FictionPress.com - let the words flow
| FictionPress.com - let the words flow |
|
| Home Just In Communities Forums Beta Readers Dictionary Search | Login Register Extras |
Author's Note:
Loooooooooong chapter. hehe.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
Of Revelations a n d "Interrogations"
Jayden woke up, badly entangled in the nasty remnants of the spell that had held her captive while she slept. Of course, she knew that she shouldn’t feel the actual, physical manifestation of the entanglement wrapped intensely around her, unable and unwilling to just let go…but she did. Her arms, legs, and head were awkwardly trapped, and she couldn’t get them out no matter how much of a vicious struggle she offered. Jayden thrashed around urgently, nastily, as if shaking off the terrible, horrible, revolting feeling of dread and revulsion that presented itself throughout her entire body.
And, finally, with a nearly hysterical cry of frantic, panic-stricken determination, the sheets eventually became unraveled. Jayden was left to instinctively shoot up into a sitting position in her bed with all the force and speed a bullet being shot.
What had happened?
This time, she knew.
For some reason, there was no forgetting this dream. This forgotten reality. But for the second she was going to purposely push it from her mind, for the benefit of not going mentally insane. Or screaming her head off.
She was drenched in a cold, disgusting sweat, her long, damp hair matted to her head. Her thin, pale arms were shaking so badly that she forced them around herself in an effort to stop the involuntary, and seemingly instinctive, tremors. She was cold, so very cold…but her neck and shoulders and head were burning with an unbearable hotness that seemed to constrict her throat, closing off her airways.
But a loud sob opened them up again. And another. And another.My brother, She thought feverishly, wretchedly, quickly clamping her shaky hand over her mouth as another loud, miserable sob accidentally came out. Chris.
She didn’t want anyone to hear her. She didn’t want to have Tyler, or Lena, or Joe to come rushing in, groggy from sleep and dishevled from running, and ask worriedly and fearfully what was wrong. She didn’t want them to see her bawling her eyes out. They would never understand what it felt like to wake up, --comfortable in a warm, safe bed-- from what you wished was a nightmare, but what had once been a forgotten but entirely genuine reality. They wouldn’t understand how hysterical and frenzied and violent her tears were and how, with every breath, a stabbing pain gripped at her chest, becoming harsher every moment.
Clumsily Jayden stumbled to the door, hand over her mouth, gasping desperately for air through cloudy vision. She hastily clicked the lock into place with trembling fingers, and staggered her seemingly drunken way to the dark corner of the room near her bed. This was where she collapsed into a small heap and let her overpowering grief fully take over. Her head was whirling, and felt unrealistically heavy and unbearably light at the same time. She was sweaty, and shaky, and was breathing at such frequent, shallow intervals, even though she somehow could not seem to get enough air into her deprived lungs. It was horrible. The devastating scene from her dream kept replaying itself in her mind over and over again. It refused to stop no matter how much she begged her mind to make it do so.Chris is dead, Chris is dead, her mind kept repeating. He’s dead and you couldn’t save him.
Stop it, stop it, stop it! She screamed at herself inwardly. STOP IT!
But she couldn’t.
Though Jayden had known from the moment the pot-bellied cop had informed her of the deaths, her entire family had always been a nameless, faceless, unrealistic sort of thing that she could not access memories of. Now that she had just relived a tiny part of that horrific night in her mind, Jayden could put a face, a voice, a sense of personality to her brother Chris. She remembered him. She remembered his essence. She found the notion of him being dead so unbelievable, so atrocious, so utterly unbearable that she started unknowingly muttering...
"He’s not dead, he can’t be dead…Chris, you’re not dead…Chris," His name was accentuated with a painful sob. "Please don’t be dead…" Her voice was pleading and childish. It seemed that she had reverted to the helpless, vulnerable, and horribly defenseless child that she had once been.
The room was whirling around her and Jayden dug her nails into her palms cruelly, trying to stop the deceptive stupefaction and dream-like haze she was currently experiencing.
"Stop it, stop it, stop it," She ground out through gritted teeth. "You’re so stupid. Stop it. "
But the room wouldn’t stop spinning and she wouldn’t stop shaking and the chills running up and down her spine were endless. To make matters worse, the shortness of breath was becoming increasingly worse and worse. Terrified, Jayden tried ineffectively to calm herself and breathe more slowly, but it made no apparent difference.
