𝐓𝐢𝐜𝐜𝐢 𝐓𝐨𝐛𝐲 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫: 𝐄𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐎𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐭

Death's Call

Y/N settles on the sofa and takes in the darkness around her, placing her glass of wine down. It's sparkling rosé. She didn't go to work again, in fact the last time she did was when she had that freak out in the staff washroom, just a little over a week ago. There's been many more chilling experiences while at work way before that one, but it was the last straw for her—especially after that patient screamed at her. Y/N was later informed that episode temporarily damaged the girl's vocal cords.

One reoccurring incident that is preventing her from coming to work is the many of unusual things that won't stop happening to her. The young patients as well as the doctors make cryptic comments that totally catch her off guard and when she does a double take, asking them to repeat their words, they look confused like they didn't hear themselves either. The strangest was the time she was in her office, transferring the notes she'd taken during one of her counselling sessions earlier that day into the patient's digital file when one of the nurses entered and stood in the doorway. The middle age woman shook her head and with a sorrowful tone told Y/N, 'you're going to die', turning away and leaving her alone. Her statement hung in the air, echoing in her head for the remainder of that shift.

Along side that is the drawings she frequently receives from the young residents of the facility, their innocent eyes sparkle with anticipation as she gasps at gore illustrated all over the page. Y/N has seen many patient's depict her own death in such violent ways, crudely drawn but the message was very clear. When questioned about their sickening art pieces, they acted as if they didn't remember drawing that, the paper looked foreign to them and many apologized to Doctor L/N for what they did in a moment of dissociation. When she collects the pages from patients doing art during free time, she noticed nearly all of them have the same marking hidden discreetly among the expressions. The circle with an 'x', the same symbol she saw in the bathroom the last time she attended work.

Y/N found a single sheet of paper, completely blank except for that marking scratched into the middle in thick black marker, inside her purse. She leaves her purse in her car.

The hallucinations she's been terrorized by certainly do not stop when she clocks out of work. They get even more horrific once she steps through the threshold of her home, already shaken up from the day of hell she undoubtedly had. Just the other day, Y/N came home from seeing a friend, something she can hardly stomach to do anymore, and saw Toby. He was dead on her living room floor, his own hatchet embedded deep into his skull. His head was a soupy mess of blood and brain tissue. It was splattered everywhere; all over the walls, destroying her furniture and the way the blood pooled around her feet, you'd think he was bleeding enough to cause a flood.

That was when she broke down. She looked away from the corpse for a second, only to see it was never there at all. She collapsed on the spot and cried for hours, begging and praying for this pain to end. It will.

Y/N can't even find peace in her sleep anymore. When she began using multiple naps throughout the day just to escape the horrors of her reality, he decided to haunt her dreams too. It started with one or two nightmares per week, just to keep her on her toes. Now, each time she wakes up is from a dream where she was supposed to die. She barely eludes death by his hand every time, waking up gasping and hyperventilating from the race she just ran in her mind.

It just doesn't stop. Y/N has never felt this mentally and physically exhausted in her entire life. She at first equated it with becoming older; she'll be pushing 30 soon, maybe she just can't hack it like she used to. She endured so much as a teen, venturing through hell and back at her own stupid expense and made it out alright in the end. Y/N feels like she can't escape this time, the ability to change the ultimate outcome is out of her reach.

But it doesn't have to be— or the way it happens can be by her choice. This has been on Y/N's mind an awful lot lately.

Her phone rings. And rings. And rings. It's been ringing incessantly the entire day, and each time Y/N would listen to the patterned tone until it finally stopped. Maybe she should answer the call, just to talk to someone voice-to-voice before she goes.