Shackles & Roses

Nine

I wake to find myself laying on my side on a hard surface, a light breeze blowing. I sit up, squinting my eyes against the harsh sunlight and pressing a hand into the wood beneath me to support myself. My hands are shaking and my cheeks are wet, throat still sore from... what? What actually happened?

My arms and hands are shaking, and I feel a chill all over despite the sun above. I fell asleep, and I dreamt. I had the dream. In public. I feel like I'm going to be sick.

I keel forwards so that my head is between my knees, and they're knocking against my head they're shaking so hard. My hands press into the bench on either side of me, but it's not doing anything, so I bring my arms above my head, wrists pressed against the skin on my neck and hands clasped together, nails digging into my palms. If I can focus on the pain in my hands maybe I can forget about the pain inside of me.

Pressure is building in my head, until I feel like it's going to explode. I press my nails deeper, ignoring all the warning signals in my brain that it's painful; that it's bad. How long must this go on? It feels like hours.

A minute.

A second.

An endless amount of time.

I am stuck in this loophole of ragged breathing and terror that fills my mind until- I am not. The grip on my head releases, and I fall forwards onto my hands and knees in front of the bench, chest heaving. The park is deserted around me. Not even a gardener is in sight.

The pressure in my head is still there, but it's easing off. I try to sit, and a bout of dizziness overtakes me, so that I press my head back to the ground, teeth clenched. This has to stop. This has to stop. This has to stop...

I stare at the grass below me, and an ant crawls over my unsteady hand, skittering about as it tries to get a grip upon my shaking skin. I try to blow it off, but I don't have enough breath left in me, and I start to panic, because suddenly I can't breathe again.

In-out, in-out, in- and it can't go back out again. It's stuck inside of me, blocking my airway so that I cough again and again, tears filling my eyes and flowing freely down salty trails already made a million times over.

My chest is tight, so that my insides feel clenched and tense. But despite this, I have no control of my limbs. I couldn't move if I wanted to, and I feel a blackness creeping at the corners of my mind. Sleep. I need to sleep.

But I can't; not here. Not now. If I sleep so soon afterwards I will have the dream again, and repeat this living nightmare. There's always one, be it waking or sleeping.

I try to calm my breaths, breathing in slowly, and then out even slower. I only succeed in feeling like I don't have enough oxygen, until my head goes fuzzy again and I'm forced to breathe rapidly once more.

The ant is gone, and I find myself desperately trying to look for it. It's the only sign of life other than myself I've seen here since I woke up. In-out, in-out.

Nails digging deeper. Mind wandering and grasping at silhouettes of things I don't have the energy to remember. But in this there is one prominent thing: pain. Physical pain, from my nails, in my chest, and in my aching head. Mental pain from the pressure, from the heartache, and from the strain of these past six months. My emotions are raw, cutting into me like knives until I almost can't breathe again- but I control it, pressing my fists further into the ground.

I have got to stop this. Stop breaking down every single time. This is the fifth time in six months, but each time it shocks me, and I don't know how to deal with it.

"Bailey..." My voice is hoarse, scored raw from any sound I must have made during the nightmare, and during the attack. It comes out as more of a moan than I intended, cutting the air, and the birds in the trees around me go silent. I say it again, throat tight. "Bailey."