Riley Brooks appears to be leading a charmed life on the outside. On the inside, she's spiraling as a result of a toxic relationship. Once the relationship comes to a tumultuous end, she loses very nearly everything, her sanity included. As an effor...
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I couldn't sleep. I rolled over on the cot for maybe the fortieth time in the last hour. I was used to this. Not sleeping. It was a bit worse than usual because of the very recent upheaval of my life.
The few times I did actually fall asleep, the nightmares were constant.
It was always a surprise to wake up drenched in sweat, my heartbeat like a tattoo. I never used to have nightmares. Not even growing up, but on the few occasions I did, it was about monsters. How cliché.
Life was sunshine and rainbows until the click of the lightswitch at night. It was strange how one simple action could suddenly make things appear.
Shadow monsters were like ink blots on my walls. Sometimes I swore that they moved.
There was one occasion that one of the shadow monsters I conjured up in my head turned out to be an actual, live spider in my room.
Then I was afraid of spiders. And those were real.
Now in adulthood, the monster was the landlord. It was the boss. It was a burglar.
And sometimes it was the boyfriend that occasionally beat you up when he felt like it. Especially when you add a penchant for blow to the mix.
So there I sat in the darkness.
I could hear someone snoring faintly and a rustling noise a bit closer to my left.
I needed to get up. The warmth of bourbon in my limbs had worn off and now I was anxious and thirsty.
I pulled the privacy curtain back and stuck my foot out into the darkness, feeling out for the chair I had propped up to help me up and down. Why had I picked the top bunk again?
I heard a quiet snicker just across from me. Landon was lying in his bunk, his privacy curtain cracked slightly. He had a sketchpad perched in his lap. Beside him was a small light illuminating from a cell phone.
"Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up," I whispered, finally grounding my sock-clad foot to the seat of the chair. I slid off the bunk, feeling silly.
"I'm not laughing at you," he said, looking back down at the sketchpad again. "Okay, maybe a bit."
I rolled my eyes and walked to the sink. "Need any water?"
"Nah, I'm good."
I finished it in three big gulps, then filled the glass again and finished that too.
Then I rinsed it and placed it, very precariously, back onto the shelf. I didn't need shattering glass to wake everyone up.
"What're you doing?" I whispered after using the chair to get back into my bunk. I turned on my side, facing him.
"Just trying out some ideas," he answered. I strained to see his paper in the darkness and quickly gave up.
"Can't sleep?" He asked, still working furiously on his sketchpad. It sounded like he was using a marker. That was odd. How are you going to erase your mistakes?
