See You on the Other Side [Yan!DSMP x Reader]

- CHAPTER 8: Tiberinus Silvius

You're floating. The surface of the water is carrying you, the peaceful waves bringing your soul to rest as you're looking up at the ceiling above you, which is normally hidden under the grass. Rain is silently falling on the roof, filling the emptiness in your mind with a rhythmic and muffled sound of the weather's state.

Your sleep medicine only work for so long for you. It's almost as though it's your illness stopping them from working as well as it should, wanting to prevent your immunity system from working well so it can kill you even more easily. It's rather exhausting, but it doesn't bring you to sleep. It just brings you to more restlessness, especially in your head.

Every night, around the same time, you leave your bed and go downstairs, fully clothed stepping into the swimming pool in the yard that's hidden at night from the moon by the walls and ceiling. Not once have you skipped. It puts your mind at ease. Sure, not as much as you'd like it to, but it does the trick.

The water is clean and clear. The blue colour is almost magical and the walls and floors fit very well with the surrealistic state of mind you have. It all feels dull. That's exactly what puts you so at ease. The simplicity of the design. There are no complicated patterns, or bright and irrational colours, or illogical architectural decisions. It's all just perfect.

With your eye slightly closed and your ears under water, your senses are all fully closed down. There's nothing to distract you, or remind you, or just give you the feeling that you're stuck to reality. Not only is your body floating in the water, your mind is too, in the nothingness that you can easily capture.

When you look around in this nothingness, you see, as expected, nothing. It's all black. You can swim through the black oil that surrounds you, without feeling it fight back. You can fly into every direction, without knowing which is up and which is down, since there's no light to follow.

And that's okay. If it weren't, you wouldn't be here again, drowning in the void in an attempt to escape the terrors created by your brain. But you believe it's good for you. It gives you a moment where you can relax. A moment of no obligation or necessity. Just peace.

Just peace.

But you know that it's not going to take forever. For weeks – or maybe even months, you can't remember the first time – you've been paying the pool these visits, and you truly have no clue if anyone knows. You don't think so, since nobody has brought it up yet, so you've been allowing your imagination to run wild. Sometimes, there's nothing but darkness there. But other times, it's chaotic and familiar.

However, while you're lying there, with the roof and walls up, Wilbur is working in his office, unable to sleep, especially now that he's out of sleeping pills. Sally is sleeping, always able to, but he's not that lucky. Maybe it's stress. Maybe it's depression. Maybe it's something even more complicated that he has yet to hear about; he truly doesn't know. However, it doesn't matter to him either. He'll just have to bite his tongue and get over it. Complaining has only led to less productivity. Or maybe forcing productivity has lead to more of it. Whatever the case may be, his inspiration always goes feral during the moments where he feels the lowest. It's possibly another reason as to why he doesn't exactly want to get better. The exhaustion sucks and may be unhealthy, but at least it's familiar and at least it leads to some creativity.

He lets out a deep sigh, feeling as his mind gets overflown by a lot. He needs a break. And he's not willing to spend another break in his office: Sally has complained about it before, since she truly doesn't like it whenever the scent of cigarettes travels to her own personal office. Especially ever since his previous office was replaced by your bedroom, she's been worried about nonsensical things such as that.