shadowtina (shadowtina) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2022-06-20 21:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | #july 2018, jen, jen x ophelia, ophelia |
Who: Jen & Phee
Where: Overlook
When: Tuesday morning, 7/3
Warning: Sceurd
Something was wrong and Jen knew it the moment she opened her eyes. Phee was not sleeping next to her but she knew she should be, Phee's room felt bigger than usual which was saying a lot since it was already a great deal bigger than Jen's, the door seemed so far away and that nagging feeling that something was wrong was so persistent and overbearing, like it was a perfume that had been sprayed all over her, stinking up her pajamas and hair, weighing her down. She pushed aside the sheets and padded toward the door, calling Phee's name without any thought about waking her parents or brother. Something told her they were dead. They were all dead. It took her so long to reach the door, the floor cold and creaking beneath her feet, the wood rough. Had it always been this rough? The door was within reach and then it wasn't and she pushed on, reaching out in frustration only to find the door moving farther away from her each time she did.
That feeling of impending doom suddenly crushed down on her with more strength than ever and she stopped and hesitantly looked over her shoulder. Phee's bedroom was still there behind her but it looked as if it had been stretched unnaturally, all the furniture was warped and the only thing that didn't seem affected by it was a lone humanoid figure standing on top of the bed. Jen didn't need to get a good look at it to know exactly who it was. The man from their garden, the man who'd hurt her father. Terror pierced through her and she screamed despite herself, turning to run, all but crashing through the door that was suddenly right in front of her.
She didn't know where to run. If he was in the house, all the wards were gone, Phee's family was gone. She didn't need to go looking for them to know that. Instead she ran for the stairs, maybe if she got out of the house she could find someone to help, maybe her dad could pick her up. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
She made it to the ground floor but she couldn't find the front door, only more staircases leading both up and down, impossibly twisted and stretched in the darkness. He was there, he was everywhere, rounding a corner every time she found a new place to run to, taunting her with his silence and that horrible grin of his. All she knew was that if he caught her, he would kill her and she'd never in her life been this terrified nor had she ever felt like she was running this slowly and clumsily, bumping into walls and furniture, tripping over her own feet. Her body didn't feel like her own, she had precious little control over it, it just wanted to run like a trapped animal, crashing into the walls of its trap.
She didn't know how long she ran for, through rooms that were too narrow to belong to the McCarthy house, a mockery of the rooms she already knew existed there. She couldn't go outside, there were monsters in the fog and even if there weren't, there were no windows or doors, just hallways and dark rooms and the Dark Man looming.
The walls kept closing in until there was nowhere to run to anymore. She was in the basement boiler room, just like in that movie she'd seen with her uncle Dean, only it was far smaller and there was a door she could close. She was wearing jeans now and she didn't question it as she fished her phone out of her pocket to call her dad. If he couldn't save her, nobody could. She needed him there. Only the phone wasn't cooperating, there were no icons for an actual phone, just strange pictures that kept flickering on and off. "Call dad!" she screamed at the phone, even if she didn't have voice activation on and never had. "Call dad! Call nine-one-one!" The door behind her opened outwards and she shuffled away from it, screaming as she watched the Dark Man walk right through the doorway, impossibly thin and long and wrong, his fingers gleaming like knives in the dark.
She woke up screaming. Just a dream, it was just a dream, only Phee wasn't there and when Jen tried to move, she realized her feet were tied. She whimper-chanted a series of 'no's as she fell out of bed, trying to untie her feet as she felt his presence looming again. Everyone else might be dead but that didn't stop her from screaming for them as he slowly moved closer to her, effortlessly catching up to her.
"Please, no," she whined, scrambling backwards as best she could. "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" She kicked at him when he got too close but it felt weak, like she'd been drugged, her body heavy and sluggish. It was just a dream, she knew that now, but if she didn't wake up, she was going to die and as he leaned in closer she started screaming at herself to wake up. She was trapped here, just like Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street. Would this be happening if she'd never gone to see that stupid movie? She was going to die in her sleep in Phee's bed and nobody would ever know what happened. That awful smile came in closer, his face like death as he reached for her with thin, long knives.
