Chapter 14: Can’t Be Crazy

An hour later, Apricot was on her knees in her bathroom, gripping the cold rim of the toilet as bile burned its way up her throat. The retching came in waves, each one wringing her body until nothing remained but sour air and the ache of emptied muscles. She spat, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and flushed.

The mirror above the sink greeted her with smeared mascara, swollen lids, and skin the color of chalk. Her hair hung in damp tangles. She looked like someone who had crawled out of something she could not name.

“What the hell is happening to me,” she whispered.

Tears came without permission. She pressed both palms flat against the sink and let them fall, watching them spot the porcelain. In the silence of the bathroom, four tight walls holding nothing but her and the truth, she did not have to lie. She did not have to hold together.

A desperate wish to be crazy was all she had. To her torment, she recognized she wasn’t.

She sniffled, wiped her nose with her sleeve, and turned on the bath. The heat against her skin loosened something in her chest. She sank into the water until it hugged her shoulders, eyes closed, muscles unknotting one by one.

She slept without meaning to.

When she woke, the water was ice cold. Her fingers had wrinkled into pale prunes. Shivering, she climbed out, wrapped herself in a towel, and padded into her bedroom. Faint dawn light crept through the blinds. Her phone blinked on the desk, notification light pulsing steadily. She picked it up, flipped through a wall of unread messages from friends, and set it back down without replying.

Apricot dressed in the first clothes her hands found: a pink-and-white plaid button-up with a small cartoon bunny on the breast pocket, and a pair of worn blue jeans. She headed downstairs, each wooden step groaning under her weight.

At the bottom, she stopped.

Machi lay curled on the couch, one arm thrown over her eyes. As Apricot’s foot creaked on the last stair, Machi stirred, raven hair sticking out at angles. She blinked, then her face softened.

“You were out cold,” she said quietly. “I heard what happened at the store. Since I have time off, I figured I would keep you company.” She sat up, rubbing her eyes. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

Apricot did not trust herself to speak. She stepped off the last stair and into Machi’s arms.

They sank onto the couch together. Apricot’s composure broke in pieces, quiet sobs shaking through her while Machi held on, one hand steady on her back, not pushing, not rushing. Just present.

“It’s okay, hun,” Machi murmured. “You don’t need to be okay.”

Apricot shook her head against Machi’s shoulder. “No. I’m not. I’m not okay.”

“I know.”

Minutes passed. Eventually the sobs thinned to uneven breathing. Apricot pulled back and wiped her face with both hands. The weight in her chest had not lifted, but some fraction of it had shifted, shared.

“It doesn’t end,” she said.

“It might seem like that right now,” Machi said gently.

Apricot felt the lump in her throat harden. If only Machi knew what actually lurked behind the word attack. What Apricot had watched crawl out of a man’s throat. What she could still smell if she breathed too deeply.

It won’t end, she thought. She did not say it.

Machi wiped a stray tear from Apricot’s cheek. “How about some tea. I’ll make it. You sit.”

Apricot watched from the couch as Machi moved through her kitchen with easy familiarity, kettle clattering, cupboard doors thumping softly. The small domestic sounds felt grounding, almost sacred.

“You know my house, don’t you,” Apricot said.

“I had a look around while you were asleep.” A pause. “You know, falling asleep in a tub of water is dangerous.”

Heat crept into Apricot’s cheeks. So Machi had found her in the bath. She let it go. Now was not the time.

Machi set a tray on the glass coffee table. Two cups of chamomile, steam curling, and a small plate of butter cookies arranged the way Apricot’s mother used to lay them out. In the thin morning light, Apricot noticed Machi’s hands were not quite steady.

“It scared me, Apricot.” Machi stared into her cup without drinking. “They said it was a terrorist attack on the news. When I saw it was the store you worked at…” Her voice faltered. “I thought I might lose my best friend.”

Apricot lifted her mug. The warmth seeped into her shaking fingers. “Nothing happened to me. I was just scared.”

Technically true. She was alive. Unbroken on the outside.

She sipped the tea, sweet with honey, and the taste clashed so violently with the memories surging behind her eyes, the snap of tendons, the screaming, the wet sound of something that should not exist, that her stomach lurched. She set the mug down carefully.

“I saw the clothes they gave you,” Machi said. “Those awful scrubs. What happened to your uniform?”

“Taken for evidence. Fabric analysis, I’m guessing.” The lie came automatically. There was no reason to test fabric for a chemical agent that didn’t exist, and they both knew it, but Machi let it pass.

A silence crossed between them. Apricot broke it.

“That reminds me, I need to get something to your brother. I got Sato a replacement camera. It’s used, but it’s a Nihon Dazzler.”

Machi frowned. “Just give it to me. I’ll make sure he gets it.” She held Apricot’s gaze. “You stay home. Rest. I mean it.”

Apricot nodded. Relief loosened a small knot in her chest, one ordinary task resolved in a world that had stopped making sense.

After Machi left, Apricot stood in the doorway as morning light spilled across the threshold. The house fell silent around her, the quiet pressing in from every direction. The faint scent of Machi’s perfume lingered, mixing with chamomile.

She drifted back inside. Every shadow felt too deep. She paced the living room until exhaustion finally outweighed the vigilance, then climbed the stairs and crawled into bed fully clothed. She focused on the hum of the refrigerator below, the slow drip of the bathroom faucet she kept forgetting to tighten. Small sounds. Anchors.

She closed her eyes. She would rest until Jasper came home from school.

She drifted.

~

She woke and did not know where she was.

The lamp beside her bed flickered, its filament sputtering. Her bedroom surrounded her, walls, desk, posters, but something had changed. The air sat heavier than it should. Too still. As if she had woken inside a room pretending to be hers.

Then the sound came.

A low scrape cut through the silence. Not the house settling. Not wind. A deliberate drag, like fingers drawn slowly across the outside of the walls.

Scrape. Scrape.

Her teeth ached at the pitch. It grew closer, circling, testing the boundaries of the room as though searching for a crack.

Apricot tried to move and found she couldn’t. Her body was fixed to the bed, limbs leaden, as though the air itself held her in place. She could see the room around her and, impossibly, see herself lying in it, her perspective split between the bed and somewhere just outside her own skull.

Outside the room, there was nothing. Not darkness. Nothing. The windows opened onto a void so total it seemed to swallow light at the glass.

The scraping intensified. Not one set of fingers now, but many. Hissing, snarling, a chorus of guttural sounds pressing against the walls from every direction. Whatever circled the room was not alone, and it was losing patience.

Her gaze snapped to the bedroom door. The thin gap at the bottom should have shown the hallway nightlight, the one she always left on for Jasper.

Instead, there was only black.

The door bulged inward. The frame groaned. Wood bowed as though something enormous leaned against it. Whispers seeped through the gap, wet and overlapping, sliding into her skull like cold water.

Let us in. Let us in. Let us in.

The door burst open.

Something floated in the threshold. A shape the size of a human torso, suspended by ropes of flesh. Where its face should have been was a mass of raw, pulverized meat, featureless except for a vertical gash that split open to reveal rows of teeth.

It screamed.

The sound was not a sound. It was a blade vibrating in her bones.

It lunged.

Apricot woke screaming.

Her voice ricocheted off familiar walls. The nightstand lamp glowed steady. No void outside her windows. No door hanging from its hinges. Just her bedroom. The cluttered floor. The posters. The soft hum of her space heater.

Her chest heaved. Sweat chilled instantly in the cool air. She pressed a trembling hand to her sternum and felt her heart slamming against her ribs.

A dream. Just a dream.

The words felt thin. Dreams did not leave her lungs burning. Dreams did not make her body feel like prey that had barely escaped.

She kicked free of the twisted sheets and put her feet on the floor. The rug was soft and real beneath her toes, and the contact nearly made her cry.

Her gaze slid to the bedroom door.

Closed. Same chipped paint. Same crooked frame. Nothing behind it but the dark hallway and the faint glow of the nightlight at the far end.

She stared at it anyway. In her mind, she could still see it bursting inward. Could still hear the wet chorus begging entry.

Apricot drew her knees to her chest and stayed on the floor, her back pressed against the side of the bed, eyes fixed on the door. She did not blink. She did not move.

Her bedside clock read 3:04 a.m. The heater clicked on, warm air drifting from the vent. The room was ordinary. The door was ordinary.

She did not trust any of it.

A sob escaped her. Then another. Tears ran down her cheeks unchecked.

“Just a dream,” she whispered. “Just a dream.”

Her heart answered with a hard, uneven pounding. She had already lived through nightmares no sane person would believe. Monsters wearing human skin. Impossible flesh tearing into her world. Death unfolding in a fluorescent-lit grocery aisle.

Who was she trying to convince?

She stayed on the floor, watching the door, waiting for dawn.