Author's Note: Hello strangers! I would like to give a sincere, huge, gigantic apology for the 40 year hiatus of this story. I've been busy with life, I've been disenchanted, I've had writer's block, and the little free time I have is usually spent sleeping. All of those combined equals not writing. I'm sorry for the wait, and thank you to everyone that reviewed, and an even bigger thank you to those who have been pressuring me to update over the last month. Without those comments and messages, I probably would've lost interest all together.
I'm back now, though, and I'm going to be bringing this story to it's conclusion soon. This is Part 1 of Chapter 10, and I'll post Part 2 tomorrow. I hope this chapter was worth the wait (really, really hope) and I 100% promise that I'll update tomorrow. Enjoy!
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"NINA!"
I'm jolted awake at the yell of my name, and for a moment I'm completely disoriented.
"What-?" I start to ask, but my eyes quickly adjust to the darkness and I see Lily sitting up in bed, looking completely freaked out. She's moved away from me and her body language is screaming defensive.
"Nina, what the fuck was that?" Her voice is shaky and accusatory, and her eyes are wide.
Dread seeps through my entire body as I realize how bad this is. Oh God, what did I just do?
... ... ...
I sit up, and my thoughts race as I try to form some type of explanation to give Lily. What do I even have to explain? I don't know what just happened. Lily's looking at me with an expression that demands that I answer right now. Begging is the only thing that comes to mind.
"Lily, I'm so sorry! I was asleep. I didn't mean to hurt you. I was dreaming, and I guess I was doing it in real life... Please don't hate me." My words become faster and more jumbled as I speak, and by the end I'm nearly hyperventilating.
"Nina, slow down," Lily says slowly, as if she's speaking to a 4 year old. Her expression is less anxious now. "I don't hate you. That was just... not something I expected. I'm fine, though." She looks down at her arm and rubs it. "I knocked my elbow on the wall when you threw me back, but nothing serious. Relax."
Wait, what? "When I threw you off?"
"Yeah, I tried to wake you up and you shoved me off of you. I flew back and hit the wall."
The moment I register her words, it's as if the world started turning again. I let out a deep breath that I didn't even realize I was holding. Thank God. Thank you, thank you.
"I shoved you..." I say, slightly dazed. I can't believe my luck. Well, I guess it's not lucky that I managed to not choke Lily in my sleep. More like a last minute pardon, which I guess is kind of lucky.
"Nina?" Lily's curious voice startles me. I realize that she was waiting for me to say something.
I can't help but wonder what did happen. This doesn't add up. "Why did you freak out just now? You looked like I'd hurt you."
"You were scaring me," Lily says, finally relaxing and laying back down on the pillows. She props herself up on one arm and rests her head on her palm. "You woke me up, thrashing around and screaming. You were saying my name, and your voice didn't sound like you. Honestly I thought you were having a seizure or something, so I tried to wake you up."
I can't stop myself from letting out a sob. I'm laughing and tearing, overwhelmed by the situation. Did I just get out of this or dig myself a deeper hole?
"Nina, what's going on? You can tell me." Lily's expression is nothing but concerned. She reaches out and holds my hand, pulling slightly to try to get me to lay down. I don't budge an inch.
"No, I can't." I pull my hand away and look away. I can't look at her right now. It's all about to come out. I know it. I'm dreading it.
"Nina, please," Lily says, sitting up again and turning my face to her. She lightly strokes my cheek with her thumb, and when she speaks her voice is very quiet. "I won't judge. You can tell me anything."
"You won't understand. You'll hate me," I moan. I can't meet her eyes, so I look around at everything else in her room. I glance at the clock and see that it's 3 a.m.
"We need to be honest with each other. I don't know where this is going between us, but no matter what, I think honesty is the most important part," she says. I finally meet her eyes and see the feeling there. She really does care. "You're so upset. Please Nina, tell me."
I can't speak. There's nothing I can tell her that isn't horrible. If I tell her about this dream, then I have to explain the other dreams. Then I'd have to explain what a fucking psycho I am and all of the crazy things that have happened in my head.
Lily sighs loudly, and I can tell that she's losing her patience. "The longer you stay silent, the more freaked out I'm getting because I think you're going to tell me something really bad. You were saying my name. I don't know how this involves me, but it obviously does."