She woke up screaming. Her hands were tied this time and so were her feet. Phee still wasn't there, nothing was there but darkness and that horrible smile. He was hovering above her, delighting in her screams as he brought his fingers down to her neck. She only barely managed to roll out from under him, crashing to the coarse floor and stomach crawling away from the bed. She could barely see through the tears in her eyes and she knew she would never reach the door in time. Nobody was there, nobody was coming but she couldn't not try to get away.
Cold fingers wrapped around her ankle and she screamed again as long nails cut into her skin, scraping long bloody lines down her leg. He was playing with her. He was going to kill her slowly and he was going to smile the whole time.
She woke up screaming.
By contrast, Phee had been having a rather pleasant dream involving making love to Greg in the middle of an intensely colorful flower garden, everything sweet smells and soft grass and pleasure. She was abruptly pulled out of it by her current bed partner suddenly jerking awake and sitting upright. The scream that came out of Jen blew all of the sleepiness out of Phee’s brain and she sat up with a full-body jolt herself. Before she could think twice about it, her magic lashed out and vines were shooting out of the planter pots crowded around Phee’s window, growing and extending toward the bed, rearing back like snakes about to strike as they fattened and lengthened.
Her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest, Phee instinctively reached for Jen’s arm. “What?! Ohmygod, Jen, are you okay?!” she cried, looking desperately around for any threat she could protect them from. Phee snapped her free fingers and the lamps in the room came on at once.
The plants suddenly moving did nothing to calm Jen down. It just made the room look twisted again and she covered her face as she shuffled back, still screaming. She barely registered the change in lighting around her, pain still lashing through her leg as the overwhelming fear that the dark man was still there consumed her. Phee was there, that was the only thing that was different and did that mean she had to watch her die too? Her screaming wasn't anywhere as loud as it had sounded before, like her voice didn't really want to cooperate but all she could do was keep trying, going from the wordless panicked shrieking to a more forceful command to herself to wake up. If she yelled it often enough, maybe it would work. Pain apparently didn't. Did she have to die in the dream to gain consciousness? Would she ever wake up again?
She hadn’t consciously called to all of the vines, it was more like a knee-jerk defensive magic move -- but it didn’t take Phee long to realize that her plants were going nuts and it wasn’t helping anything. Pushing herself up onto her knees and closer to Jen, Phee waved her hands and said a couple of words and the vines quickly retreated back into their pots. Then she put her hands on her terrified friend’s shoulders to give her a little shake. “Jen!” she said sharply, above all of the thin screaming that sounded so awful. “Jen, it’s okay! You’re awake, you’re awake!” Jen kept telling herself to wake up, not seeming to realize that she already was. Phee tried to catch her eyes, fear making her heart race, and she hadn’t even noticed the blood on the sheets yet. What if she couldn’t calm her down, what should she do then? She had no clue. Run to her mom to help, probably.
Jen finally met Phee's gaze, her eyes red and blurry with tears. Everything felt real; different from a dream, but her leg still hurt. Was that psychosomatic? No, it couldn't be, because it felt wet too. She had the mortifying thought that maybe she'd wet the bed because of her terror but it didn't really fit location wise. None of it made sense. "I just want it to stop," she hiccuped, barely able to speak and now starting to feel irritated by it because she wanted to tell Phee everything, get her up to speed just in case they needed to run. She didn't know if this was really Phee, if she was really awake or if she was still stuck in a dream and this was just a reprieve to get her more riled up later. If it was a dream, was Phee actually there with her or was she just a part of the dream? She felt real, her grip on Jen's shoulders felt firm and grounding and no matter if this was a dream or not, Jen was grateful she was there, grabbing onto her arms and clinging tightly.
The way Jen clung to her made her heart hurt on top of all the fear. At least Jen was looking at her now, registering that she was there, that was a start. “It’s okay, you’re okay,” she repeated, hoping to sound more soothing than show her own fear. She moved one hand to pet Jen’s hair. “You’re awake now, it was just a dream, it’s okay. Shhh.” It must have been one hell of a nightmare to wake Jen up in such a state, and Phee was about to say so when she really glanced over her friend. She finally saw the blood, smeared all over Jen’s leg and the sheets from her scrambling, and Phee’s eyes went a bit wide. “Ohgod, um -- shit, are you hurt? What hurts, where’s it coming from?” she asked, trying to pull back a bit to see Jen’s lower half better.
