eyes open. eyes see. brain processes information, talks to eyes. eyes talk back. she see things.
the room is dark, the ceiling indistinguishable. she has seen so many in the past weeks that none of them are familiar anymore. no comforting thing to gaze up at upon waking.
too dark, need to see better. brain says things, pupils dilate. her eyes adjust. she's stiff, she's breathing hard. she can feel the sweat upon her forehead and on her thighs. bad dreams again? of course. something more, tonight.
such terrible things.
she sits up. her back aches. in fact, much of her body aches. she's so tense and she can't relax. the room is swimming. is it her room? is it a sea? is it a desert or a tundra or the inside of a computer? she can't tell. it could be all those things. her head hurts, too.
she touches her sheets. they melt away and trickle onto the floor, where they burst into snakes and slither away. under the doors, through the walls, into the other rooms. then they're right back on her bed.
that's strange, she thinks. didn't they just leave?
hallucinating again, she thinks. she knows it's happening, and then she forgets again. shouldn't she be doing something? fixing something, or going somewhere. somewhere in the room. it's a whole world, after all.
she turns her head, and whimpers when pain flashes through it. she looks at the dresser and sees a ship being tossed about on a roiling sea of red and black. got to save it, she thinks. we'll all die otherwise.
she pushes the sheets back. the air is cold upon her bare legs and she shivers, but she stands anyway. the room sways around her and the bed disappears. she slogs through the sea, swimming endlessly, trying to reach the ship. she reaches out, desperate, and touches it.
just a dresser. why am i over here and not in bed? ship disappeared...
she rubs her eyes and thinks, i'll just wake up some more, and then everything will go away, and i'll be okay, and i can sleep and wake up in the morning and forget this happened again...
she walks to the window. the floor is wooden and cold on her bare feet. they make a padding sound as she walks. it sounds many times amplified.
touch the glass. glass is liquid. liquid? it ripples when she touches it, and she puts her hand through it. it's cold and almost gelatinous. she pulls her hand back out. no glass on it. touch the glass again, glass shatters. rains down on the floor at her feet and exposes her to the dark world outside. it's particularly windy because her room is so high.
she takes a deep breath and shuts her eyes. what's she going to do about this mess now?
she opens her eyes and she's back in bed, curled up with the sheets around her. she swears and wonders why. the window is better, though, fixed, so she doesn't have to worry about that anymore...
she tosses and turns. please sleep, she says to herself. pretty please? she says it out loud, as if that makes it any better.
she puts her head down on the pillow and pulls the sheets up further. she can feel every fibre in them, every last one them. there are so many - how do they all get there? it's funny the things we make as humans. sheets and blankets, all woven together, we don't even think about how many fibres there are in them. they're so many, and she can't pay attention to them all...
she can feel her heartbeat in her head. it's thumping like the pain.
she thinks that the ceiling is a window into the vastness of space, and she stares at it for a long time and sees many things. things that no humans have ever seen before. she tries to remember all of them so she can tell Zero tomorrow. he'd like to know.
she turns to lay on her stomach, and settles down. she lets out a little yelp and pushes herself back up. she decides to lie on her side instead. her breasts are sore, on top of everything else. she knows what'll come next, eventually at least, and doesn't want to deal with it. the cramps are the worst. she'll worry about those later.
she's trying to keep from counting out the fibres in her sheets. she can still feel them, and she wishes they would go away, or stop making themselves so obvious.
she turns her weary eyes to the lamp on the nightstand. no, it's a lighthouse. a great, big lighthouse. she glances across the room again. the ship is back. she calls to it. she knows she has to keep it safe. something about it is important. it has something special inside of it.
maybe it has the answers. or her memories and her hopes and her dreams. that would be nice, wouldn't it? her ship was going to come to port, if only she could keep it from being dashed upon the rocks that littered the floor of her room, beneath the waves that were sweeping past her bed...
she wants to cry. it's so frustrating. she can't help the ship, can't work the lighthouse. her sheets are gone again, gone to be fish in the sea. she can't take it anymore. she screams and screams, and wonders if Zero will come to rescue her.
he doesn't.
she clutches wildly at the sheets, which have come back again, and pulls them over her head. she tries to slow her breathing. she thinks of Melissa, and she thinks of Melissa stroking her hair and calling her Med and telling her that it would be all right, the things would go away and she would be okay again, and that no, she was not crazy, just having a bad night...
she thinks about that for a very long time, and wishes very much that it was actually happening. outside the sheets she thinks it's probably beginning to snow, because that's what happens when you're on a mountain. it's so cold.
she thinks of a kiss on the cheek and a hug, and more reassurances. this has happened so many times, she remembers, and she hates them all. she hates them and she hates herself and she hates her mind for playing this game with her. it's enough to make her want to kill herself. then she wouldn't have to worry about them anymore.
no, Melissa says in her mind, don't kill yourself, because they'll go away, I promise that they will, and I'll be here for you.
all right, she says out loud, and she moves her empty hand away from her head. she didn't want to shoot herself anyways.
besides, she imagined Melissa would say, if you kill yourself, what would i do without you?
"I don't know," Medli says into her pillow, which she realizes is indeed a pillow and not some sort of storm cloud.
i would be lonely, that's how Melissa would reply. so don't do that, stay with me.
"Okay," Medli says, "I'll stay...I promise..."
she shuts her eyes slowly.
eyes don't see anything. totally dark. brain quiets down, says goodnight to the eyes. brain stops firing off in any direction it likes and relaxes.
she drifts away to sleep, still murmuring, and does not hallucinate any more.