising it triumphantly to my lips like an Aztec priest drunk on conquered glory and spurting blood?

I will sink my teeth in with a savage smile, and I will make her choke on every last rancid morsel of my victory. But until then?

Time to put on my big girl panties and play the game. My way.

I tilt my chin up, defiant as all hell, and snatch my hand back from Raphael's infuriatingly gentle grip. Reaching out, I fish the fancy silk handkerchief from his pretentious suit pocket and proceed to unceremoniously dry my tears and wipe the snot from my nose.

Real classy, Jane.

Raphael, ever the gentleman, tries to offer me his hand like I'm some delicate fucking flower. Nah, fuck that noise. I shove the used hanky back into his palm, haul my ass up off the floor, and shoulder past him with a sneer. I can feel his irritatingly perfect presence following behind me as I stalk back into the ballroom, but I couldn't give a rat's ass.

As I scan the room, my eyes land on a stunning waif of a girl, all sharp edges and hungry eyes, clinging to the arm of a gaunt, sour-faced gatekeeper. They're deep in conversation with some decrepit old hag, clearly a donor from one of the shithole realms. Famine, from the looks of her shriveled, prune-like visage.

Perfect. Time to make an impression.

I sashay over, a plan forming in my devious little mind. This crusty old bat looks like she's just crawled out of a crypt, all skin and bones and sunken eyes. And if there's one thing I know about the Famine folks, it's that they get off on looking like walking corpses.

Time to lay it on thick.

"Oh my god, I just have to say, you look absolutely ghoulish!" I gush, pushing past the stunned charge and her keeper to loop my arm through the crone's. "Seriously, I'm so jealous. What's your secret? Is it the maggots? I bet it's the maggots."

The desiccated fossil throws her head back and cackles, revealing a mouthful of rotting teeth. "Oh, I like you," she rasps, patting my arm with a claw-like hand. "You've got a good eye, girlie. The maggots are a nice touch, but the real trick? Centuries of slow starvation. Nothing quite like the feeling of your body devouring itself from the inside out."

I nod sagely, ignoring the horrified looks from the gatekeeper peanut gallery. "I can only imagine. Sounds like pure bliss."

The crone grins, a horrific slash of lips over gums. "Stick with me, little starveling, and I'll show you the ropes. By the time I'm done with you, you'll be nothing but a beautiful bag of bones."

"Stop, you're making me blush!" I giggle, batting my eyelashes. "Or is that just my skin flaking off from malnutrition?"

Another raspy cackle. "Oh, we're going to get along famously, you and I."

I beam, all razor-edged charm and vicious cunning. Steering the old bat past her previous conversational partners, I make sure to catch Raphael's eye. The look of stunned disbelief on his perfect face is almost as satisfying as the feeling of the crone's bony arm linked with mine.

"Lead the way, Mama Bones," I purr, my voice dripping with false sweetness. "I'm ready to learn the ways of the Wasting."

The crone chuckles, a dry, rattling sound that makes my skin crawl. "Oh, darling, please. Call me Lady Witherspoone."

I nearly choke on my own tongue. Lady Witherspoone? Jesus, even the names in this place are pretentious as fuck. But I plaster on my most sycophantic smile and nod. "Of course, Lady Witherspoone. How foolish of me. Your elegance and grace are truly unparalleled."

Lady Stick-Up-Her-Bony-Ass preens at the compliment, her sunken cheeks flushing with what I assume is pleasure. Or maybe just the exertion of remaining upright. Hard to tell with these Famine freaks.

As we glide past Raphael, I shoot him a wink and a smirk. He blinks, clearly taken aback by my sudden change in tactics.

Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet, pretty boy.

Jane Doe is ready to play this game. And she plays to win, even if it means cosying up to a living (or unliving, I guess) skeleton with delusions of grandeur.

After all, in this twisted afterlife, you have to work with what you have. And what I have?

Is a newfound talent for kissing undead, pretentious ass. Just not Raphael's.