dreamsofnoah | 47 dreams

Of course~.

[she doesn't make a move towards him again, just smiling, but really she's going through his thoughts, his memories and fears, trying to choose which would be the most painful thing to dredge up and make him face. And as soon as she's found it, he'll find himself inside a dream so real he won't even be able to believe he's dreaming.]

((ooc: sorry about that XD just...feel free to pick something appropriate? IDK what you want him to see.))

[Justin wonders what it takes to break a sadist.

At least he does so until the Underground begins slipping away. Of course Road would take the game into his head...

And then he's in jail. The cell's familiar enough--stark, but not uncomfortable. Solitary confinement. Apparently being pretty and seventeen in a prison full of murderers is dangerous, so the solitude is for his own good. The quiet's maddening, though. There's a book in front of Justin, but he's given up pretending to read it.

Richard's funeral was over. The trial was over. In four months, Justin's life would be over. Things were happening to fast and crashing too quickly. The wound from the shootout at the lodge wasn't even healed before the death sentence was passed down. If he hadn't confessed... if he hadn't trusted Richard or saved that bitch Cassie or--

Justin tried to shake himself out of the dream. It wasn't real. Not anymore.

Or was it?

The silence pressed closer and Justin found himself drowning in thoughts and self-pity. His friend was dead--lucky bastard--and he was alone. Well and truly alone. Justin's father hadn't come back for the trial, and his mother had told him in no uncertain terms that she wouldn't acknowledge a murderer as her son. Lisa... who knew where Lisa was. She vanished once he confessed to murder. She liked him when he was a victim, but once he became the aggressor, she was gone.

And he was alone with his thoughts. With mental images--with guilt and hatred and bitterness and fear. It hurt. The quiet, the complete isolation, the pounding thoughts--it all hurt more than the bullet. Justin tried to remain impassive. He hadn't cried since the day of his arrest; he wouldn't cry now, no matter how much it hurt.]

[ooc: No, I'm sorry! For the... tl;dr, there.]

[She's watching of course, she always watched, hardly needing to do a thing herself besides calling the dream into being.

They always managed to hurt themselves the most in the end.

A second could seem like hours in one of her dreams, a never ending nightmare, and the moment you thought you were close to waking up, you realize you're back at the beginning once more, to go through it over and over until there's nothing left but an endless scene you want nothing more than to claw your way out of.

And always the worst thoughts and fears are dredged up, poured onto her victim's psyche.]

((ooc: that's fine!))

[Road is gone entirely. The City is gone along with everything good in it. There's nothing but Justin, his mind, a cell, impending death, and a dead Richard.

Time passed without passing. Justin felt his thoughts eating him alive until he thought he was insane--until he thought there wouldn't be anything left for the grand state of California to execute. He tried to distract himself by thinking about the gas chamber. He knew how it worked. If he could repeat the mechanical details enough, maybe the rest of the thoughts would go away.

It never worked.

Justin registers a pain in his arm, but he can't remember what it's from. It's not the arm that was hurt in the fight. He latches onto the pain, concentrating on it until it swallows his other thoughts, but it doesn't work. There's only more pain. Mental and physical--it's impossible to tell them apart.

In the Underground, Justin is breaking.]

[She feels nothing but amusement at watching, and a sick satisfaction. Stronger than she thought he was? Oh, maybe. That was always a pleasant surprise.

But it's still never strong enough. And maybe she'll let him go just in time, or maybe she'll keep him here until he finally does break and is never able to leave the dream again.

Maybe that was what she really likes. Having people at her mercy.

And Road has no mercy.]

[Mercy is a rare thing. Forgiveness, second chances...

Justin tries to turn his mind off, focusing on his arm until that pain--real, fathomable pain--finally engulfs his thoughts. He can hide inside of it until everything is over with and still have something resembling sanity in the end. The nightmarish thoughts and loneliness fade as the audible silence transforms into something more bearable.]

[Hiding himself in pain - Road knows what he's doing, of course she does. She's there in his mind after all, she can see it all. He thinks that that pain was real, he has no idea what pain can be like, how she could make it engulf him until he'd long for that loneliness once again, until insanity would be a relief.

But she's not playing like that this time, and forces the pain to go away, making his mind tell him what she wants it to, that the still bleeding wound isn't there, had never existed. He can't hide from her that easily.]

[He's jerked out of the mental refuge as the pain vanishes. That's not right--he needed that! Justin scrambles for another distraction, but he's trapped. The cell is getting smaller and the silence is roaring in his ears, and there's nothing he had do. He wants to claw himself until he bleeds, but his arms aren't obeying his commands.

Justin shuts his eyes; he doesn't want to watch the world shrink around him suffocatingly. The view inside isn't any better. There are too many pictures engraved on the inside of his eyelids--Richard's corpse sprawled out on the rocks, Lisa's back as she left for the final time, his mother's cold face. There's Cassie, smug... tricking him into confessing. She destroyed it all, even after he had saved her. There's Richard again. The mortician did a good job; the body didn't look like it had suffered a fifty-foot fall. White tuxedo, white coffin linings, sent off like the angel his family thought he had been.

There was no justice in the world. No mercy. There wasn't even pain, just thought after thought at that silence that was boring a hole through Justin's skull.]

[No, Justin, there is no justice or mercy in the world. Road had promised to show him, hadn't she? And now she was. It wasn't even anything she was doing herself, she was only showing him what he'd already seen, what he already knew and tried to hide from.

But she's getting bored of watching. She gets bored so very easily, and she wants more responsive toys to play with. Besides, she's shown him what she wanted to, she got what she wanted. She leaves him there, pinned to the wall - he'll have to dig that candle out himself once he snaps out of it. He'll probably come around in a little while, even if it'll be quite some time before he can distinguish between what's real and what isn't.]

47 dreams

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