Realistic or Modern we don't have to be afraid anymore * heartstringss & bad wolf

[heartstringss]

It all started with a feeling.

One moment she was at work traying up drinks to deliver to a table, the next she was crouched over the bowl in the bathroom hacking up that morning’s partially digested breakfast. It began not with a phone call or some strange and unexplainable sort of sixth sense, but instead with a sick and slowly festering gut-twist leading to a sudden overwhelming bout of nausea.

She was just wiping her mouth on the back of her hand when a tap came at the bathroom door. She knew it was Kathy before she even heard a voice.

“Han, you good?”

(…Was she, honestly? Hell, it didn’t seem like she’d been good in years.)

“I’m fine,” she lied through acid-soured teeth. “Will you check my tables? Tell ‘em I’ll be back out in a minute,”

“Gotcha. Take your time,”

She almost laughed at that one. No matter how much time she took, Hannah felt pretty certain that the universe did not give a fuck.

Shaky hands gripped at the edge of the sink, watching the water as it swirled down the drain. She felt her vision swimming all before her knees buckled and her feet gave out beneath her. A sharp crack fell on deaf eardrums when her forehead smacked the sink’s edge on her way down to the floor.

* * *​

“--what happened–”

“Oh my god, that’s so much blood,”

“Just a head wound, stupid–”

“Someone should probably call an ambulance.”

“Are you kidding? Maybe we should call the fucking morgue,”

“Oh my god, shut up, she’s gonna hear you.”

“--everyone, get out!”

* * *​

In Hannah’s subconscious, there is a memory that always chooses to resurface in the oddest possible moments.

She’s eight years old, gap-toothed and dirty-handed in the sandbox at her favorite park next to her house. Her brother and his friend are on the swings. As usual when their parents let them go out on their own, her brother is supposed to be watching her, and as usual, he’s not. Instead he’s got his back turned on her, swing chains twisted while he spins and takes turns talking with his friend about school: all their favorite girls, least favorite teachers, bullies and the like.

Several feet from Hannah, a group of older kids sit at the carousel passing ‘round some stolen beers and cigarettes. No parents at the park today, it seems. In fact, there are no damn adults at all.

Hannah takes her shovel and fills a small plastic bucket with wet sand. She presses on the top of the mound with tiny hands and digs tunnels with her fingers, her laughter joyous and her soul unbroken. All the while her mouth moves in quiet conversation. The words come out like broken English, a quiet babbling sort of stutter that often gets her picked on and doesn’t make her many friends. The older kids watch from the carousel, their laughter loud and rude, but if Hannah notices their teasing then she doesn’t let it show. She tilts her head in closer towards her unseen friend, whispers something in his bandage-wrapped ear and continues playing in the sand.

When one of the older boys flicks the cigarette butt at her, the whole group erupts with laughter as it bounces off the back of her head. Hannah feels her face go red and her entire body stills. She’s suddenly embarrassingly aware. The next second, Rem takes off and hauls the carousel into high-gear. Beer cans go flying as do a couple of the boys, their screams high-pitched and full of fear. One boy lands in the mud face-first, arms flailing as he sails. Another smacks onto his butt, mud splattered up his back into his hair.

Hannah’s brother looks on, dumb-struck, all the while his sister laughs and hi-fives at thin air.

* * *​

The first thing that she notices when she comes to is that her head is throbbing, and secondly there is a bandage (it folds and crinkles every time she tries to move her face) over her tight eyebrow. When she opens her eyes, she’s surprised to find herself in the back of an ambulance and so at once she panics. A paramedic lays his hand on her shoulder to press her back into the stretcher when she flails and nearly tips it over. He speaks to her softly, so softly that she barely hears. When she continues panicking and starts rambling about not being able to afford the medical bills all with no signs of slowing down or stopping, a sedative is issued as a means to take her down a notch. In a fuzzy haze, some he hears a familiar voice come ‘round the back of the van but can’t make out its source.

“I need to give Hannah a message,” the voice says. “This is important.”

“Now is not the time, sir,” one of the paramedics interjects. “We’ve just got her sedated; she won’t understand.”

“This can’t wait!” The man swings into view around the back of the open cab. Bleary eyes land on his form, partially recognizing him as her boss. She sees her phone in his hand, the screen lit up like he’d just gotten off a call.

