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A raw scream burst Galinda’s dreams wide open in a foul shower of behind-the-eyelids colors. She turned her head side to side, sneaking a fearful hand out from underneath her duvet to light the lamp on her nightstand. Hot, stale air hung heavy in her nose and lungs. Storm clouds slung fat sheets of rain against Room 22’s ancient, rickety casement window, which must have been blown shut by the snarling wind. She had never exactly been afraid of thunder and lightning, but in her half-awake state, a flash, bang, and another yell managed to freeze her in place on the bed. Her eyes darted about for a minute before she realized that although the weather was raging, it was not a thunderstorm. A different sense of dread crept up her neck.
She dared to glance at the bathroom door, but it was just as closed as she had left it before dozing off. The entranceway was similarly secure, so she turned to the wardrobe in a final, nonsensical attempt to locate any kind of threat. Nothing much. Her shoes still sat under her desk, tucked away in a cozy nook, and her coat lay immobile across the back of her chair. Frantic rustling finally keyed her in to the one area of the room she had overlooked. About seven feet to her right, a hurricane of blankets and limbs shifted constantly around a pillowy eye. Elphaba.
The green girl’s hand had gnarled into a painful-looking, claw-like position, muscles so rigid that tremors ran through them even in unconsciousness. Her second pillow lay on the floor, bent double halfway beneath the bedstead. A thicker miasma, nearly a curtain of sheer negative energy, emanated from around her otherwise limp form and raked shivers up and down Galinda’s back. Sparks of magic pulsated amongst her fingertips, growing brighter by the second; she snuffled into the mattress, agitation seeming to increase, until a second surge of light engulfed the room for all of a half-second.
Galinda was used to her roommate’s not-infrequent outbursts of magical impulse, due in nearly every respect to Elphaba choosing to bypass simply bottling her emotions and to instead shove them straight into a ramshackle pressure cooker. She watched and waited, expecting nothing more than an encore of short-lived flares; so, naturally, she was completely unprepared for Elphaba to kick out and smash her leg into her nightstand so hard that both her glasses and textbooks cascaded to the ground. The action produced a terrific cacophony, but Elphaba — who normally shied away from such loud noises in a rather urgent manner — did not so much as crack an eyelid. Her leg dangled off the bed now, and Galinda watched in revulsion as a fresh, jagged split in the green skin began to ooze blood.
“Miss Elphaba?” she called out, quite unsure of what else to do. No response. Her roommate stilled for a terrifying moment; Galinda counted the breaths she took: one, two, three, four, five, before her brow furrowed and a low groan leaked out from between her clenched teeth. “Are you awake?” the blonde tried again, but whatever noise Elphaba had made had not been the word of an alert girl. It hadn’t been any word at all.
Thin shoulders were hunched nearly past her ears, riding her nightshirt up to expose a dreadful spine and a ribcage so sharp it should have cut the quilt to shreds. The low light threw her angles into even harsher relief. She appeared akin to a starving, pathetic wolf: any majesty it would possibly command stripped away by how its fur hangs limp and dull; how it splays in the dirt, head drooping, unable to move an inch. In keeping with such imagery, Elphaba cried out in a gesture that rose steadily from a hum to a great howl of NO! Her lips remained parted, and she began to breathe more audibly through her mouth. Her back glistened with sweat, Galinda noticed, not without considerable alarm. Was she ill?
“Is something wrong?” Galinda responded, not wishing to enter her roommate’s attack zone. She hopped out of bed and stood at a safe distance, shifting from foot to foot on the cold floor. Another scream tore out of Elphaba’s throat, followed by a wheeze and a directionless flailing of her arms. She groaned, and her lips moved, but her speech was inarticulate and muffled. “What? What did you say?” Galinda leaned in slightly, trying to catch any phrase she could, already weighing the risk of dragging the green girl down to the infirmary. She wasn’t heavy, not in the slightest, but Galinda much doubted that she had the fortitude to venture down several flights of stairs while toting a writhing pile of limbs.
As if she sensed the blonde’s thoughts, Elphaba thrashed, whipping her head around and exposing her warped, pained expression. She bared her teeth, chest rising and falling in a series of rapid, shallow gasps. Her hands stuck out in front of her, elbows locked and fingers splayed as if she had just pushed someone back.
