Watermelon And Pineapple
Watermelon And Pineapple
The world blurred.
For a moment, everything was weightless, her body suspended in the empty space between rage and reality.
Then…the drop.
Her stomach lurched. Her limbs flailed, grasping at the nothingness around her, at air, at fate at anything that would stop what was about to happen.
The stairs. The lights above. The faces at the top, looking down.
Their faces.
Celeste. The girl who had been crying. Three others. All watching. All standing still.
And then—
Crack.
A white-hot explosion of pain shot through her skull as her head struck the marble floor below. She felt the pain in her back, her bones breaking, something warm, her blood flowing past her ears, she was like a ragdoll abandoned in the corner of a stage she would never dance on again.
For a second, all she could do was breathe through the pain, the sharp, unbearable ringing in her ears drowning out the sounds above her.
But then, their voices broke through.
The Ones Who Pushed.
Celeste stepped forward first, peering down at her like she was nothing more than a broken doll left on display.
“I hated you,” she said, her voice eerily calm, but her fingers were shaking. “You always thought you were better. You made sure everyone knew it.”
The girl who had cried earlier—Emma, that was her name—was standing next to her now. Her face, once streaked with tears, was twisted in something ugly.
Jealousy and hatred.
“You made me feel like I was nothing,” Emma whispered. "Every single day."
One of the other girls scoffed, folding her arms. Lena.
“You ripped ballet from me because I wasn’t perfect,” she spat. “It was the only thing I had, and you made sure I never had a chance.”
Another voice. A sneer. Mira.
“How you became a prima donna is beyond us,” she muttered. “You’re selfish. Cruel. A liar. And now?”
Mira crouched slightly, tilting her head as she stared at Isolde’s broken form.
“Now, you’re just pathetic.”
A chorus of agreement followed.
“You had it coming.”
“You deserved this.”
“As you always say, in a selfish world, only the selfish succeed. Now see where that got you to.”
Isolde tried to speak, but the pain was too much. Her vision blurred, voices crashing into one another, the ceiling above her tilting, distorting.
She wanted to laugh.
They thought they were better than her now? Because they had pushed her? Because they had finally found a way to tear her down?
By death?
They thought they would rise?
They would never rise. They will always be bottom feeders, the has been. Forgotten. Forever.
Pathetic.
She tried to lift a hand, tried to move, but her fingers barely twitched. Her body wasn’t listening.
Her chest tightened.
The voices above faded.
The world blurred, then dimmed.
No.
No, no, no.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
Her breath came in ragged gasps, shallow and broken, her chest barely rising. The pain—sharp, unbearable, merciless—wrapped around her like a vise, suffocating, inescapable.
Her fingers twitched uselessly against the cold marble, her limbs unmoving, useless, trapped in her own broken body.
She couldn’t move.
She couldn’t move.
A choked sound slipped from her lips—a sob, a plea, a prayer.
Not like this.
Not like this!!!
She was only twenty-one. She had so much left to do. So much to take, to build, to create.
She was young. Ambitious. Hopeful, even in her selfishness.
She had never believed in mercy. In kindness. In second chances.
But now, as her life spilled out of her, she prayed for one.
Please.
Her vision swam, shadows creeping into the edges of her sight.
She tried to force a breath past her lips, but the air was thick, her lungs straining against the weight of nothingness.
She didn’t want to die.
She couldn’t die.
Not when she had fought so hard to reach this point.
Not when she had more to prove.
Her pulse pounded in her ears, the world slipping further and further away.
No. No. Nooooooo.
The tears came. Hot, silent.
And then—
Nothing.
Darkness.
Then…light.
Blinding, white, all-consuming. It wasn’t warm or comforting. It was cold, harsh, like an exposed truth no one wanted to see.
Isolde gasped, her lungs burning as she jolted awake. Her hands clenched at nothing, her body weightless, as if she wasn’t truly here.
Where was here?
The last thing she remembered was falling—the betrayal, the pain, the prayer she never believed in. And now…
A loud boom echoed through the void.
“ISOLDE VAIL.”
The voice wasn’t human. It wasn’t just loud it lived inside her bones, inside her soul.
Her heart lurched, her breath stuck in her throat.
Something about it felt final.
She looked down.
Pure white.
Her dress long, flowing, untouched by the grime of reality. Her arms, bare and pale, looked untouched, as if she had never hit the ground.
Her fingers curled into fists.
This wasn’t right.
"Is this...heaven?" Isolde murmured. Then she chuckled. "Impossible."
Suddenly a voice boomed, shaking the endless white around her.
“YOU WERE SELFISH. YOU TOOK WITHOUT GIVING. YOU DESTROYED OTHERS TO BUILD YOURSELF. YOU HUMILIATED, YOU BROKE, YOU SHOWED NO MERCY. FOR THIS, YOU WILL BE PUNISHED.”
Isolde stilled.
Her lips parted. Then curled into a smirk.
“Wow.”
She blinked, shaking her head. “Just wow.”
She crossed her arms, looking into the nothingness, voice sharp with mockery.
“So, I’m being judged now? By who, exactly? Is this God? The one I cried to but never answered! I never killed anyone. I got what I wanted. I fought for it. And now I have to suffer for it?”
No answer.
Just silence.
Her fists tightened.
“If you whoever you are, were so just, maybe I wouldn’t have been the fat kid that everyone hated.” Her voice rose, bitter and sharp. “The fat kid who wanted to dance. The kid with no parents. The kid who was nothing, and no one cared.”
The white around her trembled, shifting, reacting.
She laughed, humorless.
“You are not just.” Her voice cut through the emptiness like a blade. “And you have no right to judge me for my decisions when you don’t know what it feels like to be a forgotten, useless person.”
A pause.
She swallowed, blinking up at the void above.
“I was bad at school. I was always a step behind, always lacking. But dance? That was mine. It was the only thing I had. And if I had to bleed for it, if I had to make sure no one got in my way, then fine.”