"Ok," I sigh, feeling defeated. Time for the shit to hit the fan. "Just promise me you'll hear me out."
Lily crosses her heart with her finger, silently giving me her word. I believe her.
"For the last few months, I've been having these dreams." I pause, trying to figure out the best way to explain this. "Really, really vivid dreams. I guess they started around the time I went back to the studio."
"What kind of dreams?" she asks, not taking her eyes off of me. I keep looking away. I can't tell her all of this while I look into her gorgeous eyes. It'll hurt both of us too much.
"At first it was sex dreams, but after awhile, they became bad ones... Dreams that feel like reality. In them, my emotions are... deranged, to say the least. Sometimes the dreams are memories, but a lot are new. Either way, they're violent and scary."
"And you just had one?"
"Yes." I swallow the lump in my throat.
Lily waits silently, knowing that I'm not done.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. "I was dreaming about you," I finally say.
"Me?" Lily's voice is so tiny that I can't help but look at her. I've never heard her sound so surprised. So unguarded. So much like a child. It touches something in me and I push forward, now determined to get it out.
"I dreamt that we were in bed fooling around. You were being really aggressive, and something just snapped in me. I felt angry and I wanted to hurt you, so I..." I trail off, looking away again. When I speak, my voice is a whisper. "I strangled you."
A moment of silence. "Have you dreamt of me before?" Lily's voice is surprisingly calm, and when I look at her I see that her face is blank. I know her well enough to know that it's a mask. She's not calm at all right now.
"Yes," I confess. "Almost all of my dreams are about you."
At least a minute passes as I watch Lily, waiting for her response. I get more and more nervous as the seconds tick by and the silence doesn't break. She never looks away from me, even once. When she finally speaks, I wish that it was still silent.
"Should I be scared?" Lily looks down as she asks this, focusing on the tiny feather that she's pulling out of the comforter.
My heart shatters into a million little pieces. I finally had her. I know what it's like to be with her, and now I've lost her.
"No! Lily, I don't want to hurt you. At all. I would never, ever hurt you, but in my sleep I'm not myself. I can't help it." I can't give up. I won't.
Lily ignores me and gets up, pulling out her cigarettes and lighting one in about 3 seconds flat. She takes a long drag and blows the smoke out in a stream. She remains standing, staring at me intensely. The silence becomes unbearable, and she just has to say something.
"Please say something," I plead.
"What do you do in your dreams?" she asks, not a second later.
"They're always different scenarios. But in all of them, there becomes a point where I just feel enraged, psychotic... And then I kill you." I find it surprisingly easy to get the words out. Maybe I'm becoming numb to the situation.
Lily lets out a humorless laugh, as if she can't even believe this, and turns away from me. She walks to the window and stares out, smoking her cigarette silently.
"I don't get it," she finally says, still with her back to me.
"What don't you get?"
"I don't get any of it," she responds, finally turning around. She stubs out her cigarette and then returns to the bed, sitting crossed-legged in front of me. I still haven't moved from under the comforter.
"You have dreams about murdering me. Let's put that on the back burner for a second, if that's even possible." She rolls her eyes at her own ridiculous statement. Yes, let's put my murder fantasies to the side, for now. "Why do you think this is happening?"
"I don't know," I lie.
"You've never had something like this happen before?" I get the feeling that she won't believe me if I say no.
"Not while I was asleep." My response is ridiculously vague, I know.
"While you were awake?" she presses.
My hypothetical, mental train is hurtling at full speed toward a brick wall. I really hope this is just another nightmare and I'll wake up soon to Lily kissing me and offering to make breakfast.
Unfortunately, this isn't a nightmare. Not the kind you have while you're asleep, anyway. This is my personal, living nightmare.
The silence stretches on and then Lily seems to finally snap. "Come on Nina, you can't just go quiet now. My instincts are screaming at me to get the hell away. I'm trying really, really hard here. You've gotta meet me half-way."
I sigh, closing my eyes again. She's right. If I don't say something, I'll lose her for sure.
"We've never talked about what happened to me before opening night last year," I say.
Lily's brow creases, and I tell she's confused by the turn in conversation. "No, I never wanted to ask. I thought you would tell me when you were ready."
I smile grimly. "I'll never be ready, but I think that's what this is about."
