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Fill: Stay In Coma 1/5

[anonymous]

STAY IN COMA

I.

It starts when there’s no moon in the sky and his mother is drinking her way into another man’s arms, disregarding the leg she’s showing, the lips she’s pursing, the flouncy way she imagines herself despite herself. Because if she doesn’t pretend that she’s already laid out with Kurt Marko between her legs, or under another man to fix her before she drowns in the pool of vodka she’s swamped in, she won’t be able to pretend that she’s still that perfection on a billionaire’s platter and that’s a problem for her self-esteem.

Kurt Marko doesn’t actually give a tap dancing fuck whether or not she’s intelligent, or if the bonds she swears she has are real, because her house has rooms he can put between them, cars that crowd garages with chauffeurs to crowd the cars, and her legs don’t need too much plying.

Raven is on the floor that night, curled against a stuffed animal Charles had won her at a fair, dreaming sweet, soft nothings because Charles went out of his way to put them there for her comfort. A prick on the edge of her bubble snakes a hole the shape of reality into everything she knows isn’t real but that she caves herself into for the prospect of future sanity and she wakes up sharp, the raggedy plush horse crushed beneath her grip.

Charles is turning, arching, aching, whimpering, sweating, and uttering things she can’t make out in his bed, the sheets a noose around every inch of him, choking the life of him out, replacing it with the darkness that she knows so well. She pads quickly to his side, the depression of her body on the mattress enough to force his eyes into a bleary awareness of the night.

“Please, don’t stop, don’t stop - No, I won’t, but I shouldn’t, what would - this just feels so right , please, oh, oh, - oh hell they’re already at it, fucking whore didn’t even - my father can do better than this, she’s nothing, we don’t need her - what’s, I don’t understand, what are you trying to do to her, stop, leave my mother -”

Everything comes out vaguely as one word, strewn together with tiny gasps of breath in between, Charles’ eyes frantic in their search for something to clue him in to which voice is, was, will always be his and what it was saying. Raven’s hand is soft but alarming against his wetted cheek - she couldn’t be sure if he was sweating from the strain or crying from the images - and he arches away from it, then back to it, not sure if he wants it, needs it, should be able to feel it, or not.

“Charles,” she whispers, stretching her body next to his, curling it to his sweated pajamas and hollowed whimperings, hoping he can hear her, see her, feel her well enough to know that she’s real, that he’s real, that he’s Charles. “Charles, listen to me, please,” she cries it, her tears guiding their way to his collarbone and he shakes against her, seizing but not, efforts useless.

He hears her but can’t place her and tries so hard to find her because she’s a light, a warm bright beaming sun in a meadow on the other side of the picket line where he’s waging a battle against drunken tirades, lewd suggestions, hatred, and cool disgust. Nothing works; he’s in a foxhole, all alone, peeking up in hopes that an escape is insight.

When Charles finally settles down it’s when the sunlight slides its way through the curtains at his window, spreading a calming green luminescence against his sheets, against Raven’s skin, against his mind, brightening things. Eyelashes fluttering, eyelids anxious to see what the room will bring to life, whether or not he’s got a peace of mind to see it with, everything comes into detailed, vivid focus. The room of an overactive imagination, of childhood dreams of flight and trains and science, of books and stuffed animals and of little sisters scared of the big bad monster in the closet.

“Raven, Raven,” he whispers into her temple, against the sleek sheen of her red hair, holding her to him until the frown creasing her forehead disappears. He knows where he is, but sifting through the mess of the previous evening is taxing and takes precision he’s never had to have and the sheets are so damp and constricting against him that he decides remembering can’t always be too terrible, can’t always be so confusing.