So this is kinda rough and unedited but yeah sorry
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My world is reduced to a gap between two wooden slats, a thin band of light in a swirl of darkness and panting breath, and screaming, and a body on a floor, and men barking and the harsh smell of blood and guns, the air pressing down on my ears and the skin on my arms crawling.
Outside, there are shapes and movement. I can still smell the pasta my mother was stirring for dinner. I can still hear my father’s joke about the neutron that walked into a bar. He’d stopped before the punchline. I loved that fucking punchline.
Outside, there is fear and death. I am next, and I pray that they cannot see me.
“Jesus Christ, Evianna.”
I am awake. I don’t know for how long I’ve been like this, but I feel like I’m frozen and I can’t move. Here’s Dexter. He’s touching my face and his expression is contorted and the light falling on his features is sloping in from the west through the windows; we’ve slept through the day.
I touch his hand and pull it away from my cheek – it is wet. He twists my fingers in his and he says, “Were you dreaming?”
“I don’t know.”
I feel like I need to throw up, scratch my skin, get rid of all this – all this, there’s so much.
“Stop it. Stop moving. What’s going on?”
I hold onto him. He feels like a rock. I hold on to him and I pull myself up from under the covers, and I feel like tearing at everything touching me, my clothes and my hair and my self, fuck –
“I need,” I say, but I can’t finish. I breathe and I swallow. “I need something. Give me something.”
His expression is confused, and scared, and fearless.
“Wait, I – I don’t – wait. Come with me. Come.”
He pulls me out of bed. The floor feels wet under my feet but it isn’t. Dexter tells me to go to the kitchen so I do. I don’t look around because I don’t know what I’ll see. A man sitting on the couch. A gun on the coffee table. Blood on the carpet, a murmuring telephone. A wooden box shaking and screaming and me pulling at my hair and Librium and Diazepam and nurses and you’ll be okay, Evianna, you’ll be okay and psych tests in a cold room and bugs appearing from cracks under the bed. I don’t look around because I don’t know what I’ll see.
“Open up the first cabinet on your right,” Dexter tells me, and I do. There’s a plastic box of first aid and medicines.
“There’s nothing in here that could help,” I try to say, but I don’t know what it comes out as.
“I have Valium, which is better than nothing. It’ll ease the anxiety. You’re shaking, and you’re scaring me.”
He does have Valium. He has a lot of it.
I take two, filling a plastic glass with water from the sink. The pills force their way down my throat and it feel bad and I feel like I might throw up but I clutch the counter and I close my eyes and I wait. I wait and the noise goes down. I wait, and I can hear the traffic from five storeys down. I can hear ravens. I can hear reggae music. I can hear Dexter’s breathing. I can hear crying. It’s me. I can hear my crying.
His arms are around me and it’s awkward and not very comfortable, but it’s fine.
“Thank you,” I say, and the words sound like words when they come out.
