Misc ideas/One shots

[Charlotte ? x Reader]

Here's another random idea that came to me while I was trying to focus on my current on-going works. Hopefully by getting it out of my head, I'll stop being distracted.

A piercing sting seared across your fingertips. You pulled your hand back, sliding between the claustrophobically close walls. The motion was slow and awkward, and by the time your smarting fingers reached your mouth, the walls were smeared with a thin line of red. 

A paper cut. 

A thrill shivered down your spine and you couldn't contain a wide smile. Keeping your sliced fingers to your mouth, you began wiggling your other arm up and over your head. The process was as cumbersome as it always was. One wall was flush against your back and the other wall pressed against your front. A large metal nail was stuck through your abdomen, its head sticking out just enough to push the encroaching wall back enough so you couldn't suffocate. Despite being literally impaled, you felt no pain. You didn't feel hunger or thirst either. You felt only trapped, frozen, stuck. Every movement was vertical, parallel, up or down. You only existed on a single plane.

Such is the life of someone trapped inside a book.

You slowly inched your arm up, easing it between the two walls, or rather, between the two pages that had become your entire world. You were sweating, the condensation causing some of the ink to transfer onto your skin in dark streaks and blotches. Annoyingly, this did not blur the words printed neatly over your head and under your feet. If you craned your head enough, you could read them. But you hadn't done that in a long, long time. You had it all memorized anyways.

You wiggled your arm up further, further, pushing it through the indent you'd made during your previous, uncountable, identical motions.

Just a little further. Just a bit more.

Your forehead pressed into the page in front of you, trying to gain a little leverage. You knew you were almost there when you felt the strain around the nail stabbed through your gut. It wasn't pain, more like a muscle pulled almost too tight, or a noose tightening. Your breath was warm on the blank page in front of you. You'd tried to weaken the paper by moistening it, but the water in your breath never seemed to reach the page centimeters from your face. It got swallowed up in the sliver of space the pressure of the nail allowed you.

Just a little more...

Your fingers wedged into the end of their well-trodden path. Your shoulder was twisted at an uncomfortable angle. Your stomach stretched around the metal piercing it. Your tongue lapped up another trickle of blood from your other finger, it tasted of iron and life. Your other fingers were being pinched into near numbness as you forced them higher and higher.

A little...-!

Your eyes widened, eyelashes brushing paper, as you felt the faintest wisp of cool air on your swollen fingertips. This time you managed to not withdraw your hand in surprise. Slowly, carefully, you spread your fingers wider. The barest hint of fresh air slithered down the tunnel made by your arm between the closed pages of the book. You sucked it in greedily, the new sensation giving you a needed burst of energy. You pried the pages another centimeter apart. The nail tugged annoyingly as you stretched further upward. But you weren't stopping now when freedom was finally within sight.

Taking your hand out of your mouth, you thrust it up to join the other. You began shifting your legs up and down along the grooves you'd worn into the paper, an attempt at gathering momentum. As soon as you started, the old urge began gnawing at you, but you bit your tongue and held it in. You couldn't run. Not yet.

With both hands wedging, prying, pushing, you managed to widen the sliver into a visible crack. You forced your neck to bend at a sharp angle and looked up, eyes drinking in the first thing to see that wasn't black ink or blank paper in... in... you didn't know how long it had been. Too long.