The Nightmare Sequence
The soul felt light but the body heavy.
Just a moment of peace and tranquility was ni c e
It wasn’t quite her
The memory
Instead
The feelingof her
Like the spear that raised
The son of a ghost
It had been so long
It had been so long
Waking was slow, pulling consciousness from unfloured hands; no, pulling dough from unfloured hands- waking up was like his consciousness was sticky dough being pulled from unfloured hands. It was hard to fully awaken.
The pillow was damp from Loki's tears. She didn’t even know he was crying; their head hurt but so did just about everything else. She pried themselves off the bed, stumbling the first few steps to the bathroom. Switching on the lights was a mistake, causing him to realize the severity of her dehydration migraine. Loki turned on the faucet and drank out of her own hand in an attempt to ease the ache. It worked well enough. He splashed her face with water after their final gulp and looked in the mirror.
It hurt. Not looking at all like the face of the one that’s missing, because looking like her was nowhere near haunting if that meant seeing her again. The dream was vague and her face wasn’t even seen, but she was there. And she hadn’t been here in a long time.
What Loki did next wasn’t really registering. The sink was intact, the toiletries on the floor though. The letter opener on the desk was in a hand- which one didn’t matter. The dominant one probably. And Loki then stabbed the desk, the desk in the bedroom, the desk that came with the house, her desk. Frigga's desk.
The letter opener pulled out a thick splinter of wood with it. Loki placed it back in the new scar of the desk. That didn’t quite work. Wood glue. That might. Even in an exhausted and emotional state the steps down the stairs were muted. To the closet in the kitchen with all the tools, with the only bottle of wood glue in the whole house. The back of Loki’s hand and pajama sleeve had failed as a tissue, so the closest tissue box was snatched and left a trail of breadcrumbs behind it as if it knew Loki would forget in the morning. It was nearing empty by the time the closet was in sight, and void when it reached the bedroom. The final resting place. Loki’s swinish drink at the sink wasn’t cutting it but a glass was so far away and exhaustion gripped that boney frame long before this moment. Glue in the injury, then the splinter to cover it up. A paperweight was placed there to squish it all into place, and Loki slunk back into bed.
Sleep didn’t arrive for awhile, but rarely did it ever. Rarely did it greet Loki at all recently. But zoning out and staring at the wall felt better than dragging a body across the house with buckets of spackle or gardening supplies. Too many nights of that might be another reason behind this godforsaken exhaustion. The sheets were soft, though, the bedding too. The pillow and mattress were more comfortable than anything else in the world. Maybe just for a moment Loki could be pleasured by slumber.