"What happened?"
"I've always been slightly neurotic. You know that about me." Why do I think that building up to it is going to make this any easier? Oh right, because I'm a coward.
"Yes," she responds, nodding her head once.
I clear my throat, preparing myself. "Last year, all of my issues built up. I reached breaking point, I guess, and I freaked. By the time I was cast as Swan Queen, I started..." How do I phrase this without sounding crazy? "... seeing things."
Lily looks even more confused. "Like hallucinating?"
I nod. "I would have moments where I thought something was happening, and then reality would suddenly return and I would realize that I'd imagined it all."
Lily says nothing, looking at me anxiously. I can tell that she's nervous about where this is going.
"Once, I was in the studio practicing," I continue, "and I turned to face myself in the mirror... My reflection wasn't doing what I was doing. It was moving on it's own, and I was watching it."
She wasn't expecting that. Lily's eyes widen and her mouth forms a tiny 'o'. Amazingly, I find myself thinking how cute she is. Could there be a more inappropriate moment to be thinking that?
Her face mirrors how I felt at the time. "Tell me about it. They weren't all nice like that, either. I imagined a lot of stuff, and most of it was bad. Violent things. Do you remember the night we officially met?"
"In the bathroom?"
"Yes. You were banging on the door trying to get me to come out, but I didn't because I was busy peeling a strip of skin off of my finger. Or I thought I was, until I tried to wash the blood off and then saw that my finger was fine. I had imagined it."
"Wow, that's..." Lily trails off, at a loss for words. I've never seen that happen before.
"Yeah, see now why I didn't want to stay and chat?" I joke weakly.
"I see a lot now," Lily responds, staring blankly at a spot on the bed. I give her a minute to process this. I'm just so thankful she hasn't kicked me out yet. She's keeping her promise and letting me explain.
Lily finally looks up at me, and the confused expression is back on her face. "How do I tie into this?"
Why can't this conversation be over with? "I've spent a lot of time thinking about what happened. I've told my therapist about a lot of it, but some of it I just couldn't tell her. So I've had to figure it out on my own."
"What happened, Nina?" Lily asks, seeing past my blatant attempt to stall. This is the part I didn't want to tell her. This is the part that will determine where we go from here.
"I guess," I start, sighing, "when it boils down to it, I took myself too seriously. I took my life, ballet, everything, too seriously. When I had to take on the role of Swan Queen, obviously I took that too seriously as well. I felt like I had to become the role."
Lily snorts. "I'm sure it didn't help that Thomas was yelling at you about it 24/7."
"No, it didn't," I agree. "I didn't know how to be the Black Swan, but my subconscious did. Until that point, I'd never given thought to how much of a little girl I was. Everything about me, from the way I dressed to my bedtime routine. I didn't want that anymore, but it was all I knew. I wanted to be sexy, fun... wild. I wanted to embrace the darker side of myself, but my instincts wouldn't let me. Then I saw you..." I look down. She's going to start catching on any minute now.
"And I was all of that," she finishes for me. I still don't look up.
"All of that, and more. I saw what I wanted to be, in you. I guess I sort of projected that part of myself onto you."
"Projected?" she asks, her voice amused.
I look up at that. "I had to take a few psychology course," I say defensively.
"Really? I didn't know that." Lily seems genuine and not mocking, so I relax.
"Yeah," I confess. "It's been helpful in my search for-"
"Get back to the story," she interrupts.
"Sorry." I pause, trying to remember where I was. Oh, that's right. My fixation on Lily. "I didn't realize at the time that I even wanted all that. It's strange to think back on. I was so naive, and just in complete and total denial. There was me, the Nina I'd always known, and this other Nina that I didn't even know existed."
"Nina, the Black Swan?" Lily offers.
I laugh weakly. "Exactly. My own, secret Black Swan. It was like these two parts of me were waging war and I didn't even know it. I was sabotaging myself, but I couldn't accept that it was me. So I blamed you."
Lily thinks this over for a minute. "When you say that you were projecting yourself onto me..."
"I mean the part of myself that was bringing my world crashing down around me. I thought that you were out to get me. That you wanted to replace me. I couldn't differentiate between the real you and the way I imagined you." My voice has become so quiet and strained. This is so hard. It's amazing that I've gotten this far without breaking down in tears.
