FIVE: confrontation

thanks to inspiredrlh for the amazing cover posted above 💕

sorry for taking so long to update - i'm going to try working on Awake as a part of the #justwriteit thriller challenge, so let's hope it becomes more regular. let me know what you think of the chapter! - ann


The night didn't grant me with more than an hour's sleep, and every second I spent unconscious meant my brain was overtaking by nightmares that shook me to my core. Images of Gia running barefoot through the forest, her footprints covered in a layer of scarlet, flashed through my mind like scenes from an old fashioned movie being projected onto my bedroom ceiling.

Then there were the other scenes - the ones that grappled with my reality - that showed me, brain dead and staring straight forward as my hand scrawled onto my notebook, the pen pressing so deeply that the paper ripped in jagged strips and ink sprayed over my lap.

Gia and Bel knocked on my door, both at different times. Whenever the noise cracked through the room I began hyperventilating, mostly because I knew I had to tell someone I was losing it. But it was more than that. I didn't feel like it was a figment of my imagination. It was much too real.

Did crazy people know they were delusional? Was there a way to tell? I wasn't sure, but the more I thought about it the more confused I grew.

I came to the conclusion that the only way I could get answers was to go to psychology. Not the lecture, no, I was too scared to enter that room, especially after the creepy messages left by the wandering subconscious of my mind. In my dreams, the high-ceilinged theatre was overcast by terrifying shadows, trying to strangle me and grapple me to the ground, were I was trapped. Maybe it was some kind of post-traumatic reaction to being in that room. It could explain the memory loss.

When the sky turned from deathly darkness to a hazy morning grey, I realised I'd been hunched in the corner of my bed the whole night. I had kept thinking that maybe if I left it long enough, my body would tire and I'd finally relax. But I hadn't. I was still awake.

Gia was one thing. One terrifying thing. But with the way she acted in the morning, I could have just written that all off as a figment of my imagination. Maybe I could have lived with that. But the smashed phone and written warnings proved otherwise. It was real. It had to be real. It was real, it was real, it was real.

"Aspen!" Bel's voice called through the thin wooden door not long after. I dug my nails into my skin. I needed to warn her. I needed to tell her not to go to psychology. But my body was frozen still. She'd think I had lost my mind.

God, I really had lost my mind. What would she do? What would her reaction be? I had a feeling it wouldn't be good.

"I'm - I, uh, I'm going to stay in this morning," I said, my teeth chattering and my words so frail that they could have snapped in the cold morning chill.

"Are you okay? Do you want some... some tea or something?" Isobel asked.

"I'm okay." I said quickly. God, if I wanted to find the psychology lecturer I was going to have to pull it together enough to leave the room. But my breath was already coming fast, my head falling dizzy, the oxygen not quite getting where it needed to...

"Are you sure?" she asked, "Gia and I could stay with you if you're not well..."

The idea of company was even worse. "I'll be okay. I just don't want to get out of bed."

"Okay," she said after a pause, her voice sounding doubtful. But she left for class, and I started putting together some kind of plan.

I pulled my diary from where it sat in my backpack and skimmed to where I'd written the contact and consulting times of all of my lecturers. I could still recall his voice distantly, as if it had happened in a dream. But no face arose in my memory. Professor Conrad Blackwood. Fourth floor of the Harriet building. He had a consulting time at twelve.

It took a while to get my head in enough order to leave my bedroom and step into the bathroom to scrub at my teeth and change as fast as possible, the images of two nights ago still as clear as day in my mind. Bloody smiles and dirt-caked feet. It was like if I gave myself the opportunity to second guess myself then I'd chicken out altogether, returning to my bed to spend the rest of my life in a deteriorating mental state.

But, I threw myself together rather messily and stepped down the empty stairwell, taking each step that twisted around the building with extreme caution in an attempt to prolong my trip to his office. With each hesitant stride I planned what I would say to the finest detail, anything to fill my mind and erase the fear clawing its way through my veins.

WAKE UP, WAKE UP, WAKE UP.

The day was bleak, the sky grey and the air threatening rain. The laughter and chatter of students walking to and from campus was a contrast to the suffocating chill constricting my throat.

And as if the atmosphere wasn't enough it felt as if I were floating through the corridors of the Harriet building under a cloak of invisibility. The name of Professor Blackwood printed with metallic letters across the second door on the fourth floor induced a splitting headache though my mind as soon as my brain could process it.