“ Please! ” she cried, much more articulate. “ Nnn… re… sorRY! ” Her voice cracked. “ I di’n… STOP! ” She ducked into her chest and immediately shielded her head with her arms, legs receding up to her torso. She ended up curled against the footboard, feet tangled and hair wild, muttering nonsensical fragmentations. Her bed, endlessly creaky, began to emit a low, consistent rumble as she trembled.
Stood on her tip-toes, Galinda peered between the green girl’s hands and caught the unfocused, unblinking gaze of a single, shining eye. She started back, but inched closer once more.
“Miss– ahem, Miss Elphaba, you’ve been yelling an awful lot, and I just do not find it very funny if you’re trying to frighten me,” she declared, voice fading into the outer reaches of the lamplight. Silence. “You know, I’d appreciate it if you answered –”
Now, it was Galinda’s turn to scream. Elphaba bolted upright so fast that she tumbled clean over the footboard and onto the ground in a heap of noise. Her limbs lay awkwardly under her torso, and as she untangled herself, a regiment of bruises had already begun to spring up across her forearms. She stood, mute and quivering, head dangling at an angle that framed her face in disheveled locks; her fists clenched and unclenched around the fabric at her hips.
“ Elphaba? ” Galinda warbled, dropping the honorific out of fright. She clutched at her chest and tried to steady her breathing, prepared to run from the room if the situation were to turn foul. “You’re not awake, then,” she quipped, for her own peace of mind. She kept half an eye on her roommate as she lit the other lamps, one on the desk and one beside the door. Several uncomfortable minutes passed in such fashion: Galinda flitting around the room, completing menial tasks, morbidly curious as to what had stricken Elphaba tonight, of all arbitrary nights.
The blonde had reorganized her desk three separate times before deciding to approach her roommate once more. She crept back over to where the green girl had remained, still wordless. They regarded each other — well, Galinda did — for a moment as stretched as warm taffy.
“Be brave, now,” she muttered, shuffling within a foot of her roommate; hand outstretched, she drew back a curtain of raven as carefully as she could. Brown eyes, wide and unfocused, stared deeply into absolute nothingness. “Miss Elphaba?” she ventured, raising her voice beyond that pathetic whisper. No response; not even a twitch of facial muscles or a change in breathing. Galinda lowered her hand onto her shoulder and let it sit, waiting for any reaction at all. Receiving the expected result of “nothing,” she repeated the movement.
She held the taller girl quite steady now, which seemed to have been a good course of action as she could feel a slight sway in her stance. Should I… Galinda wondered for only a second, before gently shaking her back and forth. When that, too, failed to produce anything, she shook a bit harder.
“This would be very difficult to explain to someone,” she said, mostly to herself. “But really, Miss Elphaba, how long is this going to take?” She altered the direction of shaking from back-and-forth to side-to-side. “It’s getting a bit boring. I am tired . Can you just. Wake. Up?” She punctuated each word with a more vigorous motion, not enjoying how Elphaba’s head lolled about in a distinctly corpse-like fashion. Not as if Galinda had ever handled a corpse, of course, but she very much disliked the contrast of a limp neck and such a tense body. “You’d better be alive, Miss Elphaba!” she griped, and that seemed to do the trick.
Elphaba jerked her head up with a sharp inhale, shoving both hands against Galinda’s chest and sending herself reeling a good few feet. She stumbled backwards, all the way into a corner, and attempted to squeeze between the walls as tightly as she could.
“Get away from me!” she slurred, throwing her arms up and yanking her legs in once more. Her voice cracked, throat dry and abraded.
“Hey, now,” retorted Galinda, stomping after her. “It’s me; are you mad? ”
“Don’t… touch me!” Elphaba cried. She shrunk back with each vibration of footsteps, and the blonde stopped advancing in exasperation. Perhaps an iota of remorse, as well.
“Could you stop yelling? I am not going to–” Galinda huffed, straightening her back and crossing her arms. “Come on, get back in bed. I have no desire to keep arguing with you.”
“Please, Fa–”
“Miss-El-pha-ba!” she shrilled, having very much lost her patience. “What is happening!” Roughly sitting down opposite her roommate, she glared and sighed. “It’s me. Galinda. Upland. As you are perfectly aware,” she grumbled, “or so I thought.” Elphaba’s shoulders dipped slightly as she peered through her hair, finally somewhat cognizant.