Am I dying? She wondered this naively through the continuous hot tears soaking her face, falling onto the hand enclosed over her mouth and her bare thighs. What if it’s a heart attack? Should I call 991? She wondered frantically.
Or would I be better off dead?
"Jayden?"
His anxious voice was coming through the locked door, a bit muffled but still instantly recognizable all the same. She didn’t want to let him in. He couldn’t see her like this…she’d scare him…he’d run off and tell Lena and Joe, and she’d already caused the two of them far too much inconvenience already without waking them up in the middle of the night…
"Jayden!" His voice was louder now. More frantic. "Jayden, are you okay?"
"I’m—" She gasped out. "I-I’m fine, I-—"
But her broken voice reminded her with vivid clarity of Chris’s child-like, broken sentences just before the living light had slipped from his soon deadened eyes, and that sent her into an even more full-blown, hysterical hyperventilation. He was dead. Gone. She’d never have to scream at him for being overprotective about the potential boyfriends he’d usually scared off, or argue animatedly about hogging their only bathroom to fix her hair, and they’d never laugh together until they cried about one of their stupid inside jokes. No one would tell them how stunningly alike they looked.
She’d never see him again. He was dead, dead…cold and lifeless under the ground…
The doorknob was twisting and turning and, soon enough, the door itself was flung open and Tyler came rushing in, eyes wide. Within seconds he was kneeling at her side.
"G-get a-way!" She managed to choke out brokenly. "GET AWAY, TYLER!"
"Jade, what happened?" He asked, his eyes worried but his voice surprisingly steady and calm. "Come on, talk to me, Jade…" He commanded, gently but firmly. Fresh tears spilled over once again as she refused to look at his face. She dropped her head down to her shivering knees, letting her knotted, sweaty hair tumble over her face. Her breathing was so erratic by this point that little random dots of blackness were spotting her foggy vision.
She wondered how much longer she could take this. It was downright petrifying.
"Jade." His voice was so authoritative that she felt she had to look up, but before she had the chance to do so his hand had lifted her chin so that his gaze, apprehensive and unyielding, met with her eyes, half obscured by her raven-colored locks. "Listen to me, allright? You’ll pass out soon if you don’t calm down."
Calm down? She wanted to scream at him. How can you expect me to calm down when I just witnessed my own brother’s death!?
"C-can’t," was all she managed to mutter through distressed, gasping breaths. She closed her eyes then, because the half-darkness was wholly disorientating her to the point of aggressive nausea.
"I think you’re having a panic attack," Chris said quickly but surely, his voice soothing. "Unless you want to wake up with a killer migrane, then listen to me. You don’t have to talk, just listen, allright?"
She tried nodding but found that a wave of distinct dizziness assaulted her with surprising force, like a violent, sudden ocean wave crashing into her as she stood unsuspecting on the shoreline, filling her mouth with water and her senses with salty, liquid fear. She didn’t want her head to be throbbing like a bitch when she awoke, on top of everything else. Hesitantly she forced herself to open her eyes, still breathing like she’d been running for hours on end without rest. Still terrified.
Chris grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly. Her fingers tingled at the contact, but not pleasantly; it was like a tickling numbness.
"Look at me," He told her. "Look at my face." She did so but didn’t see how that was going to make much of a difference. "Now listen to my voice." Tyler shifted aside so that he was awkwardly sitting next to her, holding both her hands in his own. The gentle pressure was one of the only things holding her down to earth, to reality, to consciousness. "Okay, now look across the room. You can see out into the hallway."
"I know," She gasped out, gripping his hand so tightly with her own she could’ve sworn she saw him wince. She felt bad, but her hand didn’t seem to have any desire whatsoever to unlatch itself from his. Her eyes watered heavily and she shuddered convulsively.
"You can see the light coming from down the hall, from my room, right?"
She forced her eyes to stay open and glanced at the dull light illuminating the otherwise dark hallway. "Y-yes." What was he getting at? Whatever it was, she hoped that it worked, because all she could feel was herself tottering on the edge of dark nothingness and the feel Tyler’s warm hand squeezing her ice cold one, still keeping her grounded.
"Allright, now concentrate on the light—keep looking at it, okay? Now listen to me, just listen and think about…your, um… favorite color," He improvised apprehensively, hiding his own tremendous fear and desperation for his best friend.
"Green," she managed. "It—it’s green, you—you know t-that."
"Remember how when I first showed you your room, I told you that you hated green?"
