Satsuki shot up from her sleep, body drenched in sweat.
"Christ... Jesus fucking Christ..." she breathed, running a hand through her hair. She furrowed her eyebrows and tried to slow down her racing heart, but to no avail.
It was just different night with the same nightmare all over again. Recently, they had been getting worse. Satsuki glanced over to the clock that was blinking the time in an eerie blue. It was 2:17 in the morning, which was also around the usual time-frame of her awakening. It was like a damn ritual, a vicious cycle that she couldn't seem to break. She didn't have the nerve to bring up to her therapist the newest developments in her nightmares, either. She felt almost like she couldn't trust the woman anymore. Or maybe she couldn't trust herself. She lost track of that idea quite often.
She crawled out of bed with a heaving sigh, feet touching the cold, polished hardwood floor. She shuffled her way through the darkness and into the kitchen, groping around for the light switch. Her hand grazed it softly, flicking it on. She grabbed a glass from out of the cupboard and filled it straight from the tap. The lack of sleep was really beginning to get to her, she realized, as she attempted to walk back to her room, but stumbled and dropped the newly poured glass onto the floor, shattering it into fine sharp shards that now covered the floor around her.
"Nee-chan...?" a groggy voice called from the other room. Satsuki growled at her own stupidity and clumsiness. She had gone and woken her poor sister up now. "Great job, asshole. She has classes in the morning" she thought, her frustration growing.
A door opened and out shuffled Satsuki's younger sister, Ryuko. Her inky black hair was going every which way, the red streak sticking straight up. She tried to blink the sleep out of her stormy blue eyes as she walked towards the kitchen.
"Ryuko, don't move. I broke a glass. I can clean it up" Satsuki started, taking a step carelessly onto a large shard of glass.
"Fuck! God dammit!" she hissed, her leg shooting up as she held her now bleeding foot.
"Oi, oi, calm down there, Incredible Hulk. Don't get too angry now" Ryuko snickered.
"Uhm... I hate to ask this, but can you please go get my damn house slippers?" Satsuki sighed.
"Of course" Ryuko obliged, taking care to avoid getting near the kitchen and the danger zone of glass. She disappeared into her older sister's room for just a moment before returning, holding up a pair of blue fuzzy slippers and tossing them underhanded to Satsuki. Satsuki nodded in thanks and slid her feet into them, smearing blood throughout her left shoe.
"Are you drunk?" Ryuko asked skeptically.
"Shit... Ugh, no. I just haven't been sleeping well recently" she murmured reluctantly.
"I thought that was a while ago. You told me you were fine the other night" Ryuko said, lips pursed.
"Well, I lied" Satsuki snapped.
"What is it that you're losing sleep over, Mr. Grinch?" Ryuko snorted. Satsuki snapped into her mind for a moment, scenes playing over and over in vivid detail.
"Just some nightmares. Been watching too many scary movies, I guess" she lied.
"You know, you always have some bullshit answer to why you always get up in the middle of the night looking scared shitless. I'm beginning to think there's things that you aren't telling me" Ryuko inquired.
Satsuki knew they had gotten close in the time that Ryuko had been there, but she wasn't ready to talk about certain things just yet.
Ryuko had moved in only a couple of months prior, after losing her father. Granted, he was almost never around, but he paid the bills. When he passed, it was either the sister she never met, or her mother. Both contacted her almost immediately, but Satsuki insisted, emphasis on insisted, that she did not live with her mom, but with her. It seemed strange, but something in her gut told her to trust the girl. Satsuki acted normal for the most part, but some days Ryuko could almost see something tearing into her mental health.
"Yes, Ryuko. I am just absolutely plagued by memories of... That day" Satsuki whispered seriously. Ryuko perked up, ready to hear the confessions of her older sister.
"These small, orange men with tufts of green hair began to sing and dance of moral standings... They were... So tiny. So... Ugly" Satsuki hissed, sarcastically holding her fist up to the air, shaking it softly.
"Are you ranting about that fucking Willy Wonka movie again? I get it, you thought it was garbage. Go to sleep, you twat" Ryuko sighed, causing Satsuki to snicker.
"You can't take a dose of your own, displeasing humor now, can you?" Satsuki scoffed. Her younger puffed her cheeks out childishly and swirled around quickly.
"Go to sleep. Knock if you want to be serious for 5 minutes" Ryuko growled, shuffling back into her room. Satsuki sighed with relief, and began to clean up the glass with a broom, sluggish and drained with her movements.
She slinked off to her room, and pulled out a small cigar box from beneath her mattress. She clicked the clasps open to reveal tightly packaged goods, lined up in an orderly fashion. The distinct smell of marijuana began to infect the room as the pale girl began to load some of the drugs from one of the bags into a small pipe from within the box. Her lighter sparked as she took a deep drag from the hand crafted piece of glass, and as she let her mind drift, she could have sworn that she heard a scuttling from down the hall, but chose to ignore it.
Soon, though, her bedroom door was flung open as the light beamed on, and she began to panic and her box of precious goods fell gracelessly to the ground, lit pipe landing on her cushions, effectively burning a hole in the first layer of cloth as she scrambled to hide her little habit.
"God dammit I knew it, you little piece of shit" Ryuko chuckled loudly, watching her sister fumble about, not seeming to know what to deal with first.
"I swear, it's not-" Satsuki began, but Ryuko cut her off as she picked up one of the bags from the floor, holding it up in the air and grinning.
"I guess I'll just have to take some form of payment as to not let the mighty Satsuki Kiryuin's secret out!" Ryuko cackled, Satsuki opening her mouth to protest as the door slammed shut once more.
She growled, sweeping burnt crumbles of pot off of her bed. She shoveled the rest of her contraband back into the box and under her bed, flicking the light back off. She pulled the covers over her head, deciding she was no longer in the mood to get high, but would spend the rest of the night in silence, until the sun rose to chase away her nightmares, bringing on her usual routine of normality.
It was only 2:45 am.