Your Love Is My Drug (Camren)

7. Dark side of the Moon

This chapter could be triggery for some of you, so please read with caution.

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Chapter 7

A day had passed since she'd seen Lauren, much less heard from her. And it had been seven hours now that Camila wanted to close her eyes and fade out.

She didn't think a person could experience that much pain and misery and still be conscious but she'd proven herself wrong each minute she continued to lay curled up on the floor, wishing she could burrow down into it and never have to come out ever again. Her face, though recurrently colourless, had taken on an ashen sort of white; damp with sweat and tears.

Her eyes and nose were beginning to sore from how often she had tried to wipe them dry. This had happened the other time she'd gone into withdrawal. Her face turned into a tap. Her entire body seemed to want to rid itself of anything inside, like it was filtering out the poison. Everything had to go. She was terrified nothing would be left by the time she was clean. What if everything inside wasn't enough? Sometimes in order to start again, you had to offer everything.

She found it curious how her body had lay on the floor in the exact same spot a thousand times before and never once had it feel as though the occupants of 8D were impaling her. She didn't think the quiet Asian couple living on the floor below even owned a javelin but the debilitating shocks of pain radiating through her spine, settling in the small of her back, implied otherwise.

The growing moisture on her head was suggestive of a fever but Camila was certain she didn't have one. She was unable to still her body; a tremulous, erratic jumble which did nothing but add a little more depth to the black she could see behind her eyelids. It was colder than she could ever remember it, even worse than one Christmas when she was a child and she went out of town for winter break and the cabin lost power during the blizzard. She'd been certain at the time that she'd never again see another episode of her favourite TV show, but this was different. There was coldness inside of her that even fire couldn't fix.

Nevertheless, desperate, she found herself wrapped up in a blanket. The material was thick and soft but it might as well have been paper for all the good it did.

Camila gasped, her body curling in on itself to battle the sensation of her stomach being ripped apart.

It was getting worse.

She touched her forehead against the blanket, pulling it up to her face. She thought it might help to touch her head to something soft but it made it worse. Suddenly she was surrounded by Lauren; her scent fastened around Camila's body and refused to let go. The deep breath she inhaled took Lauren with her and then she was attacked with the same oppressive sensation in her chest as yesterday in the alley.

There were whispers around the apartment. She could hear spiteful laughter coming from the bathroom. It wasn't real, she knew that, but it sounded as indisputable as her own voice whenever she'd open her mouth. Sensation gave way to curiosity for a scant moment so that she could focus more on the sound coming from the bathroom. Laughter had been replaced with something else. The tone of voice was feminine and childlike. It sounded like...

Camila's head lolled around and she used a foot to pull the blanket down away from her face in order to see over to the bathroom. The door was half-open.

Karla's head peered around the door at her first. The unfashionable hair and badly-cut bangs were as off-putting as ever; accompanied with the glasses too big for her face.