Scarlet Season

Right Now and Forever

You wake up to an annoyingly painful and throbbing headache. 

"Agh," you grumble as you sit up and look over at your alarm clock. *4:15 am*. This is the fourth time that you've woken up in the last three hours. You keep waking up drenched in tears and sweat, your nightmares are terrifyingly realistic. 

"Peter," you mumble as you roll over and grab your phone off of the floor. You're eyes are readjusting to the dark when the blindingly bright white glare of your phone flashes right into your face. You squish your eyes together and rub them until they feel like they might fall out. You then turn the brightness of your screen way down. 

'Hey, u up?' you text Peter. 

It's pointless to text him, only insomniacs are awake at this hour on a Tuesday morning. 

You drop your phone back onto the floor and sit up, your air mattress shifts beneath you. You quickly stand up, not preparing for the head rush that you get. After you restablize yourself, you quietly walk down the dusty hall and into the tiny kitchen. You open the fridge only to find a browned banana, a ham sandwich, and an apple.

"Better than nothing," you mutter as you take the apple from the fridge and walk back to your room. 

Without thinking, you plop onto the mattress, not thinking about the fact that it's an air mattress. 'Bang!' you hear from beneath you as the mattress explodes.

The floor meets your tailbone before you have time to prepare for the pain. 

"Dammit," you mutter to yourself as you roll around in pain. It's not only physical pain, it's emotional too. The 'pop' sound of the mattress brings back too many unwanted memories. 

"Scarlet, Scar, honey are you okay?" You hear your mom call out to you as she thunders down the hallway. 

"Yeah, I'm fine," you say as you slowly stand up. The pain in your tailbone is unreal. 

"Oh gosh," she says as she sees the giant hole in your now airless air mattress. 

"It's fine, I haven't been able to sleep all night," you say, walking out of your room and over to the greasy living room couch. As you sit down she speaks up. 

"Nightmares again?" She sits down next to you and puts a hand on your shoulder. 

"I wish they could just stop mom, I wish they could go away" you say, your voice breaking. You crumble into her arms and feel hot tears begin to roll down your cheeks. She rubs your hair and talks to you in a soft voice. 

"What happened isn't your fault sweetie," she coos, you sob harder. 

"But I just feel like it is, I just sat there and watched her die," you mumble through tears. 

"Scar, you were in shock, anyone would be. Please don't beat yourself up like this. There was nothing that you could have done to prevent this," she says as she pulls you closer to her. 

"I just miss her so much," you hiccup through sobs. 

"I know honey, I know," she says as she gently strokes your hair. 

"I'm so sorry that I worried you mom, I never meant to scare you or upset you," you sob into her shoulder. 

"Scar listen, let's let go of the argument from earlier okay? I know that you never intended to scare me. I think we're both just really on edge from what happened." You sniffle for another minute before sitting up and responding.

"My new friend," you mumble, "Peter. We were trying to get to know each other and he kept asking me why we moved away from England. I told him that it's because you wanted to come back to the states," you sniffle. 

"You've only known him for a day Scar, that's all he needs to know right now, and forever really. What happened was a freak accident okay? It wasn't your fault." Your mom says as an attempt to console you. 

"She was my best friend," you mumble, you can feel the hot tears building up again and see them blurring your vision. "She was my best friend. Why couldn't I have been the one that was killed? Why did it have to be her?" you ask and sob into her arms.