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freaky-darkling · 1 month ago

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Intertwined, (1/4)

Hi hi! This is the first longer story I've written in years! Please tell me your thoughts, I would love to hear them!!!

This is part 1/4, I would include all parts together but these are kinda long and I'm not done writing them all. This will take all 4 parts to fully understand. Dw, it only gets more intensely yan from here, babes.

(*￣∇￣)ノ

TWs: Yandere, familial abuse, attempted attack, violence, gaslighting, self-gaslighting, extreme paranoia, dark imagery, stalking, invasion of privacy, invasion of life, psychological horror

Disclaimer: I do not condone violence, stalking, or abuse irl. This story is entirely fictional.

With that said, have fun reading, babes~

✯¸.•´*¨`*•✿ 💘 ✿•*`¨*`•.¸✯

It started happening when Lea was little. Random moments of blackout that she couldn't remember. But everyone around her did.

During the blips in her memory, everyone around her said that she claimed to be a little boy, with a different name, from a different place. He was a completely different person to her. He was erratic and violent. Disobedient and spiteful. He had no sense of boundaries or discipline.

Her parents claimed she was playing pretend, that she was just pushing their limits then playing dumb when she got caught. To combat her disrespect, they would yell, slam her against walls with threats of beatings, drag her by the hair until she was crying and begging her throat raw for an answer as to what she did wrong. While they made her skin sting and bruise, reattuned her ears to be enmeshed with producing adrenaline, they convinced her that their reactions were her responsibility, and hers alone. The boy would be long gone each time they started laying out their punishments.

Multiple nights Lea would lay awake silently weeping, hearing how her parents would complain and fight with eachother, because of her. Even when she wasn't in the room, she had it drilled into her head how her mother wished she never had her. How her father said she was just as much of a "manipulative bitch" as her mother.

After a while, Lea naturally started wanting some answers as to why this was happening. So she grabbed a notebook and wrote in it asking who it was making her do these things to make her parents so upset. Then, she stared at the page for hours at a time, waiting for another blackout in hopes that whatever or whoever this was would see it.

He did.

He wrote back in the notebook, telling her in sloppy, firm-held writing that his name was Alec, and that he was just simply bored. That he couldn't leave his room where he was, and he needed something to do. Lea showed the evidence to her parents, but instead of receiving inquiry to understand, all she got was more punishment. She learned to stop asking for their help. It was her responsibility to take care of.

Lea pressed Alec further on her own, writing to the boy asking him to stop causing her trouble before staring at the notebook again.

It was in these long spells of waiting that Lea seemed to disappear to the world around her. Silent, still, and not asking a thing of anyone, she found peace. It was like her parents had forgotten their anger towards her whenever she became invisible.

But since Lea didn't know when Alec would take over again, and she couldn't risk looking away from the notebook, her own boredum started to get to her. So she began to write more and more to him, asking more questions and detailing things about herself without prompting.

More times than not, when she came back to, Lea was being 'disciplined'. But after her mother or father had exhausted their rage, there would usually be a small sign that Alec had left for her in the notebook, showing he had read what she wrote. Small comments, here and there, saying that he related or thought what she said was silly. Sometimes they were little scribbled doodles.

One day though, Lea regained awareness in her body, and her whole body had slowed. She was drowsy, her breathing was shallow, and she could hardly will herself to do anything more than sit up to eat. She felt half asleep. That was the start of the sedation her parents had resorted to. Now every time that Alec came back, he'd be dispelled of quick with just a few pills, and Lea would be left lying in bed staring at the ceiling, or just barely sat-upright in class, hardly able to speak, but finally looked at without hatred by her teachers and peers. Somehow, in her drugged up state, despite needing help and having to be monitored to make sure she didn't suddenly stop breathing, she was likable again, not something to run from.

And at one point in her early teens, without noticing, Alec stopped showing up.

No more did friends, teachers and family tell her to stop pretending to be such an awful imaginary kid. No more was there a note left for her. He just faded out of her life.

Alec seemed to be gone for good.

Since then, Lea had eventually been weened off the sedatives. Her parents still resented her for dealing with years of hardship, but they gradually began to become more passive aggressive with age. Though their yelling and need to lock her in her room never went away.

Lea would still have blackouts, of course, but they would now only noticably happen under extreme stress, and there wouldn't be such awful consequences afterwards.

Lea kept her habit of writing in a notebook and converted it into a journaling hobby, writing as if she were telling her every thought, feeling, passion and experience to an old friend. A practice that was surprisingly well approved of by the many councillors she sought out who seemed to suggest that Alec was just a very loud sliver of her childish mind.

