Eyes, crusted-over and sore, peeled open to the dimness of a seedy apartment, trained solely to a point on the ceiling where someone had jammed a fork into the plaster. Fingers, numb and twitching, search aimlessly for something that had been lost. Groans and moans could be heard around the room, the voices disconnected from the bodies and the bodies disconnected from the souls. The room is heavy with scents. Old pizza, spilled beer, electronic cigarettes - vomit. The smells mixed together to form an enigma that made your nose want to run for the hills.
A contact adjusts itself back over the iris of a young woman's eyeball, and her hand reaches off of the cushionless couch she was lying on, grasping for the handbag she'd brought with her. It was the only thing she ever could remember by the time she woke up from a night of partying, the only thing she knew to grab before stumbling back towards her own home. Her fingers gripped her purse handle weakly, and her legs screamed in protest as she stood up from the ground-zero of her late-night blackout.
The young woman steps quietly out of the apartment, skipping carefully over the seemingly countless fallen bodies of strangers that she would never bother to get to know. Half of them could've been dead and she wouldn't think to check. Her main priority was to get home and take copious amounts of advil before passing out again. Pulling a pale, turquoise phone out of her bag, she dials the taxi service for East Cleveland that she was surprised managed to function, and found herself being driven home in a matter of twenty minutes.
She could tell, even in a hungover state, that the taxi driver had been getting phone calls like this for a few hours now, as all of the college-age kids started to come to. He waited for her to get into her house safely before driving away. It was a nice gesture, she supposed, but it really mattered very little in the grand scheme of things. She'd likely be waking up the same way in a couple of nights, and somebody else would have to make sure she got inside alright. The sound of a door creaking open could be heard down the hallway, and she numbly turned her eyes in the direction of the noise.
"Jen, is that you?" It was her mother speaking, voice laced with relief in knowing that her daughter hadn't died in the night.
Jennifer licked at her dry lips, glancing up at her worried mother as she came into view. "Yeah, it's me, mom," She answered croakily, wincing as her own voice reverberated around her aching skull.
Her mother frowned, her facial features knitting together with concern. "Can I get you anything?" She asked, voice low and soothing.
For a moment, she hesitated, hating that she consistently did this to her poor mother, but her numb hands and tired legs overrode her empathic tendencies. Jen nodded stiffly, sorely. "Advil, please."
Her mother quickly went to get what her daughter asked for while Jennifer nearly crawled her way down the hall and into the shared bathroom, where she shucked off all of her clothing and turned on the bath faucet. Itchy eyes met a mottled reflection, dark circles looking like bruises and hair mussed in a fashion that she couldn't help but admit looked kind of adorable. In fact, she had no real problem with her appearance, save for the blood vessels on her corneas that looked ready to burst. Jen sighed tiredly before sticking her fingers on to her irises to peel out her contact lenses, now mostly useless. It didn't matter anyways. They were dailies. She could waste them.
A knock at the door snapped the woman out of her self-absorbed stupor, and her mother popped the door open by just a few inches to set a glass of water and two pills on the bathroom counter.
"Thanks, mom," She murmured gratefully in response, filling her mouth with water before popping the advil between her teeth. Jennifer scowled, the residue of the pain relievers leaving a nasty taste in her mouth. Her tried-and-true method of avoiding that disgusting flavor seemed to worse less nicely when she was hungover.
Her mother spoke from between the door and the doorframe, trying to let her daughter keep her privacy. "No problem, honey. I'll make you some breakfast. Take your time."
Jen just grunted in return, wobbling over towards the tub.
"Love you, baby," Her mother crooned gently, the heartbreak painfully evident in her tone. The footsteps outside the now-closed door signaled that she'd walked away before her daughter could reply.
Jennifer's throat contracted on her, tears boiling up behind her skin and racing towards her eyelids. She swallowed thickly, trying to keep them back, but it was to no avail. The young woman whimpered silently to the white noise of the overhead fan, her tears dripping off into bathwater, creating little ripples that made her feel even more pathetic than she was already asking.
About an hour later, Jen was sat at the kitchen table, feeling much better, though still poorly. She groggily stuffed some scrambled eggs into her palate, swallowing her breakfast hungrily. Her eyes were actively searching through her messages, her DMs, her emails, trying to find anything to distract her from the fact that her mother was still sitting at the opposite end of the table, staring at her daughter with despondency.