Lily's face tells me that she remembers something. "That night that you dreamt that we'd had sex?"
I guess she's finally getting it. "It wasn't a dream, it was a hallucination. In my mind, we left the club and you came back to my apartment with me. And we had sex."
"Was I good?" Lily asks again, grinning. Her smile is beautiful, and it helps to ease some of the tension that's about to make me crack.
"You were amazing," I say softly. My face must show how much I love her. I don't think I could possibly hide it. As an afterthought, I add, "Not as good as reality, though."
Lily smiles at that and takes my hand, lacing our fingers together. With one gesture, she's telling me it's alright. That I should keep going. I don't know if I can ever tell her how grateful I am to have her in my life.
I sigh and continue. "Then I woke up and saw you weren't there, and I was really late for practice-"
Lily cuts me off, nodding her head. "And then you got there and I was filling in for you. Wow, the pieces are finally falling into place."
"Obviously I was convinced that you'd drugged me and fucked me in order to get my part."
"No wonder you didn't like me," she muses.
I close my eyes again. Here goes.
"On opening night, I saw you with David, so when he dropped me, I knew it was your fault. I was so angry about the whole thing, and then I got to my dressing room and you were there, wearing the Black Swan's costume. I don't remember a lot because it was all just so fast and confusing, but I attacked you. Then I was fighting myself, Black Swan against White, and I ended up stabbing the other 'me'. The moment it happened I snapped out of it and realized that it was you I had stabbed. I thought I'd killed you."
I open my eyes and shut them quickly. Lily's face is horrified. She hasn't let go of my hand, though. I squeeze her fingers tighter and continue.
"I hid your body in the bathroom and got ready to go back on stage. I felt different."
"And then you danced the Black Swan like you never had before." Lily's voice is low, raspier than usual. I can hear the struggle she's having with this. I still don't open my eyes. She still doesn't let go.
"I'd finally embraced the darkness. I went to my dressing room and your body was still there, and blood was leaking out from under the bathroom door. I didn't know what to do so I just started getting ready for the finale, and then you came to my door. I was so shocked, and when you'd left, I went to the bathroom to check. It was empty. No blood anywhere. I realized then that I'd imagined it all, and that's when the truth finally hit me. I'd stabbed myself... Then I understood everything."
"Oh, Nina," Lily chokes out.
I open my eyes to find Lily crying. I've never seen her cry. She looks beautiful. Not that she doesn't always, but in this moment, she's letting herself be vulnerable. She's opening up to me the way that I've opened up to her.
The sight of her does it. I finally break, dissolving into a mess of tears. Lily climbs onto her knees as I do the same, and we meet each other half-way. Lily holds me tightly to her, and I wrap my arms around her waist, burying my face in her neck. We stay like that for what seems like forever, hugging and kneeling on the bed. At some point the tears slow and we end up laying on the bed. Lily never lets go of me.
"I'm sorry Lily," I groan, my voice muffled by her neck and hair. "I wasn't in my right mind. I haven't hallucinated since that night. I know what's reality. I know who you are now."
"Shh, Nina. Stop." Lily's voice is soothing as she strokes my hair gently. "I know. I'm not mad, I'm really not. I'm just scared."
I pull back, looking into her eyes. "Of me?" I ask, sniffling.
"No, I'm scared for you."
Her words make me feel inexplicably ashamed, and I bury my face in her hair again.
"I'm fine."
"No," she argues, "you're not. You had something horrible and traumatic happen to you, and you're not fine."
I sigh and pull back, this time rolling away so we're not completely entwined with each other. I turn on my side and scoot closer to her, looking at her seriously.
"None of that's happening anymore, though. I just have these dreams... They always replicate the feeling I had that night. Some type of psychotic rage. I hate it. I don't know how to stop it."
Lily looks at my thoughtfully, and then she sits up and stretches. "I think we need a break. It's nearly morning. Do you want to get breakfast? There's a 24 hour diner down the block."
"Ok, that sounds good," I say quickly, thankful to be done with this conversation. I know it's not over, but for now I'm just relieved.
Lily gets off the bed and walks around to the side I'm on. She leans down and gives me a kiss that's so sweet that it breaks my heart. Maybe things will be Ok. I hope so.