CONDOLENCE - wedler

chapter eleven

wednesday's sleep that night was pleasantly quiet and undisturbed until she got woken up by thrashing sounds and the sound of something getting knocked off and hitting the floor. when she fully awoke and could hear better she picked up on some sort of whimpering. it sounded so pitiful like an animal's, but she knew exactly who they were coming from.

so she got up and made her way to tyler's room and immediately entered as the door was unlocked.

the sight she saw made her eyes widen slightly. the boy was thrashing around uncontrollably, clawing at anything he could, sometimes himself. he was whimpering and occasionally would utter some words like, "please stop" and "i'm sorry."

what caught the girl's attention most though were his utterances of her name. he sounded terrified and she couldn't imagine the emotional torture this had on him, especially since she assumed this happened more often than not.

they hadn't spoken of this yet but she wasn't surprised. of course going through something as terrible as he had would result in nightmares. she'd be more surprised if he didn't have any. it made her feel bad for him again.

she stood there for a moment, trying to decide what would be the best option to wake him up and get him out of his hell of a nightmare. this wasn't something she had dealt with before.

she decided that she would try to calm him down with her voice and if that worked, then approach him and touch him. she knew it was too risky to try that first while he was thrashing around. that would be asking for an elbow to the face.

"tyler," she started softly but loud enough for him to her. she had stepped further into the room.

that didn't change much so she spoke more, "tyler calm down, you're having a nightmare. it isn't real."

it took a couple minutes of her speaking but eventually he seemed to have heard her as he stopped moving around so much and became pretty calm, though still uttering scared pleas. he had curled into himself, his arms wrapped around his stomach as he laid on his side.

wednesday quietly approached the side of the bed he was nearest to and kneeled before she carefully brought a hand up towards his face. she hesitated for a moment before gently cupping it and speaking again, "tyler."

he said something back in response incoherently, half asleep.

"you're okay, i'm here," she replied as she started stroking his face slightly. it was a subconscious gesture, something she had seen her mother do to pugsley whenever he was anxious or scared.

he was quiet for a moment before he woke up with a jolt, accidentally hitting wednesday's arm as she quickly brought her hand back to her side. he sat up and almost immediately noticed her, straining his eyes, "wednesday?"

"yes."

"why are you here?" it was clear he didn't remember his dream. which she supposed was a good thing but she was sure this was also only one night out of many.

"you were having a nightmare," she replied as she stood up and looked around for what she had heard him knock off the nightstand earlier.

his eyes filled with realization and she figured it was coming back to him a little bit as he muttered a quiet, "oh."

"your thrashing around was disrupting my sleep," she explained, though of course that wasn't the only reason why she had come to wake him up. she found that he had knocked off a candlestick holder and picked it up, placing it back onto the nightstand before she looked back at him.