"Jen, can you watch Nick tonight?" Her mother questioned breathily, having waited several minutes before she decided interrupted Jen's scrolling. It was an innocent question, not offensive or rage-inducing. Jennifer couldn't understand why she'd taken so long in asking.
Jen nodded in response. "Sure, mom. I have to search for a job, anyways…" She replied, trailing off towards the end of her sentence.
Her mother's ears perked at this, surprise gracing her aged, tired features. "Job? What happened to your job at John's shop?"
The daughter shrugged deeply, chewing slowly on a piece of bacon before moving to answer. "Nothing. I quit."
"You quit? I wouldn't say that's nothing, sweetie…" Her mother guffawed, rubbing absently at her temples.
Jen shook her head nonchalantly, speaking between bites, "Don't worry about it, mom. He was a creep. Kept trying to grab my ass everytime I walked by."
Her mother stayed quiet for a moment, before laughing lightly, seemingly proud that her daughter hadn't lost her sense of self-importance. It was heartwarming to hear that Jennifer hadn't changed in soul, even if she'd changed in practice. "Good for you, Jen. You'll find a new job. I'll help search when I get home from work. Just make sure Nick gets to bed on time - ten-o-clock, remember!"
Her daughter didn't respond, only rising from her seat to put her dishes in the sink and stumble back to her bedroom. "Thanks for breakfast, mom. I love you, too."
Around nine-thirty that night, Jen found herself shuffling through her handbag, absently looking for something interesting to inspect. There was dental floss, deodorant, loose change, receipts, crumpled dollar-bills, and much, much more. What was really intriguing, however, was the small sheet of blotter paper she found inside her wallet. Her heart pounding in excitement as she looked over the innocent-looking cubes, little sunflowers having been printed on the individual squares. Finding even a couple doses of acid was a gold mine for a frequent raver.
Jennifer glanced at the clock hanging on her bedroom wall, noticing that her little brother would need to be put to bed in about twenty minutes. Licking her lips nervously, she wondered if it would be too terrible to take a square of it while caring for a child. It wouldn't kick in for about a half-an-hour. She didn't deliberate anymore after that, placing a piece of the paper into her mouth and swallowing it. Stuffing the rest of the sheet into the recesses of her back pocket, she wandered to Nick's room where she'd left him momentarily to use the restroom.
He was sitting on his bed, rummaging around in a bucket of legos for the specific piece he needed to top off the grandeur of his plastic castle. "Have you seen the little red flag piece anywhere around here… It's the last thing I need…" Nick questioned, shuffling around the floor to see if he'd dropped it.
His older sister shook her head, but stepped deeper into the room to help him search. Maybe it was just the art of suggestion, but she could already feel the LSD kicking in. This was a bad idea. "How about we clean up for now, and I help you look tomorrow?" She suggested quickly, "You need to get into bed, anyways. It's almost ten."
Nick groaned loudly, but started putting his toys away. Jen smiled at his maturity, and at his immaturity at the same time, and helped put the leftover legos back where they came from. She picked up the makeshift castle from its place on his bed, moving it carefully towards his dresser, where it would be safe until the next day.
When she turned back around, her little brother had already come back from using the restroom, and was getting into bed. It was almost like she'd been moving in slow-motion the whole time. Jennifer walked over to tuck him in, wrapping her arms sloppily around his top-half to give him a hug.
He hugged back awkwardly, mumbling, "Love you, sis. See you tomorrow."
Her tongue was refusing to create words at this point, so she just hugged him a little tighter before stumbling out of his bedroom. She place her glasses on her nightstand, rolling herself onto her back to stare absently at the ceiling as it started to warp, to color, to form shapes that didn't even seem possible. Jen smiled dumbly, hands reaching out towards the hallucinations as if she could touch them.
Out of nowhere, an ear-piercing scream split the silence, reaching her ears just before she'd totally lost herself to the acid. She scrambled out of bed, shoving her glasses back onto her face and gripping the umbrella she kept behind her door. Her feet didn't seem to move fast enough, but she slid into her brother's room in time to see a dark, shadowy figure backing him into a corner.
"Get the fuck out of here," Jen screeched at it, hurling across the room to beat at it blindly with her flimsy weapon. It dodged her attack quite fluidly, and she was horrified to see that it was flying. Her whole body was shaking with tremors, but she ignored it, focusing on the intruder. It stayed still for a moment, deliberating, observing the two with a pair of bright, glowing eyes. The young woman was practically foaming at the mouth at the point, not fully sure that anything was even happening. What was a hallucination and what wasn't? This wasn't the time to figure it out. Hallucination or not, she'd rather be wrong later than wrong now.
