Whee hallucinations. Set just after midnight, Neela is in Ootime.
Word Count → 728
Everything was still and silent in Westville. Very little was moving about this late into the night and the moon cast a brilliant glow onto the fresh layer of snow decorating the ground, unimpeded by clouds.
However the peace and quiet belied what was happening inside the small house located on the outskirts of Westville. Recently renovated by Neela over the last two weeks the house now provided a comfortable home to the hybrid and her bird that resided within. Tonight, however, the small home was the stage to less than pleasant happenings.
Neela was dreaming. Once Neela's dreams had been happy, full of music and dancing, but nowadays they took a darker turn. During her waking life Neela was able to push away many of the darker memories of her past and actions through keeping busy and plain and simple denial but at night she had no such defences; she was at the mercy or her guilt and memories.
The master bedroom of Neela's house had been one of the places that she had taken great pains to make neat and tidy but as her dreams progressed it slowly became more and more disarrayed; sheets and other small objects thrown about as Neela's dreams turned to nightmares and her shifting turned to thrashing.
She was walking down a long hallway, dank and dark with old floorboards that creaked and groaned at her every step as she tried to force her unresponsive body to hurry towards her goal.
Julian. He was standing there, smiling at her with that cocky grin that she had always loved. Despite the fact that she had lived through this same dream many times before she couldn't help the feeling of happiness that passed through her. Then she got close to Julian and things went wrong.
Slowly she began to draw a knife, holding the blade threateningly in front of her. Neela tried to stop her body moving, to shout out to Julian but she couldn’t more nor speak and Julian didn't react to the knife. Neela was a passenger in her own body, forced to watch as she slowly got closer to Julian, forced to feel as once again the knife sunk into his throat, forced to smell his blood as it gushed from his throat and forced to listen as Julian began to impossibly speak one single word, his voice horribly clear and flat, "Why?"
Neela awoke with a shrill scream that echoed out over the silent woods surrounding her home. But while her body was awake her mind was still asleep, trapped in the nightmare created by Neela's own guilt. While her eyes were open they didn't show her the fur covered panelling of her home, instead it was the old stone house she had shared with Julian, the walls covered in blood.
With a second scream Neela tore out of her bedroom, scarcely noticing the alarmed shriek coming from Grynn's hidey hole as she tore through the house, burning her foot on the hot embers resting in the firepit but never noticing the pain.
Neela tore through the woods in a panic, her eyes wide open but unseeing, haunted by visions of blood and walking corpses, followed by stricken eyes and that last, gurgled question, why, why, why. Eventually Neela's foot met sand and she stumbled, coming to rest on her hands and knees. She had unconsciously followed the path towards her docking and was now knelt at the riverside not far away from her pier. For a moment she let the gentle rocking and banging of the Meria sooth her ears, the large boat knocking against the tired slung over the small pier as the river current swayed her.
But she wasn't out of the nightmare yet. When Neela caught sight of her reflection in the river her face was flecked with blood, the dark crimson contrasting horribly with her white facial fur, and when she brought her hands up into view they were soaked red with blood that only Neela could see.
Neela stared silently at her hands for a moment in disbelief before bending over and vomiting into the river. Then she collapsed onto the sand in the foetal position, her nose dipped in the water and chest stained with vomit, and screwed her eyes shut against the horrors that her mind still produced, whimpering quietly.
