He began to stir due to the movement next to him, fully waking when he heard her scream; the small scream of a frightened child.
He shook her until her eyes focused. “Baby, you’re ok,” he whispered as he rolled her into his arms, tightening his hold in an effort to calm the tremors that ripped through her.
She remained there, cradled against him, inhaling and exhaling until finally pushing him away. Swiping at the tears on her cheeks, she mumbled a thank you and then turned her back on him once again, shutting him out of her private hell.
Edited for fixing.
Damn! Just finished catching up on the drabbles that are posted here but not on the lj GWW.
I simply can't say WOW enough. Buffistas need to be published!
shutting him out of her private hell
I like this image. It's circular, she creates it over and over again, between her nightmares and real life.
Nicole, that's a gut kick. Especially since when I do get nightmares, they're almost always about abandonment.
Hell
The light is too bright. My eyes close and my head turns away. The light comes and goes. A wet cloth wipes my face. Faces come in and out of my vision. The faces look vaguely familiar, but they keep changing. There are always hands, lifting, pulling, combing out the snarls in the hair. The sheet goes away and comes back. There is always noise: sometimes soft and murmuring, sometimes too bright like the light. The noise used to mean something, but the meaning slipped away like everything else.
Something is holding my hand. Why won't it let me go?
Ginger, the ones you've done on this category have basically blown me apart. They're amazing.
I think this has been a great category for everyone. It's a shame we're so familiar with hell.
She pulls her feet in closer. Sand pushing up against her reminds her to luxuriate in its warmth, and she sifts the fine grains through her fingers. The water is a regular hiss and slap against sand and stone. It whispers naptime to her, but she fights it, because she can hear him squeezing orange juice in the kitchen. There'll be champagne in it, because there's been champagne in every drink of the past few days ... unless there was rum.
In the moment before he joins her she memorizes blue against blue, the sea against sky, crystal against eternity.