To the Nights in the Hold of Stone (BillDip)

I Can't Be You(11)

Pacifica POV

The shack was a tail spun reck. It's been two weeks since Bill started Weirdmageddon.

Everyone was stretched to the brink. Those who hadn't been turned to stone by the flying eyes or captured by the other rampaging demons had come flooding into the shack. This time around Mabel's Grunkles had been better prepared to house the survivors but enough food, water, and beds did not make up for the emotional and mental mind fuck this all was.

Pain shot through my legs with every step as I climbed the stairs to check on Mabel. She'd pushed herself too hard during the first week, taking the lead of all rescue runs, going out into the town to find survivors and bring them back for shelter. When she and her crew started coming back with less and less people she started taking on more care responsibilities for the wounded, being both a doctor and therapist. She spent her nights, or what we started considering nights under the perpetual red sky, in the basement with Ford and Stan. She'd shut me out, other than lying next to me in bed for the few hours I could get her to rest she wouldn't talk to me. I could see the pain losing her brother was causing her but she wouldn't address it.

That was till it became too much to bare.

I don't know what happened. One night she returned to the attic, shared with her friends and some other town teens, and climbed into bed sobbing. In the morning she didn't get up. I had to start bringing her food, forcing her to eat it.

"Mabel," I whispered into the darkened space. Towels that could be spared hung over the window to block it out. Stepping over other sleeping figures I tried to open the door to her old room, but it didn't budge. "Mabel, it's me, please let me in."

I got no response. I stood there leaning my head against the locked wooden door, warring with myself. Fear and exhaustion had long tackled the pit of anxiety in my chest, leaving a gaping hole.

"Pacifica?" Hushed came the question from the darkness somewhere behind me.

"Yeah." The answer barely a breath.

"Can you come with me? I need water." It was one of the younger kids from in town. They weren't quite old enough to remember the last Weirdmaggedon, only the impression of fear it left on them and the adults around them. They were barely aware of the horrors going on outside the shack, being much more afraid of the horrors inside the shack.

Ford had become a looming figure, fighting with Stan and growling at anyone else who came within a foot radius of him. He's cursed out many of the younger teens for no reason. One kid, I think the one I was standing with in the kitchen, stepped in front of him making him drop a glass he'd been holding. Ford raised his hand at the kid, if it wasn't for Stan grabbing his arm we all think he might have hit him.

A shadow filled the door frame and the child flinched, "Pacifica, have you seen Mabel today?" It was only Stan, my shoulders dropped.

"No, she still won't talk to me."

He exhaled, tension forming in his frame. "Try again. I can't have her going off the rails too."

"Yeah, I know." I didn't have to wait much longer with the kid, Stan was never too far from Ford and everyone knew that, we both went back upstairs. He thanked me quietly before rejoining his friends. They couldn't be much older than 12, just like we were.

I tried her door again, the food I'd left still on the floor untouched, I was only met with silence. Slumping against the door I rested my head on the doorframe, watching the younger group in the dark. "Your grunkles are worried about you." The boy had curled up into the lap of a girl who might have been older than him. "I'm worried about you." She ran her fingers through his hair, leaning her own body weight on another girl sitting against the wall. "I miss you, and I'm so scared. I'm scared of Bill and the monsters outside the shack." The hinges of the door dug sharply into the base of my neck. "I'm also scared of Ford, he's becoming so different and without you I don't know if Stan can help him. They need you Mabel. They need you, they can't lose both of you, and I can't be you." Tears dripped down my cheeks, I didn't have the strength to wipe them away.