“Hannah–” he has to push against the paramedics who are threatening to call for backup if he doesn’t back off. “Hannah, your father–”

She places a hand on the closest paramedic’s arm, using his sleeve as leverage to pull herself up even as he urges her to lay back down. Stars dance across her vision as her head explodes with new pain. “Wait, what about my father?” The words come out slurred.

The paramedic stalls her boss a moment longer, waiting til his superior has given the okay before he finally lets him speak.

“Hannah, you’ve just received a call. Your father… your father is dead.”

* * *​

She’s still recovering with old bruises and new stitches over her eyebrow a couple weeks later when she walks inside her father’s house carrying his ashes, the first time she has been home in at least three years. It’s a mess, worse than she remembers it, a single aisleway barely spanning three feet on either side the only pathway through the cluttered house. Garbage collects amongst the piles of dirty clothes and pizza boxes growing mold. The entire place reeks of rot, mildew, and sadness. From the corner of her eye, she’s pretty sure she sees a mouse perched on a bookshelf. It’s gone before she's even able to turn her head and confirm it was truly there.

“Jesus Christ, dad,” she says to the small pine box held in her right arm. Hannah lets out a sigh. Advised by her boss’s lawyer-cousin regarding next step options, this… this was the estate she needed to sort out in order to follow up with debt collectors. Where even to begin?

By way of habit, her feet take her to her old bedroom, only being here five minutes and already seeking an escape. She’s surprised to find the door closed, the room inside untouched. A single small sanctuary amongst the chaos just had she left it. She sets the box of her father’s ashes on her nightstand, sits down on the rumpled comforter of her childhood bed, and hangs her head…

It’s too much at once, and frankly, she can’t handle it.

She lays down, pulls the dusty sheet up to her chin, and shuts her eyes.

To find herself wishing for release, she almost laughs. When has it ever been that easy in the past? She stares off into the corner, brain-train rolling, eyes tired with the lack of sleep. She thinks her vision’s playing tricks on her again. Something’s twitching in the corner of her open closet, a small box-like shape. Metal sounds twinkle softly through the still night air, like a bell… a key jiggling inside a lock.

She sees the case creep out a little further, dance around her bedroom, daring her to open it—daring her to remember. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t touch it.

The case… it isn’t real.

That’s what she thinks, anyway, until she gets up and goes to her closet to see the case tucked in amongst a pile of old clothes, forgotten, left behind just like her childhood stuffed animals.

The metal clasps on either side of the old handle glitter in the light.

She lifts the case out of her closet and sets it on the bed. There’s no lock on the handle. No card, no note, nothing but a bit of tape and some small scratches and a few bitemarks ‘round the edges, likely from a rat.

Inside, a dusty suit and shiny pair of shoes lay scattered amongst a loose pile of brittle bandage. She touches the suit with shaky fingers. A strange sense of deja vu overcomes her, but the memory doesn't quite resurface yet. Nothing too exciting. How consequential for her life.

 

[bad wolf]

Skittering, scratching, squeaking. Pesky little rodents making homes in drawers and tight corners, eating at blankets and clothes. This was his nest, a circle of fabric and gauze, not theirs. If Rem had half the mind to, he'd bite the heads off every set of beady black eyes he came across. But even in this form, a shadow under the bed or dust suspended in air, caught in a narrow beam of sunlight between broken blinds, Rem could do nothing. He had made a promise. A promise... And wasn't that the funny thing? A demon making a promise. Humans could make and break them, tear hearts out and burn bridges and still see the shine between two pearly white gates, but a demon making a promise- That was written in red, sworn by angels, fallen or not.

Even as time wore on, slowly, painfully... Rem's form falling to pieces, that bump in the suitcase turning into a low slump, until all that was left was remnants, bits of skin and ash. Rem imagined a pool or dried stain surrounding his suitcase, all rotted wood and decay where he'd sunk through the floorboards. Black veins stretching out of a pit that led straight down, down, down. Maybe they would leave him there, point and say, "Here lays Rem, the monster who thinks he escaped his fate by tricking a little squirrel."

No good. No better than the rats. Rem would take that squirrel by the neck and wring it like some wet towel. Tricking... Rem had been the tricked. What had it said to lure him in there? He had no interest in nuts or burrowing. He couldn't remember, and maybe he didn't want to remember. The humiliation, even in the not knowing, was enough to make Rem groan.

