Black Webs

Everything Falls

Where've you gone?
I turned around and now
I'm alone
Will I ever understand it?
Will I make it to the other side?
I almost died
the day I lost you.

xxxxx

s e v e n t e e n:

S t i l e s

He was standing inside a hospital. A very busy hospital. People whizzed past him in every direction, lightning blurs of beige and blue. The fluorescent lights abovehead seemed to constantly flicker, like they were in the midst of a storm. It reeked of blood and death.

Stiles' felt dread creep up his back like the eight legs of a gigantic spider, spitting its venom all over him so he was clasped, trapped. His breathing was ragged, his eyesight weak, it seemed like he couldn't focus on anything at all.

His surroundings were either in fast-forward or slow-motion, disorienting him completely. That was until he spotted her. He would have felt her presence even if he'd been blind.

There was something homely accumulating inside his chest whenever he laid eyes on her. Her brunette hair spilled past her shoulders in frizzy clusters, she was walking terribly fast, like she had a plane to catch or a meeting to attend.

She strode right past him, barefeet and in a tattered hospital gown. He could smell the hint of her perfume, now ringed with the stench of blood and medicines.

Stiles' tried to call out to her, but his lips wouldn't move. They were tight as bowstrings, frozen as if they'd been encrusted in a block of ice.

His feet worked. So he followed her. She strolled past long, endless corridors that seemed to mould into one another.

The lights flickered more vehemently as he got closer to her. He tried calling out to her again and failed. She began to climb a series of swirling stairs, Stiles' was already getting breathless with every step, exhaustion swelling over him like the weight of a million monster trucks, impatience and anxiousness warred between his veins, causing him to grow weary of this goosechase.

His stomach felt like a volcano about to erupt.

She finally came to a halt, and somehow, he'd made it all the way up without passing out. She stood on the roof of the hospital, Stiles wondered how she got access to it.

He wondered how he got access. It didn't matter. She was standing atop a ledge.

Stiles' voice finally began to work. "Mom?" he squeaked. "Mom, what are you doing?"

She couldn't hear him, though. She couldn't hear anything. "Claudia, what are you doing up there?" a familiar voice bellowed, Stiles' father rushed right past him, terror illuminating his irises and making the night air around them feel heavy and suffocating somehow. As if they were breathing toxic gas instead of oxygen.

I couldn't stand being in that room anymore. Not with him looking at me like that." Claudia said, terror in her own fragile voice. Stiles couldn't help but stand there, his whole body suddenly feeling useless, his heart threatening to give up on him.

"Claudia," John Stilinski called out to his wife. She wouldn't get off the ledge. "He's trying to hurt me. I don't care if you don't believe me, but he is. He's trying to kill me." She insisted.

There was conviction in her enunciation, something that told him she would not be swayed otherwise, conviction pure and cold as winter snow.

"No. That's not true," his father insisted, outstretching an arm for his wife to grab. "You have to remind yourself that it's a disease. Remember what the dementia does. It gives you delusions. It makes you think everything is out to get you." He explained, helping her down and wrapping her in his embrace, running his palms over the length of her shoulders soothingly while Stiles stared on, like a ghost.