A crowd made its way to form a circle around me. I felt numb. Number than usual. The numbness felt strangely soothing, but at the same time I would wish that feeling upon anyone else.
'Enough of that, I need some more.'
More…
'I can think, but why can't I breathe?
I took a deep breath in
'Wait. Where am I anyway?'
The crowd dispersed.
I looked around the scan my surroundings to feel an unfamiliar figure standing above me, an obscure blurry presence that barely looked human. There was something alluring about its grotesque proportions that made me want to smile but the feeling of an impending sense of doom overpowered it without any resistance.
The more I focused the more I saw, it was female, I think. The woman opening her pale lips, as if exhaling or breathing out— I couldn't tell. However, I could tell that she was doing something to me, and soon enough something began to bulge in her throat, a moving lump of matter to be exact, But I couldn't understand what I was witnessing until it was too late.
A deluge of what seemed to be black butterflies spilled out of her mouth slowly, spreading outwards in front of my eyes like a cloud of death. I felt absurdly disgusted to the core, and as I was speechless in horror I covered my mouth instinctively, only to find that my lips were gone, as if my mouth had been sealed shut.
I screamed.
Without a mouth I still screamed. My nose felt on fire with the acrid and repugnant stench of vomit in combination with the dire need for air. I could barely focus on what was happening before me anymore but ignoring the pain I looked at the woman again and regretted it instantly.
The swarm of vomited black butterflies seemed to triple in quantity, still spewing out of the poor woman's mouth, before they crumpled to ash as if burnt by the air itself. I didn't know what to do anymore so I tried my best to curl up into a ball and wait it out.
The terrifying woman, now half her original height, finally stopped spewing out the disgusting butterflies and looked at me in my eyes. Her eyes were pitch black, with no emotion in them whatsoever. She blinked and I felt accelerated, I felt extremely perceptive of my surroundings and all the butterflies scraping at my neck and arms. I felt it all. The smell of butterfly ash falling onto my scalp, the pungent smell of her vomit and the newfound ardent desire to get myself out of this situation made itself known.
If there was any humour in this situation it would be that this felt remarkably familiar for some odd reason…
I snapped back to reality.
My pulse quickened, but it felt like it was quickening too much, and suddenly it felt as if my blood had sandpaper in it, grating and rupturing my blood vessels starting from my fingers searing its way up until my elbows. Every millimetre felt like pure hellfire coursing through my veins, and it was just too much at once for me to handle.
And after what felt like an eternity ablaze, I finally fell into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.
~~
Isobel jolted awake with sweat cascading down her neck, adorning her pale forehead with a sheen that made her look akin to a marathon runner. The white sheets that sent a wave of coolness and calm before were damp and suffocating. She immediately threw it off in confusion, and turned to look at her arms.
She felt immense relief that her arms were in fact not in extreme pain, and they were just laden in sweat. She was yet to realise she had a mouth until she realised she had not breathed since waking up.
Isobel exhaled.
"What the heck!?"
'My mouth is working again!'
Isobel inhaled, this time she enjoyed every second of the stuffy air of her room, for nothing would compare to the smell of that.
She grew still, as if taking in her surroundings.
"What was that…" Her voice trailed off, suddenly replaced by a familiar sensation in her eyes, as she wept softly after remembering what she experienced.
About a dozen minutes later, she wiped her tears and felt her face again. She barely smiled.
"What the hell was that?"
'A dream?'
"Wait, when did I even fall asleep?"
'Oh. I must've drifted off after calling mother.'
'I don't want to think about this.'
"But I need to jot down whatever the hell I saw."
'Right. Where's my diary?'
Isobel reluctantly left her bed and made her way to the table in front of the bed. She quickly sat down and began to bleed her thoughts on the white paper, and for a small while the black ink weaved across the page at magnificent speed. She looked at her work and saw a crude illustration of a tall, pitch black, woman with a mess of squiggly lines around that woman. She closed her notebook forcefully and sat down for a while, lost in thought.
Her mind was a minefield of fragmented thoughts from her harrowing experience; she found it hard to discern whether it was merely a bad dream or some sort of sleep paralysis but she later colluded it was an especially grim nightmare.
She found herself mumbling to herself inaudibly for a few seconds before turning left to see the time by looking outside.
