InsaneJournal

Fuzzy
It had felt like something out of a bad dream. In fact, initially that was what she had thought it was. Jennifer Lowe jerked upright, whole body aching and muscles feeling like they were on fire as she stumbled towards a nearby bun. She dry-heaved into it, the nausea overwhelming and not helped by the stench of rotten food that was assaulting her senses. Her throat burned, as did her stomach, the acrid taste of bile lingering on the edge of her tongue as she stayed where she was, head hanging and hair touching the rim of the bin.

She would need to shower when her body was done throwing up.

She didn't know what she was doing outside so early in the morning. Blackouts were a new one for her. She had never done that before. It was a worrying turn of events if she was suddenly going to start blacking out.

Her stomach twisted in fear; where was she exactly? How had she got there? What had happened? She was preoccupied by not knowing where she was that she completely missed the silence in her mind where there should be noise. She supposed she had been lying weirdly on her arm as she had pins and needles across her left shoulder blade, but it was nothing to worry about, the fact that she was retching into a trash can was more concerning for her.

Once she had her bearings back, she climbed into a cab, smelling of road and trash, stumbling through the hallways of her house to get towards the shower, trying to wipe the filth of the night off her and definitely not freaking out about having blacked out.

The shower was turned up hot. Too hot, really, but she felt very dirty, and heat was wonderful for aching muscles.

As she was washing her hair, her fingers slid over her shoulder and caught on a slightly raised patch of skin, tiny, barely anything worth noticing but she did as it was tender to the touch. She looked over her shoulder, water making her hair slide into her face and obscuring her vision. Once the long strands were out of the way, she saw what looked like a puncture wound, bruising around the edges and a tiny red dot in the centre, like she had been injected with a needle.

She couldn't remember being injected. In fact, she couldn't remember how she had gotten home the night before either.

Hesitantly, Jenny finished her shower and stood in front of the mirror, towel tucked up underneath her armpits, looking in the steamed up mirror at her reflection and wondering what was different. She scrutinised herself, the mark on her shoulder, trying to work it out because something felt different.

A sharp pain in the back of her shoulder, like a mosquito bite. Sudden vertigo, the world going watery, like someone had thrown a bucket of ice cold water onto a water colour painting. The pavement rushed up to greet her. The world went dark.

She was halfway through drying her hair when she remembered that. She had vague memories of hands as well, blinking and finding herself somewhere else, attached to some kind of archaic table with a man in a hat.

She nearly dropped the hairdryer, feeling a lurching in her chest. She remembered a musty smell and a gripping fear as her fingers clenched and unclenched, held by some kind of invisible force, she couldn't see it, not now. And not then. What had happened?

Pain. Small jars with lights in them, like fireflies cruelly captured and held against their will by some kind of mad collector. A man hidden by a hat and something with eight fingers and absurdly hairy hands touching her arms, dragging her down some stairs, her heels had hit the bottom step kind of hard.

She worried her lower lip. It was just a nightmare. Her subconscious was good at inventing things that scared her. She finished blow drying her hair and took one last look at the mark on her shoulder before she turned away from the mirror and tugged a t-shirt on over her head.

Her hair fell loose around her face as she padded downstairs, bare feet making little to no noise against the carpeted floors. The quietness in the house was eerie.

Wait. Quiet?

Jenny spun on her heel, tilting her head and straining her ears. Nothing. She could hear nothing. There was no sound, no hum of conversation, no voices. No single voice singing some kind of annoying and repetitive tune. Nothing but the sound of her increasingly panicked thoughts.

Her breath caught, an icy fear gripping her chest as she slid into her sneakers - forgoing socks just this once - and running out the front door. A couple of people walked past her, two people she saw every day and knew the colour of their auras by heart. But today there was nothing around them, nothing white or grey, nothing black or sparkling.

She ran back into the house and pushed the door shut, chest heaving. Panic was curling its fingers around her, her heart racing and her breath getting shorter. What had happened to the voices? Why couldn't she hear them? The fact that she had seen people meant there hadn't been a mass homicide in the night, no killing spree, so why couldn't she hear them?

Why couldn't she hear any of them? What was wrong with her?

Bright lights in glass jars, dancing like fireflies trapped against their will. Eight fingered hairy hands holding her down, pain and fear mingling, a distant cry - was it she? - and a hazy blink before...

Nothing.

Blindly, she kicked off her shoes - she hated the feeling of things against her feet when they weren't protected by socks - and reached for the phone, hands curling around it. She held it for a moment and just looked at it desperately as if it would magically dial the number she wanted without her having to do anything.

The emptiness in her head was terrifying. Her throat closed up and tears burned in her eyes. She scrolled down her phone book to Reed, Alec and pressed the green button. It rang out to voicemail and her voice was shaking, she knew, when she left the message.

"A-Alec? It's Jenny. Can we meet for coffee earlier than Thursday?" She drew in a shaky breath. "It's just- that- I- Yeah. Can we meet earlier? Like today? Or tomorrow? I know you're busy, it's just- I'm-" She didn't even know how to put it across. "I can't hear anything. Call me. Please."

She hung up the phone and stared at it for a few long moments before she slumped and slid down the wall, resting her head back against it. Her hand slid up to touch the mark she knew was hidden underneath her shirt. Where had the voices gone?

What was she going to do without them?

[Voicemail to Alec included within]