“Wh-what the hell’s goin’ on,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes with one hand and curling the other arm tighter around her shins. Shivering, she began to rock softly back and forth, thudding her back against the wall in some attempt to ground herself. “Why the hell’m I on the floor.”
“I would love to know the answer to that myself,” Galinda said, reining in a bit of the irritation in her tone. “You’ve been yelling, for one, and trying to fight what I really do hope isn’t an army of ghosts.” Elphaba blinked confusedly and ran her fingers through her hair.
“I… I don’… what?” She squinted, barely able to discern Galinda’s whereabouts without her glasses.
“So you really have no idea.”
Elphaba nodded. Despite the thick, warm atmosphere, she couldn’t stop shaking. Galinda raised a hand to scratch her ear, and she flinched without even registering the action. Further questions nipped at her brain, but her mouth had frozen and the only sound that accompanied her freshly widened eyes was a strangled exhale. Her pulse kicked up, mounting tension in her temples and creating a fluvial rush in her ears. A terrible swathe of dread twisted her throat. The blonde was speaking; Elphaba could see her lips forming words and her tongue flicking out between syllables, but any and all sound had dissolved into a mumbling blur of unintelligible gurgling. Her stomach wrenched; flipped. She tracked Galinda as best she could, eyes snapping to her position as she walked across the room and back again.
“… you… blanket…” Elphaba managed to distinguish, just before a great shadow flew above her head. Not a moment later, fabric settled onto her shoulders, and she pulled it around herself in an instinctual need to be covered; moreover, it helped with the tremors, if only slightly. A tingling sensation accompanied with the distinct taste of salt rapidly invaded her nose. It was quite unpleasant. Between this, the anxiety, muscle spasms, and the general bewilderment, she was feeling very much overwhelmed and a bit sick to her stomach.
Galinda stood and watched her roommate for a moment, any confidence in her bestowal of her fluffiest quilt quickly being torn away as the green girl sputtered and her eyes welled up. Was Elphaba about to cry? Typically, she would not ask herself such a question, but the girl was such an enigma in so many ways that she simply did not subscribe to normal patterns of behavior under most circumstances. Am I getting an emotion out of you at last, Miss Elphaba? the blonde nearly joked, but the sheer fright plastered over Elphaba’s already harried features curbed her tongue.
“Do you see my hands? Right here?” she asked instead, unsure as to how she understood what kind of reassurance the green girl needed at the moment. “I’m not going to hurt you, Miss Elphaba. Promise.” Presenting her palms by her sides just as she would to a frightened cat, she waited for a shaky confirmatory nod. “Can I sit by you?” A sniffle followed the next nod, but by some miracle of night-time, Galinda felt only sympathy. She had set aside her irritations; the green girl was genuinely distressed, and she knew better than to pile on.
Elphaba shied away as soon as she sat down, but leaned back towards her in due time, their shoulders nearly brushing. Galinda closed the gap, still a bit reluctant to all of a sudden touch someone she really did not know all that well, and received quite the shock when the green girl pressed into her without a second thought.
“This is new,” she said, incredulous. Elphaba either did not hear or did not care, instead choosing to gnaw on her bony wrist. Her teeth flashed in the lamplight, terrifyingly animalistic, and Galinda wondered how they could possibly not break the skin. The blanket slipped from her right side and crumpled on the ground. “Careful with that,” the blonde murmured, reaching across her lap and tucking the fabric back around her. The storm outside had begun to quiet: wind and thunder no longer bellowed; rain no longer battered the glass. Galinda turned her head to make out the very slightest shard of moon winking from behind a cloud.
“Have you regained yourself?” she sighed, feeling her roommate’s shivering beginning to abate.
“Don’t know– don’t know what’s… um, c-come over me,” struggled Elphaba, fixing her lower body to try and rise. She stood, hand against the wall for balance, legs at a horrid triple point of gelatinous, insubstantial, and frozen to the spot.
“Was that some sort of… vision? Dream?”
