The Nightmares of Under-London

09 - Pwcca

Pwcca.

I don't know how I know this, not exactly, not at first. But I know it, and I am certain that is what this creature is. She stole my face.

I can't tell how much time has passed; it could be minutes or hours I've lain here frozen and crumpled on the floor. My heartbeat slows to its normal rate, and then slower, until the pull between every pulse is eternal and I'm drawn down into its trough. My shoulder throbs, and no distraction mitigates. There must have been something in the pwcca's saliva: the bite-wound clots relatively quickly, though not soon enough to prevent the dizziness, the nausea of losing so much blood so quickly. I cannot measure how lucky I am the pwcca's teeth missed major arteries and veins.

There is no way to call out. I thrash around in my head, an interminable night terror in broad daylight. This is every nightmare I've ever had, body seized and throat trying to scream, unable to make a sound.

I am trapped in this liminal space, I know--I am myself, but mirages and sensations override my consciousness in random lapses until I am someone else: I am immobile on our hard wooden floor but also

stretching into my body as I stride down the pavement.

The air around me is stale and familiar with the faint scent of my perfume and spilled coffee grounds, made foreign by the scent of blood, but

early-afternoon mist brushes subtle against my skin, the scent of rain on dirty asphalt heavy in my brain. All around me Peckham bustles

and yet our flat is deathly static.

Each plunge into a mini-dream twists my stomach hard, my precarious equilibrium destroyed. It's worse than the first time I ever got utterly trashed, too-drunk and sprawled on the bathroom floor of an old mate's house, unable to keep the room from spinning no matter how still I lay. But I come back to myself, and it is hard to capture those flashes, like the morning after a night out, when all you remember is that you felt even worse than you do now. I want to cry, or moan, or vomit, and I can do none of this.

There is a sidhe with a cruel pink mouth and curly black hair, beautiful and dangerous. There is the sense of hurry.

Mum hasn't moved, from what I can hear. I'm praying it's from the same kind of paralysis I'm experiencing, because if it's anything worse--

I cannot process that possibility. It is better to lose my head to the pain.

It's another thing I can't think of, how likely it is that she may already be gone, and exactly how close I am to dying in several different ways. Panic takes root and it is impossible to squash.

Time is a rubber concept, yanked taut until its forward progression stops, but it snaps, colliding back into place with the sound of a key scraping in the front door lock.

Neil.

There are not enough seconds between him and finding Mum and me this way.

The door swings open, a long low creak setting the tempo between now and in-a-moment.

His glasses glint in the weak sunlight until he ducks his head into the doorway. He is frozen, a deer in headlights, surveying the damage: the overturned kitchen chair, the cracked wall where the pwcca smashed me against it, the shards of glass and crystals of coffee. I wish I could look away when his eyes land on me.

He isn't the snarky sixteen-year-old I'm familiar with, but the scared four, six, ten-year-old huddling in my bed after scary movies and during thunderstorms as we grew up. Except this time it's my fault. I am what I need to protect him from.