I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind,
There was something so pleasant about that place,
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space,
And when you're out there, without care-Yeah, I was out of touch,
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough,
I just knew too much,
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly
Disclaimer: I do not own the Dark Series. I claim no ownership of any cultural references or historical people that may or may not be mentioned. I only own my OC. With an iron grip. I also do not own the poetry before every chapter.
Chapter Four: Maybe I'm crazy? Probably.
"Babe, you're taking up all the covers."
"Huh? Wha...do you...mean?" She asked groggily.
Shafts of morning sunlight pierced through the small, disorganized clutter of a very familiar room. Alice woke, her face planted firmly into a stained pillow, drool forming a puddle by her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open blearily. A large TV displayed the paused screen of Persona 3, it glowed softly along with the lights that blinked from the Playstation 2. In her hands was the majority of a red comforter that lay over her body and as she took in a deep breath, she went rigid instantly recognizing the scent that permeated off of it. Someone's body shifted behind her, gently tugging the blanket out of her hands to be more evenly distributed. Her heart pounded strong in her chest as his arms wrapped her up into a familiar embrace and nuzzled his nose into her neck. Her body fit perfectly into his. She could feel his warmth all around her. A tear ran down her cheek as hot breath tickled her neck "You elbowed me all night and rammed me up against the wall, you bed terrorist! Was it nightmares?"
Upon usage of their old inside joke on sleeping together, tears streamed down her face as Alice realized that she was back in her boyfriend's bedroom with him wrapped up in her on the bed they made love on. Outside she could recognize the sounds of Valley Junction just waking up, the kids yelling back and forth to each other as they roamed around in crowds trying to entertain themselves on a warm, Saturday morning. Most were going to the Ruins, a popular hang out spot for juvenile delinquents to smoke pot, drink, and create an eden of debauchery. Everything was as she remembered it a month ago. The leopard and tiger print curtains were hung up precariously, keeping most of the harsh ten O clock sun out. Electronics lay in piles on the floor, on top of each other, twisted in with cables and multiple plug outlets that were all taken up. A half-eaten bowl of Bush's baked beans lay next to a pack of Marlboro red one hundreds, a zippo lighter, and a black game controller next to their bed. It was almost as if nothing had ever happened, the strange night where her lover had changed and the fight that lead to her death. Alice started to sob.
"It was the nightmares again. I'm sorry, babe. Next time I'll protect you better." Came the response as his body firmly coiled around hers and he held her closer. She felt one of his callused hands brush the top of her head. His soft lips planted a kiss on her neck.
"I can take care of myself." She responded suddenly, surprised as the words seemed to slip right out of her mouth.
"Babe," He whispered. "Sometimes you have to ask for help. Sometimes it's okay to let people help you, like me. You'd let me help you, right?"
"Well, yeah but..." Alice said, reaching up for her Android phone. As always, her phone was going off with multiple ring tones indicating text messages, missed calls, facebook alerts, and Metro advertisements from her cell phone company.
He grabbed her wrist as she picked up her cellular device. His fingernails bit into her flesh like knives. Alice cried out, her Samsung Admire falling out of her hands and to the cluttered floor. A thick line of crimson blood ran down her arm, seeming to underline the stylized lettering of a huge tattoo she never remembered having. 'Alpha', it said. Alice turned in his embrace to stare in horror at her boyfriend who had now become the stuff made of her nightmares. He stared back at her, eyes glowing pits of red. In his clawed hands was a simple hand mirror that he held up to her face."You'd let a monster like me help you? Don't you know you're a monster yourself?"
She saw gold eyes reflected back at her. Those were not her eyes!
"Wake up, Alice."
XXX
She didn't know how long she lay, curled up in the darkness of that cell. Time seemed to stretch on forever, an endless procession of minutes that yawned on for eternity. Stuck in her head and deprived of sight in the looming shadows, Alice was forgetting her sense of reality. The sedative that she had been given was still casting a heavy curtain over her thoughts making them slow and hazy so that the last month and this moment blended in together like chocolate syrup and ice cream in a malt. She shivered, drawing herself in tighter. The dream replayed in her mind.
