Thank you for the reviews, everyone! :-D
***
I don't like making promises. They get broken too easily. I should know.
But one night I couldn't fall asleep because my father had disappeared somewhere and my mother had locked herself in her room. She was screaming like a wild, demented creature, tearing at the walls with her nails and banging her fists against the doors, the windows. Through the shrieks I could hear a mix of shuddering tears and crazy, hysterical laughter.
I had a book in one hand; I tried to read. I tried to play with the toys stashed away underneath my bed. I punched my pillow. I tossed around my baseball.
I was nine years old...maybe ten. I can't remember anymore.
So I sat on the rug on my floor, in the darkness, and stared out the window. Listening, trying not to hear, and thinking--a vow, a promise: if this happened to me, I wouldn't deny it. I wouldn't smooth down my hair in the morning and wash my face and pretend everything was fine. I'd go see a doctor. I wouldn't turn out like my mother.
But now I can't. Now, when I need help the most, I can't bring myself to find it. Because I'm scared that I'll end up like she did, trapped in the bare white walls of an asylum.
I waited and worked and wished my whole life to not end up like my parents. I tried--and it's hard work, when your mother is a lunatic and your father is an abusive alcoholic--I tried to be normal. I did the routine things other people do. I went to college, I graduated, and I got a job. I did a stint in the army. And when I walked down the street, past people looking through their purses and talking on their cell phones and reading magazines, I pretended I was one of them. An ordinary person with an ordinary past.
It's such a thin line between reality and insanity.
***
It's a group of voices now. A swarm of voices, buzzing and hissing like flies. They whisper, they murmur, they shush and sigh. Nina is gone, but there are others... so many others. These don't have names.
I'm lost. I don't know what street I'm on anymore.
They talk of snakes, gliding noiselessly along the ground and coiling around my legs with flickering tongues and dry, hollow rattles, and I can see and feel snakes. They talk of worms wriggling in my sleeves and collar, oozing away to leave wet trails of gooey, grimy slime, and the worms are there. I hear the crackling crunch of cockroach shells in my shoes and shrill, high-pitched squeals with each step I take.
It's not real.
But what is real anymore?
***
Warning: the next chapter will be long, and told from Eames's POV.
What did you think? Review please! :-)
***
I don't like making promises. They get broken too easily. I should know.
But one night I couldn't fall asleep because my father had disappeared somewhere and my mother had locked herself in her room. She was screaming like a wild, demented creature, tearing at the walls with her nails and banging her fists against the doors, the windows. Through the shrieks I could hear a mix of shuddering tears and crazy, hysterical laughter.
I had a book in one hand; I tried to read. I tried to play with the toys stashed away underneath my bed. I punched my pillow. I tossed around my baseball.
I was nine years old...maybe ten. I can't remember anymore.
So I sat on the rug on my floor, in the darkness, and stared out the window. Listening, trying not to hear, and thinking--a vow, a promise: if this happened to me, I wouldn't deny it. I wouldn't smooth down my hair in the morning and wash my face and pretend everything was fine. I'd go see a doctor. I wouldn't turn out like my mother.
But now I can't. Now, when I need help the most, I can't bring myself to find it. Because I'm scared that I'll end up like she did, trapped in the bare white walls of an asylum.
I waited and worked and wished my whole life to not end up like my parents. I tried--and it's hard work, when your mother is a lunatic and your father is an abusive alcoholic--I tried to be normal. I did the routine things other people do. I went to college, I graduated, and I got a job. I did a stint in the army. And when I walked down the street, past people looking through their purses and talking on their cell phones and reading magazines, I pretended I was one of them. An ordinary person with an ordinary past.
It's such a thin line between reality and insanity.
***
It's a group of voices now. A swarm of voices, buzzing and hissing like flies. They whisper, they murmur, they shush and sigh. Nina is gone, but there are others... so many others. These don't have names.
I'm lost. I don't know what street I'm on anymore.
They talk of snakes, gliding noiselessly along the ground and coiling around my legs with flickering tongues and dry, hollow rattles, and I can see and feel snakes. They talk of worms wriggling in my sleeves and collar, oozing away to leave wet trails of gooey, grimy slime, and the worms are there. I hear the crackling crunch of cockroach shells in my shoes and shrill, high-pitched squeals with each step I take.
It's not real.
But what is real anymore?
***
Warning: the next chapter will be long, and told from Eames's POV.
What did you think? Review please! :-)