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I imagine the soft tap of each one falling into the box.
Tap, tap, tap.
Three, two, one.
A glance toward the wall still shows the ominous glow of bleached white bone, and I snap my gaze away. It’s not working. The riddles, the cue, it always makes the visuals go away, but tonight it’s not working!
“There is a box. A box full of marbles.”
It’s after four in the morning. The sun will be up soon, and I’m hoping the shadows will dissipate. Perhaps Thierry will bring me my pills once he’s seen that I haven’t slept since waking at two. A couple more hours. I can wait it out. I’ve waited it out before, when my supply went dry.
“All but two are red. All but two are green. All but two are blue …”
* * *
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Water leaks from the bathroom faucet, the sound of it resonating inside my skull. Pitch blackness hangs on the fringes, threatening to pull me under, but that steady drip rips me back into my nightmarish reality. My head is plagued by errant thoughts that have no place right now. Ones that seem to hover on the outskirts with sharp hooks that tug for my attention.
Why didn’t my father come back for me? Why didn’t he knock three times?
Why?
The question echoes inside my mind. I slip my head beneath the pillow, to drown its incessant sound. The answer is a dark shadow with a white glowing face. Watching me. Mocking me from the corner of the room.
I won’t look. I can’t.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Stop it! Stop!
Limbs weak with exhaustion, I stumble out of bed and hobble my way toward the bathroom. The room around me shifts with the movement, my knees buckling under the weight of my body. Before I can reach the faucet, I collapse to the floor. A hard crack against my skull sends pain shooting into my sinuses, and on reflex, I let out a cough. Blood trickles from my nose, down onto my cheek, and when I touch my finger to the warm, sticky fluid, the fringes pull tighter. Closing me in.
* * *
Clawing pain tears at my stomach like a beast desperate for escape. A throb in my head and nose sends a pulsing pressure up into my eyes, while a cavernous ache expands beneath my ribs, as if my insides have been carved out with a spade.
“Help me! Please!” The words echo and bounce off the tiles, in a voice that’s both raspy and hoarse. Curling into myself brings me to the awareness that I’m not on the floor, as I thought, but lying in bed, as the blankets shift with me. The blood on my hands is gone, but the incessant pounding in my skull remains.
The walls shiver loose, long, translucent, serpentine objects that move in and out of the wood like snakes. A tingling in my arm has me staring down at those same translucent worms crawling in and across my skin. With a scream, I scratch at my arms, digging my nail into one of the worms that attempts to burrow in my wrist.
“Get out of me! Get out of me!”
Shaking and scratching doesn’t seem to deter it from its path, and when it wriggles into me, I shoot upright on another scream.
A sob rips from my chest, as the blanket shifts like a thousand snakes are slithering across my legs. A monotonous hissing sound follows, a warning that they’ve crawled inside my ears.
Hands clasped over the noise, I screw my eyes shut and scream. Loud, drawn out screams that fail to drown the hissing. “Stop! Stop it!”
* * *
Sweat dribbles down my temples, in spite of the shivers that wrack my body. Sickness twists and burbles in my stomach at the same time that acids shoot up my throat. I turn my head in time to expel the contents, and warm fluids slide across my cheek, as I lie on my side, watching the wall blur and sharpen.
I’ve blacked out so many times, I’ve lost count. I’ve no idea how many hours, or days, have passed. Or perhaps it’s only been minutes. Last I looked at the clock, it was two, but I can’t be sure if it was in the afternoon, or middle of the night. My nostrils burn with the acids, and I heave again. And again.
* * *
