Duskwood

15.

Bang.

Lightning lit up the sky around them, the thunder shook the entirety of the motel and shook Gabi awake where she sat up instantly and gasped for breath, panicked.

Her fingers splayed across the sheets, tears falling down from her eyes and she reached up to brush them away. The lightning outside crackled as if it was laughing at her panic, at her heart beating heavy in her chest.

The motel room was dark except for the blinking red light of the vacancy sign mixing with the rolling thunder and lightning outside, it almost blended in a beautiful display. The bed groaned against her thin frame, head turning over to Jude fast asleep beside her and she lowered her legs over the side of the bed, bare feet landing against the thick carpet beneath. 

She took a breath, deep into her lungs, heart beat slowing as she walked quietly towards the bathroom. She hadn't taken her medication, Jude always reminded her to take her medication.

Why hadn't she taken her medication?

She paused in front of the mirror, eyebrows knitting together in thought.

"Medication..." She muttered to herself, a near whisper.

Gabi left the bathroom, walking towards their luggage in the corner of the hotel room where she knelt down and began to unzip, rummage through her own luggage in search of the medication she took and she found it, the orange bottle with the label and her name on it.

There was just a couple of pills left as she stood up and held it towards the blinking light of the vacancy sign outside of their motel room.

Two pills left...but she hadn't been taking it...or had she?

She couldn't remember the last time she opened the bottle or swallowed the pills down her throat. She turned back towards Jude sleeping in the bed, clutching the bottle towards her body as she walked slowly back to the bathroom.

She shut the door behind her instantly upon entrance, setting the bottle down on the corner of the sink as she looked at herself in the mirror.

"You're not crazy..." A plea to herself, that her mind wasn't going, that she was grounded and sane. "You're not crazy." She repeated.

It was almost a chant on the words, a whisper and hiss to herself to keep her mind from feeling like it was going to explode with all the questions it held, with all the visions it was conjuring up. She wasn't crazy, no, she wasn't...she was.

Her eyes moved quickly, hand reaching for the bottle and it slipped from her grasp and tumbled to the floor, rolling across the tiles.

"Fuck." She cursed at herself as she dropped down to her knees and began to search for it.

Her fingers reached, hand brushing against the rug on the floor where she felt something wet against her fingertips and she drew her hand back, it was vibrant and red against her fingers. She rubbed them together, the bottle no longer the object of her mind as the blood coated her fingertips and she lifted her head slowly towards the source.

It trailed, dripping alongside the bathtub and further up until her eyes locked on the bloody arm of a young woman laying within the bathtub, her eyes widened and in fear she flew backwards from the body pooling blood, eyes stabbed with those roses like many others she had seen before.

She gasped sharp, pressing heavy palms into the ground as she sat frozen against the corner wall near the sink. The room shifted, some dark bathroom into one of light that flowed through the little window above the toilet. 

There the woman relaxed, blood gone from her vision as she took her bath and hummed a tune sweetly, the curtain drawn just enough to drape her arm over it as she tilted her head back against a pillow and closed her eyes.

Gabi sat in her corner, watching the scene as it unfolded, like an outer body experience or a form of sleep paralysis that she couldn't move or wake up from. Her eyes were blown open in terror, breath trembling in her lungs, eyes twisting towards the door as it opened with heavy footsteps entering inside.

"There you are." The woman in the bathtub perked up, smile stretching across her face as the figure of a man came into view.

She lifted a leg upwards, out of the water and moved it towards the man who wrapped his fingertips around her ankle. The woman giggled like a school girl in love.

"Won't you join me?" She asked him, there was a lust in her eyes that would not be settled so easily.

And then it turned, the man's grip tightened and the woman began to struggle against it as he yanked back and pulled her under the water of the bathtub. She coughed, gasped for air as water thrashed around and Gabi saw it, the glisten of a sharp blade as it was raised in the air and came slicing down into the woman's flesh, over and over.

"Gabi." His voice was soothing where the vision was not. "Gabi." A mere whisper in her mind as she watched the murder of a woman she didn't know, the screams echoed in her mind.

Jude's hand collapsed around her shoulder, stirring her awake in the chair by the window of the motel room. She sucked in a breath, rubbed at her eyes as she looked up towards him and he smiled down at her. 

"Hey, good morning." He said to her and she half-smiled back to him.

Licking her lips as she adjusted herself in the seat, "Good morning." Gabi cleared her throat of the hoarseness of sleep.

"I was just about to go get some coffee and something to eat at the diner, want to come?" He asked.

She shook her head, "No...I'm...good."

"Okay well, how about I bring you something? Any requests?" Jude tilted his head.

Gabi pulled her sweater tighter to herself and she shrugged her shoulders. "Um...surprise me, I guess..."

"Surprise it is." He leaned towards her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I'll be back in a bit."

His exit was a welcomed thing in her mind but also not, to be alone in her own thoughts was a cruelty in it's own right. Her eyes glanced towards the window, watching as Jude headed out of the dirt parking lot towards the diner and then she saw it, sitting mere steps from their motel room door.

Their car.