“Nightm-mare.” The answer came immediately, and her face clouded over once more. “Oh, god– ” He couldn’t be there; rationally, she knew this. Nevertheless, the more effort she put into recalling what her brain had conjured, the more terror lumped itself into her every limb and forced her into a pathetic, cowering puddle on the floor.
“The corner!” she blurted, glimpsing the silhouette of what could have been a man, if one were to squint, near the bathroom door. “There, please! There’s not… anyone…” Elphaba was forcing words out as quickly as she could, already feeling her tongue de-synchronizing from her brain yet again.
“Nobody!” Galinda interjected, trying to keep calm herself. “Not a thing.” She strode over and waved her hands around, just to be sure. A few moments passed as Elphaba processed the statement, shoulders un-hunching and breath stabilizing. She made a small apologetic noise that cracked and broke as it exited her throat.
Galinda gathered her roommate and walked the two of them over to her own bed, supporting most of the taller girl’s weight. They sat, and Elphaba lay down immediately, pressing her body into the mattress as hard as she could possibly manage. She wormed her way across towards Galinda until her right arm was pinned securely under the blonde’s crossed leg. Her left wound across her torso and anchored her sides together, further pushing her body to compaction.
“I’m going to assume that you do not wish to talk about this,” Galinda ventured, studying the overwrought girl wedged halfway beneath her. Stretched to her full height, her feet nearly dangled off the bed. Yet, somehow, she was managing — quite successfully — to make herself a non-entity, nearly intangible; she had shrunk her very presence in the world. Her silence gave the blonde an adequate answer. “Alright, then. I won’t press you.”
Although the girls had cohabitated for nearly three months, this was the closest to a civil conversation that they had managed outside of mundane small talk. And one of them was not even speaking. Galinda supposed this counted as kindness on both of their parts: she had not once insulted Elphaba’s looks or demeanor, and the green girl had yet to unleash a ruthless verbal lashing upon her.
“It is strange, though,” she continued, thinking out loud. “I’ve never seen you so afraid.” A deep, pained exhale sounded from just adjacent to her thigh. “You surely don’t need to go into any detail, but–”
“ No. ” Elphaba cut the blonde off expeditiously. “I do not. You’re entirely correct about that.” Her voice still quavered, but her thoughts were lining up much better than they had minutes ago. She worked to curb her stammer, each word falling carefully and landing where they should, all in a neat little line. But the haze of midnight and exhaustion overpowered her mind, and before she could think, a clumsy addendum slipped out into the world. “My father–”
Galinda sat in silence, conflicted as to whether she should allow the green girl to continue, or if they would both regret whatever resulted from her next confessions. Temporarily forgetful of their orientation, she moved to lay a hand on Elphaba’s shoulder, but relocated to the top of her head out of necessity. Sure enough, Elphaba immediately stopped talking, although whether out of shock or shame Galinda could not hope to say.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” she asked timidly, prompting a one-sided shrug from the green girl. “Fair enough.”
“I’ve had… I mean, it’s been worse,” Elphaba divulged, unsure of why her filter had suddenly disappeared. “Having someone here,” she grimaced, wildly uncomfortable but unable to shut up, “h-helps. Immensely.” An angry blush stained her cheeks and her upper lip began to sweat. “Miss Galinda, if you could say something so that I might come to my senses?”
“I’ll stay awake as long as I can,” offered the blonde, “although I can’t guarantee that will be for much longer.” She leaned back, settling into her pillows. “Also, I… I won’t tell anyone about this.”
“A childish promise,” Elphaba murmured, having given up on manners.
“Unless you would prefer that I broadcasted your troubles to the general public?”
“That’s not wha–” she stifled a yawn, “not what I meant!”
“And I’m only teasing, Miss Elphaba.” Galinda’s eyelids had begun to slide closed of their own accord. “Doubt I’ll remember this in the morning. Will you?” She was rambling now, losing her polished, put-on affect. “Is that how your funny little head works?”
“I do believe you’ve just witnessed how my ‘funny little head’ works,” Elphaba grumbled. She should have gotten up long ago, but the bed was so warm and she felt so secure.
“Don’t make me laugh,” Galinda warned, a smile erupting despite herself.
The window clicked open, inviting a gentle choir of cricket-song and a chilled breeze into the air of Room 22.
“Wouldn’t dare.”