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My wake from my recuperacoon has always been different than my peers. They describe it so elegantly, they refer to it as everyone always seems to, as just another part of their day. They awake, climb out of their cacoon, put on some new clothes, and move onto their day. It's simple, ordinary.
They don't have to claw their way out. They don't have to wake up with the sopor suffocating them, and if they do, they sure as hell never mention it to me.
My eyes open and I can't breathe. My brains still foggy as I try to prepare myself for what's to come. The minute I fade from my unconscious mind I find myself in this agonizing pain. It feels as if itsy bitsy needles are pricking me all over, a sharp pain only amplified by my body's reflex to move; to escape. I hardly want to, I'd much rather fade back to my dreams. I would rather face a thousand nightmares than my deplorable life on this wretched planet.
But still, against my best wishes, my body twitches and i reach out. The drones choosing my cocoon surely had to be getting some sick pleasure out of it. Some laughs in at the thought of a young wriggler being woken like this.
Is it making me stronger? I have to believe so. I have to believe there is some reason I'm going through this. I've stayed awake wondering why they would make me suffer like this for my whole life. I've never come up with a satisfying answer. Maybe Mindfang's ancestor was just too cool to let live normally. Maybe I just got an unlucky hand. With this and Spidermom. Maybe it was nothing more than pure. Dumb. Luck.
I flail in the slime encompassing my body. I'm drowning in it. My arms reach out above my chest, searching aimlessly to get a hold on something, anything. But I must be facing the wrong way, because I feel nothing but the slick substance.
My cacoon is egg shaped, it's cobalt, and it only houses a single entrance. Most do, and it wouldn't be the end of the world if not for its towering size. The damn thing has a room dedicated to it. I can usually float in the slime; it's the only way I could sleep in this thing. Yet, these days happen more than the ones I wake up peacefully. I sink into the slime, and until I awake, it doesn't appear to be a problem. But then I do and my eyes are gorged with it. My lungs are filled with it. My entire body encompassed by nothing but slime.
Eventually I flip a way that must've been closer to where I slept, because I reach out and feel the cool air of my hive. I step inside the sopor, pushing and pushing until I can finally breathe again. I see the exit of my hell, a round shaped exit that I swiftly move towards and leep out of desperately. With a splat I land in my hive, my head hitting the floor with a thud.
I always thought there would be a day I would get used to it. Where I wouldn't stay up for days in fear of getting in the cocoon and not being able to find my way out. Eventually I stopped fighting it, but it never got any easier.
There were some nights, I recall, where I would dream of drowning. My body would instinctively react to me drowning, whether in some ocean, or in a slime like this, and I would awake to find myself in no better position.
Eventually, I began taking pride in it. It's just another struggle on my path to become a true blue blood. A rite of passage, as they say. I try to think that without a lump forming in my throat.
My vision is still hazy as I attempt to crawl desperately for any of the towels I typically lay around the room. I start to sneeze aggressively for a couple minutes as I do so, and my head still aches from the collision it had with the cold floor.
Eventually, I seem to find my savior; a lone white towel. I reach for it and begin to wipe my entire face on it. Afterwards, I attempt to open my eyes, but clearly I didn't wipe them well enough, because they start to burn. The burning is a typical sensation I associate with my wake. Yet, I still muster a frail shriek, my pent up frustration leaking out from my slime filled mouth. Then, finally, I rise, my body still covered in slime, and limp towards the exit of the room.
It hurts. I have to remind myself to stay strong. I have to hammer it into my head that this is for my benefit. I don't believe it. I finally reach my ablution room and find my ablution trap. One leg steps in and the other one follows shortly, and I touch the rigid edge of the dial and turn it harshly. Water begins flowing from the ablution head, and my eyes are finally fully flushed of the foul slime.
Despite being out of my cocoon, and the sopor finally being washed off my body, the lingering traces of it haunt me. My body aches from the various injuries it sustained finding its way here. Right about now is when I start wishing to know someone who could smuggle me some medication for any of the pain I'm experiencing.
The ablution is nice. It's hard to make out tears when they are so quickly washed away.
And with one long deep sigh, I mutter my first cursed phrase.
"God damn it."
-------
Deciding to finally try to move past my shitty morning, I sit at my desk and turn on my husktop, my hair still wet from my long ablution.
Hm. No messages. Time to make that someone else's problem.
-- arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling adiosToreador [AT] --
AG: Taaaaaaavrossssssss!
AT: uM, YES,
AG: I need some entertainment!
AG: What're you doing? ::::)
AT: oH, OK, WELL i JUST WOKE UP,
AT: bUT i'M, uHH, PLAYING fIDUSPAWN WITH tINKERBULL LATER
AT: mAYBE, yOU COULD PLAY TOO, iF i CAN GET tINKERBULL TO PLAY FOR YOU
AG: Tavros, you're letting me down here.
AG: All I'm hearing is more 8oring stuff!!!!!!!
AT: oK, wELL, i THINK fIDUSPAWN IS FUN ACTUALLY,
AT: aND MAYBE I DON'T, uM, wANT TO PLAY,
AT: wITH SOMEONE WHO, mAYBE, tHINKS IT'S LAME,
AG: Tavros, I wasn't going to play in the first place, dumbass.
