The Secret Beneath the Green Velvet

Part 3: The Shattering of the Past

Time seemed to instantly fracture, slowing down to an agonizing, near-impossible crawl.

The violent, chaotic, and deeply aggressive energy that had just entirely consumed the freezing marine hall suddenly evaporated into thin air.

It was entirely replaced by a singular, deeply hypnotic, and terrifying focal point.

A heavy, incredibly dense metallic object tumbled silently through the chilled, blue-tinted atmosphere of the room.

It had been violently dislodged from the deepest, most heavily guarded corner of the old woman’s tattered, soaking wet grey coat.

As the object fell through the open space, it caught the shifting, ethereal light bleeding outwards from the massive, wall-to-wall shark tank.

It flared brilliantly, generating a sudden, completely blinding flash of pure, highly polished gold.

It was a stark, almost offensive contrast against the bleak, impoverished, and deeply tragic backdrop of the beggar’s miserable clothing.

It was a vintage pocket watch, entirely suspended from a thick, intricately woven, heavy golden chain.

The precious metal was incredibly old, its surface worn completely smooth by decades of constant, desperate, and highly emotional handling.

Evelyn’s sharp, predatory eyes tracked the terrifyingly slow descent of the object, her mind completely unable to process what she was actually seeing.

The existence of such a deeply valuable, obviously expensive item on the person of a filthy street vagrant made absolutely no logical sense in her heavily ordered world.

It looked exactly like a fallen star descending rapidly into a pool of utter, disgusting squalor.

Crash.

The heavy, solid gold violently collided with the flawlessly polished, custom-cut, checkered marble floor.

The sound was incredibly sharp, a piercing, highly aggressive metallic clink that somehow managed to echo vastly louder than the furious screams that had preceded it.

It was the devastating, deeply unsettling sound of something infinitely precious striking an utterly, totally unforgiving surface.

The sheer, brutal physical force of the heavy impact upon the freezing stone was vastly too much for the antique, highly fragile latch.

With a sharp, highly audible, and incredibly definitive mechanical snap, the tiny, rusted spring mechanism finally surrendered.

The heavy golden cover of the intricate pocket watch popped violently open, rebounding off the hard marble.

It bounced once, then twice, the delicate, heavy golden chain pooling heavily around it like a shimmering, intricately coiled snake.

Finally, the ancient timepiece came to a complete, absolute rest on the cold, unforgiving floor.

It lay perfectly flat, its metallic shell totally exposed, staring straight upwards at the towering, beautifully frescoed ceiling.

The little girl’s hysterical, deeply ragged sobbing hitched painfully in her tiny throat, instantly silenced by the sudden, sharp, metallic noise.

The frail, terrified old woman froze completely, her heavily veined, outstretched hands hovering entirely uselessly in the cold, blue air.

A look of pure, unadulterated, world-ending devastation violently rearranged her deeply wrinkled, highly tragic features.

She let out a choked, absolutely heartbroken, and deeply ragged gasp.

It was a sound vastly more tragic, heavily loaded with pure anguish, than any of her previous, pathetic cries for physical mercy had been.

It was the agonizing, deeply raw sound of a broken soul watching its single most cherished, heavily guarded, and deeply private secret being violently exposed.

She desperately tried to lunge forward, her intention clearly to frantically sweep the precious, fragile artifact back into the absolute safety of her trembling hands.

But her starving, incredibly frail, and physically exhausted body completely betrayed her in her most desperate moment.

Her bony, trembling knees buckled completely, and she sank heavily and painfully back down to the hard stone floor beside her weeping grandchild.

Evelyn remained standing perfectly tall, a magnificent, entirely terrifying statue meticulously carved from heavy emerald velvet and cold, hard diamonds.

Her chest was still heaving rapidly, her lungs aggressively pulling in the cold air, heavily fueled by the dark adrenaline of her furious, violent outburst.

Her stunning, cold, and utterly merciless green eyes darted rapidly downward.

She was drawn entirely against her own will to the gleaming, beautiful object resting mere inches from the pointed tip of her incredibly expensive designer shoe.

At first, her perfectly sculpted expression was one of sheer, deeply arrogant confusion.