How could she not remember? She opened her mouth to reply but the words wouldn’t come out. Jayden’s emerald eyes rolled back in their sockets and her heavy head lolled into the comfortable crook of Tyler’s shoulder. Just as sweet, merciful oblivion had come to claim her for a while, getting rid of her frantic breaths and panic-stricken attitude, she felt a sharp pain jerk her back into reality.
Her bewildered eyes shot open yet again, and she gasped as another small but sudden pinch on the arm made her instinctively attempt to slap Tyler’s hand away. "What are you doing!?" She screamed, hyperventilating once again, furious that he’d stop her only escape from this current hell, and determined on showing that. "Stop—t-trying to—keep me awake! Y-you stupid, I-idiotic-- "
"Believe me, Jade, you’re going to want to stay awake right now…you’re going to thank me for this later…" He replied. "Now, come on..."
But her furious anger, deprived lungs, whirling head and shaky, sweat-drenched body disagreed with him on so many different levels.
"Have a stick stuck permanently up their arse," Tyler cut in, as he promptly wrapped a comforting arm around Jayden’s almost imperceptibly shaking shoulder. She didn’t want to seem weak and afraid; it was only another "interrogation", after all, but she was definitely a little of both. Her independent and strong-minded nature was not to be seen as defenseless and exposed. He squeezed, and she let her tired head droop into the crook of his shoulder, much like it had the night before, as she had slowly begun to lose consciousness.
She was so tired.…
She felt so numb.
"Exactly," Joe replied. "Just because he’s a cop doesn’t mean he had any right whatsoever to treat you like that." He sighed angrily; she could tell the memory still made him bristle huffily, and felt a wave of affection for this man who she loved like a father. It was touching that he felt indignant on her behalf, when he hadn’t even been there to witness what had happened. They all just believed in her judgement, that what she said had to be the complete and whole truth. It was nice to be trusted, though she didn’t feel she trusted it, if she couldn’t even convince her own mind to properly remember her past.
"Unfourtunately, even the police aren’t without corruption," Lena said crossly. "There are plenty of understanding, sympathetic ones that won’t interrogate you instead of simply asking you questions in a strictly official manner. I’m sure they won’t give you the same man, though, sweetheart. Don’t worry about that."
"They had better not," She muttered darkly, leaning on Tyler for entirely more support than she was ready and willing to admit. She was beyond the point of being tired, was altogether short-tempered, though she tried to hide it to the best of her ability. And she knew that her intense pain was lurking just beyond the shallow right surface, ready to shoot back up as soon as it was triggered. She wished for blessed relief from this all, but she didn’t know how that could ever happen. When they caught the bastard who’d done this, who had ripped her life apart from the seams, she might go to jail for breaking into his cell and wringing his worthless neck with her bare hands.
"And, hey, we can always file a complaint and get him fired if we get a repeat of last time," Tyler offered helpfully, cocking a crooked grin that she could tell was more than a little forced. "Which I doubt we will. But it would be nice to see him live in a nice little cardboard box and eat the nasty scraps from cheap restaurant’s garbage bins."
"If only Karma worked like that," Jayden sighed, letting her bangs fall into her eyes; for once she didn’t care about irritably swiping them out of her face. What did it matter? She had no one to impress. "What goes around doesn’t always come back around."
"Ah, but luck likes me," Tyler whispered furtively in her ear, as if it were a secret. He glanced around surreptitiously, as if any random stranger on the street corner might be solely interested in what he had to say. But somehow, she highly doubted the forty-something man, casually waiting for traffic to stop so that he could cross the street, had any desire to listen to Tyler’s "secret." "And I’m on your side."
"Lucky me," She mocked sarcastically, trying to force a small smile for him. They had reached the police station, and Jayden felt her knees turn to jelly. Wobbly jelly. She didn’t know if she could possibly repeat what she’d so recently remembered…she didn’t know if she could handle it…the sharp, unrelenting stab of panic seized her chest, but as she felt the beginnings of what felt like another panic attack coming on, Jayden instinctively grabbed a tight hold of Tyler’s hand and took deep, slow breaths, hastily preventing it before it had the chance to start. Lena and Joe still had no idea that’s what had happened last night; they thought she was just a bit hysterical; which was an understandable lie, so it made for a good cover-up. Jayden dug her nails of the hand, the one without her fingers laced into Tyler’s, into her freezing palm. She definitely had no intention of having a full-on attack right in the middle of the street, becoming a spectacle for the random passerby.
