NADIA DUPONT || BEFORE

That night, when sobriety has settled back over her like a wet blanket, Nadia tosses and turns in bed. Her bones groan with every movement. Her body is a maelstrom of agony.

Still, the pain is nothing compared to the whirlwind in her mind.

Every time she closes her eyes, she sees her hands, blackened and monstrous. No matter how hard she tries to convince herself it was a trick of the light or an errant hallucination, the image remains. She’s seen plenty on Serenity before, she knows. Despite her abuse of it, the drug remains a way to confront one’s memories, to process events while (potentially) allowing a guide to see into your head.

Nadia has never anything so… dark, however. Is it a sign she’s been corrupted? Some fragile, irreparable thing? Is this part of the deterioration Doctor Aiza had warned her about?

Nadia stretches one arm to the ceiling, then the other. Her teeth grit when her elbows pop. If she doesn’t think about it, she can pretend what she saw never happened. Really, couldn’t she say it was a manifestation of how she feels about herself.

That’s just wishful thinking.

Her arms fall to her sides once again.

She spends the rest of her night this way, staring at the ceiling and lying as still as she dares. More than ever, she wants a drug-less reprieve, but she can’t make herself get up. Not for all the Serenity in the world. Not when the pain wracking her is so immense, no matter how tempting the cure to it.

The shadows on her walls move in slivers. Before long, the first lights of dawn stream into her bedroom. From his spot between her feet, Dio blinks one eye and then the other before rising. The rumble of his purrs thrum through her.

“Good morning, sweet boy.” She reaches to scratch him behind the ears, but can’t quite stretch far enough.

She slumps against the mattress and closes her eyes. In the silence that follows, a thought prickles her from the edges of her consciousness. Hadn’t this last batch come from Chantal?

Her eyes snap open once again. Chantal. Perhaps her Serenity source had gotten a bad batch this time. It could happen to anyone, couldn’t it?

She’ll need to check with Chantal, though. Just to be sure.

Nadia flexes her body one muscle at a time to prepare herself for the venture. As she works to adjust to the waves of pain, her alarm blares at her from the living room.

She drags a hand over her face. “Fuck.”

Every subtle sound—the creeking of the cabinets, Dio’s soft steps, the click of the alarm as she disarms it—is another spike into her skull. Thank the gods she doesn’t have classes today. She doesn’t think she could stand to go, nor could she stand the disappointment Simone would flash her afterwards.

Simone. The thought stills her as she reaches for the phone. Could they… be in danger because of her?

No. She shakes her head. Of course not. She will get this sorted out before it becomes any bigger an issue.

“Chantal Bellarose,” she says into the mouthpiece the moment it connects. Then, hugging herself tight, she waits for Chantal’s tired sigh.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Nadia.”

“Nadia!” Is she imagining the brightness in her voice? “How nice of you to call.”

Guilt grabs at her stomach and wrings it like a towel. “I’ve been meaning to. Could I come over?”

“Right now?” Shuffling. Chantal’s voice is deafened for several seconds. Static crackles across the line. Then, “I think that would be okay.”

Nadia thinks she hears Chantal go to say more, but she doesn’t care. She slams the mouthpiece back onto its holster and spins. Teeth clenched, she pops the joints in her body one by one and prays for the pain to stop.

#

She can’t remember the last time she stepped foot into Chantal’s apartment. They’ve passed each other by between classes, certainly. But when was the last time she spent any time with her, just the two of them? Weeks? A couple of months?

The thought nags at her like the unsightly mole on her chin as she sits on Chantal’s beige couch, cradling a teacup in one hand. The heat emanating from the porcelain is near-blistering, just enough of a distraction to ground her from the otherworldly groaning in her bones.

Across the room, Chantal is pruning the variety of plants lining the shelf on the wall, errant vines from the ceiling catching in her hair. Her apartment is a gardener’s paradise, arrays of plants meticulously placed throughout the mostly-white space. Her living room window has been fashioned into a stained glass portrait of orchids, a further testament to her passions.

