Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day

"Another night", I sigh. "Another night", she sighs. Sleep is an escape. A sweet escape from the great monotony that is life. A scintilla of breath that keeps us from fading into the treacherous waters of human insanity. The lick of rejuvenation that keeps us wanting to want more. Sleep is an escape for most.

"I cannot, Skye."

I could hear my voice from afar. Quiet. Broken. Pathetic.

Sleep is an escape for most.

Skye slips her hands out of mine, but I grab onto her fingers. For the first time this evening, I meet her eyes. Her soft green eyes riddled with delicious sympathy, fear and pain, but most of all, exhaustion. A wave of guilt washes me over, escaping my eyes. I turn away, unwilling to let her see the fear that chilled my spine, focusing on the messy side-stand, willing my tears away. Nail polishes, filers, candy wrappers from God knows when, surfacing happy memories that slipped away like water. Our picture on the side-stand. We looked so happy. She looked so happy.

"I hate what this is doing to you. I hate what I'm doing to you", I whispered, my jaw clenched so tight it hurt, my throat burned and my eyes prickled with unshed tears of frustration and fear.

Sleep is an escape for most.

Skye moved from beside me, and an empty coldness took her place. Oh, what I wouldn't give to sleep peacefully. What I wouldn't give to not fear my demons, to brave him, and best him. What I wouldn't give to end the fathomless torture. Skye walked back to me, opening my fists that I had, somewhere along the way, balled up out of frustration and pain. Her hands slipped around me, holding me in a cautious embrace, setting her forehead against mine.

"Tomorrow will be a better day. I promise", she breathes.

"Yes."

No. We both knew it. Hope keeps us alive, they say. No. Hope keeps us in pain. Hope makes us yearn for the irrational. Hope is a mirage. It keeps one going until they realize it is all a trick of the mind.

"Tomorrow will be a better day. I promise."

Silently, sleep crept her hands around me, pulling me into the abyss of the unknown. I screamed until my throat was raw, but I couldn't hear my horrifying cry for help. I closed my eyes, tears slipping down my face, tainting it red with blood.

Suddenly aware of the floor, my eyes fell open. I know what is coming.

"Hey there"

In that moment, my blood ran cold. An unimaginable horror held me right where I lay. A hundred babies could be heard wailing at a distance, sounding like a siren to the Devil himself. Almost mechanically, I turned around. There he was, standing at a distance. The same brown eyes, the same auburn hair, the oblique scar on the forehead. Me, except somehow distorted creepily.

"Beautiful forest, isn't it", his sneer reaching his ear, yet somehow not quite.

Bloodied bare trees encircling me, innumerable broken dolls watching my every shiver, hearing my every breath, feeding on every fearful thought, sniggering.

"How you reawaken-", he swings his knife in the air, coated with my dried, flaky blood from countless engagements, "- each time I slaughter you-", his eyes boring into mine, "- is beyond me. Not that I'm complaining."

He moves in an almost fluid way, approaching me unhurried, a disturbing grin plastered to his face.

Tomorrow will be a better day. I promise.

As the wailing and sniggering swelled thunderously, I felt invigorated as the words came to me, seemingly from my cognizance. I can't quite place where I had heard it, or who had said it, but it made my heart swell.

"Not this time", I whispered. All at once, the commotion ceased. A cold wind swept by, drying my sweat. Everything stood frozen in time, a delicious silence enveloping me, brightening my senses.

"He finally decides to fight back!", he screamed, his face distorting into twisted happiness, clapping manically, hollering and screeching. "Oh, this is going to be fun." All dolls came to life again, laughing monstrously. But I knew what to do now.

I broke into a sprint, running where my legs took me.

"Running won't do you any good, weakling", his voice boomed, but I kept running, not daring to look back. A forgotten building rises at a distance, seemingly familiar, yet completely foreign. I break into the first door, locking it behind me. Finally, I let out a breath.

Blue-grey walls adorned with pictures of a happy couple. But now isn't the time. I run into bedrooms, looking for anything I could use to kill the other me. Nothing.

All out of hope, I walk into the last bedroom, and an overwhelming at-home feeling overtakes me, forcing me to gasp. How uncanny. I wander, lost, towards the bed next to a night-stand, nail polishes, filers and candy wrappers fanned out.

The candy wrappers from the fair we visited a few weeks ago. She looked happy for the first time in days. But who is 'she'?

I pick up the wrapper, and tears of forgotten memories escape my eyes. For the first time in what felt like aeons, I let myself weep. Lying on the bed, I whimper and yell and punch and kick, all out of breath, letting go.

"You okay?"

I froze. This was it. This was the time. I whipped my hand toward the side table, grabbing the filer, and jammed it in his throat. He didn't scream. He couldn't even if he wanted to, I had lodged the filer right in his apple. I yanked it out and stabbed him repeatedly. I screamed, giving every puncture my all, trying to wipe off the bastard's grin from his face. Albeit, he looks like me. But he is nothing like me. He is a monster. He deserved to be killed.

Finally tired, I got up from his unmoving body. Soft hair grazed my palm where it was on the bed. A horrifying, blood-curdling feeling overtook me.

No.

In a pool of blood, with a filer jammed in her forehead, lay Skye, her gaze transfixed on the ceiling, scared, in pain, dead.

Sleep is an escape for most.

Death is ours.