Fairytales

Chapter 11

I sat up straight in bed, choking on a scream. At some point in the night, I'd bitten my tongue hard enough to taste blood.

Chase. Where's Chase? The words made a loop in my terror-stricken mind. Where's Chase. Better yet, where am I?

Sweat had begun to dry on my forehead, plastering my hair to my head. Far too slowly, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, transforming the threatening figures leering at me from the shadows back into the familiar furniture in my room.

I'd been dreaming. Just a dream.

All at once, like a leaky dam finally breaking, the details, all of them, of the dream came rushing back in all of their horrible glory.

I closed my eyes, hoping to push away the strange images firing at me like bullets from a machine gun, images of Chase on an unfamiliar street, walking into a deserted house...being attacked.

The sweat was beginning to cool on my back, my breathing gradually slowing down. I was used to this. I could control it. It didn't matter that this dream had been so much more vivid than the others. So different. I'd heard it. Felt it. Like I was a part of him.

I hadn't had a dream that bad since...

Stubborn to the core, I stayed sitting up, waiting for my heartbeat to return to some semblance of normal. It took longer than it should have.

Once I was sure I was adequately calm, I moved to lay back down, this time on my side so I could stare at the clock beside my bed. How long had I managed to sleep this time?

Another scream bubbled in my throat.

The pillow had brushed against some sensitive spot on my neck. Very sensitive. Two lightning bolts of pain shot from there to my toes, leaving fire wherever it went. Everything, but especially my neck, burned and it was getting worse.

Biting my tongue to keep the scream from escaping my mouth, my hand flew to my neck.

There, a little ways under my jaw, were holes, wounds that burned even worse to the touch.

Oh God. Oooooh God.

I whimpered, wiping as something warm and sticky ran down my hand. It took me a moment to realize that it was blood.

Yet again, my heart beat spiked.

My breaths shot out of my lungs in short desperate gasps. If I didn't get control of myself, and soon, I'd pass out. But I was bleeding, bleeding, all over my soft bed.

As if that was the biggest crime of all, staining my nice clean sheets, I hoped out of bed, feeling my head spin as soon as I did. I had to get out of the dark. I had to see this for myself, if only to prove I hadn't gone completely crazy.

I slipped out of the bed, frantically untangling myself from the sheets that had wrapped themselves like ropes around my legs. Mr. Bingley, who I tripped on my way to the door and all but threw out of the way in my haste, growled and hissed at me before stalking out of the room with his tail swinging angrily behind him.

Lot of good the cat did. At least Lassie would've gotten help before I bled to death.

By the time I made it down the hall and into my bathroom, still staying quiet enough not to wake my sleeping Aunt—why I bothered I don't know—I must have had at least a dozen rug burns on various parts of my body and at least one scraped knee.

After all but jamming my fingers against the wall trying to find the light switch, I ended up blinding myself with the bright florescent bulbs above my mirror. Dots danced in my vision, making me woozy. Slower than my shaking hands would have liked, my eyes adjusted enough to finally get a good look at my neck.