When Chantal turns to face her at last, a sliver of purple light falls across her face.

“So,” she says, setting down her plant mister, “what brought you to me today?”

Nadia bites her lip. She has dragged herself this far, but now a precipice yawns before her. Does she dare venture into a situation she doesn’t know the outcome of?

As she ponders, she traces the rim of her teacup. Finally, “That last batch of Serenity…”

Chantal frowns. “Are you out of it? Nadia, perhaps you need to slow down your consumption.”

“No, no.” She waves a hand for emphasis. “I still have a few doses left.” Not nearly enough. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

“Oh?”

Nadia’s swirling finger stops. When she looks over, Chantal is regarding her with narrowed eyes. The purple light from the window shifts across her face. For a moment, Nadia allows herself to get lost in the beauty of it.

When she doesn’t speak, Chantal waves her on in encouragement. “And…?”

She sighs and sets her teacup down. Already, her hands are shaking.. “Chantal, have you ever had… nightmares when using Serenity?”

Chantal’s lips purse. “I suppose, in a sense.”

Nadia’s chest loosens.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“However, I wouldn’t classify them as nightmares in the traditional sense.”

She feels her lungs constrict once more. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well…” Chantal steps closer, sandy-colored skirt swirling around her ankles like waves on the shore. “Do you ever stay awake at night, thinking about past experiences you had that went wrong?”

All the time. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“It’s similar, but magnified if I start thinking too negatively.” With this, Chantal throws herself into the cushion opposite Nadia, tight curls swaying as she settles. “It’s none too difficult to get me back to a more neutral state, though. That’s the beauty of Serenity: it’s quite easy to reign my thoughts back in.”

Nadia keeps her gaze locked on the table before them as she digests this information. After a long pause, she says, “And you’ve never… hallucinated? Like what you saw was right there in front of you?”

“Can’t say I have. Why?”

She slides her hands beneath her, desperate to keep them still. The image of them from last night, all blackened and gnarled, flashes in her mind. “No real reason,” she replies with a harsh swallow.

Chantal sits up once more, tucking stray curls behind her ear. “You aren’t as grand a liar as you think you are.” Though her words are blunt, the twitching in her cheeks is enough to betray her concern. “What happened?”

Where to begin? Rocking in her seat, Nadia debates the best place to begin explaining. “Last night, I dropped with Etienne. Except—and I don’t know what prompted this—at some point…It’s as though I was having a daydream. I didn’t feel like myself. And then I looked at my hands and—“

At once, the monstrous image assaults her. Nadia squeezes her eyes shut and shakes herself hard enough to make her brain rattle, but the image doesn’t clear.

“What did you see, Nadia?”

She pauses to take a sip of tea, eager to ease the sudden dryness from her throat. “I was… Something else. Something dark.”

When she looks up, Chantal’s face is scrunched in a thoughtful way, gaze far-off. She’s seen that look before, the deep-in-thought, lost-to-the-world expression. Simone wears it sometimes when they read a challenging book or try to solve a Ximuchian number puzzle. “You’re making the face again,” she will often point out to them.

“What is on your mind?” The words spill out before she can stop them.

Chantal doesn’t respond right away, instead marching for her bedroom and slamming the door. Nadia jumps in place at the sound. Heavy thudding sounds from the other room, accompanied by the groan of wood on wood. She has half a mind to offer to help, but the itching under her skin makes her reconsider.

Minutes later, Chantal emerges, hair untucking itself from her carefully-constructed puff. Wiping beads of sweat from her forehead, she comes to Nadia’s side and sets down a small stack of books.

"You’re so like Simone,” Nadia says before she can stop herself. And it’s true. Who else, when faced with a problem, would turn first to books? Still, though her compliment is meant to be genuine, Chantal’s reproachful look tells her the meaning was lost along the way.

