Saraswati Shah (cobratalk) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2012-11-07 21:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, saraswati shah, savannah bordeaux |
WHO: Saraswati Shah and Savannah Bordeaux.
WHAT: Monsters under the bed are a myth...right?
WHEN: Late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning, around 1AM.
WHERE: Saraswati and Savannah's dorm room.
WARNINGS: None really.
STATUS: Complete.
Sara was, and always had been, a light sleeper -- when you had four younger siblings to care for, ones who could be getting up to mischief or trouble at any time of day or night, you simply had to be. So it was that the slightest noise (whether it was Savannah opening the door to use the bathroom, or the sound of late-night conversations in their dormitory hallway) was enough to wake her up. It was unsurprising, then, that the sudden presence of an odd -- growling noise had her eyes flying open near-instantly on Wednesday night. "What was that?" she whispered reflexively, sitting up and looking around, still groggy from slumber. But the room was now silent as the grave (save for Savannah's light breathing), and pitch black (save for the dim red glare of Sara's alarm clock). Perhaps she'd imagined it? Glancing at her clock, she frowned at the time -- it was already one am, and falling back to sleep would be a task in of itself. Sleep was never easy in coming for Sara. But she had to try. She sighed, laying her head back down on her pillow, her long, dark hair forming a familiarly comforting curtain around her. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she found herself distracted by thoughts of all the tasks she had planned for the next day; there was an essay due that she had yet to start, and planning for the Diwali festival, and -- "What's there?" she cried, scrambling up into the corner, pulling her covers up, a flimsy form of protection against the unknown entity. However, this time the eerie sounds didn't stop at the sound of her voice; instead they increased in volume. "Who -- what's there?" Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the room, but the shadowy shapes in front of her did nothing to abate her newfound fear. "Who --" The noises grew even louder, and Sara was certain, now, that they weren't simply in her room -- they were coming from beneath her bed. Terrified, she whispered, "Savannah!" How had she not woken up? Couldn't she hear it, too? "Savannah! Savannah!" Savannah! She paused, her pale hand clenching reflexively. Had they found out her secret so soon? That wasn’t going to make for good tips. The circle of wide-eyed clients disappeared as Savannah was yanked out of her dream, groggily sitting up in the dark. On the other side of the room, Sara’s posture was rigidly upright, and she seemed to be trying to contort herself into the corner that housed part of her bedframe, as if hopeful it would swallow her up. Savannah blinked tiredly in the blackness, for a moment wondering whether she’d imagined it--but no, it was too coincidental. “Sara?” she asked somewhat thickly, still disoriented from being pulled out of her sleep. “Did you say somethin’?” Sara's eyes, widened with fear (where was Shanti? why wasn't she here?), nodded. Pointing emphatically at the floor beside her bed, she cried, "That noise! What is under my bed? There's something there!" At home, Sara had always thought herself brave, braver than the other girls in her tribe, if nothing else. She would interact with the villagers in the cities they visited, she would stand up to the boys (despite her father's neverending disapproval) when they teased her brothers. But in this dark room, with growling beneath her bed and her snakes nowhere nearby for comfort, Sara did not feel brave. No, she felt small and helpless and scared. The noise suddenly grew louder, and Sara was certain she could hear scuffling beneath, too. "Oh god." Still not entirely comprehending what was going on, Savannah nonetheless threw her sheets off her long, pale legs, and swung them over the side of her bed. She’d never seen Sara scared before, and the novelty shocked her into action, lowering her body onto her knees, then flattening herself onto the carpet completely, peering under the bed. What was she looking for? A rat? Some kind of huge spider, maybe? Savannah’s pulse quickened at the thought--Australia had the ugliest freaking spiders, with powerful poison included--and if there was one in their room, they’d have to get something heavy to get rid of it. She raised her palm toward the darkness underneath, mentally beckoning. As if someone was pouring water onto a canvas of not-yet-dried watercolor paint, the blackness unfurled into two curtains, parting on command. Savannah squinted into her newfound visual clarity, blue eyes carefully scanning the area under Sara’s bed from one end to the next, unseeing. Finally, she raised herself up on her elbows and began sitting back on her heels, looking around herself just in case whatever was there had snuck past her. “There’s nothin’ there,” she reported softly, puzzlement in her voice. “Are you sure it was under your bed? Maybe it was next door.” With a flick of her fingers, the shadows began drifting back into place, like hanging smoke. As Savannah neared, Sara was tempted to stop her -- what if whatever was under the bed was dangerous? Even worse, what if it attacked her roommate? But the words lodged in her throat, so scared was she of the scuffling she could hear, the eerie sounds that seemed to be getting louder and more ominous by the second. And then, Savannah was sitting back, her brows furrowed and expression confused. "Wh -- what do you mean, there's nothing there?" Sara asked weakly, scuttling hesitantly forward towards the edge of the bed. "No, that can't be, I can still hear --" But right then, the noises stopped, enveloping the room in a heavy silence. There was a long pause as Sara strained her hearing, wondering if whatever-it-was had simply quieted for the time being, but there was no denying it: the noises had simply disappeared. "But what, where did it go?" More confused than afraid now, with Savannah's comforting presence so close by, Sara jumped off the bed and leant down, casting a wary eye at the shadowy darkness beneath her bed. There was nothing there. "That can't be right," she said, reaching forward to take a closer look. But her view did not change; the narrow space remained empty, aside from dust, a few stray papers, and Sara's singular storage box. "That can't be right," Sara repeated, meeting Savannah's eyes. "I could hear it -- whatever it was -- moving!" Pointing emphatically in front of them, she continued, "I could hear it right there!" Savannah reached up a hand to tuck some of her brilliant red hair behind her ear, now frowning. “I didn’t hear anything.” Was there such thing as enduring nightmares--things that persisted after you’d woken up? Just to make sure, she planted her palms back onto the carpet and ducked her head again, this time, making sure to look up right at the bottom of Sara’s mattress--she hadn’t looked there before. But no, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, there was nothing to see there, either. “Were you havin’ a nightmare before you woke up?” Savannah suggested gently, once again raising her torso up again as her fingers left the rug’s rough nestling. “There’s nothin’ there, I swear.” Maybe someone was being a dick--sending unseen things around to mess with people at night. Suddenly struck by the suspicion (seriously, how were they all supposed to keep track of who did what around here? There were just too many freaking people), she pushed herself up and walked over to their door, opening it with a creak to peer outside into the hall. There was no one there, either. "No," Sara said urgently, shaking her head. "No, I wasn't having a nightmare. I was --" I was dreaming of a boy from home. But those weren't words she wanted to say, weren't words she really felt like voicing. That would only raise more questions, wouldn't it? This wasn't particularly the time to talk about Vikash. "I was having...a pleasant dream," she finished, fingering her blanket. Lifting her eyes to meet Savannah, who was a shadowy silhouette framed by the light of the hallway behind her, she sighed. "Oh. I don't know. Maybe it was a dream." Or was she going insane? Sara wasn't entirely certain she could rule that possibility out: after all, wasn't hearing voices one of the very first signs of insanity. "What else could it have been, yes?" She could still hear her heart pounding, pounding a mile a minute. With a brush of her fingers, Savannah allowed the door to swing closed the rest of the way, closing with a click. She leaned her back against the wood, palms settling to her hips as she regarded the dark figure that was her friend and roommate, normally so level-headed. “I can believe you heard somethin’, maybe,” she soothed in her usual drawl, “but I don’t think it’s here anymore. And I bet you anythin’, it was just somebody being a jerk.” Sighing, she dislodged herself from the door and sauntered the few feet back over to her roommate’s bed. Someone who needed a nice, big shadow-punch to the head, that was. Savannah was strongly beginning to suspect Devon Dackers in just about everything fear-related that had happened lately, with no confirmation or proof of the contrary. And if the pink-haired girl was responsible for making this happen, Savannah didn’t particularly censor herself with people who messed with her friends. “I could stay up with you for a spell, an’ we could just listen and see if it comes back?” she offered, hands going up to her bare arms and rubbing them up and down gently over the small goosebumps that had formed there in the past few minutes. There was a small chill in the room. “Since it disappeared when I looked, maybe it’s afraid of me.” A small smile crept across her pale face in the dark. When in doubt, say something badass: It was Savannah’s go-to coping mechanism when creeping feelings of uncertainty took hold of her. Sara smiled half-heartedly at her roommate's joke, shaking her head slowly. "No," she said, standing and lifting herself onto her bed. Her fingers traced small circles on her comforter, following the intricate lines of its paisley print. "No, it's fine, Savannah. I wouldn't want to keep you up." She let out a long breath before pulling the blanket back and over her; but whereas before, the warmth of her bed had provided a sense of comfort, Sara now found that she simply felt cold. There were goosebumps up and down her arms and, she knew, no amount of rubbing was going to make them go away. All she could think about was the mysterious creature that she'd heard, one that (if it existed, but how could it? where had it gone?) she was separated from only by a mattress and flimsy metal frame. "I'm sorry I woke you up," she murmured. "Please, go back to sleep, all right?" Savannah studied her friend’s face for a moment, barely discernable in the dark. Then, she took a few long strides back to her bed, gracefully slinging her legs back up onto the mattress. “Okay,” she assented, expelling a small sigh that had nothing to do with either exasperation or resignation. “But I’m here if you need me, okay? Don’t be afraid to wake me up again; I always fall back asleep pretty easy.” The mattress box springs creaked a little as she settled back into place on the bed, and she pulled the sheets back up over the lower half of her body, enjoying the cool sensation of the smooth fabric on her skin. Whatever was in the water these days, everybody seemed to be getting scared lately, and she was now one thousand percent sure that she’d had nothing to do with it. Something was messing with people, and it wasn’t stopping. In fact, it was being disturbingly creative about it. Savannah turned away from her friend, nestling her cheek back into the goose feather pillow she’d been sleeping on since she was in middle school. “‘Night, chere,” she called out tiredly. "Good night," Sara murmured in response, but her eyes did not close. She felt hypersensitive of her surroundings, every lump in her mattress, every sound in her room and the hallway beyond. She knew she was being stupid; by all logic, if there was nothing under her bed (and, in truth, Savannah was best placed to unearth that sort of thing) then there was nothing to be afraid of. But afraid she was. And so she turned her head so that it faced her alarm clock, red and reassuring in its uniformity. It clicked on, changing seconds, changing minutes, and then changing even hours; and throughout it all, Sara's eyes remained wide open, the goosebumps on her arm a reminder of the sounds she knew she had heard. |