The Girl in the Scarlet Dress

The prison door stands like a silent sentinel, neither guarding nor guiding, simply enduring, indifferent to what passes through or what is taken.

When the warden prods Aisha forward, the stale air ripples, a small disturbance, enough to pause the breath of the other prisoners. Humans often betray themselves this way, when curiosity brushes against wounded pride. They recognize her from the underground event, the girl in the scarlet dress on the night of their arrest. Even disheveled, with mascara streaked in dark lines across her cheeks, her raw beauty refuses to disappear beneath the grime.

Hassan offers a small, uncertain smile. It lingers a moment too long.

Aisha does not react, but a quiet relief rises in her at the sight of a familiar face.

Ahmad notices and feels only dread.

Misplaced.

Grotesque.

Like laughter at a funeral, absurd against the clumps of his son’s hair scattered across the cold floor, remnants of innocence, ground beneath boots.

As a guard finishes shaving Hassan’s head, the warden shoves Aisha into line, between Ahmad and his son, severing the fragile thread that had held father and boy together.

She has been absent since their capture, and now her sudden return carves a stark silhouette into the dim room. Her knees buckle under a weariness only terror and deprivation can breed. She steadies herself. Something dormant stirs, small, sharp, deliberate. She draws her fear inward and locks it deep, where even the warden cannot reach.

Her hand moved once, briefly, barely, to the notebook in her coat. Still there. She let it go.

Her face becomes her armor. She raises her shield.

The warden circles her. Predatory.

Ahmad watches, unblinking. Not unseen, simply disregarded.

With practiced ease, the warden strips away Aisha’s outer garment and underwear, handing them off without ceremony. Among the things handed off without ceremony: a notebook. The warden did not look at it. He did not need to. It went with everything else. His touch is efficient. Rehearsed. Bored.

Through the fog in her mind, Aisha remembers: it was only two nights ago. Only that. Since she felt the tenderness of this same man. Now he stands before her as a despicable old creature with a cold, unrecognizable heart. It feels like another life entirely.

How had she ever invited those hands? Those eyes? That thing into—

She fixes her gaze on a point beyond the room, sealing the thought shut before it can finish forming. The pain behind it waits—shapeless, patient, inevitable. She will not touch it. Not now.

Ahmad cannot look away. He doesn’t know what Aisha is to his son—or what she was, other than another prisoner. She certainly seemed different. Treated differently. And now she stands here, stripped bare before them all. Rage rises in him at the indignity—an indignity even the worst of humanity did not deserve. It rises hot, useless, bitter.

He sees her eyes, still as stone, but distant.

Her mind slipping, retreating, an erosion of self.

At the edges of her awareness, her thoughts begin to fracture, opening just wide enough for a Guardian to enter.

Lakita steps in commanding darkness to fold around Aisha. Aisha is suspended in thick, sticky gel, encased in a bubble, like an embryo waiting for rebirth. Aisha has entered the spirit-realm.

I am impressed with Lakita’s innovation.

Most of my students prefer the familiar: burning bushes, translucent figures claiming old bonds. Some favor intimidation, becoming beasts or monsters to provoke obedience.

Lakita, though, designs intimacy. Quiet, cloistered initiation. I note it for future lectures.

I step into the darkness beside Aisha’s bubble and brush the fringe of her soul. I veil myself carefully; neither mortal nor Celestial, not even Lakita will sense me. The dark is thick. Tactile. Like water with weight. Lakita is not drowning. Nor dissolving. Then, a whisper, of sorts. Not sound. Presence.

A shimmer drifts at the edge of Aisha’s vision: Lakita’s aura.

Celestials imprint as color in the carbon mind:

Sometimes sharp white.

Sometimes green.

Non-humans welcome it.

Humans often fear it.

Aisha does not.

A shape steps forward, not arriving, but revealing, as though it had been waiting for her notice.

Her form begins to unravel. Waxen. Trembling.

She stretches, then folds inward, flickering like a candle in violent wind. Moving outside her bubble but she is still held there by the gel around her.

And then: light.

Not flame.

Not heat.

Something aware.

Something patient.

She reaches. Her fingers distort, twisting, warping. When they touch the light, ice tears through her like a storm.

She is snapped free.

Not backward.

Not forward.

Out.

She falls into a void without floor or sky.

Silence condenses around her.

Then, metal.

Chain.

A ringing felt more than heard, each vibration a drumbeat carved into bone.

A figure forms:

an angelic woman dressed in deep green.

Lakita. Laughing for a moment.