Her highly analytical, ruthlessly pragmatic, and deeply cynical mind furiously tried to process the jarring, completely impossible contradiction laid out before her.

Why did this wretched, filthy, highly disease-ridden street rat possess an object of such obvious, undeniable, and extreme material wealth?

It was solid, heavy gold, heavily antique, exactly the kind of highly prized, generational heirloom that belonged exclusively in the heavily guarded vaults of elite families like hers.

It most certainly did not belong hiding inside the rotten, damp, foul-smelling pocket of a trespassing beggar.

She stole it, Evelyn’s highly prejudiced mind immediately and aggressively concluded.

A fresh, highly toxic wave of blinding, violently self-righteous anger threatened to rise again in her chest, rapidly burning away her temporary confusion.

Of course she stole it. They are all filthy thieves. They take what they cannot earn.

She took a slow, highly deliberate, and deeply aggressive half-step forward, shifting her physical weight.

She fully intended to confidently, ruthlessly crush the stolen artifact entirely beneath the sharp, lethal, unforgiving heel of her stiletto.

She wanted to definitively, completely destroy the last remaining, highly pathetic shred of the old woman’s stolen dignity.

She wanted to physically prove that the weak could possess absolutely nothing of value in her absolute presence.

But as her dark, towering shadow fell heavily across the open, exposed face of the golden watch, Evelyn’s gaze finally, inevitably locked onto the interior of the casing.

Her elegant, expensive shoe froze entirely, completely suspended in mid-air.

The air was instantly, violently, and aggressively sucked straight out from her burning lungs.

The opulent, perfectly constructed world around her—the massive glass tank, the shifting blue water, the silent, gliding sharks, the cold stone walls—simply ceased to entirely exist.

Everything faded into an endless, deeply terrifying, completely silent black void.

Inside the open watch, heavily protected by a thin, fragile layer of incredibly scuffed, heavily yellowing glass, were two very small, carefully cut photographs.

They were vintage black and white prints, the fragile paper edges heavily frayed, torn, and curling slightly from years of being constantly exposed to damp air and desperate, salty tears.

The image delicately placed on the left side was of a young, undeniably handsome man with kind, deeply tired, highly expressive eyes.

He was wearing a cheap, deeply stained, and incredibly poorly fitting factory worker’s uniform.

He was smiling gently at the camera, a deeply profound, highly genuine smile that heavily carried the undeniable, unmistakable weight of endless, backbreaking, highly destructive manual labor.

Evelyn knew that exact face.

She intimately knew the precise, sharp curve of that deeply exhausted jawline, the specific, heavy tilt of those incredibly tired, loving eyes.

It was a face she had literally spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in high-end, exclusive therapy trying to violently, permanently erase from her deepest subconscious memory.

It was a face she had aggressively, ruthlessly buried under incredibly thick layers of expensive, flawless makeup, highly publicized high-society galas, and deeply ruthless corporate takeovers.

It was the tragic, highly unforgettable face of a desperate man who had quite literally worked himself into a highly premature, entirely unmarked, completely forgotten grave.

He had done it just to desperately keep a few meager scraps of food on a highly unstable, deeply splintering, rotting wooden table.

It was her father.

The beautifully constructed, perfectly balanced world began to tilt violently, aggressively throwing Evelyn entirely off balance.

A sickening, deeply terrifying, and highly disorienting vertigo rapidly, aggressively seized complete control of Evelyn’s perfectly engineered, previously unshakeable posture.

Her heavily manicured, previously completely steady hands began to tremble violently.

The massive, highly expensive, custom-cut emeralds on her soft fingers shook uncontrollably, catching the blue light in a frantic, completely chaotic dance.

She violently forced her highly reluctant, deeply terrified, and heavily watering eyes to slowly pan over to the second, matching photograph.

It was housed securely in the right side of the heavy golden casing, directly opposite the tragic, smiling man.

The highly faded image was of a very young, incredibly tiny girl, perhaps exactly the same age as the terrified, violently sobbing child currently huddled helplessly on her cold marble floor.

The little girl in the ancient photograph had wildly unkempt, heavily tangled, completely unbrushed dark hair.

There were highly visible, entirely undeniable dark smudges of thick dirt smeared aggressively across her thin, heavily malnourished, extremely pale cheeks.

