nuits sans sommeil - felix + elspeth blitz

[Bella 🌻]

f e l i x

There’s a crack in the ceiling that looks just like the map of District 3. It has the panhandle and everything.

With all that has happened, it’s uncanny enough to make this feel like a simulation, almost like real life was before the fire, and this house is something else, and in-between place where I pass the time waiting for the day I can be an adult, move out, do whatever it is adults do. Work. Furrow my eyebrows. Complain about the weather.

When I close my eyes, I see the flames licking up the wallpaper, the feet of my wooden bed, framed paintings on the walls. The memory of fire follows me around like a hungry shadow, reminding me what might happen if I make one little misstep. The floor is lava.

My fault.

So I don’t close my eyes. I stare at the crack, and the crack stares back.

I am certain that it hasn’t gotten bigger. It’s a good house, I think we’ve all agreed; maybe better than some of us would have had even if we weren’t orphans. Even now, the plush down covers and brushed cotton bedsheets curl up around me, nest-like, welcoming me into their offered warmth and safety.

Still I hesitate to call myself lucky, because, you know.

I’m anything but.

The springs creak softly as I shift my legs over the side of the bed, my bare feet bristling against the chill of the polished wood floor. I’m not tired enough to sleep yet. So I’ll do what I’ve been doing all year. Stare at the crack and wander around the house until my eyelids get so heavy I have no choice but to sleep.

Pure whim tells me whose door I’ll knock on tonight. Some may call it bothering, but I know I’m not the only insomniac in this building. And the nightly whispers keep the lonely away. I press my lips into the crack between the door and the wall and whisper loudly,

”Elspeth? Are you sleeping?”

[clover ❁]

elspeth
dollanganger goravich.

the first night i slept here, i slept on the floor. 

i had grown so used to the cold, hard bite of the ground beneath my bones that even the floorboards felt too good for me. it was easier to close my eyes and pretend i had not betrayed her, in a way, and that the irreversible shackles i had accepted were not wrapped around my wrists. it was my way of pretending she was still mine. 

when klaus found out, he looked at me with the sort of cautious pity you give a stray animal. like he wanted to scoop me up but was scared i might bite him. in those first few days, i might have. instead, he stacked nine mattresses up in my room and said, you choose whichever one you like best, and i held out for a week before i gave in and woke up one morning right at the top of the stack, teetering on the precipice between my old life and my new one. 

without her, my weakness devoured all of my strength and i relented, a victim of the sorts of things that made normal children soft and pliable. mauve would shriek and claw at my eyes if she saw the way i folded myself in two, reshaped myself to fill the elspeth-sized gap in goravich house that they swore was just for me. the lines between prison and sanctuary faded until i could not piece together the truth. 

"elspeth, are you sleeping?" comes a voice from the crack beneath the door. it slips it alongside the draught and the dust. it belongs, i know, to felix, who roams around a night like a bare-footed vampire, looking for victims who's ears she can talk off. she reminds me of my sister, hissing at me in the early hours of the morning. i pretend to be asleep until the new, soft me consumes my being and forces me to respond, tells me she is just a tiny thing, just thirteen, small and hungry for attention just like the dogs mauve tends for. 

"no," i say. "do you need something?" 

nobody has been inside my room since klaus stacked the mattresses here. i think i can hear here sticky little fingers on the doorknob. 

[Bella 🌻]

f e l i x

There is a long silence; I think she might be sleeping. My bare feet squeak quietly as they shuffle against the floor, impatient. Then, her voice filters through the crack.

”no. do you need something?”

I purse my lips, hesitant. The truth is coming here was more like scratching an itch than filling a need. There is so much more time in this place, more than I’ve ever had in my life. The time it takes to fall asleep feels like the time it might take to travel to outer space. In the meantime I don’t know what to do. But most of the time I just say to hell with it and I try to rope others into helping me pass the time.

”Just can’t sleep. Nightmares.” Though I don’t know if you can call it nightmares when you see things while awake with your eyes closed.

My hand rests cautiously on the brass doorknob. I don’t mind when people come into my room; honestly, it just makes me relieved that they want to see me. Hoping that she’ll feel the same, I slowly push the door open. The hinges creak, announcing my whereabouts to all the others who might be awake still.

”Wow,” I exhale in surprise, gazing up at her there on the top of the mattresses, nearly ten of them. Last time I was in here, she slept on the floor. I thought nothing of it; maybe she grew up in a barn, and it made her feel more at home. ”All those, and you’re not asleep yet?” It looks like fun, being up there so high. ”Can I try it?” I ask before I can withhold my burning curiosity.

