Beautiful Mess [UsUk / AmeDen]

Chapter VI

Alfred was terrified.

Everything was falling apart around him far too quickly and he wasn't able to stop it no matter how loud he screamed at his own mind. In a way, he was lucky not to go through this alone, but with Arthur by his side, yet it was still incredibly difficult to find the positive about such a thing. He had never experienced such an intense panic attack and hallucinations as frightening as what he saw that day, and the usual whispering in his head turned into angry shouting of hate speach instead.

And he still managed to convince Arthur not to take him to a counselor, thinking how those people just wanted to hurt him even more instead of helping him. He believed that everyone was against him, and had a strange feeling that Arthur was the one who distorted his vision, although a rational part of him tried to think differently.

Now he was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, but he didn't recognize the person in the reflection. It was all disfigured, the reality around him twisted and deformed just like he, in his own eyes, was too.
"What is happening to me?" He whispered as tears made their way down his pale cheeks and ended up in the sink he held onto with a tight grip. "This isn't me... I'm happy, I've always been happy... Despite everything."

Your happiness was just an illusion.

No wonder everyone turned against you. Who would want to be around your fake smile and annoying voice?

Nobody ever liked you.

Matthew was right for leaving you.

You're stupid, so stupid...

If somebody saw him, the first word they would assign him was insane, since he made it clear to each and every voice in his head that those things weren't correct. And he said it out loud.

He wondered what made them louder. He was curious about what could have happened for his mind to go abnormally unhealthy in such a short amount of time.

Arthur had multiple theories about it, but he was not sure if Alfred was up for discussion about them, so he rather kept the thoughts to himself.

"It's my punishment for saying all those things to Matthew, it must be..." The boy sighed, turning away from the disgraceful picture he saw in the mirror. He walked out of the polished white bathroom, closing the door behind himself and trying his best not to cry. It was already quite late in the night, and those who were on campus most probably all soundly slept by now. Including Arthur. Only Alfred aimlessly walked around the hallways with a goal to escape the visions that just kept following him.

He decided to attempt sleeping once more, no matter how scared he currently was.
Going back to the room he shared with Arthur, Alfred silently climbed up onto the top bed - almost losing balance along the way - and quickly covered himself with the blankets fully so there would be nothing but complete darkness. If anything, darkness was better than a twisted version of reality.

Silence. One of your greatest fears, isn't that right?

Or is it the voices that you're scared of, and not the soundless night?

Shit. There was no sleep for him tonight, no matter how hard he tried.

Instead of staying in bed with only a blanket protecting him from the opened Pandora's box in his head, he climbed back down hoping he wouldn't wake up Arthur and walked straight over to his painting supplies.

All he needed was a big, raspy blank paper and watercolours, and his every fear and doubt could be poured out of his soul.
Turning on the lamp on his desk and hoping that the light it gave was weak enough to keep Arthur asleep, but at the same time strong enough for him to see, he took a paintbrush and soaked it in water that stood on the desk for a couple of days now for good five seconds, before tapping it onto the dark blue watercolour and running it over the white surface of the paper.