She was wearing a highly faded, deeply worn, incredibly cheap, hand-me-down cotton dress.

It was a completely shapeless garment that was very clearly several sizes vastly too large for her tiny, frail, highly fragile frame.

But despite the obvious, crushing, entirely undeniable extreme poverty perfectly captured forever in the vintage film, the little girl was smiling.

It was a massive, incredibly radiant, completely unfiltered, and deeply innocent smile of pure, unadulterated childhood joy.

The massive smile proudly, undeniably revealed a highly distinctive, entirely obvious missing front tooth.

She was holding up a small, highly crudely carved, handmade wooden toy, displaying it proudly and happily for the camera.

She held it up with the exact same immense pride as if it were a highly priceless, entirely flawless royal crown jewel.

Evelyn simply stood there, utterly paralyzed, and intensely stared deeply at the missing tooth.

She aggressively stared at the deeply tangled, highly messy dark hair.

She stared deeply, falling completely into the dark, incredibly familiar, highly expressive eyes of the little girl trapped securely beneath the heavily yellowed glass.

A highly painful, deeply suffocating, entirely crushing physical sensation clamped down violently, aggressively around Evelyn’s perfectly contoured throat.

She physically could not swallow; she physically could not pull a single, solitary breath of oxygen into her burning, screaming lungs.

The heavy, incredibly luxurious, highly expensive emerald velvet of her exclusive couture gown suddenly felt exactly like a custom-made, entirely inescapable heavy lead coffin.

It was violently, aggressively crushing her ribs inward, heavily compressing her violently pounding, absolutely terrified heart.

No, her brilliant, highly calculating mind violently screamed silently into the void.

It was a highly terrified, entirely desperate, completely panicked denial rapidly echoing endlessly through the newly hollowed, violently empty chambers of her chest.

No, this is completely impossible. This is a highly elaborate, deeply sick trick.

But the absolute, undeniable, violently heavy, and entirely crushing truth was staring directly back at her.

It was heavily magnified by the cheap, deeply scuffed, highly scratched glass of the heavy golden locket lying on the cold stone.

That dirty, deeply impoverished, highly malnourished little girl in the deeply faded photograph was entirely not a stranger.

That little girl was Evelyn.

The meticulously constructed, heavily fortified, entirely impenetrable glass castle of her extremely glamorous, completely untouchable, highly fabricated life suddenly developed a massive, catastrophic, completely unfixable crack.

The violent fracture started at the very absolute foundation of her deeply buried, heavily guarded soul.

It violently, rapidly spider-webbed completely upward with terrifying, entirely unstoppable, completely destructive speed, shattering everything it touched.

She slowly, heavily, almost entirely mechanically lifted her heavily trembling gaze directly upward from the exposed golden watch resting on the floor.

Her stunning green eyes were now incredibly wide, entirely hollow, and completely overflowing with an absolute, bottomless, highly terrifying, completely paralyzing horror.

They slowly, inevitably locked entirely onto the frail, deeply tragic, entirely broken figure violently crumpled in a heap on the cold stone tiles.

She heavily looked at the completely soaked, highly tattered, entirely pathetic grey coat.

She heavily looked at the deeply lined, completely exhausted, violently weeping, completely terrified face.

She heavily looked at the heavily trembling, deeply veined, incredibly arthritic hands desperately clutching the young child.

Those were the exact same gentle hands that had, entirely decades ago, incredibly gently brushed the heavily tangled hair away from her own dirty, deeply impoverished, weeping face.

The terrifying, monstrous, completely ruthless, entirely dominant woman who had aggressively commanded the entire room just mere seconds ago was now entirely, completely gone.

She had evaporated completely into nothingness.

In her absolute place stood a deeply fractured, completely broken, entirely hollow shell of a human being.

She was completely, absolutely paralyzed by the violently overwhelming, entirely crushing, completely suffocating weight of her own monstrous, entirely unforgivable cruelty.

The completely pathetic beggar she had just violently, aggressively assaulted with her own bare hands…

The highly terrified woman she had brutally, mercilessly intended to enthusiastically throw to the vicious security guard dogs in the freezing cold night…