How I Survived

Part 11

It's been two hours since I've decoded the note and the letter and I'm sitting on my bed painting with Doja next to me. Something i tended to do was overwork myself and it was extremely unhealthy and toxic so I'm trying to get rid of that habit.

I decided to take stop painting and take a quick nap, so setting my alarm for half an hour I took a quick shower, changed my bandages on my thigh and arm and changed into a beige tank top and sweats :

I made sure to let Doja outside and caught up on my much needed sleep.
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"What will you do for me lovey" blondie spoke walking into the room with a blade in his hand.

The room was cold, freezing even, I could see white vapour come out of my mouth with each breath and my hands were shaking furiously rattling the chains.

"H-help me" tears ran down her face as though it was a competition.

"NO!"

He chuckled throwing his head back as though it was all a game to him "you think this bad?"

The door to the room swung open and Astraea was brought in, hands and feeet shackled, face muddy and eyes broken.

"STOP!" I struggled against the chains, every cell in my body screaming to help.

"When will you learn, your nothing in this world, you'll be the death of everyone you pretend you don't love"

Aries was thrown into the room, no shackles bounding him, but a huge red splatter where his heart is, blood dripping out his mouth like clockwork.

My mind was shutting down, the pain I felt was too much, especially when two of his men walked up to Astraea and Rose, slitting there throats, blood splattering everywhere. I could feel it drip down my face.

"NO! NO NO NO. IM GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU" I was scared, terrified even, my triplets gone along with an innocent soul.

"Wake up, it's not real" I could heard someone repeat over and over. Looking around the cell I started to doubt if this was reality.

The scenery changed. I was back in my bedroom, the bodies of my whole family lay scattered on the floor.

The thoughts are accelerating inside my head. I want them to slow so I can breathe but they won't. My breaths come in gasps and I feel like I will black out. My heart is hammering inside my chest like it belongs to a rabbit running for its skin.

My brain had shut down. I was clammy and there was the glisten of a cold sweat. My eyes were as wide as if someone was coming to deliver the fatal blow. Yet what i saw, no-one else could see. Trapped in my own psychosis, a living nightmare for one, tailor made by my own brain to play on my deepest fears.

Each second submerged in fear made a permanent mark on my heart, and a vivid imagination made me wander whether it was just my mind playing tricks or reality.

My eyes furiously scanned the room before I heard someone speak "look at your hands Phoenix count your fingers"

That's it! In dreams you have more or less then 10 fingers or they would look disfigured.

I looked down at my hands that were red from being clenched too hard. "O-one" my breath was shaky as I tried to figure out reality from imagination "two, th-hree, four"

"Five, si-ix, s-seven, eight, nine, ten"

My breathing had considerably slowed down, my eyes managing to stay focused onto my still shaking hands.

Pain changes people, it makes them trust less, overthink more, and shut people out.

Panic is biological, and from what i can see there are two kinds, though strongly interwoven, naturally. The first is a kind of intense worry that you could override if you wanted to, that in this panic. Painful though it is, you can keep on functioning. It is still chronic stress, damages your body, your brain, even alters the expression of hundreds of genes. It's bad, very bad.

The second kind is worse. The second kind is when your brain is so bombarded by fear that your actions become erratic and escalate, in this time some become a danger to themselves and others, they can poison society with their paranoias.

i guess there is a level three too, when some become incapacitated by panic attacks and unable to make any choices at all, when ptsd takes over, when the brain fails to function in any normal fashion.

I was probably a mix of the second and third one five minutes ago.

Alas five minutes past of complete silence, as far as i know the whole family was home seeing as they were all in my room. I stayed silent as they realised I wasn't going to talk and left the room whether they wanted to or not was left unknown to me.

Lucien stayed though.

He sat at the end of my bed as i was at the top, my back against the headboard and my knees tucked into my chest.

"I'm here," he whispers "you can talk to me or not talk to me, but I'm here."

I shook my head "i could be all sad but I have shit to do" i tucked my still shaking hands into my sweatpants pockets and got off the bed, a headache forming.

He looked visibly shocked at that "maybe you should take a break for today"

"Should i just call up the very people plotting against me and ask for a day off"

I entered the toilet and took a cold shower hoping to wash away all the memories. I leaned my head back against the cold shower was, a plan forming in my head. I feel like I'm always running to catch a train, but i never quite make it.

Getting out the shower i plaited my hair into two french braids and changed into this:

As always i made sure that i was armed and with that i grabbed my phone and headed out the house, avoiding all members of the family ultimately saving myself from extremely awkward conversations.