He just wanted out. Would do anything, everything to be out.

So when he found his spirit torn from its dwelling, meaty hands curled into the muscle at his shoulders, Rem wasn't as near surprised as he was relieved. Veins bulging, visceral, the angel before him was a sight seldom seen, and if Rem had the lids to shield his eyes from it, he'd squeeze them shut and never open them again. A permeant smile where his lips should have been, all Rem could do was laugh, so much so that he was choking on it.

A splitting ring so loud his ears wept.

Quieter, gentler, please... I don't understand.

NO SQUIRREL.

Pushed back into the case, Rem clutched at the angel's arms. Clawing, pleading, don't put me back, dammit. Was this all the time they could spare on him? He'd had so much more before, played so many little games trying to figure why in all God's grace He would put a soul through so much torment. Even as his fingers were pried back, one broken after the other, Rem gnashed his teeth, hoping for some punishment that didn't end with him in a box.

It would be another four years before anyone dared touch the suitcase.

* * *​

​

Golden hair and a pulse beneath all that flesh, beating out a tune Rem could dance to.

Saved! Saved to new life sublime, life now is sweet and my joy is complete!

Rem could cry and he would when no one else was looking.

His case on the bed, his few belongings laid out before him, Rem stood behind the women, there but not there, in a room not all too unfamiliar. Quivering, shivering, full of fervor, Rem ducked back into a corner, crouching and holding his head. Hands sticky and body aching, he yearned for the night.

 

[heartstringss]

Hannah looks at the case a moment longer. Did the bandages stir a little or was that just a trick of her imagination? She reaches up to rub her eyes, flinching when her knuckles brush both bruise and stitches at the same time. Without a second thought, she flips the lid shut on the case (the latches do not click and hence its mouth remains unsealed, it's unseen captor still at large) and tries to shake the lingering sense of unease from out her limbs. Her hands reach around to feel her pockets, touching first the shape of a crumpled cigarette pack against her butt and then the lighter that paired with it. She lifts a single stick to her lips, hands poised to light it all before she thinks to herself that she doesn't have to smoke inside this Godforsaken house if she doesn't want to, and by God she really does not want to be here any longer.

Case be damned, she leaves its fate still hanging in the balance—another mystery amongst the ashes of her father—and walks out of the house to smoke her cigarette on the porch instead. (Her hands shake as she passes through the aisleways of clutter, thinking more realistically that there might be too much tinder in this house to actually light a cigarette at all. Probably better that she smokes outside for the foreseeable future anyhow.)

Unfortunately, there's not much respite to be had out on the porch either. The steps and handrail overgrown with weeds, the furniture rusty after years of rain, disuse and rot. She doesn't even want to sit down (not knowing how recent her last Tetanus shot), that's how bad it is. So instead Hannah smokes her cigarette standing in the entryway, shoulder leaned against the frame. She peers out onto the front yard of her father's house knowing that it's easily the biggest eyesore of the whole damn neighborhood... her mother would have been so sad to look upon the overgrown garden and its topped fence, let alone the broken lawn gnomes with their painted faces now long faded, little more than discarded sentryman left in the yard.

She sighs the last bit of smoke left from her cigarette, stubs the butt out on the metal table, and slams the door shut as she walks into the house.

* * *​

The case is shuffled to the far side of the mattresss, eyes heavy as she curls into bed later that night. Sleep does not come easily—it never does—but this time, for whatever reason, she drifts off less fitfully than usual. It's likely that her doctor would say she is exerting herself too much both mentally and physically and that she needs to slow it down. Too much exposure to hard elements, to all the heaviness of memory and the things that she had buried and still not confronted since the first time she had left her father's house. Her hands curl into fists as she lies sweating in her sheets, the purse of her lips set tight and eyelids twitching.

A figure dances 'cross the canvas of her mind, its queer familiarity still half-formed, it's shape more than just a little blurred around the edges.

