It was all too good to last. She should have known that, but the possibility of something good had blinded her and now, everything was ruined.
Mike was gone.
It was her fault.
She had nightmares all the time- a side effect of being asleep all the time is that there's nowhere to run from your bad dreams. So she relived the worst moments of her life, over and over and over…
She opened her eyes. Next to her, Mike lay sleeping, mouth slightly open as he snored. "Mouthbreather," she whispered affectionately. She knew him better than anyone, but every day, it felt like she learned something new. The first night they'd spent together, she'd woken up halfway through the night to the sound of what she thought was him dying. She'd freaked and grabbed him, shaking him like a rag doll. "Mike! Oh God, Mike!"
He went from asleep to screaming his head off. "Eleven, what the hell? What the fucking hell?"
She didn't wake up so much as she came closer to the surface of reality. In her suspended, in between state, she could still hear everything that went on around her, could still even look in on everyone. From the inky black void, but she preferred not to. No one ever mentioned her by name while she watched them, but the were aware of her presence somehow, if only on the periphery of their consciousness. They were afraid of her now, and having her friends be afraid of her broke her heart. She was, finally, the monster. So instead, she stayed in stasis, listening to the voices around her, and tried her hardest not to dream.