Terror trio: back in action

Aftershocks

The digital clock on the bedside table cast a sickly green pallor over the room: 2:15 AM. In the absolute silence of Incarnate Lord, the hum of the clock was a roar, and the soft sigh of the central heating was a gale. For Lexy, it wasn't the silence that woke her, but the screaming. The screaming that, for a blessed, disorienting moment, she realized was only inside her own head. She jackknifed into a sitting position, a choked gasp tearing from her throat. The thin, starched cotton sheets of the institutional bed were tangled around her legs, a damp shroud. Her heart wasn't just beating; it was a frantic, trapped bird slamming against the cage of her ribs. Cold sweat plastered her straight, blonde hair to her temples and the back of her neck. The phantom scents of popcorn, stale soda, and blood - so much blood - filled her nostrils. Not real, not real, not real, she chanted silently, a desperate mantra against the tide of memory. The nightmare didn't retreat like a normal dream. It clung to her, a visceral, oily residue on her skin, in her lungs. It was always the same, and yet every time, it found a new, sharper edge. The sticky floor of the theater, the previews playing to an audience of corpses, the slick, hot warmth of Junior's blood on her hands as she tried to consol him in his final moments, his eyes wide with a shock that was too final, too absolute. And behind it all, the ghost of her father's death, a story told to her in her mother's shattered, trembling voice, now painted in the same garish, nightmare colours. She was falling back into the abyss. She could feel it - a vertigo of the soul, a pull from the deep, cold place where the screams lived. Then, a touch. A hand, small but firm, settled on her shoulder. The shock of it was electric, a jolt back into her physical body. Lexy's head jerked towards the contact. In the faint green glow, she could make out Nadine, sitting up in the bed she's been sharing with her girlfriend lately. Her riot of red curls was a chaotic halo around her head, but her brown eyes, even in the gloom, were wide awake and filled with a knowing, painful empathy.

"Hey, Cinderella. Are you okay?" Nadine whispered, her voice a soft scratch in the crushing silence

"Don't! Just... don't touch me." Lexy spat, the words sharp and brittle, flinging Nadine's hand away as if it were a brand

"Okay, I won't touch you. But I'm not going anywhere." Nadine said, her voice calm, a steady anchor in the storm of Lexy's panic

"Why? Why do you even care? What do you get out of this? Playing nurse to the school's most famous mess? Is it a charity project for your soul?" Lexy hissed, wrapping her arms around herself, trying to contain the tremors wracking her frame

"A charity project? You think that's what this is?" Nadine repeated, the words flat, devoid of the warmth they'd held seconds before

"What else could it be?! I'm a disaster. Everyone knows it. My father, Junior... I'm a black hole. People like you don't orbit black holes unless they're trying to earn their wings." Lexy shot back, her voice cracking

"Earn my wings? Lexy, my wings were incinerated a long time ago." Nadine said, her voice low now, losing its careful calm and gaining an edge of its own pain

"What?" Lexy breathed, the fight momentarily drained out of her

"You think your pain is the only currency that matters in this place? You think I don't recognize the sound of someone falling into an abyss because I've been listening for it my whole life?" Nadine began, the words simple and heavy

"Nadine..." Lexy started, but the apology was too vast, too inadequate

"I watched my mother die, Lexy. I stood in the doorway and watched her push that needle into her arm, quietly observing while the light in her eyes drifted away. I knew, even then, that the drugs meant more to her than I did. No matter how hard I tried to be good, to be quiet, to be perfect... I would never be enough to compete with that high. She chose it. She left me. And all I got was this fucking empathy for people who are trying to climb out of the same hole she jumped into! The worst part is, I didn't try to save her. I just stood there. I stood there, hiding behind the bathroom door like a coward. I called 911, but my voice was so small, so... fragile. Eventually, the paramedics came, and took her away. But for months, years, that's all I could see. The blue lips. The smell of stale vomit and something chemical. The feeling of her cold skin against my fingertips. I had panic attacks so bad, I'd black out. I'd wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, wondering what I could've done differently. If I'd screamed. If I'd run to her. If I'd been a better daughter, a louder daughter, a daughter worth staying for." Nadine said, her voice dropping to a whisper thick with unshed tears