nightmare : my muse coming to your muses aid when they awake from a nightmare.
the courage to face nightmares and to accept it is a courage not worth speaking . and it is more a testament to the endurance of suffering than any form of stalwart strength of heart — of knowing what comes next , and being ready for it . of knowing the events start to finish , backwards , and from any point of the narrative if it were to be plucked out by blind hands over the rim of a magicians hat like a show rabbit . each waking from it is never not draining , leaves a tiredness in the consciousness that lasts all day , addles some part of the mind that refuses to be fully put away like on any other day . a lot of zareena’s sleep coasts these particular brands of edges . she can name on a singular hand the amount of dreams that have made themselves constant to her , and made themselves the only ones to be had ( though most nights , she is blessed with a dreamless sleep , all dark with no color ) . has become well versed enough to reside on the precipice of being awake and yet still sleep — and watches it play out with some sense of lucidity like a theater showing . it makes it easier that way — because it’s better than reliving it . and she is not always right to do so , when at the most vulnerable , one can be easily overpowered by what sleep billows in .
it is her old living room , she is a child again . there is her family , scattered about the area , shining in firelight and the smell of burning wood . at some point she feels herself go from watching , phantom blooded , to being transposed back within girlhoods first seasons the instant she relaxes , when she thinks , i want to feel my brother’s hand in mine . i want to feel the rug before our hearth . then it is cold and white , and she sees a boy . at least nearly half a decade more in years — his skin is as porcelain , beautiful and with a strong jaw . eyes blue and hair half caught between blonde itself and a gold threaded brown . she’d liked to have believed it was more brown . for a moment it is just stillness and staring , then he’s grinning while perspective warps , fisheyed vision and the heart stops .
the flesh morphs , the jaw devouring - a hungering anamorphosis that shifts , alabaster to be - speckled , short stranded pelage .
a smile is not so much different from a sneer — teeth mashing snarl , unnatural , the way beasts lips though aching back in violence still smile . a curtain of darkest grey and nigh impenetrable black swathes the air to something border lining physical . like water , slightly viscous — jelly esque . jellied legs , spattered to gum vulnerable red . but she feels snow : the temperature feels like the coldness of ice and winter wind . there is no snow . she can only see blackness and unchangeable fear in the form of physical malice . phantom pain — a flesh branding burn . the man no longer laughs , because there is no man . the remnants of his chuckle is a vibration still felt against the eardrums and within the mind , busy like bees and filling like cotton . the color of lupine eyes are inconsistent — they bleed and wash away like the color clinging to cheap fabric and start blue to some intermittent grey and pulse burnished gold . a feeling of sickness , of slow choking ( hands upon the throat of invisible fingers that dig to feel pulse at its barest ) , blood , and that of an open mouth and tongue . she sees a man — you killed him — she sees a wolf — it killed you . it kills you .
bursting — collapsing synapses in the form of stolen grief . fangs that twist and surge , covet the neck , eat you . they are hands . they are her hands that grasp in sweat lacquered panic and dig in above the clavicle . there is a raw aching in her vocal cords , in the depths behind her teeth and she cannot tell if for once in years she has screamed or if the wind has done so for her . an extension of a separate being , but connected at the atoms . there’s a deafness to the room that only resounds after the loudest of noise — her chest heaves , and she tries to blink the spots from her eyes while a vignette paints its edges . a wind buffets the heaviness of a dresser against the wall . something cracks . a sharp , clear thing . lip shivering wheeze , pre sob meter signature and a mind still addled by harmful sleep .
zoya’s presence is marked by a gap and the thought , the sheets are too hot , the muscle deep autopilot that has her in prayer like kneeling at the side of her place of rest . the cold of the floor is a shock , stark contrast from the uncomfortable heat of her own skin ( and it helps befuddle the mind just a little less ) . removed . zareena feels removed and it is wholly in cause of the mind warring with itself and its anxieties . tongue chases over bottom lip , expects to taste blood , you know this is a bad dream — a terror ages in the making and yet you struggle to wrench your freedom from it . it holds you much too tightly , like an uncomfortable hug, and still you think of that jelly ( the jelly : your terror , your instinct , your detaching. you , you , you . ) . you close your eyes — you blink , and you see an overlay of his face and a wolf in the vast blank of the eyelids . you wrench your eyes open and the pain bleeds to the shadows of the room . she swears she sees them there . but she knows they aren’t . within that darkness is an empty corner . it was always empty . grounding comes in focusing on what is real . the body beside her that exudes a warmth not scorching . the two hands upon each of her forearms , they lead her up — and she grips back . feels the person within flowing dark hair and piercing eyes . she knows she looks at zoya , but it feels like she’s staring through . and it’s odd — to hold eye contact and yet have it feel fully intangible . like a ghost —
and she cannot tell if it is the haunt or the possession .
but what is possession if not a haunting within oneself most physical , most opposing , most oppressive ? what is a haunt ,
if not a looming possession , not yet condensed , not yet taken in to be hidden and then eaten raw from within , as is a festering fruit ?
a deep breath , a mimic of the pattern of oxygen the other takes in and another closing of the eyes . this time it does not bare presence of ill handled projections . it is bare . it is empty , like the corner of the room . it is empty . when gold meets cooler toned irises , zareena seems almost calm . peels free her fingers from zoya’s forearms and retreats upon herself as she comes into the world .
❛ i am awake , ❜ she sits upon the edge of half hanging duvet and sweat soaked sheets bunched at the foot of the mattress and searches , hand feeling for shoes , opposing extremities resting at the center of her own forehead , ❛ i’m awake . ❜
turnnoffyourmind
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