Under The Influence

Chapter 6 : Ariadne

Chapter 4: Ariadne

I lay on my back in the room I shared with Julianna Fleming, my hands behind my head on my pillow, staring up at the ceiling. It was past 11, time for lights out, but I wasn't tired at all- and even had I been, I would have fought hard against sleep. Sleep ceases being a refuge and begins to be the enemy when you dread what images it will bring you...

I could see the long, slight outline of Julianna under her blankets in the bed by mine, but I couldn't tell if she was still awake. She didn't exactly like going to sleep either, if she could help it.

As bad as the mattress in my bed was, I was glad I could finally sleep in it every night instead of alternating between it and a flimsy cot that sagged so much I was afraid I would snap it beneath me. Anything was better than that. Anya had absolutely refused to sleep on anything besides a bed, so that left me and Julianna to take turns in it. No more of that anymore- already things were better without Anya in our room.

It was definitely quieter, more peaceful, without her. You could actually do something with a measure of privacy- actually go more than twenty minutes without hearing someone say something sarcastic and mean, although painfully true, about you. There was no chance of Julianna doing that, as she hardly ever even said anything unless you spoke to her first, and I'm just not like that, so our room has become a mean-free zone. Thank God, because I don't know how many more days alone with Anya I could have taken.

I mean, Anya is hard enough to take when she's being monitored by aids or doctors, where they can get her to shut up once in a while, but alone, there's no stopping her, and no way to escape her idea of fun, which usually involves your idea of humiliation and/or pain. She always went out of her way to be obnoxious to Julianna and me, just like everyone else, only everyone else wasn't stuck in a room alone with her every night. She was always talking, just to hear herself, whether we wanted her to or not- 99.9% of the time that would be a not. And not just about random stuff either, she usually was saying something incredibly cruel about someone, even us- another thing about Anya was she had no problem saying exactly what crossed her and to your face, exactly as she thought it. She didn't care if it upset you- in fact, she preferred it, seemed to get pleasure from inflicting pain. She terrified Julianna, who needed little to spook- and made her cry countless times, though always silently, without tears. Julianna had learned to do that early, or risk being hurt worse by the cult she'd been forced into. It scares me to watch her cry like that...

And of course, seeing the way she was toward Julianna, she had no patience whatsoever for the nightmares she so often had. Instead of trying to help me wake her up and comfort her, she would respond in varying degrees according to how deeply she'd been asleep and/or how annoyed she felt. She might simply bury her head in her pillow and mutter curses; she might order me to shut her up or she'd do it herself; she might yell at Julianna herself to shut up; and a few times, she even leapt out of bed, grabbed Juli by the shoulders and shouted into her face, " Wake up, bitch, you're dreaming!" None of these reactions, of course, were helpful to either me or Julianna. Regardless of how she reacted, it never failed that she would be completely lacking in pity or sympathy for Julianna's terror.

Obviously, since several times I caught her deliberately being the cause of it. She could be positively evil with some of the stuff she did just to watch Julianna start shaking.

Julianna hardly ever talks about what happened to her as a kid in the satanic cult she was in, unless she just had a dream about it. Then details, events, pour out of her in one gasping outpour, as if she isn't even aware of it, has to get all of it out, can't hold the memories inside her any longer. The things she gasps out are so disgusting, so completely horrible I get literally sickened. I really don't understand how Julianna survived what they did to her. That's why I don't get how Anya can do the things she does to her. I mean, with me, I can understand- I am at least responsible for why I'm here. But Julianna couldn't help it, she was only a little kid.