uncontrollable (completed)

come back

September

Pounding pulse, and blood, and darkness and the black of lake waters, and terrible and empty and terrible, terrible, terrible-

"Mara. Mara!"

Bright light, a female voice. And just like that, I fell awake. That was how it really felt, like falling and landing hard. "It was a dream." I heard myself say, almost robotically. How many times had I said those words? Just a dream. Probably more times than I could possibly count, but this was the first time I'd said them to a girl who had heroically burst into my room, clutching a hammer to save me from being murdered.

"You.. You were screaming." My roommate, Eliza said, eyes flicking around the room as if to check that there really wasn't a murderer hiding in some corner. Her pajamas were rumpled from sleep, and she was almost manically alert, holding the hammer high. "I mean, really, really, really screaming."

"I know," I said, my throat raw. "It happens sometimes." I pushed myself up, disentangling my body from the sweat-dampened sheets. My heartbeat felt like a gun firing in my chest, over and over again. Bang. Bang. Bang. I tried to sound nonchalant, despite the fact that my breathing was shallow, and my mouth was dry. "Sorry to wake you."

"I didn't mean it like that," Eliza said, lowering the hammer. "Mara, I've never heard anyone scream like that. It was like something straight out of a horror movie." She almost looked impressed. Go away, I wanted to say please. My hands were starting to tremble, and I could feel the post-nightmare panic attack coming on, descending like crows to carrion.

"Yeah, well I'm fine now." I lied, trying my hardest to cover the tremor in my voice, and to push back the stinging of tears in my eyes as the fear set in. It was like a thousand pound weight on my shoulders, threatening to make me double over as the tears welled in my eyes because bloodlust and broken stars and gunshots and horror and terrible, terrible, terrible

I doubled over and hid my face in the bedspread as the sobs came and took me over. As bad as the dream was- and it was bad; it was the aftermath that got to me the most. The fact that I was awake, and yet, the fear was still controlling me, still making me ache in phantom wounds that broke me the most.

I knew it had been a risk to move in with someone, because of, well, this. Nightmares. Eliza and I were both graphic designers, working at the same office in London. While we weren't friends, we had been friendly for the past year. So when her boyfriend moved out for grad school and she needed someone to help pay the rent, I hadn't hesitated to jump on the offer. I wasn't sad to leave my shoebox of an apartment behind for this bigger, shared one, despite the risk.

And why shouldn't I have risked it? I had left my past across the ocean, and hadn't had the nightmares for months. I was normal. I had normal 22 year old worries and a monotonous schedule. Did I pay the rent? Did I pick up today's groceries? Have I finished my latest project? I should've known it couldn't last. It had been assured 2 years ago, that I would never be normal again, could never be normal again.

But I needed it, I needed today's dose of normal. So I sat up and wiped my eyes, glancing sidelong at Eliza. "I think I'm okay now." I bit my lip, hoping it was the truth. "Sorry."

"It's fine." She said, fiddling with her sweater sleeves. "Do you want some ice cream? it's a family tradition." Eliza smiled at me. "Nightmare ice cream."

"Yeah," I said, surprising myself. "That sounds great."

I stopped in the bathroom to splash cold water on my face, and looked up into the mirror. My face was puffy, and my eyes were bloodshot. Just perfect. My eyes were normally pretty, and gained me compliments from strangers on a daily basis. They were a golden color several shades lighter than my skin, making them looked like they glowed from within. Right now though, they were anything but beautiful. I was chilled to the bone, because they looked just as I feared they would. Crazy. "You're not crazy." I whispered to myself, and continued on to the kitchen

So there I was, sat in a chair with a bowl of vanilla ice cream and a steaming mug of tea in front of me. Eliza was sitting across the weathered wooden table from me, looking down into her mug. The clock on the oven read four am, and I instantly felt bad for waking her.

"You know, I got them too." She said. "The nightmares I mean, when I was a kid. For about a year actually, when my parents talk about it they say life was suspended or something. I even tried making offerings. Toys, my favorite foods. Apparently I tried to offer my brother in my place. I don't remember, but he swears it."

"Offering him to who?"

"Them. The ones in the dream."

Them. Suddenly, I felt a sharp prick of hope in my chest, maybe, maybe she was like me. But she couldn't be like me, because I was the only one left. I was the only one who survived. I was the only one with blood on my hands.

"You know, being chased is one of the commonest dreams." Eliza said, and I tuned out, because I had already learned all this. I had done extensive research on dream analysis after the accident. "They're the manifestation of our waking fears." She said confidently, "everyone has them." She said, calmly and totally assured, as if she'd solved my problems for me.

Yeah, I wanted to say. And I suppose everyone wakes up with wrists they don't remember slitting because their ptsd is so bad? But I didn't say it, because that's the exact type of fact that would get regurgitated at dinner parties.

Hey did you know Mara Smith has ptsd and tried to kill herself?

Seriously? That's insane.

"So what happened to you." I asked instead. "What happened to your monsters?"

"Oh, they left me alone after I gave up my brother, I just have to sacrifice a goat once every blue moon." she joked, and I couldn't help but smile.

I laughed, playing along I asked. "Where do you get the goats?"

"Great little farm in leeds, certified sacrificial goats, or lambs if you prefer."

"Who doesn't?"

"I don't know, I just pulled it out of the air."

And I was suddenly grateful because Eliza hadn't pried, and the ice cream and tea and even my irritation with her scholarly jabber had distracted me. And I was laughing.

Then, suddenly my phone buzzed on the tabletop. Who was calling me at four am? I reached for it.... and when I saw the number, I dropped it like a piece of hot coal, or maybe just flung it across the room.

With a crack, it hit the cabinet and bounced to the floor. For a second, I hoped I'd killed it. It lay there, silent. Dead. And then- Bzzzzzzz- not dead. When had I ever been sorry not to have broken my phone? It was just the number. Just digits, and certainly no name. No name came up because I had not programmed that number into my phone.

I didn't even realize I still remembered it until I saw it, and then it was like it had been there all along. Every moment of my life since the accident. It was all there, all right there. I felt like the air had been knocked out of me, the pain undiminished by the years.

"All right?" Eliza said, leaning down to grab the phone. I irrationally wanted to yell at her not to touch it, but stopped myself in time. Instead, I didn't reach out for it when she held it out to me, instead letting it sit on the table, face down and still buzzing.

I stared at it. How had they found me? I'd changed my name. I'd disappeared. Had they known where she was this whole time? The idea horrified me. That this little life of normal, it all could've been an illusion.

The buzzing stopped. The phone went to voicemail, and my heart went back to gunshots. Who was it? Which one was it? Which one of them had found me?

Whoever it was, I only had a second to wonder if they'd left a message. The phone admitted another buzz. Not a voicemail, a text. A text that made me want to curl up into the fetal position and cease to exist.

Come back, it said. You need to take your mind off this place.