Insanity

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAH!" Screams echoed through the cabin of Percy Jackson, the demigod startled wide awake in a cold sweat, terror surging through his veins. Nightmares. Again. The seventh time this month. And it was always the same one. The one with the 'cotton candy'. Flashes of memory lanced through his head. Arms being hacked off, then ripped from their sockets. Needles plunged into his beating heart, adrenaline injected into his body to keep him awake and alert as the torture went on. The smell of his own flesh cooking, the sight of his own blood and gore spilling from his surgically incised belly, the mastermind behind his terror toying with those glittering organs like they were party favors. He knew in his heart that Piper would never be capable of doing such a gruesome act, but that thought didn't help to make the dreams any less vivid. The teen sobbed openly, curling up in his blanket and rocking back and forth as his body trembled with fear. He hadn't told anyone about the dreams. About the lingering feeling of steel piercing flesh and blade cutting bone. His work had suffered because of the constant night terrors, the nightmares being so powerful that he was simply afraid of going back to sleep, some nights staying up altogether in an attempt to stave off the horrors for just one more night. And everyone wondered why he spent most of his day napping, in the open, in the daylight. Because in the shining brillance of the sun, it was the only way he could actually rest. But even then, the black clutches of his fear-addled subconscious had begun to creep even into that relative safety, following him through the dreaming world.

Percy whimpered as tears streaked down his face, staining his cheeks as wide eyes darted around the darkened scenery of his room, heart pounding in his chest as breath came before hiccuping sobs, his arms clinging tight against his form as paranoia began to clutch at the edges of his mind. Shadows lurched and moved in his peripheral vision, routine natural noises becoming distorted and echoing within his mind, as adrenaline surged through his shivering form. This wasn't healthy. His mind was slowly breaking under the horrors of his subconscious mind, things that no one should ever even have the slightest thought about chipping away at his psyche.

He was starting to crack.

Notes