HOPES AND NIGHTMARES: An ongezellig fanfiction

Chapter 2: Dreams and deals

Maya sat slouched over her desk, her eyes sunken, barley being able to stay half op-

Wait a minute. She'd been here before. She was in school? Again? But what about everything that happened? The bike? The fight with mymy? Hadn't that actually happened?

She raised her head to get a grip of her surroundings, coming to the somewhat happy, somewhat depressing conclusion that the events that had happened were nothing more than a strange daydream. It was a weird sensation having experienced so much, just to be sent all the way back to the worst possible point of the day for. Now she had to deal with Vera again. Great.

But something felt off. Being in the classroom for so long, you started to get accustomed to the usual sights and sounds of it. But there was no sounds to be heard. It was eerily quiet to the point You could hear a pin drop. She could usually hear the constant ticking of the clock at the front of the class, but for some reason it had stopped completely. Oh well, she thought; maybe it had finally given up telling the time and had finally fallen victim to the very thing it was telling her. Not much of a big deal. She began to rest her head against her hands and go back to sleep. But now, another thing confused her. Nothing was thrown at her when she set her head down. Not even the sound of someone whispering obnoxiously loudly about throwing anything at her. She looked around at the usual culprits only to discover that they were completely frozen in place. the more and more she looked around, the more confusing the discrepancies got. Everyone was statue stiff, including her own sisters. Her hands and legs felt numb, she felt cold despite the windows being closed and the daylight beaming through the small cracks of the trees outside, and not to mention, Vera wasnt at her desk. She felt cold, and shivered inside of her hoodie as she tried to understand what was happening. Despite her hatred of this class in particular, she missed what she hated about it. It felt like someone had taken the soul of the classroom. the silence started to get to her. It felt more and more like she wasn't supposed to be here. Maybe she didn't have to be here, she thought. Not like Vera was going to stop her, seeing as she wasn't there. The Anxiety slowly seeped into maya as she thought more and more about getting up and booking it down the corridor. She bounced her legs up and down and glanced frantically at the doors, wondering if anything would jump out at her if she ran. Finally, she had collected enough of a mix of fear and courage and made a frantic and desperate sprint towards the doors. She didn't have much strength, but still she slammed as hard as hard as she could against the doors to push them open as quick as possible.

But then, Without warning, something barged through the doors with enough force to send maya off her feet and onto the cold, hard ground. She cowered in fear, curling into a ball andcovering her face to shield herself from whatever horrible monster had appeared to get her. But nothing happened. She expected something to happen, some awful thing to start eating her, but it didn't happen. She timidly removed her arms from her face to discover... Vera.

She didn't look like Vera, well, at least her face didn't. It looked completely different to her usual dull expression. Her clothes seemed more dirty and tattered than before, her hands seemed crooked and veiny, and her eyes were somehow scared and tired at the same time. She Stood In front of the doorway from where she had knocked maya off her feet and remained there as maya stared daggers into her. Maya got up slowly, making sure to never take her eyes off of "Vera" or whatever it was

But then, "Vera" spoke to her. "Are you scared, maya?" Maya froze in fear. Its voice was shallow and empty. It began to mock and antagonise her. "Do something, Maya" it teased. "Are you just gonna stand there, maya?" "Do something, Maya!"

The voice got louder and louder with each new insult that it threw at her; they cut deeper into her soul every time. The classroom around them seemed to crack and fall away, until they were the only ones left standing on a peice of floor separating an oppressive, dark void that surrounded them. Still, the voice got louder and louder to the point where maya had to cover her ears in a desperate attempt to block out every word it threw at her. She clasped her ears desperately to block it out, not letting go until all she could hear was the sound of her heart beating frantically. She looked up to again see "Vera" standing motionless. She breathed a sigh of relief, only for that sigh to be thrown from her body as "Vera" suddenly appeared right in front of her, grabbed her by the scruff of her hoodie and lifted her high into the air. "WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO NOW, MAYA?! MAYA! MAYA-"