[clover ❁]

elspeth
dollanganger goravich.

she enters as though she has a right to it. 

i suppose you cannot have it all, and somewhere in the niceties and comforts, something has to give. for the first sixteen years of my life, i was never alone. wherever i went, she was beside me, a mirror of all my worst intentions. i don't think i'll ever quite get used to it, the way that an empty room amplifies my thoughts into a cacophony. i am not exactly pleased with felix encroaching upon my bedroom, but at the same time i do not resist it; part of me doesn't really mind. with her constant talking, i know she will offer me the sort of quiet that comes with company. 

"just can't sleep. nightmares." this, i understand. 

she looks up at me, all wide-eyed, her lips forming an 'o'. "wow," she exclaims breathlessly, as though my bedroom contains a palace, or an amusement park ride, rather than a stack of dubiously stained mattresses. i don't know where klaus got them from, but i am certain that somebody died on at least one of them. 

"all those, and you're not asleep yet?" she asks, as though the two things are connected in any way. as though you can fix deficit with excess. how simple it would be if things worked in that way. "can i try it?" she says, completely untethered from social norms. i am taken aback by the question, but at the same time jealous of the way her mind seems to be free from the sorts of things that bother other people, like not imposing upon people in their own beds. she seems even younger than she is, looking up at me expectantly.

"if you want," i say. "this way, you see, there can't be any monsters under the bed." it's a joke, but suddenly i worry that she will take me seriously. hurriedly, i reach out and offer her a hand to grab onto.

"still get the nightmares, though."

[Bella 🌻]

f e l i x

”this way, you see, there can’t be any monsters under the bed.”

Surprised by her wisdom, I nearly choke with laughter, then quickly bury my face in my sleeve so I won’t wake the others. I stopped believing in monsters last year, knowing I’m the worst of them now.

Clasping her hand, I scramble to the top of the pile, grunting as I throw my legs up and over. The springs bend and creak under the extra eighty pounds. It’s different than I thought; it doesn’t feel stable, really, but now that I’m up here, I pull my legs up to my chest, hugging them together with my arms. I do not think I could sleep up high like this. How does she get up to pee, I wonder. Then again, she is much taller than me.

”still get the nightmares, though,” Elspeth adds. Her honesty makes my cheeks warm. I nod, looking at the wall opposite the bed. Already, I can feel myself getting sleepy, my plan working. It’s something about having someone sitting next to me. They don’t even have to talk to me, but it does help.

”Mine are always about fire. Predictable, I guess, since my house burned down,” I say with a shrug. I am too curious to know what hers are, too. If our nightmare-scapes connect at the edges. ”Are yours about… what you see when you go out at night?” I ask, smiling shyly at her, then add hurriedly, ”It’s okay–I won’t tell, I swear.”

[clover ❁]

elspeth
dollanganger goravich.

felix lets out a giggle; she is sweet, despite what has happened to her. she carries the innocence with her of a much younger child, and yet it is flecked with something else, marred by experience, sprinkled with ash. i heard from the other kids what happened. she grabs my hand. i flinch away, although i offered it to her, then catch myself between my teeth and force myself to remain. felix does not deserve my grimaces, so i keep them to myself, tucked just inside my sleeves where she cannot see them. i haul her up with all the strength in me. it seems to take all of the strength in her, too, because when she lands on the mattress beside me she makes a noise indicative of the effort. 

she wraps herself up in a tight little ball next to me, finding her place. she seems to back instinctively away from the edge, as if she is afraid of falling. 

"mine are always about fire," she says, and i start, surprised by her willingness to unspool the thread of her darkest story. you wouldn't catch me telling stories like that. "predictable, i guess, since my house burned down," she adds with a carelessness that barely does anything to shelter the severity crouched behind it. it is the first time she herself has told me this fact, so i raise my eyebrows with concern as though it is my first time hearing it.

"are yours about... what you see when you go out at night?" 

i did not realise that anybody knew, and i wince. this secret is a precious thing; not just something hidden to avoid getting in trouble, no, much bigger than that. my sister's happiness rests upon my success in keeping her a secret. her freedom is my burden, now, and felix dangles it in front of me with a smile that makes me sick. 

"it's okay- i won't tell, i swear." 

i wonder if it is better she loves me or fears me. 

what is most important is that she does not know where i go, does not ever follow me when i slip down the lattice out the hallway window and cross the lawn. the streets at night are quiet, but there are a lot of places to hide. 

"i get claustrophobic, in here," i say, which is not a lie, but equally not a whole-truth. "at night, i need the fresh air and the sky." 

i decide to confide in her, to give her just a crumb to stem her hunger: "i don't talk about it much, but before this, after my parents died, i lived free out there. sometimes i feel like i don't belong in a place like this." 

as soon as i have said it, i feel ridiculous, perched upon my stack of mattresses, evidently out of place. 

"how long have you been here?" i ask her, but what i mean is: how small were you, when your house burned down with your parents inside it? do you remember it? will you ever escape it?