♡♥︎𓂃Heart x Horror part I: #2𓂃♡♥︎
⊹ Heart-shaped box⋮ Tear you apart
Alternative title: “Roll out of bed, it’s the weekend” or “Mirror walking”
CW: sleep paralysis, female whumpee, whump aftermath, mentally ill/ touch adverse/ autistic whumpee (but her autism has nothing to do with her mental illness(es), hallucinations of whumper/ noncon touch/ and self image issues, creepy/possessive/ yandere whumper, eisoptrophobia, mentioned past injuries, cursing, brief idealization of face injury
Saoirse’s eyelids sunk heavy in her head, pressing down on her eyes so hard she had to force them open. The room she's called her own felt distorted, the walls distant and yet flat like an up close crayon drawing on a piece of paper. The room spun slowly, a slow-motion video playing out before her eyes, resetting every time she blinked. Allowing it to settle for only a second before the space spun and tilted upwards again.
The plain beige of the walls looked delusory from where she laid. She couldn't twist her head to inspect her surroundings. Leaving her with this alienlistic expanse of a room, unfocused and lacking the details required to exist in reality. Was she still dreaming?
The blood in her limbs had stilled into concrete in her sleep. Her neck ached in it’s position against the pillow, the same pain spread to the rest of her body, locking up her muscles in unnatural relaxation. Trying to will herself off the mattress was useless. Though it played out over and over in her mind, her arms shifting, the floor becoming farther away as she sat up and took a step away from this prison. But the illusion disappeared in a instant when she blinked. So real and then nothing but a lost ambition.
Panic as deep as a gravity opened up inside her chest, question after question being tossed into the abyss yet nothing coming close to filling it. Why wasn't she moving? Why couldn't she move? Was someone doing this to her—put something in her cup or food to keep her like this in the morning? That wasn't possible, she was always careful about what she ate. There was no way someone drugged her.
Then why wasn't she moving?
Eyes gaped the walls open and blinked at her still form. She could feel their stare burning at the corners of her vision, just beyond her eyesight. Saoirse’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. Her lungs wished they were granted the ability to hyperventilate and her eyes remained half lidded as if she was simply basking in the aftermath of a nap.
The walls followed a ghostly hand creeping around her. It constricted like a vise as it hugged her tight, touch indenting into her skin with pressure that didn't exist. Not on the outside. Static cotton filled her ears as the ghost took the form of a body behind her. False warmth, weight, and laughter solidifying in her mind.
Poison smoke looped the edge of her ear as the phantom spoke to her, “Enjoying your sleep, sweetheart? I'm just happy to be by your side again. It really has been too long hasn't it?”
“Did you miss me too? It must have been so hard to operate on your own, but don't worry, now that we are back together you won't have to concern yourself with these meaningless troubles. I’ll take care of everything and we can live happily ever after together,” his fingers played with the collar of her shirt as the words played out like a record.
He's not real. Real people don't have static on their tongues when they talk. He's not real. You're seeing things. Just get. Out. Of. Bed.
Sharp fingernails suddenly dug into her cheeks, stilling the breath trapped in her chest, “Do not ignore me,” he warned, “I’m as real as those fucking scars you try to cover up in front of everybody else. The scars I gave you. And I cannot for the life of me understand why you would want to hide something like that. The same reasoning a dog uses trying to bold out the very gate that's protecting them, it’s nothing short of ridiculous.”
Something akin to thunder accompanied those words; a deep rumbling that predicted an eventual snap of whatever was holding it back. Her eyes stung at the memories refusing to stay still in her mind. No matter how much she reminded herself of the obscurity of this, that this would pass like every other one did, it didn't calm the anxieties burning in her throat, stopping her from bawling at a mere illusion.
She refused to give in to what her mind was trying to convince her of. She's alive and free because of her refusal to be broken. And she’d run these visions into her grave before she bended to their hand.
The ghost pulled her closer into him. His lips rested uncomfortably against her ear, the weight of his proximity enough to wish she could claw her skin off her face. He smiled, a slight laugh spilling from his lips, “Relax, baby. I'm not going to hurt you, I won't let anything else hurt you again. Just close those pretty eyes and give in. You know it's so much easier than fighting. So why do it? Especially when you know deep down you belong to me.”
Saoirse scraped up enough of her will to form just a breath of a response, “Get the fuck off of me.”
That angered the ghost. It loomed over her now, smoke practically dispersing at it's seems as he leaned in close, his teeth bared as he spoke, “If you don’t come back to me I’m gonna tear you fucking mind apart, do you understand that? Either way you will take me to your death bed, Saoirse. I will be the last thing playing out in your mind from the second you wake up to the moment you take your last breath. I can assure you that.” he promised, eyes steaming with fury.
“Good luck,” she managed as strength finally returned to her limbs.
She took the chance to inch herself off the mattress, hand clumsily reaching out to knock the edge of her bedside table. The impact stung, but she welcomed it. It was something she could feel outside of the haze. It was real.
She forced her gaze up, catching sight of her alarm clock, the cheep led of it flashing the time and date: it was Saturday. The start of silence. The start of her aimless wandering about her apartment, waiting for the week to start so she could focus on complaining about the work rather than have time to think or do really anything else.
Slowly, so agonizingly fucking slowly, she pulled herself off the bed. Jolting up the second she felt the ability to, closing her eyes briefly at the spinning room. She pushed off the covers with one stumbling step after another. Something caught her sleeve and she whipped her head around to glare at the thing daring to touch her, more than ready to bite it's head off.
Instead she met scared, mismatched eyes starring desperately up at her as she knelt on the bed. The delicate ruffles of her blouse made her nauseous, the way she flinched at Saoirse’s gaze disgusted her to her core, “He….he told us not to leave,” she warned, a scared tremor in her voice as she spoke.
Saoirse just shook her off without a second thought, trekking unsteadily to the bathroom. More of her balance had returned by the time she reached the doorway and she wasted no time to turn the faucet on cold and splash her face with the freezing water. She stood, hands balancing on the edges of the sink, letting droplets of water drip of her face and soak her shirt while she willed her mind to collide with reality.
She didn't spare a glance at the mirror, after what just happened she didn't have a sliver of the capacity for that scene. Taking a deep breath, then another, she contemplated if staying awake for the rest of her life was really all that bad.
