Heaven's Child ≫ SPN

29.1

Eliza || Sunshine Kids Kamp

It was quiet.

Not really, not at all. Even though no one else was in the small, unclean motel room with me, I heard their voices like the yellowing walls between us didn't exist. I heard them take every intimate breath, every wet squeeze of their hearts, every chuckle, every moan, every step, every every shuffle. I heard them as they did nothing at all. I heard what was even beyond the people in the rooms next to me. The cars working, keys jangling, heels on concrete, back door creaking, rats squeaking, the chimes on the corner store door go off as someone stepped inside.

Chips crunching, door locking, zipper zipping, bus stopping, buttons clicking, water running, tunnel echoing, brake stopping, pens scratching, electricity humming, ac whirring, stove clicking, bags crackling, tv buzzing.

It never stopped.

But I remembered sometimes when I locked my self in the room long enough, I could get a moment of bliss. Sometimes, after staring at the same cracks in the wall for hours straight, after my tear ducts seemed to have run out for the night, and after I've revisited every thought possible twice and once again, the world, just for a little, went out of focus and every sound became an incomprehensible blur.

It was better than any drug. The world was whipping past, but I was standing still, alone in my motel room. It could've been days before I pulled the world back into perspective, hours before I even moved. But until then, I embraced the unnatural quiet, I welcomed the depression.

So long as I wasn't aware to feel the sobs as they shook me, or feel the fresh wounds bleeding from the last recurrent hunt.

So long as I wasn't aware of the glaringly obvious truth: I was never going to find relief, I was never going to make sense of what happened.

Because if I didn't understand myself, how could anyone else possibly on this earth?

My eyes began to close, memories of the past spinning behind my lids. The most painful memories were the clearest and most easily summoned but I didn't want to remember any. My eyes flew open when one of my past horrors started to play.

But I didn't find the motel ceiling.

Somehow, the room around me disappeared and I couldn't see where it ended in the darkness. A waft of deja vu took me over, grounding me, helping me realize where I was. What was about to happen. I was stuck in the memory, in the moment I lived before. The moment after my father's death, after my first memory as Heaven's Child.

A shiver rippled through me, raising goosebumps as it traveled.

I wasn't cold, it wasn't that kind of shivering. My heart was pounding too fast but it wasn't because I was terrified either. I felt like electricity was coursing through me. Like it was building up too fast for my skin to contain it and if I didn't release some of it soon I was going to combust.

I felt it in every inch of my body. From the tips of my toes to the inside of my core. I felt new. Not better. Just new.

I was exhausted, and I was in pain. But I wasn't sure why. I've never felt that way before. I was dazed and could barely form a thought but all I could remember was that something awful happened, something that made me scream and cry. I decided not to dig and find out what it was.

Somehow despite the pain, I wasn't weak. I felt stronger, durable. I've never felt that way in my life, and I didn't understand why I was feeling it now.

Noises that I've never even noticed before reached my ears. Noises that were too far to even consider being able to hear them, and noises coming out of things that I never knew had noise at all. Everything I touched I understood more deeply, on a molecular level, on another plane. I saw things with frightening clarity. I felt things I've never felt before, like the mood of the sky even though I couldn't see it at all, or that something bad was about to happen even though nothing around me helped indicate it.