pandemonium and shattered glass hearts.

Chapter 12.

12.

Jess's pov.

My minds playing tricks on me again, I'm on the brink of sleep, and the dreams are starting up.

This time they aren't based on fairy tales, which is good, because their happy endings were starting to annoy me. I wish I'd know if I was going to have a happy ending.

No, tonight my mind has started depicting the wizard of oz.

I only really know the basics, having never been allowed to watch fantasy movies, even timeless ones.

Dorothy and her dog ToTo are taken from their dull black and white world by a hurricane and dumped in the land of Oz. Everything is rainbow bright there, it's a whole other world from what she's used too.

She puts on her ruby slippers and sets off to follow the yellow brick road to the emerald city and the wizard that can help her get home.

She meets a scarecrow with straw for brains, a tin man with no heart and a lion with no courage.

Dorothy manages to get back home where life turns black and white once more but she doesn't care, because it's where she wants to be.

At the moment I'm starting to wonder if somehow I've ended up in Oz, because compared to life before it seems to be tinted rainbow bright.

Now I've started over thinking sleep seems to have disappeared. I'm awake, dreaming with my eyes open.

These dreams seem like weirdly distorted visions of reality, but then again, aren't dreams always distorted takes on reality that your brain likes to tease with? Maybe, maybe not.

Today itself seemed like a distorted reality, but I know it was real.

For the first time I saw the real Luce, without needing to go through her stuff.

And despite being totally cliched, she really was beautiful.

The way she looks when she doesn't put any effort in is just beautiful, the way she walks, even talks, is different when she's not made up.

When she's not faking herself, I guess.

Maybe that's her own distorted twist, maybe she thinks she really has to please and impress people.

Maybe she's stuck in her own dream, where she's got to be perfect.

Stuck as a little girl, where your every move and achievement feel new and leave your speechless.

But nobody is perfect, especially when they're pretending.

She's asleep now, sleeping off the last effects of the drugs I guess.

I'm really awake now, feeding off the ecstasy of the day.

Even if that day did just consist of Mario Kart and tea, even if that day didn't mean a thing to Luce.

But to me it was possibly my first real taste of magic, what I'm not sure of is whether this magic is addictive.

Like a drug, that makes you crazy.

Because everything has always been the same to me, I have no idea.

I can't sleep, not when there's so much going through my mind, not when there's so much that could be a new start going on.

So instead I pick up my guitar, I've never really liked the look of the thing, but it is one of my favorite pastimes.

The way feelings and words can be put into something so beautiful with just a wooden instrument is always so magic.

I don't want to wake Luce, so I take my guitar to the bathroom, lean against the door.

Without even thinking my fingers start to pick out the melody of 'therapy' by all time low.

It seems to be a good fit, after everything that's happened.

"oh give me therapy, I'm a walking travesty. But I'm smiling at everything."

My voice is plain, just like the rest of me. It's not very good, yet I sing softly, letting myself get lost.

It's almost like dreaming with my eyes open again, the cupboard in front of me is there, but I don't see it.

But I'll never forget what I found in there, or what I did. The cut has healed over now, there's a thick scab covering the damage.

I stroke it, letting it all wash back over me.

Like a wave, one of the ones that knock you off your feet and get pulled into the under-tow.

Usually, crashes like this were exhausting, make you feel like death. Bring back a 100 things you'd rather forget.

But you know what? All it did was show me that I wouldn't take anything I'd done back. Not even for the world.

And one day, maybe I'll be lucky enough to get what I want.