@benji-imes

[The nightmare always feels more vivid during testing - Annie feels the shadows of thorns tightening around her throat. The labs are too eerie, too clean and white, and the doctors all have blank, unfeeling faces.

She’s always hated having blood drawn. Over the years she’s had a lot of blood tests, in real life too; to figure out if there was something she was deficient in that might be causing her anxiety, her sleeplessness. It’s worse in the nightmare. She always waits for the moment when the needle slips under her skin, and she always waits for the blood to spurt or the pain to come or the tech to grab her wrist and tell her she has to stay forever, the doctor’s personal lab rat for experimenting on.

It’s not happened yet, but it does feel like a ‘yet’. The anticipation is sitting like a heavy stone in her stomach as she waits for them to tell her they’re ready for her. Annie is too frightened to look around. She thinks there might be something right behind her; or maybe it’s just a breeze on the back of her neck. Her arms fold across her ribs, in case that might protect her, and her fists squeeze tighter and tighter.] Wake up, Annie, wake up, Annie, wake up, Annie...

[Like a prayer she whispers the same three words she’s been whispering for five years. Something terrible is going to happen today; she isn’t sure why she thinks that, but she can feel it. Under the soft whirr of machinery, her whispers are nothing more than a susurrous breath. The door opens, and Annie jumps, receding back further into her chair as a foot crosses the threshold, then a leg, revealing not the monster of her imagination, but Benji.

He must be here for testing, too. She hopes they don’t hurt him. The fingers of her right hand encircle the wrist of her left, squeezing hard as if that might hold the panic beneath her skin a little longer. It’s funny, she remembers the squeeze of anxiety when she first met Benji, but that seemed like a frivolous, schoolgirlish flutter next to the creeping sense of terror the labs bring upon her. She wants to smile at him, and remember how warm and soft she’d felt when he asked if he could talk to her again, but all she can think about is how terrible things happen in the lab, and she doesn’t want anyone she likes to be trapped here.] 

Hi, Benji. [Despite her best effort to sound normal, her voice is small and tentative, and she’s not looking at Benji as much as she is behind him, as though waiting for something else to follow him through the door.] 

Estava caminhando em direção ao banheiro, quando ouviu uma voz que soou muito familiar. Será que era alguém que conhecia como Rosalía e saberia de seu passado? Ou será que foi alguém que conheceu recentemente? A memória lhe falhou, demorando a associar a um rosto, mas quando se virou para confirmar, entendeu o motivo.  —— Eu conheço essa voz! ——  Falou, ao se aproximar, sem se preocupar muito em interromper alguma conversa.  —— Desculpa interromper vocês, rapazes, mas... Você é o Benjamin, da rádio? 

With: @benjii-parker

Tuah closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the warmth that seeped through his skin without burning him. his new signet ring sat snugly on his index finger, glinting from the morning sun. It took him awhile to step out from his house after he had received his daylight charm, that deep-rooted fear caused him to make excuses for himself to stay inside instead of welcoming the warmth of sunlight into his life once again. With his partner’s help, Tuah slowly entered the world that he once knew, first from the curtain being drawn in his house then finally here, sitting at the park, basking in the warm light.