Post Olympic

Tumor

IMPORTANT: this scene involves a flashback type thing that could be disturbing?????

vote n'stuff thx

also, I'm trying really hard not to glorify mental illness. This is who my character is, and if you think I'm unintentionally glorifying mental illness, PLEASE please tell me. I'm trying to make this informational about what she has and in later chapters I work with it more, but PLEASE if you're offended by anything I need a heads up, tell me how to change it for the better, or tell me to take it down. 

there's really no music that matches this scene all that well, so I guess match what you want with it.

-rabid

******************

Wires. There's wires, too many wires. Massive cables. There's cables everywhere. I look around, probes, beeping, rhythmic beeping.

Vital signs monitor.

Heart rate.

Blood pressure.

Oxygen saturation.

Respiration.

Temperature.

I watch it beep. Beep after beep. Every time it makes the noise my throat closes a little more, each rib feels like it's breaking inward. 

My vision clouds black, and I blink it away. My head swirls with memories. Back and forth, time to time, a cacophony of pain and thought. 

Eventually it rests on a single moment in time. A single painful horrible moment in perfect picture. 

It's happening again
It's happening again
It's happening again.
Again
Again
Again
Everything is the same. 
The same,
the same.

Mom.

I'm weak, I'm younger. I can't break out.

She's white, pasty white, I watch her eyes sink slowly into her head like her skin is liquid. Further and further like she's decomposing under my eyes.

The monitor flat lines. I watch it turn from life to death. From present to past. 

Then my vision is back on her.

The room sways and swells like I'm watching it through water. The wires swell and bloat and break their holders, pumping and coursing and bulging with fluids. 

Her mouth drops open and I'm screaming. She's screaming silently, her mouth agape in horror. Her skull breaks in half, slowly in half, like each bit of bone takes its time cracking. I can see the tumor in her brain. It coils up, filling the whole cavity, black sludge.

Two red eyes. Two beady red carnivorous eyes that make me curl up in fear.

It slithers out of her head, crawling down her spine and into her mouth, spilling out like a tongue. Like a grotesque swollen black tongue.

The snake stands up, hissing at me, baring its fangs. Threatening me, cursing me. 

Then it lunges. It lunges again, biting me. My face, my neck, my arms, my chest. My eyes

It lunges until I see black. 

Endless black.

Colorless black. 

---

I wake up screaming.

Sweating.

Terrified.

I look around the room, breathing harder by the second.

Grey. The walls are grey. I stare at the color but white starts to ooze into it and I start to see the hospital again. My head drops forward without me telling it to. 

I start to cry, sobbing into my pillow, the walls closing in around me, inching closer and closer and closer. 

"Nico!" I hear a rap at the door. I cry harder, I can't process anything. The door swells in its frame, bloating, I look away. "Nico!"

I close my eyes, but the snake is there, staring back, its blood red eyes digging into my brain like daggers. Like fangs. Like swords into the pits of my eyes, the last thing I'll ever see is those eyes. 

"Nico?" I lift my head out of the pillow, seeing nothing, seeing everything. There's a figure standing in the door to my room. I press my head back down into the coarse fabric, choking for air.

"Are you okay?" I shake my head no, repeatedly, violently. It kneels down next to me, but when it's hand brushes my arm, I flinch, the skin is rough like the snake. "Nico, you were screaming, hey," I look at it, blinking black from my eyes and taking a deep breath, broken by more crying. It's Fen, and he looks scared. He should be scared. His hands catch on my shoulders, I drop my head, trying to stop crying as hard.

"She's dead." I choke, dropping my head down onto his chest, he's safe.

Fen feels safer than I do. Fen feels less dangerous than my own head. 

"Oh, Nico," He wraps his arms around my back, holding me tighter. No amount of strength will let me escape its eyes. 

"The snake killed her." I start to sob again, into the side of his neck.

"It's okay," His voice is low and even, calming. "You're okay now, I'm here, it's okay."

He holds me for I don't know how long, maybe an hour, maybe longer.

He holds me until I stop crying.

He keeps me in his arms until I fall asleep again.