The only other matter of note, was that she kept receiving calls that were near silent on the other end, save for faint breathing listening to her confused greetings. Lea would block each new creepy number, but periodically they kept returning.

For a while, it seemed as though her life was finally becoming fairly normal. Until, unfortunately, when she moved out to live on her own.

It started small. So small that she was already used to brushing it off. Things were constantly out of place. She'd pick out clothes for the day just to see in her reflection that she changed without thinking. But with the prolonged sedation she dealt with growing up, there were bound to be memory issues. It was when she stopped keeping a journal that she finally realized that something was wrong. On the morning of the fourth of February, Lea opened her eyes, finding herself sat at her small kitchen table, her gaze pointed directly towards her journal open to a new page. Written atop it, in sloppy, heavy handwriting were the words, "Why aren't you talking to me anymore?"

The pen was in her hand.

Lea didn't respond to it. She tucked the journal away and went back to her daily life, choosing to forget it had happened at all. She had her coffee, ran in to work at the grocery store, started doing her daily tasks while occasionally whispering in the isles with her coworkers about this and that, overall having a good day. Such a good day in fact, that she didn't anticipate for the afternoon to turn into night in an instant with another message in the journal glowering up at her, "Talk to me Lea."

She threw the book into the trash. She tried to blame it on stress. She tried to convince herself she was experiencing narcolepsy and sleepwalking. None of the answers she came up with brought comfort, despite how loosely rational they were.

By then, she already believed the same story that her parents did. That something within her was broken and in her childhood just acted out like a toddler without morals. That Alec was a figment of an excessively active imagination. Lea had written over her remaining memories with guided hindsight.

But she couldn't get to sleep.

Something was nagging at her, telling her that the memories of recieving messages in her notebook as a child were real. That she had been told things she didn't already know about, that should have been impossible for her to write on her own. Her heartrate refused to slow.

Lea closed her eyes for just a moment and tried to force herself to sleep. Without knowing when it happened, she was standing by her bed, eyes open, with her phone held up to her ear. The world was pitch black around her.

"Stop ignoring me." A male's voice demanded on the other end.

She woke up her neighbour throwing her device against the wall.

The next day, as she was restocking the soup isle in the early morning, her friend and coworker, Amber, came up to the frazzled woman with a hiss, "Lea."

"Uh-- hi!" Lea croaked out in response. She hadn't been able to sleep since that call. Thankfully, she stopped shaking enough to come in for her shift. But she had spent the time between now and then debating with herself on whether or not to call the police or a psych ward. The former definitely wouldn't have believed her. Her imaginary childhood scape-goat was communicating with her? Even though her phone record showed that she called that number?

And the latter, well they might have taken her seriously --in a way-- but she wasn't too fond of being detained, not to mention she had rent to pay and couldn't call out sick if she was.

"What the hell, man? You blew me off yesterday without saying a word, and now you come in here and you don't even apologize?" Amber whisper-yelled.

"Wha-- I didn't blow you off."

"Yes, you did! I tried calling you but you wouldn't pick up!"

"Wait, wait, are you talking about our movie night? We're doing that tonight, it's the fifth."

"Today's the sixth."

A wave of dread crashed over her like a tsunami. She was sure that yesterday was the fourth, she had been looking forward to spending some time with Amber.

Amber didn't fail to notice the change of expression as she scoffed, "Don't act like you forgot what day it was, your phone was on and you let it ring. You ignored me. That's not okay, Lea!"

"I-I'm so sorry, I don't know what happened." Lea automatically apologized, trying to come up with something believable now but instead just spurting out the truth, "I don't even remember what I did yesterday... did I come in to work?"

"Yes." It was Amber's turn to look confused, "How do you lose track of an entire day?"

"I dunno... day's must be blurring together or something..." Lea rubbed at her eyes. Even her coffee wasn't enough to fight off her exhaustion. "I'm sorry, Amber. I really don't know how it happened, but I promise, I'll make it up to you."

The shorter woman just sighed and rolled her eyes, "Just buy me a bag of mini chocolates and you're forgiven." She then raised a warning finger, "But don't do it again. That hurt, and you had me worried."

"I'm really sorry."

When Lea went on break some hours later, she checked her call logs. Today was in fact the sixth. Other than the unknown number that she somehow dialed and promptly blocked at 3AM, there was no record of any calls or texts coming in or going out on the fifth. The day had just slipped her by.

The following days had slipped by as well, though this time out of monotony and not some freak amnesia incidents.

