Who: Mallorie, Ariadne, and Genevieve What: Mal’s showed up, she’s panicking, Ariadne and Genevieve try to help her When: Sunday Where: At Mal and Genevieve’s rooms Rating/Warnings: Let’s go PG-13-ish to start, Mal’s got a lot of mental trauma to deal with. Thoughts/talk of suicide is bound to come up Status: In progress/Closed
This was not real. That first thought raced through Mal’s mind over and over when she opened her eyes and she looked at what was supposed to be her husband’s face staring back at her but was instead the post of a lavish canopy bed. She wasn’t awake, a variation on the first thought stabbed panic into her heart and it drove her to scramble out of the bed and to the floor.
She stumbled when her feet touched down; her footing was uneven. She had only one purple shoe on, the other…
She stared at her one bare foot and recalled the memory of kicking that shoe off and watching it fall almost gracefully towards the concrete below where she’d been sitting on the window ledge. The memory of something painful followed quickly after.
She raked shaking fingers through her hair as she surveyed the room. Nothing looked familiar at first. The room was so very strange to her senses. She was dreaming, this wasn’t real, she wasn’t awake. She tried reaching out with just her thoughts to alter the space, but like the dreams she was sure she’d been stuck in for months the walls stayed resolutely fixed, the furniture patterns the same, the stone carved fireplace unchanging.
But that didn’t convince her. The nagging feeling in the back of her mind telling her she was asleep whispered seductively. Remorsefully. The dreams had stopped bending to her will so long ago, she couldn’t rely on that inability to change them to prove she was awake.
She stepped forward and tripped and then she finally leaned over and pulled that one shoe off. She held it in her hand as she walked on trembling knees; they ached so in a way that faded the more distance she put between her and the thoughts of her stomach leaping into her throat.
Taking a second look at her surroundings her breath caught in her throat. Something flashed in her mind then, an echo of reality that sizzled like sparklers and tracked light trails across her vision. And then it was gone again. Frantic eyes tried to focus on the trappings of the room again, to bring back that feeling so foreign to her, but nothing triggered the sensation in her mind again.
At the door she didn’t hesitate. She pulled it open and found another ornately created room. A sitting room. The intricate detail would have been astonishing if it didn’t feel so very fake to her.
Two doors sat in opposite walls and Mal chose one at random. At this point she was convinced which one didn’t matter. She rushed for it now, panic overriding the unsteadiness of her legs and she burst through that door, tears threading needles in her eyes and questions burning confusion in her mind.
This wasn’t real. Where was Dom? Where were her children? Why wasn’t she awake? Where was her faith?