AN: I wrote most of this a couple of days ago but I was too preoccupied to finalize and upload it. Sorry for the delay. Will be playing catch up thanks to family obligations but I'm not worried about finishing this story in time.
It all started coming back to Paige the moment she woke up in that hospital. Not all at first, just flashes and fragments of memories.
The flashes were quick.. a whisper or a flash of blonde before the darkness. Always darkness. She remembered the cold, empty darkness the most vividly. A dark so permeating it seeped through every pore of her body making her question whether she was really there, or whether the darkness had consumed her. That's the only thing she could remember at first.
Then the memories got longer. Words turned into sentences and into conversations. The darkness was stripped away bit by bit, replaced with the terrible truth and Paige shuddered as she realized that she preferred the dark.
Now the truth was out there and there was no more hope. No more pretending. The scans and tests all proved Alison right. She really did it.
That's when she realized that the darkness didn't leave. It seeped through her pores and settled inside her. The darkness was now inside of her. She was the darkness now. And everything she touched would be darkened as well. That's why she had to go.
Her mother and father picked her up from the airport. She didn't have many belongings with her but what little she did bring to Rosewood, she asked her friends to gather up and mail to her. She would've done it herself but she didn't want to spend any more time in Rosewood than she had to. So she boarded the first flight West, and even though she had to make two connections, she was happier than waiting around for a more direct flight. The moment she was discharged from the hospital she just grabbed whatever belongings she had with her and boarded the first flight she could find.
Though she knew better, some part of her hoped that if she put some distance between herself and the place it happened, she could maybe regain a sense of normalcy in her life. At the very least she hoped the dreams would go away..
She wasn't awake during this. She was sure she wasn't. But since finding out about it, every time she falls asleep she finds herself in a gurney, being transferred from room to room in that filthy pit she was taken to. She is strapped down and muzzled and all she can really catch is glimpses of these long hospital lights as the gurney passes under them. Sometimes she's not even in the gurney, but rather floating just a little ways away, watching it all transpire. She saw herself being pushed into a great big surgical theater, where a man whose face she couldn't see, hoisted her up onto an operating table.
She would watch, muted, invisible, and unable to defend herself, as she was hoisted on this operating table...no...not table... it was a sort of a gynecological examination chair... she was dragged onto it, her arms bound by her sides and her legs were lifted onto the leg supports and separated. Then she'd watch Alison, in a candy striper uniform, saunter in brandishing a turkey baster.
She'd wake up screaming and crying after that. The last thing she'd remember was Alison's evil smirk. It was imprinted in her memory, like a tattoo. Though with time, money, patience and a lot of pain, you can erase a tattoo. Paige wasn't so sure she'd ever forget that smile.