(I Just) Died In Your Arms ~ Stanley Uris

034

I lay awake in the middle of the night, my bed soaked with a cold sweat, droplets of perspiration trickling down my pale, cold, cheeks. My chest rose up and down continuously as I hyperventilated, nearly blinded by an agonizing headache.

These nightmares I was having, they made me squirm, they made me so numb yet so alert to the real world. Each time, I would awake to an unfamiliar room with beige walls, surrounded by a circle of men. They weren't just any men. Henry, Belch, Victor, Sonny, my dad, every man who has ever wronged me in my thirteen years of living. I would get up to scream, but my mouth had been sewn shut with cherry red thread, and my arms had been hooked cruelly to the concrete floor. As they stared down at me with sickening glares, a familiar being appeared behind them. Pennywise would blink back at me with those yellow and red eyes, smiling horrifically with a fresh ring of blood around his lips.

It hurt just to think about it. That's how bad it was. Even conscious, I still felt the bands of metal around my wrists and the excruciating pain around my mouth. I shook in my bed, my eyes darting around my room waiting for something to pop out at me, to scare me to death, but all I saw was darkness.

Sitting up in my bed, I stared out my window, longing to see Stan standing out in my driveway, underneath the luminescent yellow street lights, waiting for me to open the front door and let him crawl sheepishly into my bed. But I knew, deep down in my heart, he wouldn't be there. It was weekend, so his parents sprung a weekend getaway, and he would be back this afternoon. It felt so far away, and now I was being plagued by nightmares, so his presence being miles away was no use to me.

My hands balled up into fists, forcing them upwards towards my mouth. I was seconds away from alerting my aunt of my nightmares, and she had enough on her mind as it was. I shoved my wrist into my mouth in attempts to quiet my panic, sinking my teeth into my sweaty cold skin.

All I could think was how it felt to have such eyes look down on me, all of them with the intent to hurt me in many ways I could barely fathom.

"Where the fuck are you, Stanley?" I asked in a low whisper, but I already knew the answer. He was in Vermont. Felt like a hundred miles away.

I shut my eyes to recall how it felt to be cradled by him, to have his arms locked around my waist and his breath down my neck. The moment I did so though, I also remembered how it felt to be thrown into the tiles of my kitchen, my head banging against the wooden cabinets and blood pooling underneath me. So even that wouldn't help.

"God fucking dammit." I cursed, sleepily sliding out of my bed and onto my knees. The floor felt cold, like I was crouched onto a sheet of ice.

Most people wouldn't know me to be religious. In such a Christian little town, everyone was expected to be one. I was one too, expect I never brought it to attention, never once prayed unless someone was truly in danger. But in such a distraught state with no one at my side, the one I truly sought for guidance for was God Himself.

"God, please help me." I prayed under my breath, my hands clasped together and brought towards my face. "Why can't I escape this? Please free me from this."

Something caught me by surprise. A smell, the sweet smell of sandalwood wafting from underneath my bed, so strange that I reached for whatever it was. My hand brushed a mound of fabric, grasping it and taking it into the moonlight. It was one of Stan's hoodies, wrinkled, but still felt warm like he had just worn it. And the scent brought me some sort of euphoria, a false sense of joy and comfort.

I buried my face into and laid myself down on the floor, taking that odd feeling and holding it close to me. It soothed me slowly to sleep, and I felt my eyelids becoming heavier and heavier.