"Just breathe," Tyler whispered reassuringly. "Breathe and think of something else. Concentrate on something physical, something you can touch, and see."
As they continued walking, (the police station was only a few blocks from their house, and though the adults had protested avidly, Jayden and Tyler had finally managed to convince them that walking was a far better alternative to driving the short distance. Jayden needed to stretch her legs and she needed the refreshment of the cool air to completely calm her down-- nature had always done that for her.) Lena and Joe worriedly inquired, a few different times, if she was quite allright, and Jayden jerkily nodded her head, giving them a small smile. Tyler distracted his concerned parents with needless questions and pointless banter. Jayden’s steps were small and careful.
One foot in front of the other, She told herself assertively. Step…step…step…just one step at a time…
She’d be okay. She would…
Her pretty face had drained of almost all it’s color, leaving Jayden looking like a long since departed inhabitant of this life, who had never let go, never let herself move on to heaven or hell or wherever she would have been sent. Her wearisome, worn-out and rumpled appearance was not only bothering her, it was worrying Tyler and Lena and Joe, also. She looked like she’d been to hell and back, which, if you’d told her that, she would have readily and resentfully agreed.
Inwardly, she was thinking of various simple, everyday things, and the large, beautiful oak tree, looming closer every second, was providing for her physical distraction from the sudden alarm. Tyler’s hand was also helping, once again. The random man crossing the street risked an intrusive glance over at them, but she was entirely too preoccupied to notice this abnormal stare. Joe had opened the door for her; she smiled her thank you and her last deep breath had been taken before she raised her head high, opened her eyes, and squared her shoulders.
It’s not a matter of if you can do this or not, The matter at hand is that fact that, if you want to or not, this needs to get done. Right here. Right now. A murderer is running free somewhere and you’re the only one who can, potentially, put him behind bars. You have to do it. No backing down. You want to be able to live with yourself tomorrow, don't you?
She told herself this firmly, biting her lower lip so hard that she tasted the taste of bitter, metallic blood before realizing that it actually hurt.
She wouldn’t fall prey to her own selfish needs. There were three compassionate, altogether selfless people who would be waiting anxiously for her to come back out when she was finished, three caring people who could comfort her if things didn’t run as smoothly as they all hoped they would. She owed this to her family, who’s lives had been lost. She owed this to Chris. And to herself.
As she sat nervously in the questioning room a few moments later, on a hard, uncomfortable chair opposite a plump, pleasant police officer, she glanced over at the large mirror from the side of her tired, drained emerald eyes. The mirror, she knew from watching enough cop shows, was double sided. There were probably a few nosy, pyring cops watching her at that very moment, steaming coffee in hand. Brutus might even be in there. Fury raced through her system instantly, but she clenched her fists together and ignored any thoughts of him, refusing to let them even cross her mind. Jayden straightened her back and looked politely at the lady across from her, who smiled warmly.
"I’m glad you came in so quickly, Jayden, it shows a lot about your character. I’m Officer Paige," She began amicably, folding her hands and manicured nails atop the mahagony table. It was a gesture meant to show that she had nothing to hide, that she was being honest and upfront. It was meant to put Jayden at ease, and though she recognized the body language as such, it actually did make her feel a bit less wound up. "I know it must be hard for you, considering who spoke with you last time. He’s not…very sensitive to anyone else’s feelings but his own," She rolled her eyes. "I apologize, on his behalf. But I can promise I won’t be as callous and rude as he was with you." She smirked and, unintentionally, Jayden felt the inklings of a hesitant smile. "Do you need a moment, or do you think you’re ready?"
"As ready as I’ll ever be," Jayden muttered sadly to her old, ratty sneakers.
"Allright, then, I’m going to record our conversation," She replied. Jayden had a feeling that she wanted to make this as painless as possible. It was a nice, unexpected contrast, --which she hadn’t dared to hope for-- from when Brutus Gallagher had interrogated and manipulated her, and accused her of being unwilling to help him attain information, after he heartlessly blurted out that her entire family had been murdered by a deranged psychopath.
Dumb bastard.
"Is that allright with you?"
Jayden nodded, though she didn’t particularly favor anyone listening to her voice repeat that deplorable event any more than once…She just wanted to get this over with as quickly as humanly possible. Living through that night one time, and then again in her dream, already, had been quite enough devastation…