My Worst Nightmare

They’re all dead. We’ve lost everyone. Bonnie. Jeremy. Alaric. Caroline. Tyler. All of them. Gone.

Elena’s dead, too.

Stefan is destroying himself from the inside out. Ever since Elena was murdered two days ago by his own brother, the one he learned to trust regardless of their past, he’s been dying a torturously slow death. Who can blame him? He paces the floor, only taking a few steps before turning around again. He may be physically here, but as far as I'm concerned, we're going to lose him soon.

Recently he’s been standing still, his eyes picking a spot on the floor to stare at blankly. He isn’t there anymore, he isn't aware of what exactly we are left to deal with. In all honesty, there isn't anything left to deal with. It's not a matter of winning this battle. It's a matter of how long we can last.

Klaus drags Elena's dead body around like a suitcase, squeezing every last drop of her blood into his sick hybrid plans. Damon and Katherine have joined forces with him, and together the trio is undefeated. The first few times were surprise attacks - Damon and Katherine never let on that they were on Klaus' side. They took Jeremy and Bonnie in the same day. They tried to take Tyler, the first successful hybrid, into their murderous clan, but he refused. Now he lies cold and dead next to Caroline in the forest somewhere.

Damon pried Elena from Stefan's weak and helpless fingers after shooting him with vials of vervaine. I always knew he was evil, but I never expected him to commit so many cruel acts without a second thought.

“Stefan,” I whisper. My throat is so dry that his name barely escapes.

He doesn’t move, as still as stone, but I know he's listening.

“What are we going to do?”

He brought us to this old Victorian house that sits in the middle of a dead cornfield. Completely exposed. He says we can’t stay here long, but it’s all we have for now. It scares me how unconfident he is. It scares me to know that staying here, presented on a silver platter, is the safest place we could possibly be. Nowhere is safe anymore.

I give up trying to get an answer. I catch Matt lifting himself from the laying position on the sofa from the corner of my eye. It’s only the three of us left, but Matt's gotten sick. His face is the whitest a face can get without withering away, and he’s so skinny. He's been just as motionless as Stefan, until now.

“Are you okay?” I ask him. His eyes are glazed over, and he blinks once before buckets of blood are forced from his throat. This is what has been taking away his energy, violently vomiting everything left inside. I don't know that there's much left.

I press my lips together tight and reach for his hand. Matt is hunched over, a rough and desperate moaning contracting his throat. I can’t imaging how much it hurts him. I soothe him with my cracked whispers, but it won’t help.

When he's finished, I help him lie back down. His arms are so thin that my fingers leave a startling indentation in his ashen skin. I know he can't make it much longer, but I can't give up hope.

Stefan touches my arm, and I shift my eyes to him. He gives me the look, the one that makes my stomach twist into knots because something is horribly wrong.

“You need to go.” He jerks my elbow up from the sofa, breaking my hand from Matt’s icy grip.

“Matt, come on.” My voice is shaky as I reach for Matt’s limp body to lift him up.

Stefan pins my arm to my side. “You need to go.” He repeats, giving me another look which indicates I need to leave him behind.

I refuse to believe it. “Matt, get up!” I cry, knowing he won’t follow my request. He’s too weak. Helpless. And Stefan sees him as good as dead now.

He gets physical when I don’t cooperate. He shoves me back, away from Matt. “Go!” He growls at me.

I don’t give up. “Matt! Please, get up!” I raise my voice, because I see Matt closing his eyes again. "Matt!"

Stefan’s eyes turn, becoming dark and bloodshot. The veins under his cheeks become strongly noticeable. I need to hide. I need to hide now.

I don’t look at Matt because I can’t. I hurry to the spot Stefan showed me before, the place where the boards on the wall break loose and the very tight space behind them becomes my hiding place. I squeeze inside, but there's not nearly enough room to breath properly. My breaths are sharp. My eyes are shut. It’s so dark. It’s so quiet. I’m so scared.

I hear Matt’s heartbreaking scream pierce the silence. I bite my tongue and let the tears roll down my cheeks. They got him, too. All that’s left is me.

The silence is deafening. I feel like my silent sobs are much too loud. I know they can hear me. They must hear me. I'll be dead any minute now.

Where’s Stefan? He couldn’t save Matt, and I didn’t expect him to. It rips holes through my heart to know he had to leave that way, scared and sick and vulnerable.

I’m so sorry, Matt.

The wall rips itself away from me, and a pair of wild eyes that match Stefan’s perfectly are inches from my face, my throat, from breaking my skin.

A creepy grin spreads across his face, and his black hair dangles over his eyebrows. "There you are, beautiful."

I’m barely able to speak. But I need to know. Damon was on our side, he believed in stopping Klaus, but now he's murdered everyone in his path. "Why?"

I don’t have a chance to hear his answer or work up a scream before Stefan appears, tackling Damon to the ground. I am frozen.

“Run!” Stefan pleads.

I run. But my feet don’t move. I feel as if all of my murdered friends are clutching at my ankles with their cold, bony fingers, begging me to get it over with and join them in the supernatural death. I can barely lift my feet from the ground. I fall to my knees, dragging my worthless legs behind me as I crawl away as fast as I can.

I get to the front door, the only door to outside. To safety. My stomach drops to my feet, clear through the floor.

She’s attached to the door. Katherine.

Her entire arm is sewn with thick, black thread into the dark wood of the door by the flesh. It’s growing onto the surface of the door, concealing her to it.

Her lips are wet with foaming saliva, and her hair matted with dried blood, the dried blood of all her victims.

She hisses at me, her mouth bearing white fangs that cause the hairs on my neck stand up. I realize something then.

I can kill her. I can kill her now, avenge the horrible deaths of all my friends.

I spot the broken chair in the next room, probably a result of Damon and Stefan's brawl from before. The sharp point of the wooden leg calls to me, poised and prepared to act as the only weapon to kill a vampire.

I check back with my potential target. Her deep scarlet irises are as wide as her eye sockets allow. She predicts my plan, but she doesn't try and stop me. A devilish smirk survives on her deathly white skin.

I inch myself closer to the wood, subconsciously wondering where Klaus could be. If I'm going to do this, I have to do it now. If I want to end her, end all of this, I can't wait any longer. I find a nice grip on the wooden weapon and lift it shakily to rest at my eye level. I step as close to the demonic woman as my feet permit and I aim the point at her chest, just below her perfectly sculpted collar bone.

Her face is suddenly softened, her eyes gracefully concealed by her light gray eyelids. Her dark and full lashes brush evenly across her cheeks, now a rosy pink. The resemblance of Elena, the doppelganger, is most evident at this very moment. How could I stake her when she precisely resembles my dear friend?

I don’t do it.

I drop the hideous object and run the opposite way, away from her, from everything. The door clearly isn’t an option, so instead I use a window. I throw it open and leap out onto the dead corn stalks, stumbling into a sprint.

That's it, it's finally over. I'm free.

After a few seconds I realize what’s happening to my feet. The soles of my shoes are melting, burning at contact with the ground. I feel the heat haunting the bottoms of my heels.

I stop running and turn to face the house. I hadn’t run far at all.

My feet were hot.

“Stefan.” I call, but not very loud because I’m trying to figure out what I should do. There is no way I will go back in that house, but I cannot let my feet burn here.

It’s dead quiet again. The pressure is evident in my ears. I lift my fingertips to the side of my head and discover the trails of blood leaking from them.

A searing pain reaches the tips of my toes. It trickles up my body instantly, leaving bubbling blisters behind on my skin.

“Stefan!” I am screaming, but I can’t hear myself. It sounds like a whisper, quieter than a whisper. It's the last gasp of air before certain death

My screams seem to have been heard, because Stefan bursts through the open window. He reaches out for me, as I reach for him.

The moment his feet touch the dead stalks, he is quickly turned to nothing but black, dusty ashes.