Enjoy!

*This is on the first year.

Incubus

Chapter 16: Lain

Even though strange things were going on inside my house, I did my best to ignore them and continue on with my life. All of it was strange and the eerie feeling I got every time I found him around, made me jittery. Things would easily fall from my hands and sometimes my hands would tremble as I tried to open doors. But other times I was completely frozen as I stared at nothing, I was afraid of being in my own home.

He scared me. Each and every day I felt more afraid to be alone in my home, especially with him there. I just couldn't comprehend why he was still around, but I had already learned that he could hurt me. Even though he appeared to be calm, I was terrified of him. I couldn't sleep in that house, and I began to beg a few friends to allow me to stay in theirs. My excuse, there was a construction going on next to my house that didn't allowed me to sleep.

Truth it was that I really wasn't getting much sleep. And only when I tired my body to extremes or utilized the aids of medicine did I could get some shuteye. Still it was a lie, a blatant lie that came out of my lips naturally. I was every single day more and more scared.

Bobby knew nothing of what was happening, and I would usually come to the house at the same hour every day to speak to him on the phone. And just as soon as I dropped the call I was already walking out the door. Anyhow I felt the presence following me around, maybe I was starting to go crazy, but I felt strange chills during the day.

I was becoming paranoid. Being inside any type of building with air conditioning made my skin crawl. I searched wildly for him, but he was never there. And I could feel it; I could detect the exact moment where I felt that something broke within me. I had been walking around the halls of a hospital facility for the mental health patients. It was part of my early practice in medicine, back during those days I was sent a few days to observe and shadow a doctor inside the hospital.

It was my first time being there. The doctor had left and soon enough I was left alone in the ward. Nurses would come and go, my presence being ignored as they chastised a patient that had bitten another one. All I could do was observe, my body becoming invisible to the medical practitioners. Someone wept, the sound barely noticeable but I followed it. Curiosity was my main forte, and that curiosity brought me my first crisis.

I was mostly calm during most of my practices, my mind fully reinforced because I knew that I had to prepare myself for the worst-case scenario. This wasn't the worst case. It was a common case of someone in a state of delirium. The young female trembled on the floor inside her room. She was in a type of solitary confinement. Her body was moving forward and backwards as she murmured of some type of loss.

Everyone had lost something after Meteor. Some just never recovered. She was one of those cases. And as I observed through a small window to her room, I studied her. She was the type of case one would find during an exam, something that wasn't as common as some people thought of. And as she murmured softly I could identify a few specs of her words, she was talking gibberish. Things like 'he's coming;' 'we are doomed;' 'he never left;' and even 'he will kill you.' By then she had stopped moving, her back towards me, still I felt as if she spoke to me. She knew I was at the door; because even if I was a silent observer, she noticed. Slowly she turned around, her eyes staring directly at me.

"He's right behind you." My heart turned cold at that moment. I trembled, a shiver going down my spine as I moved my head to stare at whoever was behind me. Nothing. There was nothing behind me, but I did the wrong thing when I turned my back on a patient.

I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. And on reflex I yelled.

I had awoken from another nightmare; because after that, all of my dreams were plagued with them. Soon enough the nightmares got worse. Even thought I felt safer in my friends' houses, I continued to have those night terrors. He would appear in each and every one of them. His favorite one was of when the meteor had fallen. We all knew our end was nearing but when I saw that blast beginning to fall from the sky, I knew that my end would come.

Midgar was quiet during that day. Many and I mean many people were running away. Some were leaving their children behind as their dread struck them. It was with a group of friends that we tried our best to help evacuate the city. And with every second that went by the chaos got worse. People ran for their lives, children being trampled as the adults preoccupied themselves with their safety. Older people sat down immobile waiting for their demise.

We tried our best. We really did try.

I remember helping many children and older adults to a shuttle. But in the mist of the chaos I saw many people kill to have a place in one of the main forms of transportation. And just as the team had decided that we had to evacuate, did the worst decided to arrive.

I was helping an elder woman into the machine, she was weak but we all knew that she would make it. It took a few pushes and the help of a friend to help her take the step she needed the most. Once she was done I turned around to keep searching and helping others, but the yells from my team stopped me and made me turn around.

"Vanessa, forget it! We need to go now!" I had turned around to stare at them. I was willing to risk my life to find more people, but I began to see what was left of the team getting into the shuttles. I was one of the few people on land and as the instinct to survive pressed on, I ran towards the shuttle. A few steps were all it took before my hand was grasping one of the only hopes I had to survive. And just like that it was all taken away.

