HeartStopper: Haunted

1. Merge

Rose blossoms have teeth. They eat people. Death comes in a slow process. Charlie Spring knows this. He's also learned that there's only two ways to make the roses stop biting. 

Tao showed him one of the 'saw' films and now Charlie's had reoccurring nightmares for the past week. His door has been shut, his phone silenced, and the only person he's spoken too in days has been his big sister Tori. She gets it... most of the time. 

Lying in his cold sheets he probes the bones of his rib-cage with his small fingers imagining hooks passing through the ready to rip open his chest. In his dream his guts spill over and roses that look like snake heads swim in the blood gnawing on his organs. Everything is cold. 

Lack of eating paired with the medications for his supposed flu has him hallucinating more than sleeping. Bloody hand-prints appear on the cool glass of his window. During the heavy rainstorms his spinning mind tells him that this is all there is to reality. 

The curls on his head are soaked in sweat from his fevers. Dark circles appear under his eyes and his face is seemingly hollow. The scars on his wrists and forearms could be fresh but he's not gotten out of bed in days. 

'The roses are eating me.' he thinks and maybe he's right. 

...

Theologically, water holds memory. As cold as the shower is pouring over Nick Nelson's shoulder it doesn't protect him from the images. The world has been an awful blue as of late and with him as the last boy in the locker room post rugby match he's allowing moments to pass through his mind. 

Not all of these moments belong to him. When he's imagining a spider crawling up a gutter and then feels the prickling feet on his own skin he decides he's let his imagination get the best of him and he switches off the faucet. 

The air, having been warmer than the water, sends chills up his spine and on the back of his neck. All the short red hairs on the back of his head stand on end. 

In only a couple moments he's standing in front of the mirror over the sink with a towel tucked tightly at his waist line. He's pouring out the contents of his tervis; a bad protein shake. The silence of his phone is unbearably loud. 

"The flu." Charlie told him. 

Nick was no fool. This isn't the flu. Depression is weeds in the garden of Charlie's heart and Nick was scared. Tori promised him, though. She told Nick she would look after Charlie and he had to trust her. 

He took a deep breath and tilted back his head dropping the cup into the sink. His eyes shut and he thinks about their days in Paris and of those afternoons in the snow at his house. He thinks about the way Charlie looks in that hat Nick had gotten him. Slowly, an ease works it's way into the chest of Nick Nelson. He could breath, for now. 

As he left the locker room fully dressed and ready for a nigh on the town with his friends he decided he would just have to do something incredible for Charlie and maybe his friends could help him figure out what. 

...

Darcy was the first one at the cafe. She was here at Bruggison Brongs most afternoons. Being away from her mother was the easiest thing in this life right next to loving Tara Jones. Darcy's friends called her 'the most American Brit who ever was' and she held tightly to that title. 

Her silver, over-the-ear, headset weighed all of five pounds and held her bottle blond hair in place like a head band. Beats had become her calling. She made music as she sipped iced coffee and waited for the others to come round. 

Her pink knitted sweater was a size too big for her and she's got on sneakers that make her feet look bigger than the rest of her body. She loved the rainy days the most. Technicolor and neon belong in autumn darkness.