𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒

𝙘𝙤𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙

a little convo between sophie and felix cuz i think abt them a lot. sophie prolly cannot stand felix sometimes bc felix is a purely guilty alcoholic and sophies just some confused teen who isn't sure why her coward of an uncle is such a mysterious weirdo (this is before the pills cuz i think felix was the one who gave sophie the pills in the first place)
tw: mentions of death, alcoholism bc felix has no chill
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Sophie had been sleeping for hours.

She woke up in a mysterious room, wondered at the floral curtaining, then was immediately weighed back down by the sudden reappearance of her consciousness. She remembered what room she was in—a guest room decorated by Linda. The woman had an impeccable taste for flowery decorations, if the pink pillow half covered in stitching meant to form a rose just at Sophie's side was anything to go by.

After recovering her sense of direction, Sophie stood, grateful for the open suitcase spilling with clothes at the side of her bed but half uneasy (as that was the only way she could describe the violent lurch of her stomach) that Felix didn't even bother to help her unpack. Shrugging off this feeling, she let groggy moonlight dribble onto the back of her neck as she changed out of the clothes she'd been wearing for two days straight and into a sweater with horrible stitching she still wore anyways.

There was a long bit of silence as she eyed the closet in her room, shoved one of her sleeves up and down her arm as she contemplated whether she should hang up her clothes in the old box or go downstairs to face her new caretaker (although she wished he wasn't her new caretaker). Sophie eventually decided to hang up her clothes, ignore the suggestion of a man nestled underneath the floorboards supporting her feet until she absolutely had to acknowledge his presence.

When she finally finished, she realized she had far too many things that didn't fit her—either too big or too small or too frayed with all the usually cheerful words ran through with age and dissolved into mere husks of letters. For example, one shirt of hers, one with the words "Queen", had the leg of the Q missing, so it was simply "Oueen" with a strike of the actual fabric of the shirt torrenting through one e.

It was almost comical how she refused to let go of all of them, how she swore each of them had some type of memory between the stitching. The Oueen shirt was actually worn when she belted out a horribly off-key song to her father, and he still laughed along and clapped when she was finished and took the wooden spoon away from her so her mother could finish cooking. The very thought brought tears to her eyes, so she banished it to some random corner of her mind until it snapped and lashed out once more.

She had to go see her "uncle" now.

Just to stall, she walked over to her small bedroom window, peeked into the dreary night, and locked it. Then unlocked it, and locked it again, this time with a more forceful tug that made the window frame rattle with force. Eventually, that was done too, and she had to leave–bid a goodbye to the cyclops-eye of a moon in the sky and push open her door to unleash the smell of mothballs.

The house had barely any windows, merely enough to allude to the presence of something other then peeling wallpaper smattered with brown splotches that reminded Sophie of dry oil on an old stove. The only way Sophie was able to tell there was another living soul in the house was the faint smell of something burning–most likely firewood or such.

A lick of yellow light on a distant hallway told Sophie exactly where Felix was, and she immediately pivoted towards the gaping doorway she guessed led into a living room–her guess was revealed to be correct when she got right by the doorframe and could peek in.