An unknown man had decided to take my place in the ship. His body made sure to push me away and to make me fall towards my death. It was all it took; being time bound the shuttle left as my eyes made contact with fire. By then I was fully awake, my body sweating as I relieved the memory of that fateful day. I never could get to the part of the nightmare where Bobby and his friend, Daniel, saved me. But I knew that the terror that grasped me, as I lay on the floor too weak to move. It was the same terror I felt that made me wake up.

It was painful to wake up every single day like that. My chest would usually hurt, as if a hand were squeezing it making sure to destroy what was left of my fragile heart. I knew I was sick, but knowing that people did not like the weak minded I started my day like any other. I would usually leave my friends' house without eating any breakfast, because I discovered that I was sometimes too anxious to eat. And when I did so, I would usually return the food by the time I knew I had to leave out the door.

That usually made me arrive late, or sometimes never arrive at most of my classes. I was failing, and even though I wanted to try and do my best I was never feeling my best. And trust me that I tried. But the many hours I would usually spend studying were now spent with a bottle of alcohol in my hand and a couple of sleeping pills in the other.

I was swirling into a self-destructive conduct. I knew it, but I just wanted to forget. I wanted to forget what I saw after the Meteor. I wanted to forget the burned bodies of those that didn't hid in safe places. I wanted to forget how some people the buildings that fell squashed, but I couldn't.

I knew I wasn't the only person in this state. I knew Cloud had been catatonic since it all occurred. I knew Tifa would wake up crying to a serious and distant Cloud. We were all devastated. And even though more than six months had passed there were always some who never recovered. The streets were filled with them, and little by little I was inwardly asking to join their club.

Edge wasn't a city built with peace. Edge was simply where everyone who survived Midgar went. It was the city next to the destruction. It was the city next to the place that would become a giant graveyard. We… we were just the lucky ones to survive. But sometimes I never felt that lucky.

I don't know why I had decided to move to Edge with Bobby. I knew I wanted to continue with my studies, I just didn't have the energy to survive. I barely had any energy to do anything at all. And with my husband far away in a boat moving military secrets… that just made me feel more alone. I had a full house for myself, and the one I shared it with, it wasn't someone you simply welcome with arms open wide. The cat that made me some company being nowhere to be found, her posters were already taken out because it turned into a futile attempt.

Some of my nights were spent lying awake as I stared at the celling. I had a self-induced insomnia because my body had become dependent on the pills and alcohol to program myself to sleep. I never really wanted to sleep; I never wanted to close my eyes to relieve those memories. Even thought I also knew that I needed it from time to time.

And so I found myself walking constantly alone in the pit of darkness. Every corner for me held a memory, a memory I wished to never remember. At first it was the nightmares. Quickly it got worse.

During the time when I was awake, I began to see my nightmares in every single face. I was living with the people who valued their life more than the child they trampled. I was there, watching how those people continued on with their life with little to no remorse. It was sickening.

Still I found myself mingling with them. I spoke casually to a few of them. Some males becoming interested in any available female, however my friends would never allow them to get near me.

This time around Tifa had left her bar under the administration of a close friend of hers and joined me in our drunken adventure. I was way younger back then than I am today. And even thought I wasn't really a party girl, I enjoyed distracting myself from time to time. Many young people thought the same, and in a group we found ourselves bar hopping. Only one person being unlucky driver who could not have any type of drink other than water.

As I danced alongside my friends, I left this world. I was in a place were no worries existed. I was in a place were one did not have any responsibilities. I was in a place were I wasn't married to a man that was with someone named Angelica. I sometimes suspected that Bobby wasn't as great of a man as I had always painted him to be.

I was young and still innocent when he began to speak to me. Still underage, but by then there was nothing going on between the two of us. He had waited for me. I thought it was something romantic, but what I never knew was that I was to be another conquest of him. He had moved slowly, strange and new sensations being felt by what I believed was love.

I don't even know if I love him.

Now a day I feel as if I can recognize what happened between the two of us. I was naïve, he was a man that was twelve years my elder. He knew what he was doing. I was just starting to learn how to walk. He had been my first. But I wasn't even his last one.

Sometimes I feel as if he had manipulated me. Words like he couldn't wait no more, and that he needed me made me fall into a fake sense of security. I was in love with him, but I didn't love him. As a young person, I was in love with the idea of being in love. I never knew what was the difference. However now I can tell that love overpasses anything, even the deepest of hate.

And like a fly I was caught in his web of lies and pretty words. I fell for it and I gave him my first. It hadn't been a pleasant experience, but we went on. After that things seemed to get more serious between the two of us, until Meteor. That had been the event that molded his decision to marry me. Bobby had lost all of his family, and I was the only person left to him that was more than a friend. For I was his girlfriend and once I recovered from it all I was his wife.

