InsaneJournal

Unsettled Sleep
"Calm down, Jennifer, you're just having another episode." Dr Marlone's face is swimming above her vision as she blinks through the haze of drugs. His hands, quick and alert, knowledgeable in what they are doing, fastening manacles to her wrist and in the background there is faint chanting. It is slow and rumbling at first, quiet and soft, hushed tongues that she does not speak filling the air.

Above her head he holds a needle that is slid into the side of her neck and he smiles down at her. The chanting in the background increases and she has never heard that before. "Hush, Jennifer, sweetheart, it'll all be over soon." His voice is soft and reassuring, talking her down from an episode, "You're not special, you're not anything more than anyone else. One day you are going to learn that."

Another voice, echoing in her head Beautiful specimen, so special... overrides Dr Marlone, but his face still swims in her vision. He pats her cheek and the hospital around her fades away. His features twist and morph like water swirling down a drain. The white walls melt away to reveal darkness, shelves and benches lined with jars and cages, animals and creatures squawking and clawing for freedom. There is hissing and spitting and the splashing of water from the tanks that line another row of benches. She hears a whinny, an uncomfortable sound from a creature trapped in accommodation too small to handle. The tanks are lit with fluorescent light but she cannot see clearly what's inside. Fireflies are trapped in jars on shelves, they make the room glow softly, their light illuminating the room where the lights of the bright spotlight over her head do not reach. They are static in their jars, like they are afraid, frozen with fear from the man that has captured them, glowing. Some brighter than others and beneath them all an empty shelf with just one on it. The room is full of the unimaginable. Drawers and benches are covered in clutter and items that look medieval. The staircase taunts her with the idea of freedom, rickety old stairs that look like they would creak if stood on in the wrong way open out into the room, a heavy thud as the light pouring down like rays from heaven disappears and the air closes in. Moth-eaten curtains hang at the windows though no light gets through, the space so close and tiny only lit by the fireflies and a couple of sparsely placed lamps. Above her head a surgeon's light, beaming down on her from above her, blinking past the streaming light to see the beams overhead, dusty and lined with cobwebs, spiders scuttling across and out of sight, relishing in the shadows and the dark.

Warm touches on her wrists and she twitches, struggling out of habit.

It isn't Dr Marlone that is tying her down to the table this time, not this time, this time is someone scarier, someone different in all the ways people shouldn't be. It is a hulking figure with big hands and too many fingers, muscular with a thick neck and slow eyes that give little awareness of anything outside of the orders that have been given. The hair stands on end on her arms as its hand slides over hers, almost in sympathy for what she is about to experience. The long, thick hairs on its hands tickle against her skin as the manacles are tightened, and their steps, a slow shuffling, lumbered with each movement. One has three distinct footsteps, a shuffle, thump, thud, the other only two drag, thud.

Her head can't move, the thick, fogginess of the nightmare realm and the tranquilisers holding her fast and unforgiving in their grip, trying to force her hand to sleep when she doesn't want to. Sleep is the last thing she wants. She strains against the restraints as that voice starts again, low and rough, infused with some kind of magic that made her chest and her mind feel like it is on fire. A black candle catches her attention and she cuts her eyes to the side, trying to see. A vial of dark red liquid is beside the candle, its wax sliding down the long, thin edge and she swallows, seeing bones and fingers, tiny, like those of a child.

He is pulling at her without touching, the words spilling from his lips beneath the brim of that hat setting her skin alight and her mind roaring, the pain unbearable. She cries out trying to get him to stop, watching the lumbering servants watching her. Their eyes are too big for their tiny little heads, heads that are too small for their great massive bodies, slow with age and stupidity, lacking the higher mental faculties, she supposes. One is markedly taller than the other, though the short one is stockier, like an oversized, muscled ape. It is the short one that touches her, his hands too hairy and his creeping fingers, all twelve of them, brushing over her skin.

Here in the quiet even the thoughts are lessened. There is no rumble of conversation, just snatched thoughts from around. From the minds of a mad man and his hulking servants. She hears the rustling of paper an old book bound in leather though he is not reading from it, he has no need to because he knows the words now. They are embedded in his consciousness. She knows this because he knows this. She hears it.

A fine addition to my collection, never had an aura reader before... Hungry. Want over to be fed ... Need a new heart, this one has been too well used. Can't be relied on. Must resupply... Lady on table look sore. Sorry lady on table. Master Berg say so. Must be done. ... Stop writhing, child, it won't do you any good, you will be free soon enough. I am releasing you from your pressure. A delightful addition. Perhaps I am doing you a favour? ...

NO! No favour! She doesn't know what she is fighting but whatever it is she wants to keep it. It is hers and he cannot have it! Squirming and writhing is no good, her limbs merely twitching, unable to fight the unconsciousness that is coming for her, clinging to the edges of her mind like a shadow and a threat, sucking her under bit by bit with the promise of peaceful oblivion, that quiet notion of absolute peace with no pain and no screaming. No hands or lumbering servants with shrunken heads.

That fire creeps over her skin again, she isn't far enough gone to forget that. Beside her there is something being ground, a pestle and mortar and another fleeting thought need more blood, baby. Must see the dealer, perhaps he could get me metatarsal bones too. Infant, again. Human elements are always far better for things like this. Always better for this kind of work... Could do with some healthy hearts... young virgin's blood? No, too risky. Ritual demands- and a snapped command to make a note of what he needed to buy. More words rushing over her, ice fire now stretching over her whole body, burning and freezing all at the same time, pins and needles prickling as her back arches without her permission like the bow of the Goddess Diana. All points rush towards the center, she can feel it, the arch of her back, the highest point of her as she can't breathe, she can't scream, she can't think. She can't hear anything anymore and she falls back to the table, hitting it with enough force to jar her mind and make her teeth rattle.

Above her chest, above her heart hovers a firefly and she regards it without understanding. It hovers, up and down like it cannot decide to fly onto her or flee and she does not know why but she wants it. It hurts, she aches and it burns and she can't understand but she wants the firefly. She needs it, she knows it will soothe the ache that is burning through her.

A jar reaches out above her vision held in mangled hands, boney and weathered with age, leathery skin stretched too far over long bones and longer fingers. It snatches the firefly from the air and she feels a pang of loss as it is taken away from her, a sharp shot through her being that culminates in a whimper and her eyes roll back.

Those hands touch her again, they grasp and loosen bindings as she is picked up, lolling into the muscular mass that ripples beneath her face. Brute strength. Nothing more. Nothing behind it.

Pain overwhelms and the lights go out, the fireflies blink on the shelves and then there is darkness. Empty, silent darkness.

She jerked awake, the scream fresh on her lips, sweat making her shirt cling to her skin and her hands shaking as she reached for the phone and notepad she kept beside her bed. It was a habit she had gotten into as a young girl, writing down the things that she saw and heard and the things that she dreamed. Sometimes she liked to pretend that if she understood her dreams, she would get better.

Her hand moved furiously in the dark, scribbled and messy notes as she dialled Rhiannon's number. Never mind that it was late at night. Rhiannon needed to know. She needed to know and Jenny needed to tell her.

Her heart was hammering, chest heaving as she breathed through the tears, feeling that sharp stabbing pain as if she had just been there, with that man. The voicemail clicked in and she spoke hurriedly into it, well aware that her voice was shaking.

"Rhiannon, it's Jenny. I- We need to talk."

[Voicemail to Rhiannon included within]