Work Text:
i.
He comes in glimpses at first.
“You want to do it.”
The signboard flickers purple, seeping through Jessica’s closed eyelids.
“You know you do.”
Her eyes fly open, breath stuttering in the cold, vision unfocused. A cacophony of nonono is echoing through her mind, but she can’t quite form the words in her mouth, still gasping for air. She grips the bottle in her hand, knuckles turning as white as her face as she downs the drink, bitter whiskey clawing its way down her throat. Her unspoken ‘I want it’ is swallowed with the liquor, her mind going back to street names and road signs.
When she doesn’t breathe in pheromones and lavendar, she releases the death grip on her bottle, replacing it with her camera. Takes pictures of things she knows are real. People she knows are real.
The camera can’t lie.
ii.
He corners her in phantoms.
Ghost fingers and imaginary figures find her in the dead of night when her subconscious is awake, waiting. Main streetBirch streetHiggins DriveCobalt lane doesn’t stop parts of her flesh from burning, where his tongue licked and mouth puckered on. Doesn’t stop her heart from slamming against her rib cage, making her every exhale tremor.
Doesn’t stop her breath from hitching when she sees a 17 year old girl in a bed with her limbs splayed out, a broken doll without its master. Her head is turned to the clock on the nightstand, counting minutes and seconds until she won’t hear his voice in her head anymore, bony fingers pulling on neuron threads.
She hoists the girl over her shoulder like she’s dead weight, pretending she won’t be hearing her screams for the next few nights. She’s grateful when the girl accidentally knocks her head and goes out cold, because Jessica starts to hear her own voice being mixed with the girl’s.
Then she gives her back to her parents and he makes her watch what love is, real love is, purple linings and all. His hands are still in her head, picking her brain and telling her that she could’ve had that if she’d just stayed. She swats the thought away, and watches the reunited family leave. Unaware.
iii.
He gives her false hope.
Makes her entertain the idea that she’s a hero, that she saved a poor, helpless girl from a fate like her own. Or, at least got her out of it.
Then Jessica sees metal glinting in the elevator, and before she even has time to move she hears the shots ringing out. She knows she is too late the moment she starts running, but even as she reaches the bottom of the stairs there is still a small sliver of hope that she saw wrong, heard something else, and none of this is real.
Brick red pools on the floor of the elevator, empty clicking of the gun reverberating through the silence. Hope is looking at her now, eyes blank, finger still twitching over the trigger.
“Smile.”
Then the gun clatters on the floor and people are coming to see and Hope is screaming again but this time it’s only her voice in her mouth, not his, and it’s not your fault it’s not your fault is going through Jessica’s mind but she knows that’s not true.
It’s all her fault.