Chapter Nine

Lea was alone.

The woman never returned after their encounter in her dreams. She didn't dream about her anymore, she never saw her spirit outside or even think about her that much. It was as if someone had taken her by the throat and ripped everything out of her. Her chest felt like it was a shell, she wasn't sure her heart remained. The world moved without her, leaving her to fall to her knees and weep.

She didn't respond to her parents the following morning. She barely got out of bed and when she did, it was only to use the bathroom. Any food she was offered she left to rot on her dresser. Soon it led to a mess of stale meals being left to stink up her bedroom and be thrown away by her mother. Her mother tried to communicate with her but the seventeen-year-old felt hopeless. She didn't have any answers to her mother's concerns because nothing would make them better.

Lea knew she was going to die, she could see it. Her arms were now stick-thin despite her illness only starting a few weeks before. Her lips were dry and cracked to the point the skin peeled off of them on its own. If you were to pick her up she'd weigh nothing. She was losing too much weight for her body to keep up with. It was impossible to comprehend and her family was distraught at her appearance.

Early that morning, she overheard her mother in an argument with her sisters. They urged her to call an ambulance, to go back to the clinic, and demand help. It got to the level of nearly getting physical when her mother told them what happened hours before. She sounded dead inside almost when she protested that there was nothing they could do. Her mother expressed the fear she felt and that she didn't want to disturb Lea from resting.

Lea curled up after that and went back into a state of silence. It was getting harder to think in full sentences without losing focus. She gave up eventually when trying to gain control gave her a headache. She was going mad, unable to even escape into her imagination for comfort. The entire situation terrified her and she wanted it to end. If she was going to die, she wanted to die quickly. She wanted someone or something to end her pain if even for a moment.

She felt like she had been trapped. Her body was a custom-made prison designed for her torture. Her once soft skin was now rough like sandpaper and ghostly pale. The honey undertone she had only the day before was gone. Now, you could see her veins bulging from underneath. Lea sniffled as she shed another tear at the sight of herself. She didn't want to leave her room. If she did then everyone would see what she had become.

The dark-haired girl only saw herself as a monster. You could poke and prod at her hours and be unable to find every messed-up part of her. She didn't dare to take off her pajamas, she knew if she did there would be nothing. Her thighs had shrunken down into being nonexistent. Every bit of fat on her bones had vanished overnight and she wanted to throw up. Lea had turned into a walking corpse figuratively and physically.

Her phone had gone off multiple times but she ignored it. None of her friends had heard from her in days and she left all their group chats. It pained the teenager to see them chatting about lacrosse scholarships, band practice, and the vacations they were on. She was forced to see their posts where they skinny-dipped and snuck alcohol under their parent's noses. They lived carefreely, she didn't have the strength to tell them.

So, she shut them out. Unfollowed all of her friends and classmates that she knew. Left every group chat, closed open direct messages, and logged out of her account. Turned off the notifications on her phone, and put them on her messy desk. If anyone had tried to contact her after all of that she didn't know as her eyes were closed. She felt like she'd been hit by a truck, her body so tired that thinking was near impossible. She was completely and utterly defeated.

Her house was silent when she managed to wake up. The sun had already set with her bedroom pitch black save for a lamp light she left on. A blanket had been pulled up to cover her body, most likely from her mother. Her mattress felt damp from how much she had sweat in her sleep, her arms sticky and hot. Yawning weakly, she heard her body crack and groan from moving. Being inactive for the entire day had left her sore, stiff and uncomfortable.

Lea didn’t hear anyone’s television on or even her sister’s talking on the phone. She realized that she had slept the entirety of the day, now being awake in the middle of the night. She sighed, a hollow feeling sinking in deep within her body from the action. It sunk deeper and deeper into her bones before settling into a dissatisfying emotion. Hopelessness, misery, discomfort. All of it she was feeling at the same time, overwhelming her senses.

Raising a hand hesitantly, she felt her forehead and grimaced. Her skin was hot at the touch meaning not only had she become a skeleton, but she had gotten a fever. The entire world was throwing itself to fight against her and she was suffering. Lea sat up careful not to hurt herself any further and looked around her bedroom.

The once neat and meticulously clean room had turned into a nest. Her sweat-ridden clothing sat by her bed in a pile. Shoes, bags, and purses were strewn across her entire floor most likely from throwing things out of her closet in her previous tantrum. The tantrum itself was one of the memories she was having trouble remembering clearly.

Knowing that her mind had large gaps in it terrified her. She suspected that the woman possessing her body had something to do with it. Just thinking about the fact she was possessed made her disgusted. Her mind was in a fog from the confrontation before, her focus on the fact the woman denied being a demon. She could only think of a demon taking her consent so quickly to torment her.

‘I’ll wither away and she’ll get off scot-free.’ Lea knew it would be impossible to prove she was taken advantage of by a demon and it made her conflicted. She wanted to demand answers but her fear of the woman worsening her condition made her waver. And with the woman being missing, it wasn't possible.

The woman was no longer present in any of her dreams. Her presence was gone but she still felt like someone was watching her. In the darkness of her room, there was nothing but the teenager struggling to breathe. Her chest was heavy as she imagined someone watching her from the shadows, slipping in and out of her reach every few seconds. That their arms, invisible to the human eye, were on top of her chest pushing down until she suffocated.

