The Bottom of the Hole

Part 1 - The Morning Of

"no, please no more," Jeffery could feel himself falling through that fucked rabbit hole. He tried kicking his legs to maybe push himself towards a wall.

"jeffery"                 "hey"   "Jeffery"            "JEFF"           "up"       "jeff"  "cmon love. WaKe up now"

    "up"          "jeff"   "hey"               "hheyyy JeFFORy"        "jayyyy"                  "time to GeT uP Jefff"

He heard the voices trying to get him to open his eyes. He knew if he did they would let him fall even faster. Like they were holding him and voluntarily dropped him when his eye's opened.

"don't you hear us jeffory"   "up, up now"     "noo no it's JEFFery"           "Jeffory"            "up now"

"do you wANT To make us sad " "up" " Why Wont H e WAKE UP"            "cmon this isn't like you" 

It was those three voices that wouldn't shut up.  One he dubbed as Ella. She was over bearing and smothered him with what he thought she considered as love. She called him by his name and was the worst. She reminded him of his mother Elaine. The next Aaron. He would call him Jeffory. He reminded Jeff of his grandfather, Adam. He was old and hard of hearing.

He knew Jeff's name was Jeffery, but he would only call him Jeffory sometimes to tease his daughter-in-law. When he didn't want to tease her he would call Jeff, son. And then the rat. It never said Jeff's name but it always had something to say. Like get up, or it would laugh at him, or something like that. He called it the rat cause he was pretty sure that voice was supposed to be some sort of combination of his siblings. 

Over his 14 years alive he remembered there being other voices, but they never made a deep enough impression for Jeff to name them. They came and went every few months. But the big three were a part of every nightmare since the beginning. 

"Jeff..jeff...hey jeff..."

That kinda sounded like rat. Jeff felt sick. Or maybe it was anxiety. "AOuuUamph," Jeffery curled up into a tight ball holding his stomach. He looked up and tried to unclench his face enough to open his eyes and see his attacker.

"Oh my god," it was his sister, Riley. She threw her head back laughing and the leg she used to kick Jeff awake was in mid air, shacking as she laughed. Jeff felt even more sick and curled his head back down into his chest and hugged his stomach even tighter. "Wai-ah hahaha. No wait, I didn't mean to kick you that hard. aw- ah ha..ha, wait lemme catch my breath."

Riley stood up out of her chair and tired taking deep breaths. Jeff looked over at her desk and saw her computer on and her desktop dirty with several pens, pencils and papers. It was Saturday so his dad and brother would be sleeping till 12 at the latest, so he concluded his mom wanted Riley to wake him up for something. He uncurled himself and tossed off his blanket. He had gone skateboarding with some friends yesterday after school and he was so sore when he came home he slept in his clothes.