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Bones crumbling, giving out. Words being changed right along with the world. Scythes, sharp stone and blood staining the—
She shot upright, bed creaking in protest.
Her heart was like the rabbit her headband portrayed: fast, too fast, pounding in her ears, chest, fingertips. It was trying to escape through something sour and burning in her throat, in her mouth, then in her throat again when she swallowed it back down.
Breathe. Kaboodle needed to breathe, to fill her lungs with air, to calm down. It was a dream. Just a dream. It wasn't real, she wasn't bleeding, she's okay.
"Just a dream." She repeated it in a whisper, reassured herself. "It was just a dream." Nobody else would, after all. Just her, only her, and it would only ever be her. Probably. Maybe. She didn't know—no, she did know.
It was fine, she didn't need anyone anyways. She hadn't growing up, back when she was seven and comforting herself after nightmares. Why would anything have changed?
Answer: it didn't.
She inhaled, exhaled, closed her eyes and repeated the process. Her heart slowed, and Kab would be okay. Dreams were just that—dreams. Not real—no not that—fake.
They were fake, it was fake, she was real. No better word for that. No better word for the truth.
Her journal, the truthful journal. She needed to grab it, add another entry. Another dream. Another nightmare. Another truth, another fact. Another everything, adding on until she could piece everything together.
It was on the window sill, just out of reach. The moon was bright enough for it to be illuminated, enough for her to write without the slowly melting candle.
One more slow breath and she pushed back the blanket, swinging her legs off the mattress. She put her headband in place, for the familiar feeling of it, and got up.
The journal was worn from the past however long it had been since she'd taken permanent residence in her room. She hadn't kept track. The cover had turned soft, by her hands only.
She didn't use pencil anymore, it was too easy to change. Ink was better, permanent, obvious if changed. (It wouldn't, it was only her who could do that).
The quill was annoying, but she took it anyways, right along with the nearly empty inkpot she'd made.
She slid to the floor beneath the window before flipping the journal open to where she'd stuck a long sliver of a stick as a bookmark. It was a new page, the two behind already filled, and she dipped the quill into the ink.
As she wrote, she quietly spoke each word she put in ink, careful not to smear it with each line she made.
"I was hit with weakness again," She paused. "I think. The world was changing... again. There was a scythe, and I was fighting again, or trying to."
Kab inhaled slowly. Her arms were still scarred, probably always would be, cut open from whatever sick training she'd done. Jagged, pale slashes, like some weird abstract art.
She exhaled.
"I was bleeding."
Now for the hard part: real or fake?
Bleeding was—had been—real, it had to have been. She remembered every hit, every sting and flare of pain while she tried to fight back. Training, training, and it was for nothing! She'd figured out the truth, how she was tricked into thinking she was weak.
She wasn't weak, she wasn't. No matter what anyone else thought.
But she had scars, tangible proof. It had happened. Not tonight, but it had. Her dream was right.
It all was right, had happened, was real. But it was all in a dream, was it fake then? Was a real dream fake?
She didn't know. She didn't fucking know.
It was like her other dreams, real and fake. Like some of them, which meant it had to apply to all of them if they were logical. It was all real, wasn't it?
No, no it wasn't. She wouldn't let Clown be right, because he was never right, he was a liar. He'd lied and tricked and left her worse off than anyone had. He deserved to be wrong. And probably was, since everything he said was another lie.
So it couldn't all be real, or maybe none of it was. Maybe everything was a dream and she'd wake up at the start. Maybe she hadn't even left home. Maybe home was a lie.
Her eyes were burning and her throat hurt again. Water—a teardrop—landed on the paper. She dropped the quill and dragged her sleeve over her eyes.
If it was all fake, than everything good had been too. Everything she'd thought was good, everytime she'd thought she'd found a home.
Everything bad was fake too, everytime she'd been hurt and her friends—were they friends? They hated her now—had been hurt was fake.
Maybe some of it was real. Maybe the stronghold and little glass house was, and maybe Rae had never been followed and she'd wake up and it'd just be her, Rae, and Maddy and they wouldn't hurt or hate her.
It hurt thinking of that, hurt inside and she wasn't sure if she wanted that or if she wanted to have never found the stronghold at all. It would've been better that way.
But why would any of it be real? No matter how vivid it felt, it was like of book, a fairy-tale, a story she'd read late at night when nobody was there to get mad or hurt her.
She wasn't some heroine in a story, things like that never happened to her. Weren't supposed to happen to her.
She hated how much those thoughts sounded like her mom, like Kyle, like they were telling her she'd never be as good or as strong or even be anything.
The ink was smudged, her hand was stained. When had that happened? Her breathing was wrong again, and she tried to keep quiet, not make any noise that would wake anyone up. She didn't think she could handle that, risk having someone push through the door when she didn't want that. Maybe barricading it would've been better.
She flipped through the pages of what might have been dreams, dreams within a dream that was so surreal it couldn't be reality, no matter how real it felt.
How many more dreams did she have to go through? How many more times did she have to wake up before it was over? How long until she finally got out?
How could she even tell if she was out?
Her breathing didn't calm down, she pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle it. The journal fell, open on one of the earlier pages, one of the first ones. The first one, written with messy ink spots and a few speckles of blood.
The scar across her chest stung at the thought, her face and hand were wet. She felt sick, horrible, and wanted to—
She didn't know what she wanted. It to be a dream, maybe. She wanted that, right? She did. Kaboodle wanted everything to be a dream, some long, horrible nightmare.
The words, shaky and stained, stared up at her. She finally skimmed her eyes over it, the first dream, the reason she'd woken up and woken up in her room, alone.
Kyle came back.
Was it even a dream? Didn't scars dictate that, reality versus dreams?
She didn't know.
It had to be a nightmare—all of it. She didn't think she could handle it if it wasn't.
It was all some big, elaborate nightmare.
That's all it was, she decided, trying to breathe and stop crying. It was a dream, dreams within a dream within who knows how many other dreams.
All she had to do was wake up.