The nightmare felt like it was starting up again and Jen's crying was a beast with a mind of its own, uncaring that she wanted to calm down, talk and reason. She sobbed pathetically as Phee pulled the sheets away and there was so much blood. The room didn't look contorted though and the lights were on and Phee was there. "He grabbed me," she managed between her heaving sobs. "His fingers... They were like knives." Was she awake? God she wasn't sure but right now she needed to believe she was and stop crying! She pulled her leg up to try to see just how bad it was, her hand shaking as she poked at her bloody leg. There were two cuts up from her ankle that nearly reached her knee but it was hard to see how deep they were with the bleeding and she'd never been so freaked out by blood before but this felt different and it made the muscles in her arms tense up, her hands balling into fists.
Phee knew that it was Very Important that she not panic right now, even though she was feeling very freaked out herself. Something from a dream had hurt her for real? Jen was hysterical though, and bleeding, and those two things needed to be dealt with first. She tried to think about grounding things -- dark fertile soil, digging her toes into sand, snaking roots, safe little burrows in the earth. It helped a little, and Phee took a deep breath as she pulled Jen’s head and shoulders in closer to hug her, hoping it would help instead of making her feel trapped. “It’s over now, you’re okay, it’s just us here,” she said, doing her best to sound sure of that. Jen’s leg needed to be tended to, but Phee couldn’t do anything about it until she calmed down a little. “Deep breaths, come on, breathe with me, Jen.” She started taking more deep, slow breaths herself as if to guide Jen into doing the same.
It was grounding. Phee smelled like Phee, a familiar scent of shampoos and herbs and Jen didn't remember really smelling anything in the dream, let alone something nice. She still couldn't stop crying on command, but she did try to breathe with Phee, hating how much she was shaking and jerking with each sob. Her rational mind was chiding her now, getting louder and trying to make sense of this. She'd fallen asleep with something sharp in the bed somehow, the hurt had come before the dream and not the other way around and she was being a baby right now. Then again it had been a horrible dream and she'd woken up repeatedly in it so she kind of felt less bad about being a baby than she normally would; there were some things even she wasn't too cool to be scared of. Even so she was starting to feel very self conscious about the crying and it felt a bit surreal, like she was sitting beside herself, observing rather than living it, waiting for it to be over so she could get back to normal and leave this behind her. It took a few minutes where she let Phee hold her and curled in against her, focused on her breathing, on breathing in the nice smell and breathing out the bad emotions. God, she was all snotty and wet and bleeding all over Phee's bed and when she finally pulled back she did so with a small, "Sorry."
She was patient with Jen, though she went through a few rounds of strong emotion herself before her friend calmed down, worried that it wouldn’t work because she had no clue what she was doing. Finally Jen’s crying quieted down and her breathing evened out more, and something in Phee unclenched. That must have been one hell of a nightmare, fuck. Phee petted Jen a bit, and she was tempted to cling tighter when Jen pulled back, but it was probably best to let her go. “No, don’t be,” she said immediately, shaking her head at the apology. She didn’t want to hear that nonsense. Phee rubbed at Jen’s arm a bit more, her expression concerned. “Do you think you can walk? We should clean that up and see how bad it is.” She nodded down at Jen’s bloody leg. It was hard to tell how deep the scratches were, but they weren’t gushing, so she didn’t think Jen was going to bleed out or anything.
Jen nodded and once she felt like she maybe could talk again she cleared her throat and muttered through clenched teeth, "This was some Freddie Krueger shit." She still sounded sniffly but spitting out the words like a curse word helped. "Ugh I fucking bled all over your sheets." She knew Phee didn't care about that, even if they were likely very expensive sheets, but it felt necessary to apologize, or at least distract herself a little. "Sorry," she mumbled as she let Phee help her out of bed, twisting a bit again to look at her calf. "Unless you kept razor blades in bed; then this is solely your fault. You didn't, did you?" She let out an unsteady laughter and sniffled again, still visibly shaken and clinging to Phee's arm as they headed for the bathroom. It was such a blessing that Phee had her own bathroom, that she didn't have to stumble out to the hallway like this and risk running into Phee's family.
