Six
1560 Words
Briseis
I was in the dark place again. Earth and rot clogged my nose as I desperately searched for anything that could help me figure out where I was. Jessica! I screamed inside my head. Jessica, please, I sobbed over and over. A moment later something shifted. I couldn’t say what it was that changed, but it was as if my point of view shifted. I was now looking at Jess instead of looking out through her eyes. Tears immediately sprang to my eyes as I took in the sight of her. There were dark circles under her eyes, mascara streaks stained her cheeks, and she was so pale. She looked as if the color had been drained from her body; her lips were nearly as pale as her cheeks. “Oh, Jess,” I whispered as I threw my arms around her shoulders.
“Bris?” She asked.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Where are you? Are you alone?” I realized I was peppering her with questions without giving her a chance to answer, and snapped my mouth shut.
“Are you really here?” She asked me tentatively, “Is this some kind of trick?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, and I will explain everything after we get you home. It is me, though, Jess. It really is. I want to help you, but you have to tell me where you are. What happened to you?”
Jess inhaled deeply before she visibly relaxed. “I don’t know. I mean, we’re in the woods, but I don’t really know anything more specific than that. I was making out with this guy in the club and I guess I drank too much. I remember feeling dizzy and weak, and then I woke up here. That’s all I know.”
“Are you alone?” I asked her. “Are the other girls here too?”
“Um, maybe. There is one. There was one more, but she disappeared, yesterday, and she never came back.”
“Okay.” I chewed on my lower lip as I stood there unsure of what to say. I knew I needed more information, but I had no idea how to get it. If Jess didn’t know where she was or who she was with how the hell was I going to find out?
“Bris?” She interrupted my internal struggle. “How are you here? This is a dream, right? It has to be.”
I nodded my head. “It is a dream, but it’s real, too.”
“If it’s real, why do you have ears on your head like a dog or something?”
“What?!?” I threw my hands up to my head and gasped audibly. “Oh, my gods,” I whispered.
“Well?” She urged.
“I.., I... don’t know. Maybe it’s something that one of us conjured up in the dream?” I fumbled for an excuse. I was nowhere near ready to explain all of this. Not to mention, the only thing we needed to be focusing on was getting Jess, and Troy’s sister, out of there.
“If you say so,” Jess hedged, suspicion clear in her eyes.
“Well, can you do this whenever you want to? This isn’t a one-time thing is it?”
“I think I can,” I shrugged. “I think I can even see things from your eyes, sometimes. Only, the only thing I could see was darkness, before.”
“Yea, I think he’s making it dark, somehow. When he comes in to…. Well, when he comes in here, it fades sometimes like he can’t keep it dark when he’s doing whatever it is that he does when he’s here.”
Horror turned my veins to ice. “What does he do to you, Jess?” I asked hoping with my entire being it wasn’t what I was thinking.
“I don’t really know. It doesn’t really seem like he does anything. Maybe he’ll stroke my hair for a little while or something like that; when he leaves, I feel really tired, though. I always fall asleep, after.”
“Okay,” I raked my fingers through my hair searching for answers that I just didn’t have. It’s not like I could stay in Jessica’s head all day waiting for this creep to come in and play with her hair. Or was it? “Okay,” I repeated, “Well, that’s something, right? Maybe Troy can help me think of a way to use that to our advantage. I wonder if something in the research would be helpful, or I could call my mom. She might know something.” I was mumbling to myself as I paced back and forth in the small space that we were trapped in.
“Troy?” Trust Jess to catch on to that name.
I stopped pacing to explain. “Yea, it’s this guy I met at school. He’s helping me figure this stuff out so we can find you. He said his sister was missing, too. Maybe you can talk to the girl that’s in there with you and see if it’s her?” I ended on a question as my thoughts poured out of my mouth in the same jumble that I thought them.
“Sure,” she answered. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she kept it to herself for now. If I knew anything about my best friend, I knew she would tell me whatever it was soon enough.
“Briseis. Briseis.” I could hear Troy’s voice as if from a thousand miles away. It felt like something was tugging me to the surface of an ocean that I didn’t realize I was drowning in.
“Do you hear that?” I asked Jess, confused as I tried to remember why Troy would be calling out to me. He wasn’t even here.
“Do I hear what?” She asked in response.
“Nothing,” I shook my head to clear the fog in my brain. “I just thought I heard- “
“Briseis!” It was more urgent, now. Who was that, again? Why did he sound so worried?
“That. There it was again!” I said, spinning around as if I would find the stranger standing behind me. Of course, there was nothing there.
“I didn’t hear anything, Bris. Are you okay?” She asked.
I barked a laugh at the absurdity of her asking me if I was okay. Perfect, she’s being held prisoner by some weirdo with a hair fetish and I’m acting so crazy that she’s worried about me. Wait. Jess is being held prisoner. “I’m not actually here, am I?” I asked her.
“What do you mean, Bris? Maybe, you should wake up now?” She suggested.
“Maybe I should… what?” The fog in my brain was getting thicker.
“Briseis, damn it, wake up!” The stranger yelled again, more forcefully this time. I looked around for Jess, but she was nowhere in sight. Then, the ground fell away beneath my feet and I went tumbling into the fog.
Troy
“Briseis, wake up,” I said again, shaking her roughly. Why wouldn’t she wake up? She had been unconscious for over an hour, and I was starting to think she was never going to wake up again. I tried to use her phone to call her mom and ask for help, but she had a pin to open it instead of a fingerprint. I didn’t know enough about her to even hazard a guess at what digits she may have used. “Why didn’t you use the fingerprint option?” I muttered in frustration, as I dropped the phone back to the counter where it was.
I slid my hands into her hair and gently lifted her head. “Please wake up,” I whispered.
“Did you hear that?” she mumbled so softly that I wouldn’t have heard it if I wasn’t so close to her face.
“What, Briseis?” I pushed, “Did I hear what?”
“Jess,” she whispered.
“No, I didn’t hear Jess. I need you to wake up and tell me what she said, okay?” I rubbed my thumbs back and forth against her temples and desperately tried to think of some way to wake her. I had just lowered her head back to her pillow and stood to retrieve a glass of water from the kitchen, when I heard her cry out, still barely more than a whisper, “Troy?!”
“I’m here, Briseis,” I assured her. “I’m right here.”
After a few more seconds in which her whole body tensed up as if she were preparing for impact, her eyes snapped open. My bones turned to jelly in my relief.
“Troy?” She asked again, her eyes struggling to focus on my face.
“Hey.” I whispered, again placing my hand to the side of her face. “Hey, it’s me, it’s Troy. I’m right here.”
“Thank the gods,” she muttered as her body relaxed into the sofa and she fell back into unconsciousness.
- Writer