Maya shot up out of her bed, petrified and covered in sweat. She was quick to jump to the conclusion that the horrific experience she had just been apart of was a nightmare. Not that her head could rationalise or understand any of it. Despite having the most terrifying experience of her life (except for the day where she had to show off a presentation), maya was still groggy and exhausted. Sleeping never seemed to fix how tired she was, no matter how comfortable she slept, how tight she hugged her blobfish plush. She was always in some form or another tired. Right now, she was tired of having nightmares. Trying to peice together what she had done before her nightmare, she looked around unkempt and dirty room to find something to give context as to what happened prior to her snooze. Her eyes felt heavy, but She did notice her hoodie; tattered and balled up in a basket full of an assorted pile of clothes that she should've probably folded at some point, but never got around to it due to being tired all the time. She took that off before going to sleep but never usually did anything else before going to bed. Her pillows were damp for some reason. Besides her hoodie, she couldn't see much else, so she went to switch on the light for her room. Getting up was difficult as her legs went numb, so she had to try and wake them back up so she didn't faceplant the instant she got up. She managed to get them moving, only slightly wobbling around before she made it to the light switch. Flicking it on, the bright light stunned her and made her eyes sting, But she could see her room now in all of its glory. She also noticed her alarm clock, which she almost never got up to. The time read to almost 12am. She quickly turned off her light to make sure nobody would come into her room and interrogate her for staying up so late.

The problem that now arose was that once maya got up, she couldn't go back to sleep. She couldn't have done anything fun either, like play a game on her computer due to it making too much noise and the thing that usually combated that, her headset, had died, and she had forgotten to charge it before heading off to school that morning. Charging it now would take forever. Staying up on her phone would inevitably have her doomscrolling past ungodly hours, and Coco had told her to stay away from social media after she had told her about it. She pondered what to do next until she felt the back of her throat burn with dehydration. She had forgotten to take any water with her! not like she could've, with what happened just hours before her awakening. Maybe if she went down now, she could get something, and nobody would notice her going down those horrifically creaky steps...

But there was one big problem with going downstairs. It was usually a death sentence for all nighters, especially on school nights. The floorboards were way to creaky for them to have any right to be, and every movement that she made at night seemed amplified in a strange and cruel way. Even now, she could hear her own shallow breathing as she thought over her plan of action for the night. Getting water would involve running the tap and getting a glass to hold the tap over, but that would involve going down the stairs, and even getting to the stairs was difficult...

She was overthinking this. Surely, It wasn't as hard as she thought it was going to be...

Right?

There was no time like the present. Opening the door as slowly as she could, she got a peak of the outside. It was pitch black. But not pitch black enough to the point that she couldn't see. The floor and the stairs were visible, at least. Everything beyond that was envelope in shadow. She took her phone as a precaution to use as a makeshift flashlight. She didn't want to miss a step on the stairs and tumble down it. That would hurt. Alot. She took the first step outside her room and the silence of the house felt suffocating. The next step came soon after that, and now she was fully outside of her room and In full darkness. She could barely see past her own feet.

Doing all nighters did have their perks. For example, maya had gone down for food so many times, that she had memorised the points of major creaking from the floor. Unfortunately, those points were very spaced out, so she had to contort herself constantly just to avoid making any form of noise and So far, it was going well. She was just about to make it to the stairs, when a strange groaning sound frightened her and knocked her off her concentration, leading to her tripping onto one of her knees and a painfully squeaky creak noise to peirce the silence of the night like a blade. Maya froze. She listened out for anyone, any sort of movement that she could hear from any of the rooms close to her. Her nerves were on fire. A few moments passed before she assumed that the coast was clear, getting up from her knees and readjusting herself. She looked around until she realised where the strange groaning sound had come from. Mymy still had her door open, and maya could see her face down on one of her pillows, snoring louder than she could think. There was also a strange musical tune playing from inside mymys room, almost sounding like some sort of national anthem of some sort. Maya tiptoed up to Mymys door and as delicately as she could, closed it to avoid any more accidental jumpscares.

She began ot traverse her way down the staircase, taking extra caution to male sure she was avoiding every source of unnecessary noise as she could. By this point, the darkness of the night enshrouded the entirety of the bottom of the stairs, so Maya had to use her phone as a makeshift source of light to make sure she didn't miss a step. When she reached the bottom of the floor, it was much easier to move around, seeing as nobody slept downstairs. She made sure not to drop anything as she grabbed a cup from the pantry and filled it up with water, which was probably the loudest thing the she had deliberately done so far.

Maya actually felt accomplished that she had managed to do something. Usually she would screw St least one thing up, but this time, she didn't mess up anything at all. Even the trip going back up the stairs was pretty uneventfu-

Maya missed one of the last steps of the staircase, making her trip once again, but this time with a glass of water bring involved. It crashed down onto the floor, cracking into hundreds of tiny peices on the floor. Maya heart sank like a rock at sea. She scrambled to escape to the scene of the crime, clamouring up the stairs and into a door that she thought was her door. She looked back behind her to see if there was any one following her. What was she going to do now? She couldn't go back out there. She was gonna het into so much trouble because of this. Her mind ruminate of thoughts of being locked in her room for months on end, spending the rest of her life stuck in her room. But then, she suddenly noticed where she had ran into.

