InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Sleep Paralysis ❯ The Ticking of the Clock Face ( Chapter 2 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

It mocked her.

The face that gleamed in the dim light, and the two hands which told where she was to be at what moment.

The clock.

A representation of time, which should not matter.

It was all just a lie… a binding by society that kept the thoughtless masses under control and at bay. It was a lie. A form of control amongst all other things to keep everyone in perfect order, smiling and happy and singing along to the silent tune they seemed completely deaf to.

No surprise there.

And that same lie told her that is was a quarter past three.

She sighed, falling back onto the couch with a solemn sigh.

Because even though it was a lie, it still ruled her life as well, hated as that fact was. The only exception it had not, was when she was an infant. And even then, it didn't matter... There was always some place to be, even if she was not aware at the time.

She couldn't just be. She simply couldn't just exist.

As she gazed at the ceiling, the pattern so familiar from the endless nights of no sleep… the endless eternity which consumed her being from slumber… for the sheer reason that sanity was the better option. To keep her from sinking into what for many was a blissful escape from the outside world, and it was only in the outside world she wanted to stay. That she fought to stay in, challenging the vestages of mind numbing exhaustion to win.

And at some point, it always did.

But that did not keep her from trying to keep those same hands from touching her, caressing her body, and speaking to her in ways that even human words could not comprehend. Loving, perhaps, gentle, perhaps... at times.

But violent more often than not.

And always, always hidden.

Kagome sat up, frustrated, figuring to get ready for school four hours before she had to leave was better than to be left thinking. Alone.

Standing up, she felt the bottoms of her pajama pants dragging slightly from her insistence on wearing them low upon her hips as anything higher felt abnormal to her, she made her way to the bathroom across the living room. It stood adjacent to her own bedroom door, an easy access to those nightly urgencies.

...Not that the closeness of it mattered one bit, seeing as she was usually caught resting or passed out from utter debilitation on the couch.

She loathed her bed.

It felt cold.

It was large enough for two, and countless nights had she encountered times where the mattress beside her sunk in, and different things had hurt her. Or reversely, had comforted her in her lonely nights of sorrow.

Psychologists told her that what she experienced was called `night terrors' and 'sleep paralysis'.

Those faces in the mirror that seemed to jump out at her, so realistically, and left the bruises and cuts along her skin. The times she'd woken from her slumber as if jerked to reality, paralyzed and unable to move for a long time. The crushing weight on her chest, forcing her breath from her lungs like an organ, leaving her wheezing and suffocating.

The terror, the agony…

If they were only dreams… how did they hurt her?

Once a therapist had told her, “Why don't you try responding to them? Perhaps that will make them go away.”

But Kagome knew… she knew the more you acknowledged them, the more they hurt you. The best way to go about with life was to completely ignore they existed, and pray to the Gods that the next day you'd be alive.

But often at nights...she prayed to the Gods that these days would just end instead. To pluck her from the earthly plane once and for all and let her surrender to the silent abyss.

Please don't make me suffer this bullshit any longer...

But as everything else, they did not hear her crying. Her pleading and begging for the pain to just go away..

Not even had they given her the gift of apathy.

She felt every inch of her pain, physical and emotional, and it scarred her in ways she knew could never be repaired.

Kagome slowly peeled the clothes off her body… first the long sleeved sweater, then the t-shirt, then the tank top... as if they were layers of herself that were an invisible shield to keep the outside world from knowing what she really went through.

She mentally prepared herself for the visage in the mirror.

...she looked like an abused anorexic... The skin that seemed to stretch thinly across her bones only like a tarp that held her together, if only barely.

But understand… that isn't your fault, Kagome…

She sighed at herself in abhorrence, turning away harshly as she set her towel on the rack next to the shower.

Yet in the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of something in the mirror.

It's nothing. It's imaginary. It's fake... you're just... imagining it.

Sweat began to bead on her brow, and she inhaled quickly. Turning around as if the world began to rotate in only slow motion, she dared peek behind her.

There's... nothing.

Shuddering, she turned back around as the world sped up once more and she went to turn on the shower.

But as she reached to pull back the shower curtain...

A ghost white hand grabbed her wrist in a bruising grip.

Her breath hitched in her throat, and she commanded herself not to be scared.

It's only a night terror… it's nothing, it's fake… it's fake…

Trembling harshly, she forced herself to look up in to those blood red eyes, that scraggly black hair that went down his back.

...Those all to familiar eyes gleamed at her in the dim light of the bathroom, and her heart stopped.

...she barely screamed as he slammed her against the wall and began to make her body his own once again, forcing her into the tile of the floor as she tried to force him off.

Nothing she did, nothing she could do, and nothing would ever be done to change this situation.

It didn't stop the hateful tears that leaked from the corner of her closed eyes, shut tight against the heated breath that panted above her as he claimed her body.

During it all, she reminded herself it was fake… so, of course, the pain could never be real for something as terribly simple as a bad dream.

That no one would ever believe her.

That's all it was. That's all there was to it.

A living nightmare that was ruled by the third hour of that cursed face.