content warning!

this text contains graphic mention of sexual assault, emotional and sexual abuse, medical abuse, eye trauma, body horror and gore, suicidal ideation, and violence. please read with caution, or go back to home.

this is all based on personal experience; names have been changed.

SATIVA

they found me.
they surrounded the cabin.
they can see me through the windows.

they’re shining their searchlights through! Fuck!
they’re going to break through the windows and grab me and

the air conditioner is screaming, but i can still hear the clicks of the guns as they cock them. my breath is solid now, congealed, leaden in my lungs.

i cannot move i

Evan has me in his arms, carrying me up the stairs away from the endless city on the TV away from the guns trained on me through all the windows of the ground floor

Stop! I saw them! There! for just a second, Evan, when you lifted me over the couch, i saw the way those demons – the ones I thought were our friends – peered down at me from the banister, chittered, scampered back into their rooms and slammed the doors

It’s okay, babe, that didn’t happen. Avery was just checking on you. He came down earlier to check on you and you screamed and told him to get away, so he did. Everyone is really worried about you.

is Colin here? is Avery? no, i am alone, i am trapped in this foul antireality with some simulacrum of Evan gripping me to his chest as he pushes open the door, drops me on the bed,

what if he rapes me, i couldn’t tell him no, it’s not like i can even move, i, i –

the wood grain of the A–frame ceiling, ceiling-that-is-also-wall, is hundreds of leering eyes. shifting. blinking, irises melting and scleras shifting like hundreds of tiny whirlpools, sickening and hypnotizing and filling my throat with bile and

he is next to me on the bed on top of the sheets trying to reach out and hold me but I won’t let him i don’t know if he’s real or not don’t know if I can trust him don’t know if he’s working with the demons i can still hear them talking outside they don’t think i’m what i say i am they call me she they call me weak and manipulative and

maybe there’s a way I can check to see if he’s real? i have to let him touch me again. have to

let him pull the single white top sheet back, let him place it over me (the gentlest he’s been with me in so, so long)

let him wrap his arm under my back and hold me to his chest (like he cares. like he could actually protect me. like there is something left between us, something more than bones, picked clean)

time stretches, seconds splinter into moments.

swirling wood grain slows,

there's one ragged breath from him

in –

whirring from outside the window the blinds are closed but what if they can still see what if they know i’m in here what if they can still shoot through the blinds and the curtains don't even go up the whole way there’s another window up top without anything covering it they can see me they know i'm here they know i’m going to die they’re going to get me they know they know they know

((his breath,))

out –

tremors in my legs ,,, kinetic energy coils in my chest ,,, my arms shake ,,, my body feels like it’s on fire everything is moving bolts of lightning through my heart is this a seizure is this actually happening this can’t be happening i would go to the hospital if this was actually a seizure he would call for help and there would be sirens and an ambulance and they would take me

((new breath,))

in –

No, no, this has to be a dream! it can’t be real! I took the Sativa, that’s what it is, it’s the gummy, I took too much and –

Blue. Please. Listen to me, for just a moment, and look up at him. See how Evan’s face is frozen, slack-jawed in the middle of a breath. See how he’s opening his mouth to say something, how his eyes are beginning to blink. How his skin is made of wax, how he’s shining like plastic in the light. How

his eyes swell as they

look into mine,

ballooning,

filling with pus,

eyelashes flaking off and

skin tearing and

time moves again the swirls spread across the ceiling they snake over the floor and up the side of the bed and his eyes hold so much hurt in them that i wonder if

Yes, Blue. You’re right. He is in pain, and it’s pain that you caused, because he knows he can never trust you again. See how he can’t quite hold it in, the poison you’ve fed him? How he tries so hard to take care of you, how even in this moment of absolute psychosis he wants nothing but to keep you safe? This has gone on for a long time, Blue. He should see you for what you are, but he can’t. Not yet. He has to get rid of the pus behind his eyes. He needs something to lance it, but – Ah. I see. He’s noticed. He sees how Colin looks at you. He knows you’re going to try to leave him. He’s going to stop it, though! He can control Colin! Easiest of all, he can control YOU! He just has to keep you –

out –

Evan’s eyes burst, popped like cherries between teeth, splattering me, painting me in viscera,

