warning: lowercase chaos ensues.
the horrorshow collective
i
if effy had been born in a previous century, maybe she would have believed in reincarnation. but, being born in this one, the concept was far too depressing. because how long until the world ends anyway? can't be that much longer. one day we'll wake up and boom, ashes to ashes we all fall down.
but what if reincarnation was real? effy wonders this as she stares up at the ceiling. the same ceiling her brother used to look at every night. (before he ran away from home because he forgot who he was.) what would happen in the event of a major apocalypse? would we be reborn as dust, sand, bones - what ever remains? or, without a body to inhabit would our souls just wander in space forever? condemned and infinite and empty.
effy thinks this sounds like her already.
ii
and she must've taken too many pills because tonight all she can think about is the end of the world. she imagines how the loss of gravity would pull her feet from the ground, gasping for oxygen. her thin wrists shake at her sides, clattering with the jingle of bangles. the ugly lights blink in her face with too many colours. the people she knows dance around her, somehow detached from what she is seeing. that they could all die any second.
she desperately wants to grab freddie and take him to somewhere safe, but she doesn't know where because where can you hide from gravity? effy wants to warn all of their friends, but knows they wouldn't understand. it is her nightmares that are becoming corporeal, not theirs.
never theirs.
iii
effy reaches over and takes freddie's hand. he responds contendedly, squeezing her little white hand in his own. he feels slow and stupid, like his mind was winding lisurely backwards and he hasn't caught up. but he sees her expression, that terrified look on her face, and the shock of it almost registers to him as physical pain.
her hand feels sweaty against his, and he can feel her pulse is going haywire. "what's wrong?" he whispers, but then she smiles. a brilliant thing, because all the nerves that jumped on edge calm back down. she shrugs, as if saying what do you mean? i'm as happy as a clam! and then she goes back to dancing.
those are what scare freddie most, those sudden changes in her mood. you never really know where you stand with 's so unpredictable... but now she is happy again, so he goes back to being happy too. and also wondering, why the hell are clam's happy in the first place?
