Descent Into Madness

Chapter 13: Nerves are Shot

When I woke up again, I just laid there for a moment. There wasn't any pain and for a minute I wondered if what happened could have been nothing more than a horrid nightmare. But I couldn't deny that Phineas wasn't laying next to me, and that he might have merely gotten up already seemed like wishfully thinking. Besides, it felt too real to have been a dream. Not that I'd never had such a realistic dream before. But that had been about killer robots and a dictator and doppelgangers and other things that were so blurred in my memory that I couldn't pin point what they were. A frown pulled at my lips, I hadn't thought about that in years.

Resigning myself to fact that I was going to have to do something, I opened my eyes and glanced around the empty room. I ran my hands over my face before pulling them away in confusion and wiggling my fingers.

Numbness filled them at the movement. Not really uncomfortable, just strange. I sat up. It was as though my limbs had fallen asleep but without the pins and needles that came with that.

I rolled my shoulders. The feeling went past my limbs, filling my entire body. Even replacing the aches. The only thing that wasn't just numb was a slight stinging in my back.

It was annoying, but at least I could move. The whys were at the edges of my mind, and I didn't particularly want to answer them. I stood up, pushing back the questions. I could deal with what was going on with myself later.

I jumped as unexpected music cut through the silence.

"I'm not Roxanne, I'm not Eileen, I'm not Sharo-na!"

Recognizing the custom ringtone, I hastily tried to dig the mobile phone out my pocket, accidentally pulling several other items out of it in the process.

"And I don't wanna study, work or stay at home-a"

My numb fingers fumbled the phone, dropping it. The ringtone cut off suddenly as I managed to catch the phone before it hit the floor.

"No!" If Mum could call me, maybe I can get it to call out?

Looking at the phone, I blinked. The screen was black. My eyes flickered to the reflection being shown, and I almost dropped it again. It wasn't a prefect mirror, not even close, but it was good enough to show the amount of blood streaking my face and hair. Raising one hand, I rubbed at the dyed blood that coated my cheek. Only a little of it flaked off at the harsh treatment.

Giving up, I switch to running my fingers though my hair, trying to break up the dried blood. It looked so dark in the reflection, almost brown, far from its normal green.

I needed to see something familiar in my appearance because, right now, I didn't recognise myself. My breath quickened as I looked at my own eyes, because they had to be the same. Right? I traced the size and shape. The small deformity of my right eye, making it slightly larger than the left. The things that couldn't be changed with a spattering of blood. Before moving to my actual eyes, and immediately looked away at what I saw there.

I'll deal with that later as well.

I activated the phone, ready to try to call Mum back. But there were no bars. I bit the inside of my cheek. If I hadn't been so focused on my own appearance, would I have been able to seize an opportunity to make the call?

What would I have said to her anyway? 'Hey Mum, you know how you never believe us when we tell you what we're doing? Well, we went to an alternate dimension and guess what? I stabbed Phineas in the back!' Yeah, right!  I yanked at my hair, pacing the length of the room. This is all my fault! I should have insisted we build the time travel pizzeria.

Clenching my empty fist, my nails dug into the cut skin, it didn't even hurt, and I hurled the phone away. It hit the seat cushion bed, bouncing but not breaking at the rough landing.

And I definitely should not have stabbed him! I-I should have knocked him out. Or... or...

"Fuck!"

The word slipped out, and I clamped my hands over my mouth, eyes going wide. The word seemed to echo in the space. But I knew it was just my imagination. I'd never said that word before, Mum and Father were quite strict when it came to cursing, the worst I'd ever uttered before was 'shit' and even that was on rare occasions.

Lowering my hands, I shook my head at my own ridiculousness. It was just a word. A bad word that Mum and Father would be disappointed to hear me use, but they weren't here. It was still just a word. Why am I even allowing myself to dwell on it at all?

Because it's a distraction.

I took a step forward, and my foot kicked something. I looked down. A part of the remote. It must have fallen out my pocket. I picked it up. If I could have, I would have rebuilt it, but it wasn't that simple.  The remote was powered by a small amount of pizzazium infinionite and keyed onto the portal in our dimension. Without the portal to guide it, rebuilding the remote would be useless. And while building a new portal would be easy with the right materials, it would take roughly eight million gigawatts of energy to power, which is enough to overload a power grid, if I had access to a working power grid.

Why am I rehashing information I already know? As soon as the thought past my mind, I rolled my eyes. Because it was another thing to distract me from having to thinking about what I did. I can't keep allowing myself to drift off. I need to find him.

I stuffed the part back in my pocket and, after a moment of hesitation, fetched the mobile phone as well before heading to the door. It slid open with ease this time. Perhaps the frequent usage was loosening it.

Walking out into the corridor, I didn't bother closing it behind me. My eyes scanned the floor. If Phineas had been here, there would have to be blood unless he managed to stop the bleeding somehow.

Walking towards the room where... it happened, the buzz of the lights grated at my ears, louder than the other times I'd come through here. I was almost at the room when I realised my own footfalls sounded weirdly quiet in comparison then I caught sight the drops of blood, and it didn't matter.

I sped up, following the irregular trail before it stopped. There was no body, no sign of him ever having been there other than the drops of blood that still glinted in the red light.