Before I even considered knocking on the wood, a voice, the voice, echoed through the timber and over my skin, wrapping me in a sheen of cold sweat and pushing my breath into gasps.

"Come in."

I'd never wanted to run away so badly in my life. And not just run for the fun of it, or for the freedom. Not to chase a ball across a field or to catch the last bus before I was stranded at the station. I wanted to run for my life, push my calves until they burned so badly I couldn't walk. The instinctual desire to flee was so strong I almost humoured it.

But I refused. It was my mind again, tricking me. That was the only reasonable explanation, and I was a reasonable person.

I opened the door, pressing the handle and letting it loll open with a harrowing creak.

He was beautiful.

Sitting behind an old mahogany desk, hands folded before him in a way that was both unsettling and inviting, was who I instantly recognised as Conrad Blackwood, as if I'd known his face this whole time. Fine wrinkles marked jet black eyes that were creased at their corners, eyes that instantly melded to mine in a way that was much more intimate than a mere glance.

Isobel and Gia had been right. Professor Blackwood was barely in his mid-twenties, but he somehow had a way of appearing much wiser than twenty-something years could give. His hair was the kind that belonged to someone grand, combed and thin and practically cut. A thin layer of stubble, facial hair that would not dare to look lazy, shaded his sharp jaw, and a curious smile, revealing rows of glistening white teeth, was the icing on the cake, telling me he was someone I couldn't not remember.

"Hello," he said, oblivious to the tell-tale signs of the anxiety that felt as if they were ricocheting off of me in chaotic waves from where I stood frozen in his doorway. "You must be from psychology?"

He phrased it as a question, and I robotically nodded, the headache which had started at the nape of my neck wrapping around the surface of my skull. I remembered him now, standing before the class, his smile flashing to the crowd...

"Sorry, I don't think I know your name," he continued, his curious eyes boring deeper and deeper into me, as if exposing every layer which made up my existence.

Blood. I remembered blood.

I hesitated. His voice was so... melodic. Calming. It was eerie, and I felt my heartbeat slowing, thudding deeply, as if I were on the brink of falling asleep...

"Aspen," I said slowly, breaking it down into its two syllables. This didn't make any sense. Seconds ago, I could have collapsed from the fear circulating through my body, pumped by a frantic heart.

"Aspen," he repeated, saying the name with a certain admiration. He gestured to the seat before him with a welcoming nod. "Sit down."

And I did. And I remembered students pooling into their seats, his fingers tapping the microphone comically to make sure it was on.

"How can I help you?" he asked, appearing entertained as he cocked his head. He was wearing a woollen V-neck over a neatly ironed collared shirt, stretched over broad shoulders and a slowly rising chest. Studying him made my head split in agony, making me bite back a cry in protest. A desperate cry for help.

"Um," I said, my voice dry and barely audible.

There were nervous murmurs, before a hushed quiet had fallen over the class, an unnatural silence that shouldn't have been cast over a room of rowdy students fresh from their summer holiday.

"Is it the content we're going through in class?" he asked, his head bowing in understanding, almost in sympathy. His smile was so warm, a glowing ember in the frosty cold, luring me to it like a moth to a flame.

He'd addressed us kindly at first, as a teacher asking his students how they were feeling about starting a new class. But when nobody answered, he knew we were where he wanted us. He had been testing the waters before diving in deep.

"Not the content," I said, fighting the drowsiness lowering over me with all of my strength, igniting the pain thrashing through my head into a powerful fire.

We were in the palm of his hand, sitting in rows of friends and smiling brightly, holding an innocence which could only be found in youth.

"What is it, Aspen," Conrad asked curiously, and for the first time he frowned, tainting the happy greeting he'd been holding beforehand. "Why are you here?"

It was when he'd spoken his first words that day that I'd registered something was wrong. The way they blurred together and fell apart, drawing us in as if everything he said was effecting us in the most detrimental of ways.

The pain. It was too much. It was twisting around my joints now, flowing from my head like melted snow down a rocky mountain, bashing and abusing me from the inside, making me bite down on my tongue.

But then, when I met his eyes again, when I willed myself to push past it and remember, I realised it was all connected, a perfect series of events with such clarity in my mind it almost burst through me and out of my mouth in a cascade of screams.

"I remember," I said, my tone now seething as I tried to control it, the pain curling my fingertips and pulling apart the sinew and muscle from my limbs. "I remember it all."

And then almost instantly, the pain ceased.

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