"What do you--"

The Hannah in her dreams draws short from asking her full question, heart seized into her throat with the sudden grip of full-body terror. She senses danger at her back but can't yet stem the fear enough to turn around; all hair along her neck and arms raises up on end. A wet, slithery sort of presence leaks into her mind, dark fingers peeling back the layers at the very fabric of her being and the thing which keeps her separate from everybody else. Her own hands grasp at either sides of her head, pulling hair and skin as she clasps onto the thing that's trying to worm its way in through her ears.

She wakes up screaming, tears and blood and snot all intermingled in the harsh new lines made streaking down her face. A bit of moonlight flirts across a shape crouched in the corner of her room. Her heart stops in her chest for a few painful, dread-filled seconds, but by the time reality sets in and she finally gets the light, the figure's gone. She spends the next several hours watching as the moonlight plays its shadows across her bedroom ceiling and the wall, her spine gone painfully rigid while she struggles to grasp what might be real with what is not.

 

[bad wolf]

It was a long while before Rem moved again, every joint stiff and muscle gone taught. It was enough to hold him together for now, the hard press of the suitcase etched in lines across his body and over miles of scars. His head in his hands, he peered out between his fingers with large, lidless eyes, expecting a wetness to drip down from his face and into the carpet. He was usually so careful, but in this plane he didn't have to be, stuck between words, alive and dead and neither at all. It was very seldom that he was granted a reprieve like this, where he felt some semblance of whole--the flesh under his fingers raw but tangible, solid, together. He was afraid to let go, scared it would come apart in his hands, and yet, also afraid to hold it too tight, that his fingers would sink below the surface and tickle his organs.

Rem remembered a time when he grew too comfortable in this plane, how the angels had wrenched him out of it. The consequences had been grave, seared into memory and made reflex. He couldn't spend any amount of time here and relax. It was no vacation, no stroll through the meadow. Marked like a brand, the wounds made fresh in his mind, every minute was spent in utter paranoia.

And even so, despite the shiver, Rem smiled his permanent smile, feeling delight at the presence on the bed. He wanted to show it gratitude for opening the case--tested the doors as it slept, rattling the locks and peering through the keyhole.

Let me in, little bird. I have a dream just for you.

Something soft but slimy, grown like mold in his back pocket.

Wasn't that just splendid?

* * *​

It was around early morning when he finally stood up, straightening his back with a large arch. He did the same thing, stretching forwards, looking like a frightened cat, so thin the bones stood pronounced along his spine and the meat sank between his ribs. Going slack, hunched slightly but feeling better than he had in a long long while, Rem stared at the figure on the bed. All golden hair and sweat, the redness at its temple weakening Rem at the knees, everything feeling rubbery and new. He cocked his head ever so slightly, trying to decipher some hidden message between the creases under its eyes. Tiptoeing, he toyed with the case beside it, thumbing it open the slightest bit so that he could pull his suit from its confines. Dropping it on the floor, he opened the case wider to reveal his shoes.

Blessed be.

Clutching at his chest, trying to contain the beat his heart stamped out behind its cage, Rem's knees finally gave out. Carefully removing the shoes, he sat back against the bed and held them firm, a mother cradling its child. Pecking them on the toes with his teeth, Rem scooped up his belongings and exited the room.

He dressed himself in the hallway, stumbling around mountains of debris and decay. Heading to the bathroom, needing only its unique smell to point him in the right direction, Rem pushed against the door, a pile of something blocking his entrance. Giving it a good shove, he slipped through the narrow sliver he was allotted, still holding his shoes in an effort to keep them clean.

A crime scene, the clutter inside, someone's lifelong collection. The toilet and tub were buried and made pointless, stacks of everything collapsed against the door. Rem paid it little mind as he turned and faced himself in the mirror, the light shining in through the bathroom window just enough to illuminate it.

A canvas of red, skin flayed, eyes wide. Rem recoiled and slammed a fist into the plane, half surprised to see it shatter, shards spilling into the sink below.

Much better.

Rifling through the medicine cabinet, Rem found empty bottles of medication, packs of razor blades and bottles of aftershave--nothing he was particularly looking for, though he did pocket a few razors. Slamming the cabinet shut, more pieces of glass raining into the sink. Rem wondered at once if he was making too much noise. Pressing an ear to the door, he listened for movement on the other side.

