Basement stairs
Gretel climbed out of the oven and into the party. The burning was so recent that she didn't need memories, there were cinders still in her in hair and on both knees were raw red. She was the daughter of fire, and not just tonight. She'd always felt more complete when she was burning and less regret when she was bleeding. There was purpose in destruction, sometimes blind or just misguided, but it was still real. It felt real. Oh, she wanted it to change at the time. She thought she needed it to, but it was only after the hurt was gone that she felt empty. So empty it scared her. The nothingness of a mind can be terrifying. The knowledge that one should be sad, one should stop, one should say something.. but no. Just turn the lights off because nobody is home here, they're putting the lockbox on the house now.
Gretel hated that feeling worse than she hated hurting, but maybe that was because she didn't hate hurting at all. Maybe she needed it. Maybe the hurting made the everyday feel good by comparison. Its not like anything legitimately good would ever happen to her anyway, so she needed to hire substitutes. She wanted music because that would quiet the ghosts in her heart, but she always knew that she'd done nothing to deserve their silence. They larked on, they tweeted her, they hashtagged her with guilt.
She had two tarot cards(the Devil and a reserved Hangman) tacked to her feet and a knife in her back when she reached the stairs. Her dirty wedding dress dripped with sadness off one shoulder, and her thoughts didnt even form in English anymore -- as if her own mind had given up on communicating with the disease she'd become. She needed to go down, she knew. The way all bad girls went.