compound sentences || a.i. [a.u.]

apostrophe 0.5

The awakening reeked of rotten berries, the sweet odour of the room they’d escaped mingling with that of the decomposing leftovers from previous meals. It wasn’t this she found unsettling for her nose had gotten used to her lack of hygiene, but what her head had yet to get used to were how slowly but surely the nightmares were seeping into her reality. The strong wall she’d built for her love to never be hurt by the dreams he wasn’t a part off, was nothing but a noble hedge anymore and she knew that either he would disappear into the threatening shadow of fantasy or she would.

“Ashton,” she now desperately called out his name, while with the previous dream he had been the one to so feverishly call out hers. His locus, however was unslept in, the white cover straighter than they would’ve been even if they had been habited. For a moment she feared the ending had come and her heart ached with a void it hadn’t acquainted since she’d been a little girl and if she’d thought the stench had been bad the feeling of something so familiar, yet so sad, smelling like sandalwood and patchouli, her desolate youth in a house that was not fit for a child with vivid imagination, made her want to throw up every ounce of her being.

But there he was and just like it had appeared, the smell also went, as if he was a magical antidote to memories and grief. His hands held a tray carrying breakfast for one and an orchid. The orchid was black.

“No nightmares tonight?” he asked, setting the tray on her bedside table.

Her eyes widened, as the realisation hit her, he didn’t remember. He did not stink of sweet metal like her sheets did, he was still the same golden kid he’d always been, his hazel eyes still filled with purity, instead of the dark imminent threats he’d spoken earlier.

“Great,” she spoke while swallowing away the dryness that lie brought with some of the orange juice. “Like a baby.” If he hadn’t been a fragment of her imagination, he’d seen right through it. No real smile could possibly be this wry.

But he was credulous, foolish even. “Great,” he echoed. But they both still noticed something had changed. Like the genetic adaption made to that damn black orchid.

When she finished her breakfast, she went to sit at her typewriter. Light flooding out of the world as she did so, bathing her in nothing but the consoling words she wrote. But this condolence was cut short by the sensation of cold metal against her chest bones, trailing along and fingers in her neck.

Then a whisper, no longer sweet, no longer filled with an infinite longing. “You should’ve left me there, you should’ve left me in the nightmare.”

She snapped around, but he wasn’t there, he was asleep on the couch. She rubbed her temple as if her demons were but an ink mark on the side of her head. As if she could just rub it away. If she just rubbed hard enough and people seeing the marks would only face her with enflamed cheeks of embarrassment. Oh, how she wished it was just ink-stained temples that made her cheeks burn and not the eyes of a boy she knew she could love no longer.

“Hey,” the now awoken boy retrieved her from her thoughts that seemed to spin in the same patterns every time they’d pop up.

“Hey,” she smiled, slowly removing her hand from her now reddened temple, “had a good rest?”

“It was weird, I think I dreamt something. I’ve never dreamt anything before.” he sounded worried. He knew. He knew.

She stood up and walked towards him. Then swore she’d seen him flinch, but continued to approach. Not like a prying animal, quite the opposite even. Animals aren’t prone to giving up like humans are, they’d never face the one they fear in hopes of reversing that effect of fear.

Cautiously, she sat on his lap, like one would pet a wild animal. Fluttered her lashes. “It wasn’t a nightmare, was it?”

“Nah, well… I don’t really remember. I mean. I’m sure I’d remember if it were anything too shocking. How did the writing go? Any good prose flow from your immaculate pen?”

“Good prose always flows from my pen, I feel quite ashamed to be its holder. Quite a talent that pen of mine. It’s Bic, you know? Quality pens.”

He poked her stomach and she laughed, it all felt so normal. “Don’t sass me, lassy.”

By saying it all felt so normal she was questioning the normality. She shouldn’t have questioned herself when she was so eager to convince herself. Maybe Ashton wasn’t the only figment that had rend itself from her mind. She was going absolutely insane. Her thoughts deranged in a familiar way.

She smiled, but there was an emptiness.

“Where’s God?” Ashton suddenly asked. Alana frowned at his laconic question, not sure about its possible philosophical relativity or that of a certain nightmare. He pointed to her collar bones, were the real emptiness lay. “Where’s your cross?”

A/n: totally not even going to apologise for this being late even though I set a mental deadline. Cause that's just who I am this year.