She does not speak at first. She paces. Observes.

Not cruel. Not kind.

Weighing.

Measuring.

Aisha tries to speak. Her lips will not move.

The message is simple:

Not yet.

Lakita’s voice comes smooth and cold, silk pulled taut.

“Tell me, why would the Essence waste its time on you?”

The question wounds more than Aisha expects despite not having a clue what this Essence has to do with her. And who is this in front of her.

Her answer surfaces unbidden: “Lakita.”

The name lands before its meaning returns.

“I don’t know why I was sent to watch you,” Lakita says. “I was told to test you. So far, I am not impressed.”

Aisha flinches.

“Am I… stuck here?” The words crack like thin ice.

Lakita starts to probe her body looking for something mumbling to herself, “You should have stayed in the bubble.”

Without looking at Aisha and continuing to poke her, she says, “You are not where you belong,” Lakita replies. “That is not a warning. It is a fact.”

The dreamscape trembles. Reality presses at the seams. A thin crack forms, silent and expanding.

Lakita softens only slightly.

“Essence leads me to you. I don’t yet know why. But then, why does Essence choose any of us?”

She does not move, yet she is suddenly before Aisha.

Aisha stumbles. Her temple strikes something impossible. Pain blooms, sharp and real. Lakita steadies her, preventing true harm but not the sting.

A test.

A jest.

Aisha stares at this being, shocked that she would trip her purposefully.

Lakita places her gently on unseen ground.

“When the time comes,” she says, “the path will be there, if you want to try and walk it.”

Cold rushes over Aisha, rattling bone.

“Where am I now?” she asks.

“Somewhere you cannot stay.”

A pause. Almost tender.

“When the time comes, you will find me.”

Then softer: “Essence chose me to guide those who can fill the voids left by the gods’ careless conflicts.”

And a whisper like smoke: “Assuming that day ever comes.”

The world buckles. The dream dissolves.

As she falls, she hears one word:

“Remember.”

Spirit returns to skin like cold water flung onto burning coals.

Then nothing. Then stone.

Aisha’s eyes snapped open.

The weight of the prison rushed over her like a cold tide. The dreamscape, the green haze, Lakita’s voice, dissolved like smoke.

What remained was breath, stone, and silence.

She composed the entry without paper, the way she had learned to hold things she could not afford to lose. Somewhere in the hours before the gathering, before the arrest, before any of this, she had written: I do not know what you look like. I do not know your name. I know only that you exist, and that knowing is enough to keep me moving. She held the words in the place where the notebook had been. They would do until she could write them down again.

Lakita did not speak. She watched.

And I wonder, not for the first time, whether even we, the Witnesses, are being watched in turn.

This thought was first brought to me by an Aegean Alchemist whose name I never bothered to remember. He asked if knowing I was observed would change me: my color, my behavior.

A stupid question, I thought.

But still, I considered it.

At first, the feeling of being under a microscope was abhorrent, violating.

Then, numbing.

In time, I stepped into the role of the observer myself. And from that vantage, a new question emerged:

What is the state of mind of the one who watches?

Eventually, complacency set in. I ceased to care. Freed from self-consciousness, I learned to manipulate my color: how I appeared, how I was perceived. I became not just a subject, but a performer.

Rejecting the concept was perhaps the most interesting. If I reject that anyone is observing me, my color and actions are moot. If no one is watching, then my color is irrelevant. My behavior, unmeasured. My actions, unrecorded.

I went back to observing. Beside Aisha, Hassan leaned closer.

“Are you okay?” he whispered.

She didn’t answer. Her gaze was elsewhere, part of her not yet returned.

The warden answered for her instead:

“No one asked for your concern.”

The blow came fast. A sickening crack as knuckle struck bone. Hassan crumpled. Aisha flinched.

The room held its breath.

Hassan groaned, alive, but bent in pain. The warden flexed his fingers, savoring the moment.

The razor hummed as it passed over Aisha’s scalp.

Her history, her voice, taken in quiet clumps.

One by one, others followed.

Grace stepped forward, her fingers brushing the silver cross at her neck.

“Lord, I am not scared,” she whispered. “Allow me one small joy…”

She kissed her Bible, then surrendered it, standing still as everything else was stripped away.

Harjit stood next, his fingers instinctively reaching for something to cover his head.

His faith was in his stance. His words, though unspoken, I heard from his spirit.

“See me. Take what you will. You cannot take what I am.”

David stood frozen, trembling at the sound of the razor.