The old balcony. She forgot about this place. It was special to her and yet, she never went there as much as she waned to. She wasn't allowed up here. Nobody was, for a reason that was presumably so serious That it wasn't explained to anybody. Nothing seemed wrong about this place. Sure, it was a little overgrown with weeds in some places, and there were cobwebs everywhere. But it was perfect in Mayas heart nonetheless. She could see the night sky sparkle with tiny dots of stars, light years away but still showing off their beauty, even from so far away. It mesmerised her with how wonderfully peaceful it all was. She thought about what it would be like to be a star; up in the Darkness of space. She thought more and more about how she would've preferred to be born as a star, how happy she would be to be unbothered by anything. Nothing could harm her up there. Maya wanted nothing more than to be left alone, and yet thw answer to that problem was in the millions if not billions of stars staring down at her for her entire life.she sat and stared for what felt like hours as the cold wind made her feel more at home here than in her own room. She forgot all about the darkness, Mymys snoring, the broken glass, and simply stared at the sky. She was at home with the stars.

"Maya?"

Coco's voice snapped maya out of her trance instantly. She whipped her head around to see coco standing there in her nightgown, seemingly unbothered as maya was about the cold.

"Maya? What are you doing out here?"

"C-coco! I u-uhm... I d-didnt mean to break anything, I promise! It was an accident! I know I shouldn't be up right now, but I had a nightmare and I couldn't go back to sleep and my throat felt weird and i-

Maya stumbled over her words as she desperately tried to explain herself. Coco quickly cut off her rambling.

"Woah, hey...calm down. What's wrong? Was it yesterday? I know Mymy gets under your skin but we shouldn't say things like that to each other-"

"What? No, it's not that, I'm just...your gonna get mad at me because I messed up and I did something wrong and i-im so sorry I messed up. I didn't mean to and...

"I'm sorry im such a screw up."

Maya sounded much more on edge as she continued to ramble. Coco let her go on, as she seemed as thought she needed to say something to someone. Anyone. She knew that Maya trusted her despite her wanting to push everyone away and be alone. She might have been the only one who really wanted to help.

"Do you want to talk? I'm here for you, you know that."

"B-but your supposed to hate me! Everyone hates me. I mess up all the time a-and I say the wrong things and I hurt your feelings.."

"Why would I hate you? Don't say these things about yourself, please."

"I-i don't want to be alone..."

Maya looked awful, like she was about to collapse into peices at any moment. Coco knew what she had to do to help.

"Oh..Maya.. come here.."

The two sisters embraced under the moonlight as maya weeped into coco's shoulders. Maya clamped her hands over Coco as she broke down, her tears soaking Coco's nightdress, Not that Coco cared at all. Maya managed to get out a few words out of her mouth while she was crying.

"W-why... A-am I l-like this..."

"Your not hurting me at all. Don't worry. I'm here, Maya. No-ones going to hurt you. Your safe, OK? I'm here."

Maya managed to calm down to the point that she wasn't crying as much, but was still shaking like a scared dog. Coco was still Hugging her tightly, however. She wasn't sure what to do other than hug her. Maybe that was the only thing she could do.After a while, Maya fell silent. Coco whispered in her ear to make sure she didn't jump up

"Maya...do you want to go to bed now? It's very late.

"Y-y..yeah.."

"If you want, I can go into your room tomorrow and check up on you. Would you be okay with that?"

Maya shuffled her head around. Coco assumed that was a yes, but didn't want to check if it was in case she upset her. Coco helped maya up off the floor, and she took her hand as they walked out of the balcony. Coco noticed that there were shards of glass close to the stairs. She assumed this was the sound that she heard that woke her up.

"Did you drop this, Maya?"

"*Sniff* Yeah."

"You can help me clean it up, if you want."

"O-ok.." They both cleaned up the mess without much issue. Afterwards, Coco did one last thing before she walked back to her room. She hugged maya as tightly as she could, almost talking her of off the floor. Maya seemed alot happier after that. They both walked off. Back to their rooms, with Maya feeling like she had lost something, and yet gained something at the same time. She fell asleep while Hugging her blobfish plush as tight as Coco hugged her, with no nightmares plaguing her for the rest of the night.