Three Days Prior

She was hearing it again. 

That slow methodical taps, so loud, so grating, in a constant quiet that stayed deafening. Like a metronome, or those swinging pendulum those humans used to keep rhythm - those tappings kept to her rhythm. 

Click, clack, click, clack… click. 

She stopped hearing it, stopped doing it. Irene sat at the edge of the grandest, softest, and gentlest piece of comfort she's ever had the pleasure to have slept in - swaying her clacking heels in the air, hanging loose at the tip of her raised feet. 

The penthouse suite felt a lot more desolate and lonely with only the sounds of her heels filling in the vast silence. Darker too, now that's she closed every blind, dimmed every light… half out of obligation, the other consideration.

She was late.