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STEVE LAID on the floor, his back aching more and more as the night went on. Every movement rustled the scratchy tendrils of carpet that gnawed at the exposed skin of his legs and elbows. His head was spinning with thoughts and emptiness alike, spinning in circles over and over again until it'd fall over and spill onto the scratchy carpet. Over and over again, an unbreakable cycle.
He yawned, stretching his mouth that hadn't been used in hours. The sun had long been set since the last time anyone uttered a word into the fallen silence, and the darkness of the Henderson family's living room was wholly filling except for the dull glow behind the sheer curtains.
The moon hung high in the sky as it did every night, something that someone who's lived under it for almost eighteen years should have been accustomed to by that point. But Steve laid under it with a startling intensity that kept him awake like an upward force pulling against gravity, hanging him above the depths of Hell that could pull him right through.
Something shifted next to him, to his right where his elbow nudged against the slightly less itchy fabric of a brown, woolen couch. His elbow froze, no longer itching the nudge and paused mid-stance from where it bent under his head. Steve stayed like that for about a minute.
Then his head resumed its spinning, the carpet itched, his back ached, his elbows bent, and his weight crushed all that sank beneath him to cushion the eventual fall.
Steve thought he would have no issue sleeping on the floor. In fact, he accepted the floor with gratitude and willingness; it wasn't like he had much of a choice, though. The blonde with a sparkling attitude in her slouch had snatched the slightly less scratchy couch within seconds, leaving him with the slightly more scratchy, carpeted floor. But he took it with a smile and bore it.
Another minute passed before another something shifted, on his same right side. Steve froze again this time, but not to avoid getting caught being awake, as if that were some major crime. He froze to drown out any other sounds besides the scuffling of the blonde sleeping on the couch above his place on the floor, to hear the patterns as she flipped from her left to her right side and to determine whether Valentina was awake or not.
She was not, he decided.
Deep in her sleep, Valentina was reliving the events of the previous night. Flashes of things she barely remembered blurred together into one messy movie. The sequel to Halloween, apparently. Michael Myers played by Billy Hargrove.
Steve's face appeared. He was there for a moment and then he was gone, blown away by the wind of scenery. Her brain was working like a storm, brewing up memories that she didn't want to remember and hardly could anyway. Billy appeared then, but he didn't vanish like the previous character. He stayed, and he inched closer, and suddenly he was as close as the faint reminder of his breath lingering in Valentina's throat. It was bitter like alcohol, but drier than any liquor could be. Valentina shifted again in her sleep.
