I sat at the kitchen table again, with a mug of tea in my hands. It was like a repeat of my post-dream panic attack, but this time Phil was the one sitting across from me at the wooden table. He held my phone in his hands, reading the message over and over again.
"What's it supposed to mean?" He fretted, obviously anxious about the message.
Oh, I don't know, I thought. Maybe the crazy terrorists that got me in the first place want me to come back and have tea with them? I didn't say that though, because Phil was my friend. My sarcastic remarks would get me nowhere, so instead of being a sassy asshole, I gave my usual answer.
"I don't know." I cracked my knuckles, a nervous tick I developed in high school. "I guess they want to find me again, because I survived."
"But what the hell is 'You need to take your mind off this place' supposed to mean?!" Phil replied, not quite satisfied with my response.
"They want me to go back to where I was?" I suggested, completely exhausted. "They want me to forget-" I stopped myself, trying not to think about it. I took a deep breath before I spoke again. "I don't know Phil, I have no idea what it means." I slumped down, resting my arms on the table, and my head on my arms as a makeshift pillow. "I'm sorry for waking you up."
Phil shook his head. "God, Mara, I want you to tell me about this stuff, I need to make sure you're okay." He smiled at me, and I instantly felt a little better. Phil had that kind of effect on people, able to brighten their day just by being near him. I could see why so many people watched his YouTube videos, I was lucky though, I got the real thing. "Plus, we don't need anyone coming after me because I didn't take care of you." He joked, and I nodded feeling a little bit better.
"Maybe you should take a little break from work." He suggested. "Just until we figure this stuff out."
"Yeah," I agreed, too tired out to really think about it. "Maybe I should."
I wasn't totally sure it would help, but I knew I needed to get a new phone, or at least a new number if they had found it. A break from work would give me ample time to do that, and I certainly had enough money to support myself. If the nightmares came back too much, or if I started to see things like the wink in the mirror, I could go back.
I sat up, again, propping elbows up on the table."I'll text my boss in the morning." I said, before I realized that it was the morning; just early. I groaned. "Ugh..it is the morning."
"Yeah, Mara," Phil laughed. "That is what happens when you wake up past midnight. It's morning."
"Yeah, but morning doesn't really start to count as morning until four am." I argued, changing positions again, so my legs were tucked under me in the chair.
"I guess." Phil conceded, and I smiled. Now that my best friend was here, I felt a little bit happier, a little bit lighter. It was going to be okay. And then my stomach growled, loudly.
Phil raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to go get some breakfast?"
"Yes, please." I said, nodding quickly. My hands had started shaking again, and at first I thought it was nerves, but found it was my hunger. I hadn't eaten since last night, and an early breakfast sounded great to me. "Do you have any ideas on where to go?" I asked, standing up from the chair and stretching.
"Yeah, there's this place twenty-four hour place in chelsea." He replied, finally setting down my phone and passing it over to me. At the same time I was glad I had it back, it felt like a dark reminder that I wasn't safe. Wasn't normal.
After what happened, I felt like I could never be normal. I'd never be the same again. I felt like the house down the street that the always adults told you to stay away from, broken and stately and mysterious. And seemingly irresistible to strangers, until they came inside and saw what I really was. Haunted.
Because of my ptsd, I saw things that weren't there. Like my eye winking at me in the mirror, when I hadn't so much as blinked. Or the time I saw blood on my hands and flipped out. That had been an ordeal. I had wiped them frenziedly on my jeans until I pulled them back up, not a drop of blood against my pale skin. There wasn't any blood on my jeans either. I was left only with a sick feeling in my stomach, and the eyes of strangers on me as they whispered to each other.
"You should probably go get dressed." Phil said, interrupting my thoughts. I was thankful for it, I didn't want to think about that stuff right now. Looking down at my sweatpants and cotton tank top, I agreed. The pants needed to go.
"I'll be five minutes." I said as I turned and walked down the hall, past the bathroom and the mirror inside, to my room at the end.
"They all say that!" Phil called, and I smiled a bit.
"they're not all me!" I yelled back, and then remembered that Eliza had gone back to bed, and we had been yelling. Oops.
The bronze door knob to my room was discolored with age, and the floorboards creaked as I stepped into my room. This apartment may have been bigger than my last one, but it was older too, somehow charming with its sunken hardwood floors and chipping paint. It made me love it even more.
My room was less than impressive. A bed, dresser, and desk, along with a bookshelf packed to the brim. There was a stack of books in the far corner in the room, and not an organized stack either. No, the books were the slumping piles of a scholar gone mad, mostly fiction novels, but there was a set of encyclopedias somewhere in the mix too.