Every intrusive thought you could imagine infiltrated her mind. In an uncomfortable silence, she sat on her bed with her eyes slowly coming to a close. She figured that the only way to escape the things that bumped into the night she should rest for a bit. Going back to bed would save her another few hours of pain from her body tearing itself apart.

***

Kaeo landed on a tree branch nearly crashing to the ground from how thin the wood was. She balanced with her hands planted firmly on the tree trunk next to her. The tree was large but all of the branches were skinny and thin. Seeing this, she swallowed her anxieties and jumped towards the open window. She slipped up a bit, nearly missing the windowsill and falling to the ground.

Thankfully she was strong enough to grab it and sink her nails into it. Her fingers wrapped around the small section of wood and clenched at it as she pulled herself up. It hurt to do so as her fingers burned and ached from the stress. The skin on her fingers turned red from the strain she put on them, using all of her weight to fall into the bedroom. She fell onto the floor with a small grunt, careful not to make too much noise.

Hair falling in front of her face, she moved it back to see where exactly she was. The bedroom was messy and cluttered but it wasn't hard to find who she was looking for. On a bed in the corner of the room, curled up in a ball with her face scrunched up in pain, was Lea. Kaeo ran over to her, briefly touching her shoulder before pulling back.

The older teenager was thinner than she thought was possible for the human body. Bones poked out from under her skin, bulging just like her veins. She was scared to know exactly how this happened, her eyes widening in horror. The fifteen-year-old wanted to hold Lea close and stop this cruel transformation from happening. She wanted to turn the clock back and stop her from encountering her cousin. She felt her guilt resurface and she trembled above the frail from beneath her.

Kaeo was frozen in shock at what Lea had become. This wasn't the seventeen-year-old who had laughed with her about their favorite comic book series. Or the girl her cousin had ranted and raved about. This was a skeleton, a shadow of what she used to be and she couldn't stop it. It felt like it was all her fault and she hated herself for it. Right there in the room with the girl who would soon be trapped with her, she wanted to run away.

'It's too late to back out now,' Kaeo got onto her knees to hug the sickly girl close. 'I don't think you'll ever let me do this to you knowing what I've done.' She hugged her with a gentle grip, struggling not to tear up.

She was scared to hug the older teenager too tight. Her chest felt like a bag of bones, her body so slim that she was terrified she'd vanish into nothing. Lea was colder than she had expected to the point she felt like she was frozen. Newborns lost control of their body's and the heat was included, but to witness it in person was unnerving. It made her feel guiltier by the minute knowing that she could have warned the girl in some way. Even if she didn't believe her in the end, she could have tried.

'I'm so sorry.' Kaeo carefully laid the teen back down with a conflicted look on her face. She had gotten what she needed and soon someone would be looking for her.

Abruptly, she stopped and listened to the silence in the room. It was an unnatural silence that added to her discomfort. She looked around the room to see if she had missed anything out of the ordinary. Or worse, if someone had woken up during her time in the house and was nearby. But the longer she waited the more it became apparent that no one else was there besides the two of them.

Still, Kaeo felt like something was going on. Her heart began to hammer in her chest as she gave one glance back at Lea. The seventeen-year-old was still asleep, breathing weakly against her small mattress and comforter. Her eyes narrowed, staring at the closed bedroom door. Against her better judgment, she left the bedroom and headed into the house's main hallway. Almost immediately she was hit with a strong smell of blood.

Her stomach dropped once she realized what she had come across. A numbness spread across her body as the smell became stronger the further she walked. Her shoes had become wet, the floor was sticky with familiar red stains and wet patches. Kaeo looked down to see that the splotches were distinctly footstep-shaped. This only served to confirm her fears, her gaze shifting to the bloody walls. They had become stained so badly that she couldn't see their original color.

The fifteen-year-old wondered if she should go any further with her exploration or leave. But she dreaded the idea of leaving Lea in what was most likely the location of her family's death. She wouldn't be able to live with herself knowing that she had left without checking if anyone was still alive either. So, she continued with the hallway becoming nastier with more blood on the ground and splattered all over the house's walls.

She wasn't sure what would wait for her when she'd arrive at a corpse. She was fearful that there would be nothing but gore in the place of a body. Or that the family would still be alive but traumatized from whatever Lea had done to them. They would probably accuse her of knowing something and demand she tells them what happened to their daughter. And Kaeo just wasn't able to handle that type of pressure, knowing what she did know.

Her eyes began to water from all of the smells hitting her. It was like someone had spilled their guts all over the place. The ground was damp with blood and what she hoped wasn't flesh. All she could think about was Lea. How she would react once she woke up and was left in the middle of such a disaster. It made her feel worthless, knowing she didn't do anything to stop it.

Her nose was overpowered with the smell of something putrid, so vile it made her nauseous. Her hand covered her mouth as she stared at what she thought was a hand. It was on the ground with blood all over it and a mess of gore. Kaeo trembled unable to go any further. She had seen enough and she needed to go back. The family was probably torn into pieces and Lea would never be able to forgive herself for it.

Thinking of the girl was enough for her legs to work as she turned back and ran. Ran back from the massacre she wasn't strong enough to face. She ran and entered Lea's bedroom, seeing that the teenager was still fast asleep. It scared the fifteen-year-old to know that without control Lea had most likely eaten and tortured her family. But she knew she needed to get the both of them out of there or else the situation would worsen itself.

Gathering up her remaining willpower, she gazed down at the sleeping teenager and decided what she needed to do. She had no other choice, but to take the girl with her.