A/N: I wrote this yesterday for Introduction to Fiction Writing - except that unlike my other assignments, it's actually good. It's funny, not a single person in class noticed that it was a fanfic... eh. I s'pose there are plenty of characters named Jonathan who have horrible foster parents and are afraid of birds.
Also: THE PHILLIES WON THE WORLD SERIES! Forgive me if I seem a bit overexcited (especially for someone from Los Angeles), but I really do like Cole Hamels, and there's a whole story involving random occurrences of Chase Utley, which I won't even start to get into right now. Anyway, let's go Phils! ...and on with the story.
Jonathan woke to the sound of his own screams for the second time that morning and the fifth time since he had fallen asleep the night before. A thick film of sweat was keeping his hair stuck to his neck and forehead, and with his teeth clenched together so tightly it hurt, he was breathing only through his nose - in the tiled spare bathroom, he could hear every frightened breath over the diminishing echoes of his screams. Every inhalation and exhalation made a faint rasping sound that was too loud in the silence that pressed in on him from all directions. He could feel the muscles along the inside of his wrists go limp as his fingers slowly relaxed their death grip on the edge of his thin sleeping bag, but his arms were still shaking slightly. Missing the familiar feel of his glasses on the bridge of his nose, he squinted at the base of the porcelain sink (which was currently only about a foot away from his forehead) but he couldn't see much anyway in the moonlight that was reflected around the small room.
The moon itself could be seen in the vanity mirror that took up most of the wall directly above his head, and he tilted his chin up slightly to get a good look at it. This tensed the muscles around his throat, and he froze in place, not breathing, only blinking and feeling his strong heartbeat pound at the base of his skull as a shadow flashed across the blurred circle of light - it was gone in a moment, but it was too late.
It's just a bird - oh god. No. His tongue darted out briefly to restore some moisture to his lips. Please, not the birds. Jonathan, don't think about the birds. He swallowed quickly before letting a slow breath escape from between his teeth. Doubles, remember? Distract yourself so it doesn't hurt. They can't hurt you. Start with 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 12 and 20 is 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536 - too slow, I'll lose the number. 64, 128, 256 - they're coming for you, oh god, Prometheus, Prometheus and the birds - oh god - don't scream, don't scream. The Crawfords will hear you and call the police again.
The muscles in Jonathan's legs felt about ready to snap with the effort it took to stay in one place for more than two seconds; his forehead, jaw, and upper arms weren't doing much better. The tendons in his wrists had tensed up again, and the fabric of the sleeping bag tore between his bloodless fingers with a small zipping sound that made him shriek as his elbows sprang away from his sides and hit the icy tile floor with all the force that he had been using to hold on to the bag. From where his head lay (in between the base of the sink and the base of the toilet) he could see that the walls were all going away from him as they went up, getting narrower and narrower, and eventually the ceiling was going to fall and well, wouldn't that be interesting. I probably couldn't breathe if it fell on me. It would probably shatter the bones in my hands with them folded on my chest like this, and maybe stick a rib through my lungs just for good measure - if it was heavy enough, it could bruise my heart and cause an eventual hemorrhage into the pericardial sac.
I wish I could make someone tell me how that feels.
The prison-like impression given by the receding walls was even worse in the dark, with Jonathan's view obscured on the right side by the bowl of the sink, which hovered over him like the highest tower of a villain's castle. With the mirrored door on the left, bright moonlight shone into his left eye but not his right eye, making them focus differently so that his vision seemed even worse than it would have been on a normal glasses-free morning. (He hadn't had a normal morning since last summer, anyway.)
It nearly made him sick, to be so afraid - and by the time he fell asleep again, the moon had set, the sun had risen, his back was covered with a fresh set of burns from the radiator that was supposed to stop the shivers, and his fingers and lips were bloody from nails chewed too far down and teeth sunken too far into sensitive pale skin.