Predictably, Phee muttered a “don’t worry about it” in regard to her sheets. They were easily changed and washed, and gods knew it wasn’t the first time blood had accidentally gotten on her bed. “No razor blades that I know of ...” she added in a murmur as she nudged the bathroom door open and helped Jen inside. Could something else have been forgotten in her sheets though? An athame? Some sneaky plant with thorns? She would check, just in case. Phee had Jen sit down on the closed toilet lid so she could prop her leg up on the edge of the tub. “Freddie Krueger shit though -- was that who grabbed you? In the dream?” she asked even as she moved to grab a washcloth and got it wet in the sink. Phee rummaged in the cabinet drawers until she found some peroxide too. She hoped the wounds weren’t deep enough to need stitches, that would mean getting parents involved and who wanted that? Phee knelt in front of her friend and gently started to clean up her calf.
"No," Jen mumbled. "It was that man from the garden..." She'd told Phee about him when it happened and she was a bit thankful that she didn't have to explain it all now. Phee knew enough. The cuts hurt and she wrinkled her nose and tightly clutched her boxer shorts while Phee cleaned her like a proper nurse. It was so much better than doing it herself, this way she didn't have to look at them, she could just look at Phee and let her mind race, preferably away from all the fear and confusion. Would Phee make a good nurse? Maybe she'd become some kind of herbal remedy person who actually had stuff that worked on account of her magic. Some people would definitely call her a quack but they'd be missing out. She pictured Phee older, surrounded by herbs in a little cottage. Why was she in a little cottage? Why did Jen associate herbalists with olden times? Probably a movie influence, it was kind of funny. Was the dark man going to come back and kill her? She took a shuddered breath and focused on Phee again. "I think your dad needs to strengthen the protective stuff on your house again," she mumbled. She'd never expected any of the Point Pleasant badness to get her in here, but it had and she wasn't sure she'd ever feel safe again.
Phee hadn’t made the connection before, but as soon as Jen explained, she remembered the story. It made her feel cold inside. Was something going to start haunting Jen through her dreams now? What if the next time her injuries were worse? And she was in bed by herself, like she usually was? Phee glanced up at her friend and nodded a little. “I think so too,” she murmured. She wasn’t keen to ask her father for anything lately, but Phee could get over herself for this. This was important. Even if James had to ask another witch for help with it, they all needed to be safe. She winced a little as she looked at the angry red cuts up Jen’s leg. They were still bleeding and needed to be bandaged, but she thought she had something to help them heal better too. “Just a sec, Zan gave me some healing stuff,” she murmured and knee-walked back to the bathroom cabinet. Phee found the little jar of salve and came back to Jen. “It might sting at first, sorry.” Phee started to gingerly dab the greenish paste onto Jen’s wounds. “I wrote down the recipe and the spell, but I haven’t tried to make my own yet,” she said, feeling like she needed to keep Jen distracted. “So this is expert stuff, don’t worry.”
Even if Phee had made it herself, Jen had no doubts it'd still work to some degree. Phee was magic and Jen's admiration for her was too grand for her to have doubts about her abilities. Some part of her wanted to spend every night here now, just in case this happened again. Much like Phee she was imagining waking up alone from a nightmare like this one and she hated every aspect of it. What if she was badly hurt and her dad was already at work? Staying here all the time wasn't realistic in any way though, plus Phee spent the night with Greg a lot. Jen wrinkled her nose and bit back a curse at the sting on her calf but it was worse in her imagination than it was in reality and she relaxed soon enough again, watching Phee with furrowed brows. "Amateur stuff would sound amazing right now too," she reassured her and reached for some toilet paper to blow her nose. God she was a snotty mess. At least she was breathing normally again and that paste had a weirdly soothing smell to it. "I'm so glad I wasn't alone..."
Phee loved the smell of the salve, it was fresh and green and a little peppery due to the herbs involved, and she found that it was calming her down too. “I am too,” she told Jen with feeling, and grabbed her hand to squeeze it once she’d finished dabbing the medicine on. She would’ve hated to think of Jen waking up like that alone and scared, screaming until her dad woke up -- if he even did. If he was even there, didn’t cops work all kinds of night shifts? It made Phee want to have her over every night too, just so she would have company. She looked at Jen with a furrowed brow, her expression pained and sincere. “You can call me any time, day or night, okay? Like, I don’t even care, wake me up if you need to, you know? I’ll like ... steal my mom’s car to get to you, I promise.” Pretty soon she would have her own car, but that was further down the line. Phee leaned forward to kiss Jen’s knee, then scooted back to her bathroom cabinets to start hunting again. “I know we’ve got bandages somewhere,” she muttered.
