𝔳. chapter five

                                    

                                          
𝖁 : Come What May.

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IN HER DREAMS ALASKA DIDN'T FRET ABOUT STEPPING OVER THE EDGE.
They were dreams after all.
Besides, it was not the falling that had always haunted her, but what there was at the bottom. Sometimes there were the faces of her parents staring up at her: wide, uncharacteristically cruel white eyes beckoning her to lie with them, fingers curling ever so slightly as they had the power to move her. She hovered above them, eyes red ringed and watery, not being able to pinpoint if what she felt was fear or something else entirely. But she never ended up lying with them, she always woke up as she hovered there, staring at what she had wrought upon the world.
There were other bodies down there too. Faces she didn't recognize. Faces she didn't want to seek out in real life.
Tonight the pit of bodies grew wider. There were wide, gaping mouths, bloodless limbs and a low hum that emanated throughout the world Alaska found herself in. The hum seemed to coarse through her, making her very insides vibrate.
She could feel herself shaking because there were wings too. Wings pulled and crunched and discarded. Wings crushed into ash and dust. Wings strewn in the dirt, soaked in blood. There were humans too, mixed in with the wings until Alaska couldn't tell them apart. Those two worlds should have never been mixed to begin with, yet they were destined to. Something in the soulless wind told her that she was destined to cause it.
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!






Alaska sat up gingerly, trembles traveling from the back of her neck to the very tips of her fingers, head pounding with her pulse. She felt confused and invigorated, had a power running through her limbs no mere human was usually afforded. A spot of blue above her - two spots of blue, on and off, set below a haze of dark, above shadow-cast lips. The world was spinning a bit but everything cleared as a familiar - if out of place - wall clock came into focus.
It was nearly five.
Alaska let out a sigh, realizing she'd fallen asleep in one of the dining chairs while waiting for her brother to return home. The grey shawl had grown cold given the chill hanging in the air. The nightmare was long forgotten when Alaska swung her feet out from the shawl and down to the floor, draping a sweater around her nightgown. Her gaze softened upon spotting her twin fast asleep on the couch, clearly for the same reason as her. 
With only the kitchen light left on, the blue glow of the television screen casted the room in shadows. The news still hummed in the background and when Alaska turned her attention to it she saw a gaunt faced reporter talking about some gruesome animal attack on a couple the night before. Alaska ignored the unpleasant way her stomach churned due to the news and reached for the remote to turn the TV off.
The stairs were cool under her still-bare feet, the hollow sound of them echoing with an emptiness that hadn't existed when mom and dad were still alive. Now every sound felt hollower, louder in the quiet. Dad's computer didn't run in the upstairs office anymore, the noisy tower and boxy monitor remnants from almost a decade ago, but Dad had refused to convert.
The whole house always felt quiet now. Alaska half hoped to hear her phone ring, just to have some more noise. TVs were always running in the background now, or music blasting, some noise to drown out the emptiness of two missing people.