Trapped Inside A Nightmare

"Ellie..."

The sound of Sean's familer voice nearly made Ellie's entire body quiver as she fought back the tears, yet again. She was unsure if they were tears of joy of finally hearing him speak, hearing him say her name, or if they were tears of betrayal and hate. No, not hate. She could never hate Sean. No matter what happens she could never and will never hate him, she loves him. You can not hate the one you love, can you?

"Ellie.." he repeated, his voice full of the same desperation hers has been full of every single time he called and never spoke, every time he left her sitting in silence, every time she sat there wondering why he called if he was not going to speak to her.

"Ellie please..just talk to me." He insisted.

Her mind began to race. Talk to me? What is he expecting her to say? Hi, how you doing? See any good movies lately? He left. He's gone, he's not around anymore. There is no way she can talk to him, not now.

"Ellie I just want to talk.."

It's kind of funny, after these past several weeks of praying one of his phone calls will be the one of which he was ready to speak to her, and when it finally happens..she can't talk. She has nothing she wants to say to him, nothing good and no words are forming...

"Stop calling me." Ellie insists as she hangs up the phone.

Nearly seconds later the phone begins to ring again, looking down she sees it is yet again Sean.

Tears sting her eyes as she pulls herself to her feet, staring at the phone, Ellie runs her fingers through her thick red hair, trying not to cry but the harder she tries the more tears continue to well in her eyes.

"Stop it." She whimpers as she slams the phone hard across the room, it smashes into the wall on the far end of the closet and shatters, making a loud cracking noise as the tiny pieces hit the ground, the ringing stops.

As if right on cue, the door to the closet opens, as Ellie turns around prepared to see Raditch or the janitor standing there with his arms crossed ready to hand her a detention slip..she is slightly surprised to see Paige Michalchuk to be the one standing there.

"Ellie..." Paige says as her eyes wander across the closet and rest on the numerous pieces of the phone which now lay scattered on the ground.

Ellie follows Paige's gaze, as she looks at the pieces of the broken phone.

"Uh..it...fell.." Ellie explains.

"I heard...about..your father. I wanted to see if.." Paige sighs as she looks at Ellie. "Are you ok?" She asked her.

"Yeah. Fine. Couldn't be better." Ellie lies to her.

"I don't know what its like to lose a parent, but I can imagine. You shouldn't even be here." Paige says to her.

"But I am." Ellie is already getting sick of everyone suddenly caring about her, everyone suddenly acting like they know her and understand what she is going through.

"If you're so fine and ready to be here..what happened to your phone?" Paige asked softly.

"I already told you. I dropped it." Ellie insisted.

"Dropping a phone doesn't make it shatter. Ellie I heard you throw it. These walls are not soundproof you know." Paige responds.

"Why do you suddenly care, anyways?" Ellie asks, trying to make it clear to Paige that she has no right to be here.

"Because I remember what happened the last time you had family issues." Paige said, making it clear in her voice that she is not going to back down.

"You think I'm going to cut again?" Ellie asked her, clenching her hands into fists at her side.

"Yeah well its not that hard to believe." Paige responded.

Ellie bent down as she picked up her backpack, glancing down at the shattered pieces of the phone that laid on the ground.

"I'm out of here." Ellie said as she pushed past Paige, brushing her shoulder against Paige's she felt the tears coming to her eyes.

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Sean pulled the phone away from his ear, as Ellie finished her sentence and the line went dead. What made him actually think she would ever want to speak to him again, anyways? He did something he never should have done, he left her. It took him weeks or months..Sean has lost track of time but all he knows is it has been far too long since he had the guts to actually call her and speak to her. The first time he actually wants to talk to her, is the first time the sound of her voice made him want to cry. The way she spoke to him, so angry and cold, clearly still upset at him for leaving her like that. Sean didn't know what to do now, he can't go back to Toronto, and he can't stay with his parents. Just being here reminds him of all the time when he wanted out, and now here he is back here and he can't stand it.

Alberta. That's exactly what he needs, he needs to go to Alberta and be with Tracker. At least he knows his brother wants him there, at least he knows his brother won't care what he does or where he goes and he won't be forced to pretend to be happy. Sean knows his parents can see right through him and he knows that they know he no longer belongs here.

Sean picked up the phone as he quickly dialed Tracker's number, he has it memorized by heart but has yet to speak to him since he left him in Toronto. He figured that Tracker would be a complete ass about the fact that he was calling him because of what he said on the day he left.

After several rings Sean was about to hang up when he finally hear his brothers familer voice.

"Hello?" Tracker asked into the phone, his voice was soft as if he had just woken up.

"Tracker." Sean said

"Sean? Hey whats up bro?" Tracker asked, actually sounding happy to hear his voice.

"I know this is last minute but..I can't stay here anymore.." Sean said, he actually was worried that Tracker wouldn't want him anymore.

"Rent too much for you?" Tracker asked with a chuckle.