The desk wasn't as bad, although the surface was littered with pencil shavings and crumpled drawings. My sketchbook was lying open on the wooden top, nightmares drawn to life for anyone to see. The sketchbook was the product of my insomnia, and my nightmares. Once I woke up after a dream and got enough of a grip on myself to hold a pencil, I usually drew in the sketchbook. It was that or stare at the ceiling all night, which generally made me worse.
One time, I had been staring at the ceiling in my old flat, too lazy to get up and sketch, and I watched as the ceiling cracked. The cracks were like spiderwebs, thin and papery at first; but they got thicker. I lay there as the room crumbled around me, paralyzed with fear, unable to tell myself that it wasn't real. It wasn't real. To me, it was real. Until I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the ceiling was unmarred and no rubble tainted my bedroom floor. I didn't go to work that day.
I pulled a pair of jeans out of my dresser drawer and put them on, but didn't bother to change out of the tank top I slept in. Instead, I pulled out a large grey sweater and put it on overtop, creating convenient layers if I got too hot. I had to look through the sheets of my bed to find my wallet, which must've fallen out of my pocket yesterday. My bed was really just a mattress. No frame, no anything. Just sheets and pillows piled on top and pushed into a corner.
Phil said my room was odd when he first came in here, but I liked it. What it was lacking in real furniture, it made up for with charm. Somehow, despite the distressing pile of books and the nightmare-sketchbook, it managed to look nice with a few christmas lights strung up, and some paintings from an intro to painting class I took when I moved here. One of them was huge, and took up a considerable portion of my wall space. Because of that, I had a few leaned up against my dresser, right next to my boots.
I needed said boots, it had gotten cold in London and I would be glad for a pair of nice shoes on this outing. After putting the boots on, I slipped into my jacket, grabbing my keys and wallet and shoving them in the giant pockets. I was ready to go.
Dashing down the short hall, I hoped I hadn't taken too long getting dressed. When I returned, Phil was still at the table. He looked up quickly, shaking his head.
"You said five minutes."
"How long was I?" I asked as he rose, ready to head out for breakfast.
"Six minutes and seven seconds." was his response, and I playfully punched his shoulder.
"Oh come on, I thought I actually took too long."I complained, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.
"Well, you did better than my roommate would." He laughed, pausing as I locked the door behind us. Then, his face lit up almost comically. Phil had remembered something.
"What?" I asked, referring to the look of excitement clear on Phil's face. I took another step down the stairs, prompting him to keep moving. Phil got the message, and started walking again, but didn't tell me what was behind the look of glee on his face.
By the time we got out of the apartment complex, we were both breathing a little heavier. "Your apartment building is almost worse than mine." Phil remarked, his breath forming miniature clouds in the chilly morning air. The sun was starting to rise, and it bathed the city streets in a beautiful golden glow.
"I know." I panted, recalling the labyrinth of staircases that was Phil's apartment building. We continued walking, and Phil seemed to have an extra spring in his step. I eyed him suspiciously, unsure what the motive for his sudden cheeriness once we left the flat was.
"Why are you so cheery?" I said, stopping abruptly at a crosswalk as cars roared down the streets. Phil was humming now. Humming. I knew Phil was generally a cheery burst of sunshine, but this was unusual, even for him.
"I don't know what you're talking about." He lied, and I narrowed my eyes at him. Phil was a horrible liar, and from our childhood I knew all it took was an intimidating, unblinking stare and he'd crack. I glared at him as we waited to cross the street, and he swallowed. Bingo.
"Okay, I might've invited someone to come with us." He relinquished, and I stepped back.
"Phil!" I protested. "You know I'm not good with new people!"
"You'll like him. He's a really nice guy. I swear it." Phil assured, and I raised my eyebrow in response."I trust him with my life." The eyebrow went higher. Sadly for me, the childhood tricks thing went both ways. Phil knew, that if he said please, and looked at me with those baby blues, I couldn't say no. So he did just that.
"Please?" He said, batting his eyelashes. "Pleaseeee?" He pouted, and kept staring at me. Shit.
"Okay, fine!" I gave in. "But please tell me who it is first?" I pleaded, picking up the pace as we crossed the street.
"It's my other best friend." Phil explained, taking long strides to catch up with me.
"Okay?" I said, already anxious. I hated meeting new people, I always felt like I'd have some sort of episode as soon as I saw them. Whoever Phil's friend was, he was no exception to the Mara Smith anxiety attacks. Plus, I was really awkward when I met people. How are you supposed to just meet people and act normal?- well, close to normal. "What's his name?" I asked, trying to distract myself from the anxiety twisting in my stomach.
"Dan."
"Who?" I asked, stopping at yet another crosswalk. God, as lovely as London was, there always seemed to be traffic, even at six o'clock in the morning. It was my least favorite thing about the city, except maybe how crowded it got in the summers. Phil interrupted my train of thought with a laugh and a smile, repeating what he'd said.
"Dan. His name's Dan."