Close your eyes to shut it out –

– This has to be a dream, it can’t be real! The others would hear, they would come and help me if it was real –

Blue –

i turn away from him, not ready to look and see if he’s still there, holding my breath to keep the charnel stench out of my lungs, hoping time will speed up so this can be over maybe if i can make it to midnight i can break out of this i

i must be trapped in some sort of time loop. i will wait ten minutes. 11:43 right now. i will wait ten minutes and ask him what time it is.

sheet wrapped around my legs mummifying me holding me flat on the bed as they look down at me voices just out of earshot i know they're talking but i can’t figure out what they’re saying wood grain fading off into the distance, slithering off me and back into the shadows at the perimeter, huge dark chamber, so big i can’t conceive of it, one light piercing down, it spears through me, and

the energy is back, tingling from my toes up through my legs to my core, tickling in a way that feels closer to arousal this time, and i don’t want that, i don’t want to feel that, i

i want to wake up and get out of here and get away from that creature but the sheets are holding me tight and i look down to see it’s not sheets, it’s straps like they put on the beds in insane asylums, i’m restrained here and

the creature leans over me more, eclipsing the light behind it, and its features resolve – melted, cadaverous, nose and lips rotted away to expose bleached bone and a skeletal grin. its eyes look just like my mother’s. her eyes when she’s mad, when they harden and sharpen and look like they want to peel the life from me, when she tells me how worthless i am, when she tells me

No one will ever believe you.

there are more of the creatures now, gathering around above me, the leader-mother reaching down to run its desiccated hand along my chest, stopping between my legs.

i have to get out. this is what i fear most.
i can’t do this, i –

i'd rather die than this happen!

Evan,

electricity jolting, whirring from a contraption just out of view. something powering on

turn my head to the right, away from the Evan-eyes, see an empty folding chair up against the wall of the room, the room that isn’t endless, it’s the a-frame room in the cabin in the woods, i am not in a hospital, i am not tied down, i am –

Evan, what time is it?

i am having a heart attack. i am going to die. oh, thank god. i have waited for this for so long. i remember sitting next to my bed as a child, on my knees, praying in the pre-dawn light, begging god to give me cancer or tuberculosis or something, something that will make me weaker and smaller so i can shrivel into the corpse i’m meant to be, something that gets me the fleeting attention and care that i want so bad, something that will martyr me, i’ve wanted to be nothing more than a memory for as long as i can remember, please, please, let it end here –

It’s 11:44. Are you okay?

You're going to be okay.

It’s only been sixty seconds? No, no, that isn’t right. I was in the hospital for years, wasn’t I? And then after that, they sent me to the laboratory, where they tested me, where they tried all those electroconvulsive treatments on me, where

Blue. Babe. That didn’t happen. You weren’t in the hospital. We’re in the AirBNB, remember? I’m here, holding you, and you’re just having a bad reaction to the gummy.

No, no, that isn’t right. That can’t be right. Evan, what time is it?

It’s still 11:44. Blue, listen, it’s going to be okay. I love you.

how do i tell you that

i don't love you back that

i wish it was Colin holding me that

Hah. You’re so predictable, Blue. Cheater. Infidel. Liar, deceiver, stupid fucking girl.

I’m not a – who are you, I –

Blue, I’m getting tired, it’s 11:56. I’m going to turn off the light now, okay?

No, wait, I

i have to wait til midnight i have to get out i have to make the ceiling stop spinning and i have to warn Colin, have to tell him we can’t do this anymore, have to cut him off and pull away and stop being around him, it’s too much, i have to be loyal to Evan and, and, and i have to

to –

slip, fall,

crack my head on the floor

and

nothing. just gray, static,

Blue, I’m getting tired, it’s 11:56. I’m going to turn off the light now, okay?

crackling in my brain
and

You won’t remember this, Blue. Just know that I will. That Evan will. That all your lies will be revealed, and the rest of the family will laugh at you, and Evan will hold control of you like he always has and always will.

and

I'll always be here for you, babe.
I love you.

and

the blessed darkness of

sleep