Kingdom Come Undone

Three AM Pacing

A/N: *waves hesitantly* Hey guys... long time no see. A cute lil update for you all: all is well, first and foremost. At the start of the year, I did attend 5 funerals back to back fairly suddenly but only one of the passing's was of someone incredibly close to me (which I think I referenced when I posted the last chapter)? Anyways, 1) work was crazy (Education, am I right?), 2) I traveled to Europe with friends, 3) I got diagnosed with COVID two days before leaving Europe, 4) Was 'trapped' in a hotel room until I could test negative, 5) Turned 30, 6) Finished the school year and finally regained some sanity enough to get us here. So, welcome back! Or if this 5-month hiatus was established right in the middle of you checking out this community, welcome! So happy to have you here!

Something I hadn't taken into account though was that during my absence, I would forget half of the shit I wrote. So once I felt fully ready to come back to this story, I quickly discovered that I had to reread SO MUCH in order to make things make sense and not repeat anything. Gotta say, this thing is long as hell. Props to you all for reading so diligently. Proud of you.

This chapter is shorter than usual (a little less than 9,000 words), but you all will find that I had to do IMMENSE research for this. Nine permanent tabs while writing to be exact, as well as a few additional scientific studies to make this as accurate to the real science as possible. But once again, I am not claiming to be a doctor or to have ever attended med school, so if some of this isn't precise, my bad. Please feel free to reach out and educate me!

I'm so happy to be back and will attempt to do my best to stay on top of things. But staying sane in this crazy world comes first. Thank you for your support and for coming back after all this time :)

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Sleep Tuesday night proved to be listless. Alison and I laid awake silently for at least two hours trying to get our brains to stop thinking about the next morning. To stop thinking about the day we had just lived. Or day that had happened to us. To stop altogether. Because with her ever-apparent anxiety and my preoccupation with obsession and control, our entire world felt like it was spinning.

Willing my eyes closed, I found my dreams coinciding with reality, pressure continuing to build in my head as I attempted to thoroughly sleep. But in the midst of the in-between, I felt Alison still moving beside me. Tossing back and forth instead of being located directly by my side. I tried to ignore it, knowing I was not mentally equipped to meet her where she was. Where we both were. I didn't want to acknowledge the day. But my body was internally screaming.

It felt like fire. Which at first thought feels overdramatic. But lying there between consciousness and impending reality, inescapable heat is all I felt. No place in my mind felt secure or hidden. Like my thoughts had become scorched earth throughout the day. A field of green turned to dust.

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"Adjust the cap on your head while I get us safely inside, Bug. It's about to fall off." I wrapped my forearm around his waist lifting him out from the car. He had insisted on wearing an adjusted blue jean cap of his father's that was inevitably a little too large. It was an unseasonably hot day given it was the last day of February. And while an excellent accessory in theory, it fell off incessantly as I got him ready this morning. I had picked up that cap more than I could count and the directness in my voice reminded Jake that the last thing I wanted to do was to pick it up again.

"Mommy say I wook handsome, dough."

Spinning us gently in the middle of the parking lot, sending laughter through his veins, I replied, "You do look handsome, Jake. Your cap looks great. I'll be honest with you though; I'd rather hold onto it because all I've done today is pick it up off the ground for you to make sure you don't get dizzy."