Last week, she had awoken happily in her boyfriend's bedroom of her hometown, Valley Junction. Curled up into him after another dreadfully long night of playing video games, she had the security of his arms around her and the knowing that this would last forever if they tried. Alice recoiled at the word 'forever' now like it was a slap across the face. Tears streamed down her cheeks and a fresh howl of sorrow escaped her lips. The sound flew out into the void and vanished without a trace.
Forever. From the first moment they had locked eyes, they had talked about forever. This was after beating the shit out of each other first, of course. Their romance had begun with a spark of rivalry that ignited a firestorm of passion. He was persistent and demanding. She was stubborn and had a problem with people throwing their authority over her. (she would often say it was bad enough that his older brother acted like her guardian at inconvenient times) Neither of them would submit their loyalties until their closest friends, their only family, had gotten them drunk and abandoned them together for a night on their own.
A fight to the death had ensued in her dead great grandmother's field, on the property of her empty, childhood home. And at dawn, after they had tired each other out neither of them landing a fatal blow, they had collapsed in each other's arms and the only word between them was 'forever'. That morning, they had spoken it like a reverent prayer. They had gone on nearly a year and a half now, spending most of their time together in each other's company using that word. It was the castle they had built together. And now some British brat by the name of A was kicking down their sand castle.
Their relationship hadn't been an easy one either. It was as tumultuous and unpredictable as a wild sea. Both had experienced trauma in their past. They had problems communicating, him preferring to let his impatience and anger boil over while she had grown introverted and reclusive. As many times as they bounced back and forth with each other, they had returned days later ruefully. Neither of them had ever been truly able to move on so they continued back at the beginning of the argument that had split them apart, apologizing about bad behavior and bartering with each other on how to make it work. After awhile, his temper had just started to even out while she felt exhausted but refused to let go of what she had. Because what she had was her twin flame, the man of her dreams and she wouldn't let that go for anything...would she?
Horrified now that she thought on it, Alice recalled the exact wording of the deal she had made with A.
"We offer you a job. If you do it correctly, your reward is life again."
"My life...back?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
The words now chilled her to the core. He had never agreed to restore "her" life back only that he restore life back to her. A had not lied to her at all. She had been willing, so willing...
"What kind of job?"
"Just some janitorial work. You know, things get messy and sometimes you need to just clean it all up."
She had shook A's hand!
So fast it made her question her motives! Had she really been so ready to release her hold on her love and her life as Alice Hart? Had she really let go of her friends and her hometown of Valley Junction to the whimsies of The Devil? (which is who she was starting to think A was) Alice remembered how A had menacingly told her that he would eat her soul. How if she didn't follow through with her end of the bargain, she would face eternal death. She had made a bargain for her life, a contract with him after he had told her she was dead! And Alice had believed every word of it like a child! What if she wasn't dead? What if she had been sleeping and now it was too late to go back! Alice had naively walked into a trap without looking at the strings attached as usual! Horrified, she realized that she might have just given up 'forever'. How could she have done that?
Another broken howl of bitterness and sadness burst forth from her as she rocked back and forth in the fetal position in the pure darkness, her mind fragmenting under the guilt, stress, and consequences of her actions. The girl shivered uncontrollably as feelings of loss, fear, hysteria, and maddening grief ate at her. Tears stained Alice's cheeks. Now she had no choice but to comply or else she was dead.
But wasn't she dead now without him?
"I said your reward would be life if you completed your job correctly. I didn't say what life or in what conditions your life would be restored. Welcome to life anew, Alice Hart...or should I say Aubrey Rose in this world?"
"...This world?"
And then a thought hit her.
XXX
'Welcome to life anew, Alice Hart...or should I say Aubrey Rose in this world?''
The endless number of hours spent in complete and total darkness was a test of her soul.
