Delirium (Creepypasta x reader)

•14•

Halloween came faster than you thought possible.

It felt like the next few weeks passed in the blink of an eye. The leaves changed colour into a beautiful array of yellows and reds, oranges and browns. The air grew chilly, cool nights interchanged with warm ones – though those grew few and far between, before disappearing entirely.

Preoccupied with labs and studying for the midterms, you passed by the spooky décor at work with nary a glance in its direction (though you did smile at the plastic skeleton in the window). The seasonal pumpkin drinks pressed into your hands, slipped past your lips without reflection on the taste. It was a shame for that, really, because those cost more than regular coffee.

Sleep quality grew worse despite your efforts. When it was cold, you'd typically pile on the blankets to preserve heat – but you found yourself waking up night after night, oscillating between so hot you left an imprint of your body in sweat on the bedsheets and so frigid your teeth chattered. Dreams flashed behind your eyelids that were frightening, but upon waking they slipped through your mind like grains of sand, nothing left but the racing of your heart and fear in your gut. The semi-circles under your eyes grew darker, writing grew sloppier, but you powered on.

I can make it through this. It's just a rough patch. I'm nervous about midterms, and the party. Once they're over, I'll get better.

You thought about this every time your head hung low and your breath grew short. Make it through the month. Make it through the month.

While you grew worn out, Cathy only seemed to become livelier.

She prattled on nonstop about the things she was getting up to, parties she went to, people she met. She sat close beside you in the class you shared together, whispering in your ear and scribbling doodles of spider webs and trees in her notebook. No notes. You ended up letting her take photos of your own, so she didn't whine about missing assignments or flunking quizzes like she was in her other classes. Which she told you about, extensively, in detail alongside who was prettiest in class and who she hated with a passion.

This sudden development of motormouth was odd, but you were so relieved that she was friendly again that you hardly minded, even if she didn't invite you over to her place anymore. Plus, she wanted even less comments from you than before, which made it easy to tune her out like a podcast while you focused on desperately trying to understand the paragraphs in your textbooks and not on taking an impromptu nap.

Speaking of people she hated...

Jenny and you had really hit it off in those same weeks.

You had thought that maybe her friendliness that one class was a fluke, an exception, and that once she did her good deed of the week by being nice to you, she'd forget about your presence entirely. Instead she stuck to her word, sitting beside you every class or saving you a seat with her backpack. She shared her notes with you willingly and worked with you for every pair's assignment in the class. It was not unwelcome, especially since you found the material getting harder with every hour-and-fifteen minutes lecture.

What made it even better was that she shared your love of photography!

You mentioned it off-handily once while texting with her, and she subsequently flooded the chat with her own photos, a lot of them from when she was in her home country. That led to the two of you trading nature photos nearly every day, from mushrooms to deer and many, many fall photos. She was more of an artistic photographer, organizing leaves in transitioning colours and setting up cozy window scenes, but she never said anything bad about your photos. Jenny always had a compliment for your photos, whether it was about the subject, angle, or lighting. It made you feel... good.