That earnest and sweet look on Phee's face made Jen's eyes tear up again, but for completely different reasons. Her emotions were just all very close to the surface this morning and it was something of a novelty to feel this vulnerable around someone and not hating every second of it. "You too, you know that. I'll always pick up." She hadn't really had a friend like this since she was a kid, someone she loved this much but Phee just kept taking up bigger and bigger space in her heart and the way she was handling this made Jen feel it keenly. The little kiss was cute and it helped ground her again, bringing a little watery smile to her face. "You can just tear a strip of a night gown or something if you can't find any, it works in the movies," she joked, a desperate attempt at finding something light in this situation because she was still terrified and some part of her kept expecting to wake up again in an even worse place. She was almost certain she was awake now though, everything was too crisp and real, she didn't remember smelling anything in her dreams and if she squinted she could read the ingredients on the nearest bottle on the counter. She could never read in dreams and she never realized that in dreams so that had to count for something.
Phee laughed softly as she rummaged through drawers. Why had she not organized these better? Like, forever ago? “Yeah, I’ll wrap you up in like, blue zebra stripe bandages,” she snickered, thinking of one nightgown in particular. That probably wasn’t sanitary, even if the clothes were clean, but she could see how it could be useful in a pinch. She made a victorious sound as she found a first aid kit and popped it open, and there was some real gauze in there. “I knew it,” Phee declared with a smile as she came back to Jen’s legs. “Here, we’ll just get you all wrapped up ...” She proceeded to carefully do so, more like it was precise surgery than something this simple, and looked up at Jen once she’d put the little hooks into place. “How’s that feel? Not too tight?” she asked as she patted the top of her friend’s foot.
"I think it's just right," Jen replied and admittedly she'd never had to be wrapped for deep scratches like that. She'd once messed up her ankle, but that wasn't the same thing at all. She couldn't say this was comfortable but it still felt better than when it wasn't wrapped, like she needed that firm support both physically and mentally. "God, I don't even know what time it is," she sighed. It felt like dawn, but was it? Was it too early to call her dad? "I'm still so sleepy but there's no way I can go back to sleep yet. Are you tired?" She'd be okay with Phee sleeping, she thought. She could just play on her phone, watch cute videos and endless reels until it wasn't so stupidly early anymore. It'd be soothing to have Phee there, whether she was asleep or awake but she had a feeling her very loyal and stubborn friend wasn't about to go nap after this.
Phee didn’t know what time it was either, just that the windows in her bedroom were still dark, so it had to be early. She was tired but still very awake and wired, and she couldn’t see herself going right back to sleep. “Yeah, but I don’t think I’ll sleep again for a while,” she said. Phee pushed herself up from her knees to her feet again and offered a hand out to Jen. She probably didn’t need the help up, but Phee wanted her to know she could lean on her if she needed to. “How ‘bout we get back in bed and put a movie on? Something dumb and funny.” They could cuddle up and just be with each other and let the distraction lull their minds again until they either naturally fell asleep or it was time to get up and take Jen home. Hopefully with no more nightmares involved.
Jen gave her a somewhat relieved smile and nodded eagerly as she got up, only really grabbing Phee's hand for emotional support more so than physical. "Something dumb and funny sounds perfect," she agreed and hopefully it'd be engaging enough to keep her from calling her dad at a ridiculous hour. She pulled Phee in for a hug, both as a sign of gratitude but also because she just really needed that contact and warmth right now. The fear had faded into something more manageable but it was still simmering somewhere deep underneath everything; a wary uncertainty and confusion. She kind of wished she could find a rational explanation for the cuts on her legs, that some spring had come loose in Phee's mattress or something else she couldn't think of but that would make perfect sense. But she knew deep down she wouldn't find anything, that man in her nightmare had been real and he might come back. Maybe she'd gotten off easy because she was at Phee's house and it was warded to the rafters. It wasn't something she wanted to think about, right now she just needed to believe she was safe and that her dad was okay and hugging Phee helped sell that to her brain.