Just like that the night went on. At two in the morning we were being dropped at our places, Tifa and Cloud being the ones that accompanied me to my home. Both of them acting different due to the influence of the ethanol consumed during the night. Anyhow I bid my goodbyes and had closed the doors on my freedom. It was my own jail, but I had to be in it. I couldn't keep invading the privacy of others because I was afraid of living on my own. And now as I was dressed in my nightgown my eyes staring at the bed I barely shared with Bobby.

It was a king size bed, it felt too big for me. And as I lay in the middle of it I stared at the wooden ceiling everything was still. No nighttime creatures being heard. And in that disturbing form of silence I closed my eyes and welcomed the darkness. Unbeknown to me the night events had been longer than what I thought.

I woke up at noon, the sun reminding me that a new day had arrived many hours before. I had overslept. And as I looked at the calendar I felt my eyes widening, I was going to be late for my practice. I tried to twist on the bed, but I found my body not responding to any commands that I gave it. Vague memories of last night came to me. I hadn't really thought that Thursday's isn't really a good day to go out with my friends.

However as I tried to get up from the bed I felt my body extremely weak. My mind went over to a strange dream that I had during the night. There was some miasma on top of me, nothing distinguishable, but a strong pressure over my chest made me become a little bit more alert. I could hear someone breathing, nothing too labored but then strange sensations were felt in my abdomen.

I couldn't remember anything else. And the day went on like normally it would. I was out of the house in an instant, my mind looking for an escape as I remembered of my failing practical course. In the end I missed it, my hands working on some bandage as I had finished cleaning the geostigma of a child. In here I helped the orphans with their conditions, but it was also the same place were I took care of my own.

Bobby's money went out fast enough each month. The debts that piled up constantly barely left me with money for food. I counted every cent I had, my accountability impeccable. I made the best I could with the amount of money, and was even capable of saving some for a trip back home. I missed my family, and in this place all I had with me was my friend, Tifa.

"Did you sleep well last night?" Tifa asked me as she picked up some spaghetti with her fork.

"Yea, all I had was a strange dream." I told her as I picked a piece of meat and passed it to her. She graciously took it from me and gave me some of her salad in exchange.

"What was the dream about?" She spoke with a mouth half full.

"It was like some weight was pressing down on my chest. But this time I had no nightmares, it just felt strange." I looked towards the side, the clear window showing me a different environment than what I was experiencing inside the building.

At my small confession Tifa was silent. Her eyes looked to the right and then towards the left, and as if noting that the coast was clear she leaned towards me. "Do you believe in demons?"

I nearly choked on my food. We laughed at our silliness while she told me of many stories related to demons that depraved on the innocent. By the time we were fully eating I had forgotten my worries. We spent the rest of the day together, laughing like best friends as we tried to distract ourselves from our own problems. Most of my time with Tifa was spent that way.

Still nearing the end of the day I had forgotten to ask to see if I could stay over at her house. And so I laid on my bed with my eyes wide open. I was afraid of what liked to appear from time to time, but I couldn't fight against my tired body. Just as I told myself over and over, I fell asleep, a nightmare becoming alive as I ran for my life. I knew it was only a dream, but it felt too real. Because I felt as my breathing was leaving my body, the enormous pressure on my chest being something that slowed me down.

I couldn't go on, and just as I thought I was about to faint I woke up.

The pressure was still there, a faint body lay on top of me. I was afraid to move, but as quickly as I saw it, the apparition left. My phone was ringing softly in the background.

What I saw wasn't my imagination. I know it wasn't. He had been there.

I don't know what overcame me, but I got up from the bed and entered the bathroom. I was wide-awake, and I wasn't sure if what I saw was real. But he was there. And he was… I couldn't stomach it. It was that way how he appeared t me once more, I was doubled over releasing all of the food I had taken during the day.

"If that was going to be the reaction I would have gotten from you. I would have done earlier." He was smirking. He was enjoying my misery, but I was still too sick to really note his demeanor. I was afraid of him, scratch that, I was terrified. And just as he took another step towards me I felt my breathing quickening, I was having difficulties to breathe. With another step everything went dark.

I woke up to a sudden pressure on my chest. It all felt like a dream, but when I felt some movements and strange sensations, I opened my eyes to stare into a pair of jade ones.

The night terror had just begun. My war against him was declared. And from the very beginning I was loosing the battle, because each and everyday he conquered more ground. Somehow at one point I had allowed him to touch me willingly, my nights being shared with someone I could never understand.

And it is done. Hope you all enjoyed. I'm sorry for the delay but it finally came after all. I'll see if I can go back to updating like I was but things have been a little bit irregular this summer. Besides that I really couldn't find the inspiration to write this story.

But I will not give up on it.

So I'm off now, review or fav or something along the likes.

*This chapter has not been edited, nor revised.