The journal messages had stopped, and though she found it hard to fall asleep at night now, Lea wasn't calling any mystery numbers.

The only way Lea had coped with the loss of memory as a child other than writing, was convincing herself of the fact that she had just been daydreaming while acting out, and that like her normal dreams, she just forgot them when she "woke up".

But now she was becoming increasingly aware of her lost time. One second she'd be cooking, the next it would be hours later and she'd be in bed, her nightly routine done to a T without any recollection of it. The jumps forward in time especially happened any time she got emotional. Any time she felt a heaviness in her throat, the uncomfortable wriggling forth of water in her eyes signalling she was going to cry --typically at a movie or show-- whether out of happiness or empathy, she'd come to with the TV off and her attention pointed at literally anything else.

The once assumed "minutes" lost in her day wouldn't stop piling up. The mental tally of hours lost in just a week was akin to the torture of being strapped down and having water dropped onto her face for days at a time. Unable to do anything about it, with each small moment building and building to a break in her psyche.

But she didn't dare to write it down. She didn't dare keep any record of her emotions or what she was thinking; not physically. Lea considered that maybe all of this was just some paranoia disorder brought on from her childhood. She didn't want to try to prove that theory wrong. She paced back and forth, her eyes acutely aware of and drawn to anything that could be written on. Her veins itched to dispell the thoughts in her head, to get some form of release. But she didn't dare. She didn't dare leave evidence, or any piece of her fragile desperate mind to be looked at, to be studied by this force that occupied a section of her brain. She wanted-- needed to keep at least one fragment of herself protected from it's eyes. It's eyes that were already all over her home. It's eyes that knew her habits, her hobbies, every little thing that made her vulnerable. It's eyes that had undressed her, seen her bare and helpless, then redressed her as if only it was allowed that kind of access. She wanted to claw into any surface available for it to go away, but she didn't dare. The risk of knowing for a fact that her world was being tracked outweighed the miniscule hope of relief that she was merely insane.

Three weeks after the phone call incident, and Lea's anxieties surrounding her own mind had distracted her enough to not notice the unfamiliar man in the alleyway she passed on her way home from work. She was yanked into the shadows, a hand covering her mouth as her back was slammed against a rough, gritty brick wall, making her choke on her breath. Lea's heart started to race in her chest, her eyes wide and focused as if recording what may be the last moments of her life. The taller, gruff looking man looming over her held a knife that glinted in the low light as he growled, his breath heavy and filthy as it hit her face in hot puffs, "Don't you fucking dare scre--"

How do you forget the moments after something like that? How can you be taken out of a terrifying situation to find yourself mentally panicked yet physically calm on your couch, and not question how the hell you got out? He hadn't finished his sentence, her body barely had the time to react enough to send her into a panic and Lea was already home safe. She clutched at her chest, wondering why she wasn't hyperventilating, why her heartrate had gone to normal, as if her body had long gotten over what happened. Her mind still wanted to weep in terror, but no pang came to her chest. Every movement replayed in her mind. His dark heartless eyes that reminded her of her angry father, the snarl on his upper lip as feral as a rabid dog. His thick, dirty, clammy palm pressed against her lips, nails digging into her cheek. Replaying the short moment and remembering each detail slowly brought back that feeling of panic in her bones, but it was too late. The absence of it at all was the most sickening.

Her walk to work a few sleepless hours later just made it all the worse. In the early hours of the morning, the neon police tape shown like a beacon against the grey air behind it. A small crowd had gathered around trying to sneak a peak at the disaster, gawking at the very ally she'd been pulled into the night before. Light grey smoke wafted from a dumpster, coupled with hundreds of particles of ash.

There was a single body bag on the ground.

Horrified yet again, Lea attempted to look like she wasn't running as she kept going along her way to work.

Could that body have been the man that attacked her? But how? How could he be dead and assumably burned, when all she had for proof that the event happened was a scratch on her cheek?

The questions and rumors spoken by coworkers and shoppers alike all buzzed through the air and landed heavily on Lea's mind. Her internal dialogue panicked every time someone glanced at her or asked for help with finding a specific item. Wondering, worrying if they somehow knew that she was involved. She kept coming up with lies to explain her scratch, but no one asked, as if taunting her with the fact it was so obvious she was there that nothing could prove her innocence. The passing murmured theories intertwined with hers, trying to piece together every second that happened. Lea threw up on her break. Her coworkers thought it was due to excess empathy, or more likely the stomach flu going around. They were completely unaware that the guilt over the fact she didn't know how she escaped with her life, and what happened to that man after, was devouring her inside out.

(End of part 1)

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