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The old wooden boards beneath her hands bit into the skin of her palm, but she couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel the splinter as it caught on the side of her thumb, nor the nail left out on the floor as it scratched over her wrist. There was no feeling outside the hurricane of despair and terror that blazed through her body like a wildfire.
She screamed and howled, watching as the image of death, of her guilt, loomed over her, horrifying smile stretched gleefully across its face.
Funny. She’d never seen her mother with such an expression before. It was fitting that she would bear it at last now, at the very end.
And then it washed over her, a realization, an acceptance. This was it. There was nothing she could do. She’d tried facing it, fighting it alone. She’d burned it down, she saw it burn. Yet here it stood, advancing on her closer and closer, tearing the skin from her face, no longer posing as someone she’d once feared and now becoming her fear itself. Where did she end and the monster begin, she wondered, as freezing hands began to close around her face.
It was pointless to fight anymore. She’d lost, the monster had won.
And as she slipped her eyes closed, ready for the agony of the end, to let it crawl into her skin and finish the job, she heard something else besides her screaming and the demon’s harsh breathing and laughter.
A door, flying off its hinges. A loud slam as it was thrown against the wall. It didn’t matter, though, it wasn’t important because the demon had slipped a cold thumb past her lips, was gripping tight to her lower jaw, beginning to pull, ever so slowly, down and down…
Suddenly something heavy slammed against her chest.
She felt herself thrust backwards, hands losing their grip against her face as another pair of arms, warm arms, wrapped themselves around her body, holding her tight, one hand resting against the back of her head.
“It’s okay,” a voice whispered in her ear, “I got you. I got you, Rose.”
She sat there for a moment, her screams dying in her throat as her brain stuttered, trying to keep up. Why wasn’t she dead yet? Why had the pain stopped, if only for this moment? She realized a moment later how hard she was trembling against the arms wrapped around her body and it occurred to her that there was an actual person there, not just the demon that had looked like her mother.
It hit her like a brick. Joel had gotten in.
The panic returned in full force. He wasn’t supposed to be here! She’d come out here to be alone, to face it by herself. To break the chain so that nobody else got hurt, nobody else ever died to this fucked up creature ever again!
She screamed and thrashed in his arms, fighting against the grip he had on her. “No no no you have to go you have to leave it’s going to get you too! Joel, please, you have to leave me alone!!”
She wailed and slammed on his shoulders, but his grip was firm, only tightening around her as she fought to break herself free from the only person she’d ever truly cared about.
“I’m not leaving you,” he grunted, resisting her wild thrashing. “I don’t care. We can figure this out!”
“We can’t!” she wailed, now resorting to tugging fiercely at his jacket. “It’s never going to leave me alone!” She knew what she’d do - she’d knock him out and lock herself in her mother’s bedroom. Barricade the door. So she could die there alone, where nobody would see. But…no he’d just come in and see her later. Would that still count? Or maybe the demon would just wait for him.
She’d have to run again. She’d have to end it herself, so that nobody else got hurt because of her.
His breath was warm against the back of her neck as he leaned into her. “I know. But I want to help you. I can’t just let you give up like this.” She felt his grip tighten on her. “I can’t lose you.”
For a moment, her struggling weakened. Her eyes blinked open, sticky with tears, fully expecting for that horrible face to be in front of her, all smiles, all teeth, all multiple jaws open to devour Joel whole, but there was nothing. Nothing but an empty house and the edge of Joel’s hoodie in the corner of her eye.
“It’s…I tried. I tried fighting it, I tried facing it and it didn’t work. I can’t beat it. I can’t do it, it’s going to kill me and then it’s going to kill you and…and it’ll just keep going because I couldn’t…I couldn’t…” She let out a fierce sob and gripped Joel back.
He sighed against her, the hand on her head beginning to gently stroke through her hair. “Shhh,” he shushed her quietly and it occurred to her, then, how quiet everything had gotten. Without the demon’s hissing and her own terrified screeches, the house had once again settled into desolate silence around them.
“You don’t have to face it alone, Rose,” he breathed against her ear. “I’m here, okay? I won’t let you go. I won’t let you go without fighting with you.”
She shook her head and buried her face in her neck. He wasn’t listening to her! “You can’t, you’ll just end up watching me die and it’ll all happen to you!”
“It won’t. It’s not going to happen, okay? I won’t let it happen. I’m not letting you go, ever again.” And the strength of his grip, how hard he squeezed her then, and how she felt him trembling, ever so slightly, against her body, sent a fresh wave of sobs through her body. She wanted to believe it, she wanted to believe it so bad, but there was just that part of her in the back, egging her on to let go. Fighting was hard, it was pointless. She should just give up.
But how could she now, when Joel was fighting so hard to keep her?
She didn’t know what compelled her to say it, but it welled up through her chest, up her throat, and past her lips. “It looked like her. My mom. I let her die, I could have called for help…but I didn’t. She’s dead because of me, because I was scared.” She sniffled again, another sob wracking her frame.
Joel didn’t respond for a moment and horror fluttered briefly in her chest. She’d fucked it up. She’d let him in too close.
“It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
Those words, two simple little words, slammed into her so hard that she froze completely, arms locked around Joel, tears halfway fallen from her eyes. She stared at the ceiling, those words repeating in her head, over and over and over.
It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.
Was it? Was it okay? She couldn’t believe it, but she wanted to. She wanted to so badly. Maybe not now, sitting in her childhood home, trauma peeking around the corner, the heavy air of that demon still making its way through her lungs and back out again, but maybe one day it could be.
It wasn’t okay now, but for the first time since blood had pooled on the floor of her room in the hospital, she felt just the faintest spark of hope.
And all the emotions of the last week, everything she’d forced down, ran away from, pretended it wasn’t there so that she could hang onto some thread of normalcy, came rushing back up like floodwater, breaking through the dam and tearing a howling wail from her chest as she gripped Joel and he gripped her back, holding her close as she fell apart, letting everything rush from her body, the heaviness of guilt and trauma and fear splashing onto the dead floor of the house, soaking into those wretched boards.
Away from her, out of her. Until she forgot why she’d ever wanted to face anything alone.