The Beacon [h.s]

5

Nyla West

"Nyla! Please! I can't! Help! Someone help me! I can't take it anymore!"

My eyes shoot open with my heart dropping down to my stomach. I scramble off my bed and yank my bedroom door open, running down the hallway as I try not to trip over my own feet. Everything takes a pause in my mind while I solely focus on the screaming coming behind Mother's bedroom door.

My shaky hands fumble to get the bedroom door open and to my sight I see her tossing and turning while screaming bloody murder.

I quickly make my way to the edge of her bed, dropping down to my knees to reach out and try to sooth her down. She's still moving around, lost in her nightmare, but I do my best to keep her voice down. I shake her shoulders to pull her back to reality.

Her screaming finally came to a quiet mumbling of random words as her eyes drift open. I hold her face between my two palms while my thumbs stroke under her eyes softly to get her to relax. I feel the dampness of the couple tears that fell during her nightmare as I wipe them away.

"Hey...Mom it's just me. You're okay, just focus on my voice and the feeling of my thumb touching under your eye, okay?" I try to coax her stress away.

"Nyla? What happened?" Mother whispers.

"It's okay, you just had another bad dream." I gently smile, still holding her face between my palms.

Mother has had nightmares for as long as I can remember. The reason as to why they even started is still unknown. They don't happen very often, but when they do it always gets pretty bad. This one was much shorter though, I've had instances where she's screamed for nearly an hour while I tried to get her to calm down. She even managed to accidentally hit me when she was still in her nightmare.

"Oh, did I wake you?" She asks me, looking concerned.

"You did. But it's alright, I couldn't sleep anyways." I decide to lie so she doesn't have to feel bad, it's not like she can control what time these happen at.

She's tries to regulate her breaths as I take my hands away from her face, I place them next to her on the edge of her bed. My own heart rate finally comes down from being abruptly awoken. I give myself a second to catch my own breath.

"Sorry I woke you." Mother looks at my face. But then her eyebrows crease like she's confused by something. "Nyla, are you alright? You don't look so gre-"

But before she could finish her sentence, I felt my stomach growling and my head feeling lighter. My arms wrap around my stomach as I jump up to my feet again to make a run for the bathroom out in the hallway.

I shove the bathroom door open and lift the toilet seat, dropping to the floor before I'm hurling out every drop of fluid left inside me.

I feel like I just threw up my body weight by the time I finished and closed the toilet seat to flush it. Leaning my back against the bathtub, I wipe my mouth with some toilet paper, almost gagging again from the bile taste in my mouth. Resting my head against the top of the tub, I look up to the ceiling. That's when the memories of last night hit me.

I got wasted.

I curse myself in my head from that stupid decision I made last night. It didn't even cross my mind when I woke up, all that was running through my head was getting Mother out of her nightmare.

The memories of me and mother's fight, my breakdown in my car, and seeing Louis at the bar. I remember taking multiple shots while talking to Louis. The rest of the night being a blur, leaving me to guess either Louis dropped me home or an uber did.