Take Me Away

Day Two

Twelve booming strikes rang in her ears. One booming strike rang in her ears. Two booming strikes rang in her ears. It was now half the hour; two-thirty in the morning and still no sleep came to the poor blond. Her eyes were squinted shut in the process, mentally begging her brain to shut off, to stop pulling those vicious recollections out like a photo album and thumbing through them, trying to memorize them once more. The first time had already been enough.

Monsters. Cassie had never believed in those disgusting and vile rancorous piles of filth, until she herself had become one. She realized it; she had grasped the fact that she had let herself turn into those horrific creatures. Those lies she told, the scandalous thrill and the rush that felt so wrong, but so right, that she had let take over her during the incident, the feeling of being high off of the ground, onto cloud nine, the forbidden ecstasy that had washed over her, and finally, the cold, hard truth that was like a smack in her pale face.

Guilt overcame her mind. Cassie wished she had told the truth; she would’ve spared herself all of this, she would’ve spared everything she was feeling, had she have done what was right. That one night that had spiraled out of control, and the events that followed it; she desperately wished she could take it all back. She was tired of crawling into that stupid abandoned corner in her room and pounding her head against the walls, tired of shedding constant tears unexpectedly. She didn’t want to cry, she didn’t want to regret; she wanted her life to be back to normal.

The twist of the doorknob caught her off guard, causing Cassie to do go by instinct and pretend to be asleep. Dainty footsteps carried into the room, closer and closer to her. Her heart was on fire, pounding a mile a minute, for fear of being caught, for fear of the confrontation she should’ve known would never come, not at this time. To the person in the room—Stacey as she was sure of, since no one else was around—she was fast asleep.

As it turned out, she had indeed been correct; it was no more than her older sister coming into the room. Cassie yearned to open that hidden leather book she called her mind and to let her sister in again, like she used to. She wanted Stacey to read those pages and to sympathize with everything, and to help put that book back into the shape it deserved to be in. This feeling had only increased as she felt Stacey’s hand caress her hair softly, brushing a strand away from her face.

“I miss the older days, Cass. I miss being able to be a teenager and go out and have fun with all of my friends, you know? Instead of always having to take care of you. I love you, but sometimes I want to be a teenager. I want to live life to the fullest, and it’s hard to do that when I’m taking care of a growing girl like you.” Stacey continued stroking Cassie softly, unaware that her younger sister could hear and was wracked with guilt all over again.

“But you’re a great girl, Cass. It’s worth it, for a great sister like you.” Warm lips hit Cassie’s forehead, and those words were enough to make her want to open her eyes and pull her sister down next to her, to spill every single detail to her and to cry into her sisters arms for comfort. Unfortunately, her sister had already gotten up from beside her and shut the door. Cassie arose, biting her lip again, not caring that blood was appearing again.

She leaned over to the nightstand, finally having absolutely enough, and opened the drawer, pulling out the bottle of Tylenol PM. She popped open the top and tipped the bottle over, letting the pills spill out into her otherwise empty palm, not even bothering to glance down to see how many had landed into her hand. She capped the bottle and threw it back into the drawer. Dry swallowing pain pills were what Cassie had come to at this rate, if she couldn’t get any sleep. They would knock her out and the pain temporarily.

It was a bad habit, she would admit, but as she lied down in her bed, pulling the covers over her body, she felt a hell of a lot better now that she knew she could get some sleep that night.