Sean realized that Tracker really does think he is still in Toronto. "No man..I'm in Wasaga. Been here a while now." Sean said.

"With mom and dad? Why would you go there?"

"It's a long story. But..I can't be here anymore." Sean continued

"So you need a place to crash and you called me." Tracker said, clearly he seemed bothered by this.

"You know forget it. I never should have called. I'll talk to you later." Sean said as he was prepared to hang up the phone. Last thing he needs is to hear his older brother reject him just like Ellie did.

"Sean. Stop. Of course you can come here." Tracker replied.

Sean let out a sigh of relief as he heard the news he had been waiting to hear.

"Really?" Sean asked.

"Yeah man. We're brothers you're always welcome here." Tracker said.

"I'll be there tomorrow." Sean said as he hung up the phone.

For the first time in what seems like ages, Sean actually felt himself smiling. He is finally free of this hell he once called a home, finally free of those haunting stares from the people who he once considered his parents, free of the guilt of what happened to Tyler, and most importantly he was free of that taunting image of Ellie driving away from his house.

But he will never be free of the thought of being the one to hurt her so much.

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Ellie rummaged around in her pocket, searching desprartly for her keys as she stood outside the door to the house. Tears streaming down her face as she tried her best to remain calm. Finally she found the keys as she quickly unlocked the door, the second she was inside the house she slammed the door shut and tossed her bag on the ground at her feet.

It took a good two minutes but Ellie finally pushed herself away from the door, her heart beating so fast she felt as though it was about to break through her chest and splatter on the floor, causing her to be drenched in even more blood then usual.

Ellie ran into the kitchen, she looked down in the sink, her eyes resting on the knife from the other night. The sink still had drops of blood spalltered around the drain, and the knife was now still covered in the red liquid. She picked up the knife as she studied every detail of it, the blood was dried but yet she could still smell the awful stale stench. Her stomach growled as she continued to stare at it, something about it was hypnotizing her. She could not pull her eyes away from it, it was as if her eyes were locked to it, and she was afraid to look away.

Ellie finally forced herself to drop the knife on the counter top. Looking down at her black sleeve she rolled up her arm to reveal the same deep scar from the other night. Normally the thought of deepening a scar was the one thing she would never do. She always preferred to cut in a fresh place every time, afraid of what would happen if she deepened a scar. Of course she always wondered what would happen. Would it be harder to stop the bleeding, or would it feel ten times better seeing as how the scar was not fully healed and still slightly tender.

Ellie picked up the knife, as she stared down at the same scar, the knife hovered above. Ellie could feel even more tears trickling down her face, cutting through the dark makeup she had applied earlier in the morning. She swallowed another sob as it rised in her throat, she could feel her stomach growling more, the stench of the dried blood made her want to throw up. Of course she swallowed all of that emotion inside of her, she has to do this.

Ellie closed her eyes as she lowered the blade to the fresh scar, the cold blade touching her skin gave her goose bumps, her heart pounding even harder, her head began to hurt. "Come-on" she whispered silently to herself, trying to urge herself to continue on with it. Something felt different this time. She always felt slightly afraid every time she cut, but today there was something else, something different. Today she felt as if this was going to hurt a lot worse then it has in the past.

With her shaky hand Ellie slowly dragged the blade across the scar, the second she felt the blood dripping from her arm she dropped the knife, realizing this was a mistake. Ellie looked down at her bleeding arm, the blood was flowing freely now, but it was not like it was before. In the past the blood would slowly trickle down her arm but today it was flowing as if it were a river going through the mountains. This time the blood was flowing too fast. Ellie wrapped her hand around the scar as she felt more tears falling down her face, she searched around the kitchen as she grabbed the roll of paper towels.

She wrapped a paper towel around the cut, but within a matter of seconds it was drenched in blood. She continued to grab more and more towels from the roll as she tried to stop the constant bleeding. With what little energy she had Ellie made her way to the living room and grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch. She pushed the blanket to her arm as she tried to stop the bleeding, but before she knew it the blanket was sticky and soaked. It was dark so she could not see the blood., but she could feel as it continued to flow quickly from her arm.

Ellie reached for the phone that rested on the couch, but as she tried to to grab it she felt herself grow lightheaded and collapsed on the ground. With each drop of blood that fell from her arm she felt herself growing weaker by the minute, she tried to stand up again and grab the phone, but the second she was standing, her legs gave way and she collapsed into a pile on the ground.

"H-H-Help..." she tried to scream but it came out only as a whisper.

Ellie finally gave up as she laid back down, closing her eyes she waited for it to happen. She waited for the second when it would all stop.

It was actually a feeling she now found herself welcoming. The feeling of freedom. The feeling of no longer missing her father, no longer feeling alone in this world. The feeling of longer loving Sean. It was the one thing she wanted more then anything, and now that she knew it was coming, it was the one thing she feared.