Isobel's eyes widened slightly, "I-It's almost night-time."
The sunset had faded by now, submerging the landscape into increasingly darker hues of blue as one looked west. Isobel especially loved the moon tonight; it was a waning gibbous. She enjoyed the view of it all and took it in slowly and then left the curtains open to let some fresh air in before turning away.
Isobel mustered up the courage to go outside and enjoy the view even more but saw her surroundings a little differently than before.
She pulled on a black leather jacket, custom tailored for her by her aunty years ago. This jacket especially was one of her favourites even with her distaste for darker shades of clothing it used to feel the most comfortable when going out because of the sleek feel it had on her skin and the sheen of the leather. She then slipped on some boots and headed out of her room and was closing the door behind her when she heard a dimmed voice down the hallway and paused to listen briefly.
"—And I'm not doing the best to be honest with you mom, its kind of lonely here… I just thought there'd be more to university than this, y'know?"
An even more muffled voice Isobel could not make out came after that.
"Yes, yes, you're right it's only the first week but I just can't shake of that feeling that I wont really find my people. I hope I'm wrong, but yeah…"
Isobel moved surreptitiously moved closer to the origin of the voice, and it only occurred to her that it was the same girl she had been verbally bombarded by the day before, Alexandra.
"Actually I did find someone that I sort of like a lot, her name is Isobel. She seems rather kind and keeps to herself, but I think I'm just like that too! I bet we will get along swimmingly."
Isobel's heart quickened.
'Huh? Me of all people, why not Eric or something?'
She moved right outside Alexandra's door, thankful for her leather jacket being almost silent.
The unclear voice grew louder and yet Isobel could not hear what Alex's mom was saying, what she was saying about her.
'This is really irking me out… I wish I knew what she was saying about me.' Isobel thought to herself.
"As a matter of fact, I used your tactic mom! And it failed miserably, thanks a lot."
A short reply ensued, which was probably a question asking, 'what tactic?'
"I told Isobel I was going to the club with a bunch of friends and invited her to come with me, but she couldn't make it… It's all good though, 'cos I don't have friends anyway.
Isobel felt a pang of guilt in her chest seeping outwards slowly, her mind raced, trying to understand the situation. Her breathing became forced.
"Yeah, I just wanted someone to go out with me, and I would just say 'Oh what a shame they couldn't make it! Well, it's just us so let's go anyway.' But that will never happen because its such a bogus tactic!"
A long stretch of silence followed.
Only Isobel's heavy breathing right outside the door could be heard.
"Oh, hold on mom I think someone is at my door."
Isobel could hear Alex getting out of her chair and that was all she needed to hear before taking off towards the door.
'Oh my… I need to go, fast.'
Isobel successfully made it out of the view of Alex's door and quickly left the accommodation building. She slowed down upon feeling the cool breeze on her flustered face.
'I feel so bad… I didn't know she felt that way, I can't bear to do that to someone like her again, especially after how she enlightened me. And this is how I repay her?'
She clenched her fists briefly and walked outside to a bench a few minutes away facing the moon.
Upon sitting down, she exhaled melodramatically and looked around to make sure nobody was looking.
"What is wrong with me? Why on earth am I feeling this way anyways, so much has happened, yet its only like, day 3 of university. On top of that I'm not even focusing on my studies!"
'Gosh, imagine if Mo—'
"No."
"I'm getting rather sick of being controlled by her even from miles away, like, I'm free for crying out loud! I don't have to act like her subservient little maid anymore, or be played like a fiddle emotionally…"
Gazing at the moon surrounded by a mesh of purples and indigo shades, she pondered.
'I need to figure out who I actually am, without my family's influence. But on that thought… Why don't I just benefit from my standing in society like this?'
'I mean, I'm pretty well off already, so I'm basically better than most people around me anyways. They don't hold a candle to what I am.'
'I can't believe I almost thought for a bit that I was on their level, how pathetic. If there's one thing mother was right about, it's that we humans are not born equal, familial money changes determines your social status and quality of life after all.'
Getting up from the bench with a different energy to her, Isobel walked home with more fervour than she had before.
"I suppose as a someone above the rest I can benefit Alex's loneliness, but those deplorable boys as well as anybody else can stay far away from me. They aren't worth my time."
A new vessel of conviction had set sail in her mind, one that felt unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable.