Honey and Spice | ✔️

Chapter 14

Nathan

Ryder pokes his food around. It’s odd to see him suddenly quiet, so I ask him, “What’s wrong?” 

He looks up with a slightly panicked look on his face, then he relaxes and smiles sadly at me. “Nothing,” he says, “it’s just that I haven’t been getting much sleep these days.”

So that explains the dark circles under his eyes and his messy hair. “Oh,” I reply, “maybe you should try drinking warm milk before you sleep? It helps me sometimes.”

“Oh, okay, thanks.”

“Oh right, how was the party?” I ask, but as soon as I said those words I instantly regret it because Ryder’s grip tightens around his spoon. 

Ryder

Last weekend was really shitty (not as shitty as my actual living-in-hell level of shitty, but it was still pretty shitty).

It started after I woke up, checked my phone and went back to sleep. That was kind of normal, I guess, but then I woke up around 6 pm. But I was too drained to do anything - even cook dinner - so I went back to sleep with an empty stomach and mind.

Then, the nightmares started coming. I mean, it’s a somewhat normal occurrence for me whether I liked it or not, but it was more messed up than usual.

In the nightmare, it started with me being in an empty white room. I walked around it, touching the walls to see if there were any exits, but there were none. Then, the room started closing in on me. The lights started to flicker and I panicked, trying to stop the walls from pushing in until they finally stopped, and the whole room now looked like a hallway. The lights were dim and I could barely see what was at the end of the hallway.

Suddenly, I saw a dark figure coming slowly towards me, and every time the light flickered, it came closer until it was in front of me in a matter of seconds. I had no way of escaping as it had me pinned against the wall. I struggled and tried to break free but suddenly it showed me its face and I screamed. It was all melted off like candle wax and it reeked of death. It opened the slit in its face (probably its mouth) and it stretched wider until the whole lower half of its face became unhinged. Then, I screamed louder as thousands of black bugs scrambled out of its mouth and engulfed its whole body.

Blood-curdling screams filled the air as the bugs crawled onto me and went inside my eyes, nose, ears and mouth. I kept screaming and flailing around to get the bugs off but I fell into a hole that had manifested out of nowhere. The bugs disappeared but the only thing that stayed was the eerie screams that tormented me and filled my head.

And then I woke up to the sound of my alarm. Oh god, I thought. I forgot that I had to work. I got up in a rush and went off to take a shower. The nightmare was so real that I could still feel the black bugs crawling all over me and I could hear the piercing screams begging me to stay.

Work was tough. I mean, it’s usually a breeze but because of the nightmare and the amount of sleep I had - or lack thereof- it was hard keeping track of customers’ orders and keeping a steady hand on the cups that I gave them (I spilt coffee on someone by accident and they threatened to sue us). My manager, Mrs Silva, asked me afterwards if I was alright and I just said that I had a rough couple of days and then she let me off. I like her - she’s chill and nice to everyone; but I don’t take advantage of her kindness. I'm not that kind of person.

I went home afterwards, ordered takeout because I’m too tired to cook food and went to bed early. But that didn’t mean I slept early; I just lay in bed waiting for sleep that never came.