Complicated With You • Simon Ghost Riley x Reader

4 - same mistake

Fingers curl around the edge of the sink, hands trembling and clammy, arm muscles strained.

The glare you receive from the woman in the mirror is frightening. You hadn't seen that woman's face to face in years.

She was a face of someone you didn't want to remember. A face that would haunt you, even in the most blissful of dreams. She'd always be loitering around. Never too obvious, never too hidden. 

She'd never really leave. You knew that. She was still there somewhere. Lurking and spying, ready to show up when the moment was given.

She was a face you couldn't stand. A face that taunted you, a face that tormented you. You wanted to forget, to block out, to neglect and disregard it. But you couldn't. No matter how hard you tried too.

     You just couldn't.

It was like little young you watching that cliché 90's horror movie for the one-hundredth time. When the music ceases, all sound quietens, movement stills and it's just silent all over.

     But you know, you know somewhere in the back of your head, that it's not really over. Because that small and young paranoid piece of you is hiding behind those cushions, eyes peeking scarcely above the plush, just waiting for something to jump out.

And it does. And even though you know it's coming, it continues to utterly terrify you.

Like nightmares and voices and mortifying images, all in your mind. It eats you away, clawing at you, nails digging and teeth sinking, deeper and deeper than ever before.

You still see him. Just staring at you with those eyes. The eyes that had lost their light, their shimmer and their life. You see it in your dreams. You see him in your dreams. I'm your nightmares.

     When you're in your room, warm comforting lights turned off and dark evening sky drooling in through your curtains, your eyes can't help but fart around the space. The mind plays tricks and you swear you can see his figure on the other side of room, timing idly around.

     He walks as if he's never walked before. As if he's in an unrecognisable place, a place that made his skin and teeth itch.

     That's when, with shaky hands, you reach out to flip that lamp switch on. And when you see there's nothing there and you're all alone, you allow yourself to breath again.

     You allow your shuddering chest to rise and fall out of sync, uneven. You allow the shaking of your hands to clutch at the bed sheets, before reality hits you and your wide eyes begin to blur with oncoming tears.

     You'd say you feel bad for the out of sight bugs roaming your room, hearing you whimper and cry to yourself at night, over and over again, wallowing in your own self pity when you dream the same nightmares. When you recognise the same woman or when you see same silhouette of that man wondering your room in a dazed drunken state, but you don't.

The guilty conscience you carry holds everything against you. And people had taken advantage of that vulnerability before. They'd rip that part right out of you, tear it, play with it, bruise it and break, right before putting it back in and sewing it up agonisingly with a knife and rope.

Tears had now dried, arms and hands resting at ease and jaw completely slack. Yet you could still see the vague and subtle glare that lay hidden behind the faltering glimmer of light in your eyes.

You jerk, eyes wide and muscles tense when you see a familiar man in the reflection of your mirror, instantly spinning around.

Simon stands there at the door, his knuckles hovering above the bathroom door, as if about to knock. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."