Myosotis

Utopiosphere

'Twisted creation

Phosphorescent apparition

Heart disorientation

Bemusement'

'The sky is painted in Lunacia

Florets slashed open the vein of tears

Misfortuna

There is no escape, my dear'

-Mili, 'Utopiosphere'

---

Alice was going insane.

She refused to eat the days after Hans' death and the nurses attending her grew worried as they returned to collect the tray of uneaten food they had delivered earlier. Nothing they did or say could ever get her to eat as she glared obstinately at the small crack on the wall across from her that had formed when she went on her sudden rampage days ago. But that wasn't the only reason why she was going insane.

She had nightmares.

Every night, every single night, she would relive that day in her dreams. There was no escaping it, and it scared her. She didn't want to remember that day, but no matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard she tried to get her mind off of it, it kept on reappearing like a scab on her arm. If she even tried to scratch it off, it would bleed and a new one would form, and end up worse than before. The dreams would continue haunting her persistently, a ghost of the memories of that day.

So every night, she would wake up in a fit, screaming and crying for her brother even though he was gone, but that didn't stop her.

It was like a merry-go-round, it kept on going around in continuous circles. Only this time, she couldn't get off when she wanted to.

(She couldn't take it anymore. It was too much. She wanted it to just stop.)

Eventually Alice took to sleeping with the cat doll her brother had given her. It was a cute plushie, with a tinkling bell attached to a red collar that rang whenever it moved and a patch of black covering its right ear and eye, reaching just above its stitched smile.

("Deemo," she insisted when she was asked what the doll's name was; the only time she would ever speak.)

It numbed the pain and eased the nightmares slightly. Alice liked to think it was because her brother was watching over her, like guardian angel. It fit, considering he was just like one when he was still alive, but then she would remember that there couldn't possibly be deity up above; because if there was, her brother wouldn't be dead.

(And she would fall into depression once again.)

Once that realisation happened, the pain returned and the nightmares enveloped her once more, this time with twice the ferocity than before. And that wasn't all. They were following Alice into reality. She would hallucinate sensations (the touch of her brother and his blood smearing onto her skin), sounds (the screeching of tires), and images in the corner of her vision (a big white truck racing towards her and the figure of her dead brother) that weren't even there. And every time it happened, Alice's heart would skip a beat as she panicked.

Yes, Alice was going insane.

Insane with grief.