The shadow made a dash at Nick, earning a jostling from an umbrella that didn't seem to affect it in the least. It's hand reached out towards the young boy, gripping his wrist tightly. Jen swung wildly at the figure, screaming as loud as she could possibly manage. The intruder started dragging her little brother towards the open window, aiming to pull him outside. She charged in closer to the attacker, limbs and weapon flailing wildly in any attempt to stop the abduction.
Jennifer was failing. Her brother was gripping the edge of the windowsill in one last attempt to save himself from being kidnapped. Her limbs were shaking uncontrollably, her whole body felt cold, and yet every pore was sweating profusely. She dropped the umbrella, throwing herself at her little brother.
Nick wrapped his legs around his sister's torso, and Jen did the same for him, her limbs locking ferociously around his body in an effort to keep him safe, one hand still on the windowsill to keep them anchored.. She was snarling animalistically, enraged and frightened as only an incredibly intoxicated person could be. The shadow made eye-contact with her, saw the confusion and the terror that was creating a cocktail of tears that had begun pouring down her cheeks. She made eye-contact with the shadow. She saw nothing.
The attacker gave one more pull, one more violent, meaningful pull. It wasn't playing around anymore. Jen's hand slipped from the window without even the slightest bit of effort. She latched her now-free hand onto her brother's shoulder, curled around him so tightly that she was almost afraid that she was suffocating him. The shadow did not move, however. It was stagnant, floating in mid-air as if second-guessing itself.
Suddenly, it gripped Jen's upper arm, attempting to pry the sister away from the boy. She was determined, however, and pumped so full of adrenaline that she thought she could tear a tree from its roots with her bare hands. It started shaking the two of them, trying its hardest to separate the frantic siblings. Jennifer's hold on her brother started to slip, and her little brother had long since lost his own. Her arms got tired, her limbs got weak, and she let go of him, little by little. She was shaking, she was scared, she was crying - she was high as a kite and wanted to die.
Nick was out of her grasp. She'd lost him.
The shadow made no hesitation in tossing her little brother back in through the window before starting to take off with someone who wasn't even supposed to be on his agenda. Jen couldn't even process the information that she'd just be graced with. Nick screamed, shrieked, cried for her to come back, but she couldn't even form words. Colors were melting together, sirens were ringing in her head, and the only thing she could tell for sure was real was that her little brother was getting smaller and smaller.
Jen blinked. She blinked again. She blinked and blinked and blinked. And then she screamed too.
She screamed so loud that she thought the whole of Cleveland would lose its power. She screamed so loud she thought that her own eardrums would burst. She screamed so loud. Or at least, she thought she did. The tab of LSD felt heavy in her stomach, reminding her that none of this was likely real.
Jennifer couldn't even see her hometown anymore. She couldn't see anything but lakewater. It reminded her - she hadn't been in Lake Erie in several years, had she? She remembered tossing wet sand at her friends and siblings, dodging the returning assaults. She could hear the laughter and the happiness and she could feel the sunshine and the burns on her flesh that she'd acquired over the day. A ship whooshed by her, sloshing around in the water below the shadow and herself. Her mouth salivated. She thought that she was going to throw up. It wouldn't be surprising.
Free-fall. She'd been let go. The water had disappeared from beneath her, only trees being seen for what felt like miles around. Wind rushed past her body, making her ears go numb. Jen's eyes wouldn't focus. She hadn't seen anything real for what felt like days. The things she was describing to herself were warped, were muddled beyond recognition. She recognized them anyways. The acid still hadn't fully kicked in.
She hit the ground. She didn't feel it - not in the way people usually feel things. It rocked through her system, wreaking havoc to her physicalities, but it only felt like vibrations. It felt like sound. Jennifer was still screaming. She was still screaming. Still screaming.
Still screaming.
/ 0000 /
I know what you're thinking. "What the hell is this? Peter Pan? Old news. It's all about Frozen now. Didn't you post one of these like... Two days ago?" Yes. I do what I want and this makes me happy and I need to get a job. If you enjoy this, and want to read more angsty Neverland, OC-centric bullshit, go check out my other stories. There's like, three more to pick from. Leave a review, if you will. Not just on this story, but on all stories you read. It'll make someone super happy, and you'll probably get some new content out of it. Thanks. Peace.