He watches with eyes glistening. The pattern plays out.
He chases her, but she is quick. Too quick for him. He reaches out one shaky hand towards her as he runs.
The liquid shimmers across her body, heaving with each breath.
He stumbles.
She sees.
She hesitates.
"Please!" he calls out.
She's gone.
[[The child]]. [[The teen]]. [[The adult]]. [[The elder]].Jeffrey giggles as he toddles across the park. The child.
His mommy and daddy sit on the hill together and look at him play. His daddy [[whispers]] something in his mommy's ear and she laughs. Jeff exhales slowly, a haze forming around his face as he ashes his cigarette in an empty beer can. The teen.
His father is shouting at his mom in the other room, barely pausing for breaths in between the ranting. Jeff can hear his mom sob in those gaps. It's a wonder she has any fucking tears left to cry at this point.
He takes a drag.
Something goes [[smash]].Jeff sits alone in his car, his fingers drumming against the outside of the car door through the window. The adult.
Melissa is just finishing up inside. He can see her passing off her last table to another waitress and sorting out her tips. Not much longer to wait then.
Jeff takes a swig from the [[vodka]] bottle and adjusts himself in his seat.Double-click this passage to edit it.Jeffrey lies tucked into his bed, gazing through the open window with dead eyes. The elder.
These lucid moments are terrifying for him. He has control of his mind, a very rare event in the past few years, but he is agonisingly aware that it will soon be gone again and he will be lost to the [[madness]].Jeffrey is pretty sure his teacher told him that secrets aren't nice and you shouldn't whisper when other people are around. He wants to tell his daddy not to be rude but his mommy is laughing.
It makes him happy when she [[laughs]].
Lucy barks loudly until Jeffrey looks at her again. She starts zooming around him in circles, round and round and round and round until Jeffrey gets dizzy and falls over, laughing and clapping as he goes.
Lucy jumps up to him and licks his face twice before zooming off again. She dances through the fountains until her fur is soaking wet.
Jeffrey looks back at his mommy and daddy but they aren't watching. He's breathless already but he picks himself up and toddles after her, trying to match his steps with her muddy footprints.
"[[Lucy|Repeat]]"!Considering how little money Jeff's family actually makes, it always irks him when they resort to breaking things to make their respective points. Such a waste.
He exhales another [[pall]] of smoke.The worst was when his father hurled that photograph of Lucy at his mom's head. She had dodged it, of course; dodging came as naturally as crying to her these days. But the photograph didn't survive the encounter.
Long after they'd left the room for their bedroom, Jeffrey snuck in to assess the damage. The photograph was torn, scratched, shredded. He'd tried to tape the pieces back together, he recalled, but once again he [[failed]] her.Lucy died that day at the park. She stopped in the middle of the road when she saw him stumble and turned back to help him. The pickup truck decimated her poor body. Jeff didn't remember much from back then, but he would never forget the spray. They were supposed to grow up together.
[[Drag]].
Jeff drops his cigarette and turns to her but his father is through the doorway before he can step between them. His fingers are ripping at her face. His rage is absolute. He's feral.
Jeff grabs the stool and swings it at what he hopes, through his blurry tears, is his father's head. His hands shake so much he's certain that he'll drop it before
it [[connects]].
His father drops and lands alongside Jeff's cigarette in the blood pool. His mom hurtles from the room and out the front door with an adrenaline-fueled speed that turns her bloody handprints on the doorframes into bloody smears.
Jeff [[follows|Repeat]].Another smash, but this time from next to Jeff's head. His mom crashes through the doorway beside him. Her clothes are wet with blood. He can't tell where it comes from. It seems like it comes from everywhere. It pools beneath her [[feet]].Oh, he knows it's a bad habit. He'd already kicked the whole smoking thing a few years back, and his father always said that was way worse than drinking.
Somewhere inside Jeff knows that was just an excuse for his own alcoholism, but that part of him is slowly drowning in a swamp of vodka and whiskey and gin and wine.
[[Swig]].As Jeff lowers the bottle and wipes his mouth, Melissa leaves the pub. He stumbles out of his car, slamming the door behind him in his hurry, and scurries towards her.
She walks quickly with her head down and arms crossed. Jeff is sure she can hear him call her though. [[Why]] isn't she stopping?"Stop following me, Jeff!"
Her walk is turning into a jog. Jeff takes a breath and breaks into a run. She hasn't noticed. He grabs her.
Melissa shrieks as Jeff's hands close around her shoulders. She whips around with an open hand [[swinging]] at his slack face.
Jeff drops the bottle of vodka in his surprise, coating them both in the remaining contents.
"Enough! We're finished, do you hear me? Fucking FINISHED! If you don't quit stalking me I'll go back to the police!"
Her face glows pink. He can see the struggle play out in her eyes. She still loves him, he's certain of it. She's just confused is all. She cares about him. She won't leave him.
She turns and [[runs|Repeat]].It's a strange sensation. In this moment he knows where he is, he knows where he's been and what's happened in his life, and he knows exactly where he's going. Yet he knows the confusion will soon return.
The nurses know when he's lucid because he cries the entire time. Jeffrey flicks his eyes over to them, watching him through the doorway. They are the only ones who ever come to see him and that's because it's their goddamn job.
He has no [[family]] left.Jeffrey's mom most likely died in a gutter somewhere many years ago.
Jeffrey's father died in prison.
Jeffrey's ex-wife stayed true to her promise to never, ever see him again.
Jeffrey didn't have any children.
He is truly alone in his old age. His lucid days are spent reflecting back on his life up until this point. His mad moments are spent reliving them.
That is what he [[dreads]] the most.He can feel the madness return, creeping up upon his mind like some kind of terrifying predator. His lucidity, a scared young girl in a flowing white dress, always flees in the face of the madness.
Jeffrey whimpers.
His lucidity begins to run. His madness fills the crevices of his mind. A shadow in liquid form.
Jeffrey sobs.
The shadow splashes upon the young girl, black goop dripping from the fabric adorning her.
He's not [[ready|Repeat]].