AG: Don't you think FLARPing would 8e more exciting?
AT: yEAH, fOR YOU, mAYBE,
AG: Oh come onnnnnnnn!
AG: Look, may8e I'll put in a word with Terezi and we can go easy on a couple of low 8loods like you and Aradia.
AT: nO, uM, i'M GOOD ACTUALLY,
AG: ::::(
-- adiosToreador [AT] ceased trolling arachnidsGrip [AG] --
UGH! Can't I catch 8 f8cking 8reak!? What's his deal? A few extra scrapes and drops of bronze blood in the last session and he pussies out like this! It's as if he's spitting in my face at this point. "Just woke up," If only it was that easy; he has it so fucking easy! Subconsciously I start to reach for an unbroken 8-ball dear my desk, and like clockwork I throw it against the wall. It predictably shatters, and a glass shard scrapes across my cheek before I can move out of the way.
My breath quickens. My hand turn to fists in my frustration. It's hard sometimes; to place why exactly I meddle with him. He's never done much for me, he's hardly treated me with any respect , despite the frequent attempts to cradle him like he wants. I feel something for him, obviously I would feel SOMETHING for him, otherwise, I wouldn't talk to him so intensively. It's a weird feeling of kinship I see with him. He's weak, he's a coward, he's a nerd, but he also isn't afraid to say what he wants. He isn't afraid of...
-- arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling adiosToreador [AT] --
AG: Tavros.
AG: I had a really shitty morning.
I begin to cringe a little bit as I type. The keyboard clicks with my hand's movements, but they feel as if they're working seperately from my better judgment.
AG: What gives you the right?
AG: What gives you the right to ignore me like that!
AG: Did you know that the only reason I even fucking 8other with you is 8ecause I care about you enough to want to see you 8ecome stronger?
AG: Stronger than a pathetic wriggler.
AG: Wriggle wriggle!! Hahaha! That's all I think of when I talk to you.
AG: Why is it that you get to just "wake up?"
AG: Did you know that when I wake up it takes hours? It takes hours to get to doing anything productive 8ecause the sopor is so deep I C8UGH IT 8P EV8RY M8RN8NG.
AG: I H8 YOU!!!!!!! I H8 H8 H8 H8 H8 Y8U!!!!!!!
AG: 8T'S N8T F8IR!!!!!!!!
AG: 8T'S N8T FAIR TH8T YO8 G8T T8 B8 A P8THETIC W8MP!
AG: IT'S N8T FA8R Y8U G8T TO PL8Y F8CK8NG D8RKY C8RD G8MES W8TH YO8R L8S8S!!!!!!!
Tears hit my keyboard. My mouth starts quivering.
AG: T8LK T8 ME. L88K 8T ME T8VR8S.
AG: T8LL ME T8 MY F8CE TH8T Y8U H8 ME T88.
AG: T8LL ME Y8U W8NT M8 DE8D
AG: JUST L8KE EV8RY8NE ELS8!!!!!!!!
I can feel my heartbeat. I know what I'm saying is wrong. And as my hand reaches up to my head to focus I know what I'm doing is wrong as well. But I still do it. For what reason? I'll never know.
AT: I'm sorry, Vriska.
AT: I'm sorry I'm such a pathetic wriggler.
AT: I don't deserve to even talk to someone as great as you.
AT: I love you Vriska.
AT: You're a true 8lue 8lood.
AG: God, what am I doing.
AG: Fuck
My hand reachs back down from my skull. My head becomes focused again, as focused as it can be when I just did what I did.
AT: uH, vRISKA?
Before i can read the next message, I leep towards the side of my husktop and hit the power button. I don't want to hear what he has to say. I don't need to hear what he has to say. I don't need his sympathy, or his reprimands.
Slowly but surely, what I've done settles in. It settles deep in my guts. I'm nauseous for the second time this morning. It's funny really, you can only find it funny when you fuck up as much as me. And so I smirk a bit as tears begin to reappear along my cheeks.
I get out of my chair and back away from the powered down husktop. As I stumble backwards, I quickly fall to my knees. The cold floor of my room makes the fall hurt; but I'm too distressed to notice.
And so I lay with my knees on the freezing floor of my room for a looooooong time. I let my thoughts race and race, and I let the blue tears leaking out of my eyes hit the floor time and time again. I barely move lying there, just the occasional moment of my hands to bring my silky hair up as i wipe some more drops of blue.
But, soon, I'm reminded I have other things to do rather than cry and whine. A loud guttural cry releases itself downstairs. A cry I'm all too familiar with. Its the cry of a Lusus. Realizing this, I turn my head in reaction. Then, with my face still wet, I deliver a harsh slap to my cerulean stained face. Slap! Slap! Slap! Again, again, and again.
When I decide it's enough, and my tears stop flowing from my redding eyes, I rise and stagger towards the growing cry of a painful responsibility I bare. I release a painful chuckle to myself, and only myself, as I walk down the impossibly long stairway. A secret only for me. A feeling only for me.