 

[heartstringss]

There is a midway point of existence between the states of conscious and unconscious wherein the brain, unhindered and unfiltered to the max degree, occasionally cooks and serves up horror to itself. Somewhere in that middle gray area hides the key to all one’s vulnerabilities and unique complexities, the place which beings such as Rem lovingly know and call ‘the sweet spot.’ When she’s trapped in all her loathsome frequencies of sleep paralysis and bound and gagged inside a nightmare, this is the place where Hannah’s spirit comes to hide. A place of neither being nor unbeing; neither dreaming nor undreaming; the home of both the restful and the tired.

Fingers dig like claws through sweat-soaked golden hair, tangling strands and scratching scalp. A murmur of pleading falls off her pale pink lips while beneath the stranglehold of her bedsheet, Hannah’s thin form twists and writhes and jerks. When a bony finger reaches out under the cover of nightly shadow and presses a new dream like a gift inside her brain through the tiny keyhole of her ear, her body stills and goes rock-solid. Her nerves still twitch and convulse in panic beneath the tautness of her skin, but her mouth, her eyes, her hands all fall flat and stretch wide open—staring, gaping, wordless.

A figure looms close by her shoulder, hidden amongst shadow in the fall of night until the moment that a bit of moonlight wriggles through the curtain and casts a light upon his shrunken, blood-soaked, emaciated form. Hannah’s lungs draw in a sharp gasp, which she fights to hold and then release only to find she can’t when it instead gets trapped inside her chest, her nerves suddenly re-paralyzed. Stars burst across her vision, the effect of the trapped air and inability to release it both dizzying and painful. It feels like hours before the effect, all on its own, eventually wears off. Her dreaming dulls, becomes less vivid and more fragmented in turn, but her sleep—like always-–remains no more peaceful than it was the time before.

* * *​

She doesn’t wake up when the stranger (not stranger) begins to move around the bed. Even if she’d been more lucid, she likely wouldn’t have regardless. At this point, the sun had already come up and so his strength had weakened, no more a glimmering, half-formed corpse in the tangible present world. Hannah has long cast off the sheets in her sleep by this point, her body now lay curled, shaking, in the cold air of the room.

Neither does she wake when the suitcase by her feet stretches wide its mouth to reveal the contents that it held inside. Perhaps she should have been more startled when the case was shakily lifted and then dropped onto the floor, but rather than panic she hardly notices at all. Her face turns once into the pillowcase, eyelids and hands squeezed tight against the dusty fabric as she keeps on dreaming.

The dusty contents of the case lift into thin air, the door squeaks open, and still, all the while… she sleeps on.

Her shoulders tremble with the cold morning light, even as the air throughout the house remains still stale and choked with mildew with the windows tightly shut. A pale hand reaches blindly for the discarded sheet, tugs it up around her shoulders when she finds it. She burrows deeper into the worn softness of her childhood bed, comforted even in her sleep by all its old familiar smells. Was her sleep more peaceful with the demon lacking, or simply because her nightmares had worn her out so thoroughly now in the end?

Whatever the reason, she didn’t get to relish this peace too long, unfortunately. (Then again, she never did.)

The sound of shattered glass woke her suddenly and roughly, muscles tight and aching as she shot bolt upright in bed. Her heart was hammering, chest tight, barely breathing as her hands fisted into blankets, completely overcome with surprise and fright. She wondered briefly if she might have only imagined the noise, started to relax a little when out of nowhere a second slamming of doors followed and more shattered glass echoed somewhere in the house. At that instant, she shot out of bed entirely. Her feet were already carrying her to the door before she’d so much as made up her mind whether or not she wanted to investigate or just flee entirely.

She looked down to find her hands clenched around a small wooden baseball bat, unsure when she had even picked up. Her immediate suspicion lay with wild animals or thieves, already making sense of the fact it was inevitable someone might come to burglarize the house after her father’s obituary had been posted and the house was clearly vacant til her arrival just the other night. She hadn’t arrived with her own car, so aside from the lights and shadows moving room to room (hard to tell with the windows cluttered as they were), a burglar might not even know that she was here. Though Hannah wasn’t fit to defend herself much otherwise, she’d taken any advantage that she had. Goddamn if she wouldn’t still at least try.

Creaking open the bedroom door, Hannah trembled out into the hall and tried to steal herself for whatever met her on the other side. “Who’s there? I swear I'll call the cops. I'm fucking armed.”