Sleep doesn’t come easy for me and with that thought in mind, I pick up the small bottle of pills from my purse. The handwriting on the back merely says, All you need is one.
I can add assault and theft to my résumé after what happened two nights ago.
Before I left Jase’s home, I swiped the bottle of sleeping pills from his medicine cabinet. I don’t know if he knows yet, or what he’ll do when he finds out, but he can add them to my tab.
This goes against everything I know; everything I’ve ever done. Both the stealing and taking the drugs. They’re only sleeping pills, I remind myself. And I desperately need sleep. Holding the pill up, I see it’s a gel capsule with liquid inside. Just like an Advil.
But everything about this week is more than morally ambiguous. And everything has changed.
The phone pings again and I check to see what they said after getting a glass of water and a single pill.
Laura wrote back a novel. Text after text demanding I give her every detail. To which I reply, I still love you! I’ll tell you all of it soon!
And Jase wrote back, Sleep well. To which I reply, You too. And feel far too much just from being able to tell him goodnight.
It’s so cold here. At first I don’t know where I am. Sleep came too easily. I remember feeling my entire body lift as if I’d become weightless, right before falling so deeply into darkness. Even now I can remember it, as if I could touch it and relive it. Although I know it’s already passed.
I fell and fell, but it didn’t feel like falling. Everything else was moving around me until I landed in this room. A small room with dirty white walls. There’s a radiator in the corner with a thick coat of paint, or maybe many coats of paint. It’s white too, like the walls. The thin wooden boards on the floor are old and they don’t like me walking across them. They tell me I don’t belong here. They tell me to go back.
But I hear the ripping.
Something is being torn behind the old chair. It’s a tufted chair, and maybe it was once expensive, but faded fabric is being torn down the back of it.
Rip, another tear and I hear something else. The sound of a muffled sob. A shuddered breath and the sound of gentle rocking. Just behind the chair.
I take another step, and a freezing prick dances along every inch of my skin. It’s so cold it hurts, like an ice pick stabbing me everywhere.
It doesn’t matter though. Nothing does. Because I see her.
She’s there, Jenny’s there. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, rocking back and forth with a book in her hand. The Coverless Book.
“Jenny,” I cry out her name and try to go to her, but the chair doesn’t let me; its torn fabric holds me where I am, making a vine around my ankles. My upper body tumbles forward, falling onto the back of the chair. “Jenny!” I scream as I reach out to her. But I can’t reach her, and she can’t hear me.
Her hair is so dirty, long and stringy now. The tears on my cheek turn to ice.
“Jenny,” I whisper, but her name is lost in the cold air as I try to move from where I am. How is it holding me back? Let me go! She’s my sister! She’s here!
I fight against it all, but my hips are now tied down as well. I can’t move to her; I can’t even feel my legs. Please, let me go. I have to go to her!
The book falls, and the sound whips my eyes to her once again as Jenny covers her face to cry. Her arm has a marking, is it a quote? A tattoo?
What is it?
Her shoulders shake as tears stream down her cheeks and I tell her not to cry. I tell her it’s okay, that I’m here. Her wide, dark eyes look up at me. Her pale skin is nearly as white as the fog from her breath.
It’s so cold here.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, staring straight into my eyes. Both pain and chills consume me.
“Come with me,” I beg her, licking my chapped lips and I swear ice coats them after. “Come with me, Jenny!” I scream, feeling the bite of a chill deep in my lungs, and she only tilts her head as if she doesn’t understand.
The torturous feeling of being trapped makes me scream a wretched cry. And Jenny only stares at me.
“I just wanted them to be okay,” she tells me as if she’s apologizing. “Someone needs to be okay.”
“Who?” I beg her for an answer. “Who did this to you? Where are you?”