After crying the very last tear she could shed, Alice crawled around blindly for the next fifteen minutes trying to find her cot. Once she climbed gingerly on top of it, she had a long time to think. The gears and wheels in her mind turning in a frenzy, the time carried on without her barely noticing. Every so often she would switch positions on the uncomfortable, springy bed. The metal would squeak as she shifted and it was the only thing that broke the heavy fall of silence. It was the only thing that brought her back to reality as she went surfing in an endless sea of imaginings that tempted her deeper into vivid delusions so that she lived whole lives in her mind and died thrice over. Absentmindedly, without realizing she was doing it, she began to sing in a wavering little whisper. "Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun. And it's no coincidence I've come and I can die when I'm done. But maybe I'm crazy..."
Just when she was about to forget the light altogether, her cell was suddenly illuminated.
Moving so fast her pillow toppled off the bed mattress, she made a dash for the metal sink and the object of all her anticipation: the mirror. Hesitating below it, balancing on the balls of her feet, she looked up with hopeful, chocolate brown eyes. She knew she was bald. Alice remembered the operating room and her blurred reflection in it. She had run her fingers over her smooth head in the shadows, crying for the loss of her wild, curly waves and spirals of dark brunette hair. Sure, her face was a little too chubby and her body was entirely too curvy but at least she had her hair. People had told her that her hair was pretty. Well, turns out that this time around, she didn't. The Devil had taken her boyfriend, her old life, and her beautiful hair away. Looking up into the mirror now with hope, she pushed away the thought that this was ridiculous and proceeded on with wide, chocolate brown eyes.
When strange, tawny gold eyes stared back at her she drew back and let out a short, startled scream.
Her face was completely different. She had high cheekbones and delicate features that made a mockery of her old, round, chubby face in their beauty. Her lips were rosebuds, full and inviting where previously they had lacked. Her skin was ivory, almost seemingly luminous. Alice remembered being a bit olive complexioned, never having the flawless alabaster skin of her mother. Her body was thin and petite, a small waistline and slender curve of the hip. The only semblance to her old self was in her short stature, merely a couple inches taller than her previous four foot eleven inches. Stunned, she noticed her eyebrows were perfectly formed and pale, platinum blonde. Even more so when she realized she wore a silver metal collar around her neck and had an elaborate henna tattoo of gold ink that covered her face and down her neck, completely engulfing her right arm. The world 'Alpha' was boldly written there for her to see. Just to see if it was real, feeling like it could be a dream, she brushed her one of her brows with her thumb and began to cry. The girl shoved herself away violently from the sink and the dreadful mirror. The mirror was telling her lies! She had brown hair! Not blonde! She didn't even resemble this airy, delicate slip of a girl. How could Alice have been Aubrey in this world looking so unlike her? Was there no hope...
No hope that maybe in this life as Aubrey Rose, he was waiting for her?
Looking like this, she highly doubted it. She didn't even know who that was staring back at her in the mirror. It was so alien, so foreign. It most certainly was not her... How could it be her? Was there no hope, no mercy that she might be reunited with him?
How was she going to keep living without him?
Alice flung herself across the room, stumbling, and with the momentum slammed her body against the door. Her hands formed into tight fists that she used to pound and beat on it with. But since it was padded, it absorbed most of the noise. Over and over, she threw her fists into the door in a psychotic, terrorized fit. She begged to be let out, but mostly she asked the same question "Who am I?" in a desperate, panicked tone. As time ticked on and she was ignored, Alice started throwing her body against the door. The girl didn't care how much it hurt, the pain reminded her she was real. As her mood devolved, she scratched at herself as if trying to rip off the tattoo that was so alien and foreign from her. It represented everything that was wrong, had ever been wrong... Eventually she started drawing blood. It smeared along her luminous, pale skin, coloring it.
"Who am I? Answer me! Who am I? Am I Alice? Am I? Tell me! Fucking tell me, goddammit!"
The light turned off suddenly and she was plunged into darkness.
"Am I Alice? Am I Alice?"
Her voice echoed long in her head after it died on her lips.
"Bring him back!"
XXX