FEEL

30. Knellish

Knellish ~ feeling afraid to relax your body and drift off to sleep because you notice how similar it is to death

~ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows ~

~°~

There is something about having had death nudge the tip of your tongue, tease along the buds right there and twirl along the edges that makes sleeping feel like lying lifeless in a coffin. It felt like I was on the precipice of the underworld itself, the only thing keeping me from entering being my urge to stay wide awake. I was a foot in and a foot out.

The day had passed so quickly, yet so slowly, like it was two separate days with different paces. I was quite familiar to this feeling, to having one day feel as if it were two or more because of the excessive amount of events that have transpired. If I had been told this morning that my day would end with me being in Mr Pierce's bed instead of dead either through my own actions or my father's wrath, I'd have howled out a laughter in pure disbelief.

Yet, here I was. In the comfiest bed with the finest, most masculine scent that had successfully lulled me to sleep all two times that I had been here, except now.

Because now, I don't want to die. Everytime I close my eyes, I feel as if this is a dream and I would wake from it. Like I actually did jump, and Mr Pierce hadn't grabbed me and everything that happened after that wasn't real. I'm dead. And I won't be able to see him again. To touch him again. To have even the slightest chance to feel his hands on my skin. Being alive, I do get that chance.

I lift from the bed, looking around the dark room. The urge to see him grips me vicely, giving me not much of a choice but to abide. He must be sleeping, though. Even if so, just seeing him would be fine. Just to placate my innermost concerns.

Gracie is asleep at the foot of the bed, curled up in a white fluffy ball. I want to sink my fingers into her fur, but I'm afraid of waking her, so I keep moving. I'm out and into the hallway, my footsteps barely coherent on the tiled floor. I nearly jump out of the cotton shorts Mr Pierce had borrowed me when I find him in the kitchen, wide awake.

He glances up at me, mouth half full of the pineapple slices he's eating. He looks so adorable, like a child stealing cookies in the middle of the night. If a child was over six feet tall and adorned with firm muscles beneath his T-shirt.

I walk over to and settle on the barstool across from him, bracing my elbows on the counter. "Couldn't sleep?" I ask. His head shakes. He's still chewing. "Me neither."

Mr Pierce swallows, then says, "Do you want anything?"

"What do you suggest?"

He shrugs. "Warm milk, maybe. What's keeping you up?"

"I keep thinking I'm not alive. Like everything up to now has been a dream. Everytime I close my eyes, I think that I'll just die."

Mr Pierce frowns. "Is there anything I could do?"

"I don't know," I sigh deeply in exhaustion, my head falling onto my arms on the counter. I'm not just tired, I'm frustrated. I want to sleep, but I just can't.

"Warm milk it is, then?"

I nod without lifting my head up and then hear him move around the kitchen as he prepares it. For that moment, I close my eyes and try to let the hushed noises of him busying in the kitchen put me to sleep. I'm in a state of half awake, half asleep for a good few minutes, where I'm certain I'm asleep, but I can hear everything around me as if I were wide awake.