Natalie's Legacy [sequel to Natalie's Diary]

[24] Control

[24] CONTROL

Jane

Waking up came sluggish and unwelcome.

My muscles had turned to soup sometime in the night, barely congealing into something usable. I rose out of a blur of hazy emptiness, like coming into existence out of nothing. No dreams, no nightmares, just waking from something deeper and darker than even an underground tunnel.

Crawling out of a tunnel hadn't left my head spinning.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, my feet brushed against my heels from the night before.

On the bedside table was my lead pipe, still attached to a strap. I reached for it, curling my fingers around it.

Nothing made a sound. Swirls swam closer. Shadows shimmered nearer, trying to sneak up on me when I looked away. I was too quick, too quiet, at the door before they could catch up to me. The door handle turned in my hand. Not locked. No, I could still escape, still get out.

I jerked the door open one-handed, pipe ready in the other.

Lucas stood poised to grab the nob. A duffel bag hung off his shoulder and his eyes saucered behind his glasses.

"Jesus Christ," he said. I kept the pipe high, poised as if I was prepared to hit a fastball out of the park. "You're going to freak people out."

"What's happening?" My voice cracked. Part of me was breaking and part of me was wielding a weapon.

"Jane, it's going to be okay," Lucas promised, prying the pipe out of my fingers.

I let him, my resolve crumbling. The previous night came back in pieces: Lucas' arm under my shoulder blades, doing more to hold me up than my legs were, his keycard turning a door panel's light green, and the way my fingers unsuccessfully fumbled over the straps of my shoes in the doorway until Lucas had to do it for me.

"I thought you were out cold..." Lucas said, shrugging the bag off his shoulder, "I just thought you might like proper clothes. Or to charge your phone."

"Normally I need to be medicated to sleep." I pressed the heel of my hand into my eyes, trying to rub the crust and caked make up out of them. The effort was superficial. 

I let the tension fall out of my shoulders, stepping carefully back to the bed to sit on the edge.

"Where is your medication?" Lucas asked.

"I think Bia might have it..." I said.

In the flurry of waking up late and Lucas' disappearance, I hadn't packed it. I didn't know we'd be in Salem so long. Bia, though. Bia came prepared. She packed Hallowe'en costumes and brought snacks. She looked after us and Bia would've thought about my prescriptions.

"And Rhys takes medication, too, right?" Lucas asked, pulling a chair up closer to the bed. He looked wary too. Professor Plum had gotten rumpled in the night.

"Only melatonin. Doesn't like things messing with his mind. Can't answer enough questions honestly to get diagnosed with anything."

Pills and pills and pills. Pills for anxiety and PTSD and sleep and drowning out near-death experiences.

I looked up, catching Lucas staring into his open hands like all his secrets had spilled between his fingers.

"What happened?" I tried again tentatively, trying to pull myself together. My limbs all felt sluggish, uncooperative. On top of that, my skin had the clamminess that always seemed to accompany falling asleep in yesterday's clothes.