The Long way Down

Faith

I don't remember waking up afterwards. It was like a sudden rush of clarifying air, filling in around me. Swathing me in the familiar glow of the classroom. Like reality was shifting around me, replacing one world with another. 

It felt as if my reality itself was an illusion for a moment. The warmth of some pleasant dream. All my foggy memories worn into a brain felled, entranced by what could be instead of what was. 

I still find it hard to articulate the sensation, but I found myself right where I had started. Sitting in the back of the class. 

I glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes left. 

...

At around midnight or so, It hit me again. I was about halfway through one of my biology worksheets before I felt the gentle throbbing, that same plague of exhaustion setting into my bones. I hadn't noticed it, having been preoccupied, but upon waking again I'd finally felt alert, at least for a few hours. 

I tried to finish my homework, but found myself unable to concentrate. Cutting my losses, I went to bed. 

...

That night I found myself unable to stay asleep for more than a couple of hours, or even minutes at a time. I'd continually find myself shaken awake, only to realize that I was still alone in my bed. Sheets twisted around my arms and legs, dead tired. 

Nothing I did seemed to matter. Each time, I'd shakily down a few gulps of water and go back to sleep, but It refused to take. I'd just wake up more and more exhausted with every cycle. 

The heat started to get to me. I continually felt hot, almost suffocating eventually. I tried sleeping without my sheets. I still woke covered in sweat. Tried stripping down to my boxers. It didn't seem to help. 

The last time I woke, I managed to crawl my way to the window. I threw it open, and felt a rush of freezing air wash over my face. The relief flooded my senses, as I pressed my face against the screen. Trying to capture as much wind as I could through the mesh. Smelling the rain carried on it. Feeling the moonlight. 

...

I woke about two hours later on the floor under my window. In pain and sore across my entire body. I tried to pull myself up. My hands and upper arms were littered with deep gashes caked with dirt and debris. 

In a panic, I raced to the bathroom, doing everything I could to ignore the intense pain the motion put me in. The pressure building behind my eyes with every step. 

I glared into the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot, and my face was caked with what appeared to be soot. I pulled my swollen lips apart with my freezing cold, almost blue shaded finger. My gums were bloody and it looked like one of my teeth had been chipped. 

At this point, I quickly locked the door behind me and threw myself into the shower. My mind was racing at a hundred miles a second. I had no idea what had happened, or what was going to happen to me. The paranoia was quickly gripping my chest, as I erratically scrubbed down every inch of my forearms, even past the point of reopening some of the wounds. 

I tried to rationalize what might've happened, but found I couldn't piece together the slightest cogent recollection. Thinking back on the night previous, all I could hear were screams. Long, agonizingly shrill screams, brimming with malice and fear. 

Trying to remember anything beyond that made my mind ache violently, to the point where I found it difficult to see straight. My blood started to pool in the bottom of the shower. I couldn't seem to reconnect my consciousness with my body. I felt like I was floating in and out of reality. 

I don't really remember much about the next few minutes. Just the harshness of the bathroom lights. How it pierced my eyes. It felt blinding. I had to crawl out of the shower. I couldn't hear my own thoughts over the pounding of the water. I could feel it in my head. The impact. Shattering through my temples. 

I threw the bathroom door open and gasped for breath away from the layers of steam coming off the tap. 

The air helped me focus enough to pull myself together, more or less. 

When all was said and done, I managed to walk away looking mostly normal, if slightly under-slept. The scrapes on my arms weren't as bad as I had originally thought they'd be. If anything, I'd made them far worse. A few bandages and a white lie or two managed to conceal the extent of my misery.

...

A week or so later, and I'd only gotten worse. Sleep evaded me just as much as I evaded it. My fear and eventual hatred of the toxic urge to close my eyes increased in direct proportion to how alluring it became. How vital it felt, especially when I was alone.  

That became more common as the days went by. I couldn't keep up at school, and interpersonal conversation became a cruel joke for me. More often then not, I'd spend hours every night staring blankly out the window. 

It was hardly any use fighting it. When I'd inevitably fall asleep, I'd only wake up far worse then I'd started. My parents, as oblivious as I'd tried to keep them, couldn't help but be concerned. I'd downplay my injuries and fucked up demeanor as best I could, but they weren't buying it by the end. 

Friday morning, everything changed. 

I'd been more or less dreamless for the last couple of nights, but the nightmare finally broke through. The most vivid depictions of wrenched pain and misery. An overbearing weight of evil. Nothing human could compare. It was all encompassing, almost. 

All dark. Wet, and cold. Something burrowed deep underground, feeding into the roots of the forest. I felt myself running through it. Slipping behind. Crawling, groveling but I couldn't escape. 

I felt the trees reaching out to consume me. Growing through the back of my mouth, slipping between the layers of my skin. Earth, clinging to my legs as I tried to run. The smell of rotting wood filling my nostrils. Enveloping my body, until I couldn't run. Pulling me to the ground. 

The light dawned slowly. Barely able to slip between the edges of the clouds. Reaching me through a haze. 

My back was damp with dew, and my body was freezing cold. My arms stretched out to the sides, with the grass blowing gently around my naked flesh. 

I looked up to see my house, silent and lifeless. Waiting for the remnants of the night to finally dissipate. The horrors of my night slowly giving way to the fear and confusion of my waking world. The branches of our old oak tree stretching over me like bony fingers. 

It took me an eternity to finally pry myself off the ground.

I ended up skipping school. Somehow, I knew that I had to go back to the house. Or maybe I'd finally been driven crazy.  Regardless, whatever was happening to me was getting worse, and I couldn't begin to comprehend what I needed to do to fix it. All I could think to do was go back to the pond. 

I'd been thinking about talking to Ruby as well. For some reason, the idea sent a cringe down my spine. But it didn't matter. I just needed all of it to stop. It had been hard enough just losing S.O. without all of this psycho shit. 

I'd gotten nearly all the way there before I changed my mind. I'd already been on the edge. The feeling had been getting worse. Though I'd been slowly learning to cope with it, the pain increased. The headaches were getting bad enough that I'd started habitually downing some leftover pain meds I scrounged up from my parents medicine cabinet. 

They hardly worked any more, but it was better than nothing. 

I'd gotten to the crosswalk adjacent to the campus before I fully felt it. Something had changed inside of me. Suddenly I was incredibly aware of myself. I knew, without the shadow of a doubt that if I kept going, I was going to continue to suffer. 

Shouldering my backpack, I took one last look at the school before turning around and heading for the house.