Memories of stories he’d heard from Auschwitz rose in his mind: stripes, shaved heads, bodies like fallen wheat.

Stories he had tried to believe belonged to the past.

But they did not.

A tear slipped down his cheek, not from fear, but from recognition.

Though not a man of prayer, he imagined himself one as his voice trembled:

“Adonai…

They clearly hate me.

But You never asked me to pay for the soul You placed in me.

So I return it to Your refiner’s fire.

Help me be a tzaddik.

Let me walk in Your shadow, always.”

I heard every word.

It is not language that makes prayer holy. It is longing. It is return. I blew upon him. This newly adjusted David was returning.

Grace gently wiped the tear from his cheek. “I pray for a miracle,” she said. Not rescue. Justice.

A miracle had been granted.

The guards opened the stairwell door.

Bear. Fox. Wolf.

Names worn like skin. Tools shaped into men.

They descended, barefoot, breath held tight, into the bowels of the prison. Urine-slick stone. Rot. Sweat. Despair.

The cell, built for one, now held six. Yet each corner bore more than just the weight of their bodies. The spirits of those who had been here before scratched relentlessly at the walls, desperate for release, desperate for freedom. Though their physical bodies had space to move, their flesh screamed with suffocation, and their souls were pressed together, compressed within these cold, unforgiving confines.

Then came the last stripping: not of cloth, but of symbol.

Five lockboxes.

Not six.

Aisha noticed.

Everyone noticed. Each lockbox held a gold coin, meant to pay for the bearer’s execution.

Bear removed each prisoner’s coin with ceremony, but when it came to Aisha, he handed her a paper bag with strange care.

She had arrived dressed in a party gown, intending to dine with the warden, only to find herself cast back into the role of prisoner.

Bear gave her the bag. Inside was a tattered white dress. And beneath the dress, the notebook. She did not reach for it immediately. She pressed her hand against it through the fabric of the bag, confirming it was there, and then lifted the dress out as though that were the only thing she had been given. The warden did not notice. He had not known what he was holding when he took it. He did not know what he was returning now. The fabric was plain, a stark contrast to the gown she had worn just hours ago.

Bear sneered at her, not with desire, not with menace, but with the particular contempt of a man doing work he has not been paid for. He gestured at the dress. “Put it on. Apparently you were worth more to him alive than dead. Lucky for you. Not so lucky for the executioner.”

He and the warden watched intently as Aisha undressed, giving no chance to cover herself. Embarrassed, she feigned dignity as she removed her clothing, doing her best to preserve what little sense of control she had left.

Resentment softened into weary understanding. Fear flickered again as the guard handed five gold coins to the warden, who placed them into a box at his belt.

The warden tapped the box: click, click.

“Sleep while you can,” he said. “The bright lights burn.”

And with that, he left, his laughter echoing long after his footsteps had faded.

Ahmad shifted uncomfortably.

“Bright lights,” he murmured. “Maybe it’s a way out.”

Hassan tried humor, but it fell flat.

“Maybe it makes this place less of a nightmare.”

“We’re like pickles in a jar,” Ahmad grumbled.

Aisha smirked.

“And I’m the spice?”

Even a joke could be rebellion. Hassan felt a wave of relief, however slight, and welcomed the momentary respite.

“Aisha,” Ahmad said softly. “Get some rest.”

From his corner, Harjit growled,

“Some of us are trying to find peace.”

He adjusted the strip of cloth shaped into a turban, dignity in fragments.

Hassan noticed Aisha shivering.

He draped his blanket over her.

“Hey, Spicy,” he whispered. “Take this.”

“What about you?” she asked.

He said nothing.

She opened the blanket and motioned.

After a moment, he joined her.

Small rebellions.

Small tendernesses.

Small refusals to break.

“Can you keep a secret?” Aisha whispered.

“Sure,” Hassan murmured.

She grinned, eyes glinting.

“Shh.”

She pulled a tiny flask from her gown.

“Soup,” she said. “I made it.”

A miracle disguised as contraband.

David sat up, shivering. Something in her laugh broke him open.

“If Moses was here…”

He prayed again, Hebrew rising in cracked syllables.

Grace pressed her hand to her cross. “Lord… even the ones who harm us.”

The cell quieted. One light flickered. Six bodies settled into borrowed warmth.

But something lingered:

A turning. Not outward. Not upward. Inward.

They were not free. Not yet.

But something holy entered the room. Not loud. Not radiant. But true.

And it did not leave.

The spirit remained. Not above them. in them.

It did not ascend. It stayed.