In Waking and Dream

by staringatthesky

With you in waking and dream I shall be, In the place of shadow and memory... Because once there was a little girl who saw things; whose dreams became nightmares and turned into reality; whose reality became the shadow world of the vampire and the fey. This is the story of Alice, who left humanity behind to become a vampire and search out her Jasper and her family. Canon compliant

14. Chapter 13- Dandelions

Chapter 13- Dandelion.

The treatments continue, day after day. Leather tight on my wrists and ankles and filling my mouth with its vile taste. Blinding, brutal pain in my head that wipes out everything I think and believe and am. I'm a shell, a ghost, a nothing.

Joseph, let's go outside and play before Papa notices I'm gone!

My head aches. I don't want to eat, and when I do it makes me sick. I can count every one of my ribs. My wrists and ankles are circled with purple and black bruises, a permanent reminder of the restraints I am caught in so often.

Sissy, let's read more about Anne of Green Gables. Maybe one day we'll have adventures like Anne.

He comes to the room in the night. The first night I fight him, and after I bite and scratch and struggle he retreats. The next night he comes bearing a shiny syringe, and the drugs render me helpless and turn the world slow and fuzzy. I can do nothing as he laughs at me and looms large with his face wearing the devil's mask, and what he takes from me I'll never get back. Sometimes he comes back.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you…why isn't anyone here with me?

Days and nights blur, and I feel myself swirling and tossing in the maelstrom. Sometimes I don't know where I am and the fear of being lost makes me scream, and sometimes I do know where I am and that is no less terrifying. Day by day I lose things…my hair, my innocence, my dignity. Soon I start to lose even more pieces of myself.

Mama, where are you? I'm lost Mama, and so frightened. I don't know what's happening to me.

The treatments continue. Sometimes there are other pains beside the lightning bolts that split my head and stir my brain. One day the gag is not in place and I bite my tongue hard enough to put my teeth right through it and nearly suffocate on my own blood. Another day I suddenly find I can't walk, because during treatment I have twisted in the restraints so violently that my ankle is broken. They splint and bandage it, but when it finally does heal it's crooked and I can only limp.

Please don't hurt me again. I haven't done anything to deserve this.

This is the bottom of the rabbit hole, and now I'm lost in the endless dark tunnels of the underground, and every day more of my memories and feelings and thoughts scuttle off, running away from me and this wreck of a body I exist in. Like dandelion seeds blown in the wind they dance and then vanish. Soon there will be nothing left at all.

I don't know where I am now. Is this all that there is- these grey stone walls and the blinding pain of the treatments? How did I come to be here?

I don't remember.

I don't remember.

I don't remember.

Then, in the middle of the howling, terrifying vortex of nothing, I find him. He comes to me in my dreams, the beautiful golden man with his amber eyes and fair hair and the crooked smile that is only for me, and when he holds out his hand I take it. Linked together I feel nothing but the most glorious, all-encompassing love and it's all for me. We belong together. I just need to find him.

Jasper.