"Hello?" My words echoed through the vast house, containing a hint of unease as I became aware of a peculiar ringing in my ears. It was my house - but it wasn't. The rooms were warped, seeming to stretch out for hundreds of miles in front of me, but they still resembled the home that I was so familiar with. The key alcove was still in the wall next to the front door, the staircase still spiralled all the way to the top of the house, it's smooth black banister still intact and the clock still ticking away on the wall while the sands of time gradually slipped away. The ceiling, originally made of plaster, was now comprised entirely of dark wooden beams and these too towered high above my head. My boots clacked loudly on the flagstones and I removed them, more out of fear than wanting to keep the house clean. Just as I reached the staircase, boots dangling from the laces in my fingers, a small scuffling noise sounded behind me. I whirled around, but saw nothing. I turned - there it was again, only louder this time. And then I saw him. A small boy whizzed round a corner, allowing me a brief glimpse before ducking out of sight again. "Hey!" I called out, breaking into a run after him. But when I finally caught up with him, I wished I'd just stayed put.
His face had been distorted beyond recognition. There were long, deep cuts across what used to be his cheeks, the skin torn almost down to the bone, revealing a thin layer of flesh underneath. His eyes glinted blue, sparkling with malice, and the psychotic grin that stretched over his face was so wide that it opened the wounds beside it, causing blood to trickle onto the floor. What scared me most, however, were the words that had been cut into my brother's forehead.
FREAK
I shrieked in horror as my eyes snapped open, my cheeks wet with tears. Although I was both disgusted with myself and relieved that the mutilated Jack of the dream wasn't standing before me, the ringing continued, and I jolted back into reality as I realised that someone was calling. Figuring that Mum probably wasn't going to bother answering the phone, I trudged down the stairs, my thoughts whirring. Of course, I would give anything to have just one last ordinary conversation with him, but I just couldn't get the image of him, so damaged, out of my head.
"Hello?" I said, picking up the receiver and wondering who would want to call someone this early on a freezing December morning, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu as this was the exact word that I had spoken in the dream.
"Eve! It's Leo. How are things?"
"Everything's fine," I said, slightly perplexed that he didn't intend for my Mother to take the call.
"Just to let you know, your Mum's paid for a therapy session today in an hour or so. Did she tell you?"
Well, what a surprise, Eve. Yet again you're having therapy; I guess you're not getting better after all then, hmm? Why can't you just be a nice, normal girl and stop making life difficult for everyone?
"No," I replied through gritted teeth, adding under my breath, 'Of course she didn't'.
"What was that, sorry?"
"Oh, nothing."
"So I'll see you then?"
"Sure."
I slammed the phone down and glared at it, my face burning with annoyed humiliation. So now she couldn't even bring herself to tell me that I had an appointment with someone who was actually trying to help me? 'What's next?' I thought angrily as I shoved a couple of slices of toast into the toaster and tipped a glass of water down my throat. 'Is she just going to randomly walk up to me and slap me round the face or something?! God, why is she being so unlike herself?'
Eventually figuring that being angry at Mum wasn't going to help the situation, I stalked upstairs eating the toast and, after arguing with myself about whether I should wear a shirt that proclaimed I was a Jedi or a Hogwarts student (the Wizarding World triumphed over Star Wars in the end), I sent a text to Mum telling her where I would be in a failed attempt to try and prevent another argument and rushed out, feeling a guilty sense of relief that I would be temporarily free of her waspish comments and cutting stares.
"Eve?" I blinked, my eyes fixed on the tiny dust motes floating past the small pool of sunlight on the tiles. Even though I had been trying to stop them, my thoughts were fixed firmly on what the voices had been saying earlier. Predictably, I had mentally denied it and convinced myself that I liked boys. But now I allowed my mind to wander. Did I like boys? I remembered being completely enamoured with a guy named Finn, but that was years ago and I hadn't been interested in anyone else since. And the idea of having a boyfriend now wasn't exactly appealing...
"Hmm? Sorry, yes?" I mumbled, suddenly overcome with fatigue. I had spent last night going over and over Mum's alien behaviour until four in the morning and, when the clock hands had hit half past five I had given up trying to sleep and flicked through a book until my four alarms all went off at seven. Leo smiled and repeated, "I asked if everything was okay at home? Has anything out of the ordinary happened lately?" I hesitated. "Well, Mum's been acting a bit weird-" What the hell are you doing?! Why would you tell him that? Now he's going to tell Dad and Mum will get called out by the council or something, and everyone will find out about- I stopped myself. "I-I meant, I've been having weird dreams. About Jack." He shot me a confused look, but said nothing. "These dreams, are they particularly violent or scary?" I fought the urge to screw up my eyes, as if it would destroy the heartbreakingly gruesome memories of the most recent dream. "Yes. In the most recent one he had been cut all over his face." And without meaning to, I told him everything.
Well, not absolutely everything, of course. I didn't tell him about the time directly after Jack's death, the time that I secretly knew as 'The Dark Epoch'-that had lasted for two years. But it felt so liberating to tell someone about what I'd been seeing that I came clean about every dream that I'd been terrified by, the ones when I had woken up shaking and drenched in cold sweat, the ones that I'd never been able to break away from my memory. Once again, he gave me techniques to help me put the dreams into a more realistic light, so that when I thought about them later on, they wouldn't seem as petrifying as they had before. But, as I thanked him and began walking home, a new creature of dread settled itself in my stomach and a thought struck me.
How was I supposed to use the technique that he told me about if the damage had already been done and the dreams started getting worse?
And then, of course, I entered another never-ending battle of fear with yours truly as my opponent.
YOU ARE READING
Eve(-1)
Teen Fiction*COMPLETED AND EDITING* You can't often tell when you're internally breaking. Most of the time, you don't want to hear it. You say you're fine and hold your head high, trying to camouflage your pain and the approaching storm. But what do you do when...