Cheeks warm, she shifts her attention to the stack of books in Chantal’s lap. The cover on top depicts an embossed image of a brain, the words ON MATTERS OF THE MIND circling it. Without a word, she flips through, the silence punctuated by the whisper of the pages running together. When she approaches the end of the book, she slows down. Then, with a grunt, she produces her find for Nadia to read.

While Serenity is oft-regarded as a cure-all for even the most traumatized of patients, it should be known numerous side effects can occur while under its influence, including disorientation and hallucinations.

Nadia’s brow furrows. “It wasn’t a hallucination.” And yet, even as she says it, doubt settles in the back of her mind, an unwanted guest. Perhaps she had imagined the horror, after all.

And yet…

The sting of the claws in her hair pricks her again, a phantom memory. “No,” she says, voice steadier than before.

“Okay…” Chantal’s reluctance is evident enough, but she sets the book aside with a nod regardless. “How about this one?”

And so it goes, Chantal flipping through each book with growing impatience as Nadia refutes her suggestions. Before long, Chantal’s impressive stack has been combed through, whittled to a single thin book at the bottom: MODERN FOLKLORE.

Chantal chews on her lip as she flicks through, twirling an errant strand of hair with a well-manicured finger. For a moment, Nadia is transfixed at the sight of her.

“Perhaps it was one of these,” Chantal says, breaking the spell.

Nadia looks down at the page she’s presented. Most of the paper is wreathed in black, making the figure in the center stand out all the more. Though it’s human-shaped, the flash of its eyes and the dagger-sharp claws jutting from its hand makes her heart lurch.

“Y-Yeah,” she says, voice strained as she tries to swallow down her brewing nausea.

Chantal pauses, examining the image. She flips the page so only she can read the back, which she does with a worsening frown.

“What?” Nadia urges when she doesn’t speak.

“You… you’re certain this is what you saw?”

She jabs a finger at the ghastly image. “This is what I was, Chantal.”

Chantal closes the book without a word and sets it in the space between them. For several seconds, she chews on her thumbnail, face an ill-fitting mask over the turmoil brewing beneath. Then, as Nadia thinks she will end the conversation all together, she says in a voice so terribly quiet, “Do you remember Professor Duval?”

Of course she does. Some stubborn part of her keeps the memory of the woman close to its chest. “Yes.”

“Did you ever listen to her audio logs?”

Nadia’s nose wrinkles. “What are you going on about?”

“The vocite, Nadia. Countless copies were made of the Professor’s research. Perhaps it was not required listening for you, but weren’t you ever curious?”

“N-no,” she says, something not unlike shame welling up within her. “It never occurred to me to.”

Chantal sighs, hand halfway through her hair before it gets tangled in her tresses. After a moment to unravel the mess she’s made, she picks the book back up and finds the page again.

“Professor Duval was investigating miasma. Specifically at Idune.”

“I know that part.”

“Of course you do. But what you don’t realize is there was a missing part to all of those recordings.”

Nadia’s mouth opens. How absurd, she almost says, but then stops herself. She’s never listened, after all. What would she know?

At last, Chantal has found the page again. She holds it up for Nadia to examine once more, tapping emphatically at the figure in the center. Now Nadia has a chance to regard it better, she notes the way the figure seems to emerge from the shadows themselves, skin so slick it drips. Not any kind of dew or blood, if the image is to be believed, but the same pitch clinging to its claws.

“In it,” Chantal continues, earning her attention once again, “she speaks of these creatures. Living but not. Human but not. A-and it’s with this last recording the ACAS came to understand the phenomenon we know of as monsters.”

Nadia’s chest tightens seconds before the words register. Then, blinking, she tears her gaze from the image. Heart in her throat, she says, “You mean…?”

“What we know is not precise.” Chantal closes the book again with a snap. “But… yes, Nadia. If this book is correct, this is a monster.”