All It Takes
an excerpt

---> Not the very beginning, so it may be slightly confusing. Sorry. :)

Renee woke up with a start and night time swept around her in such a way that made her feel as though she was stuck in black and white, like an old film. Where the colours are so dimmed that she could almost imagine that they had been drained away, almost imagine what it’s like to be colour-blind.
The moonlight climbed in through her window like a secret lover, leaving elongated shadows and making menacing figures out of her furniture. Renee wished she could simply burst out crying, as she had when she was young, and find herself comforted by her mother. The logic part of her brain registered that her bedroom is too far away from her parents for her sobs to be heard, and that she’s too old for hysterics. Another part of her brain remembered that she wasn’t usually prone to nightmares and such a situation was not so common in the depths of her childhood, a missed opportunity.
Renee never used to remember dreams, or nightmares. She always remained blissfully ignorant of the adventures of her subconscious. Lately that’s changed. Maybe the cataclysmic changes to the content triggered the memories to remain long after her eyes were pried open, peering at the hairline crack in her ceiling, and imagining it all falling in on her.
She had thought that five months would be enough. She had thought anyone could overcome anything in five months. She thought wrong, what if depression is somehow genetic? What if one day she too decides her head is too heavy and that it’s time to hollow out her skull?
She flicked on her bedside light and the monstrous shadows retreated. The colour returned, but it still seemed dull, deadened. Like the world had once been in high-gloss, but someone had switched to matt paints, like someone had placed a sense deafening sack over her head.
Her nightmare had been frighteningly real, realer than real life; even if it remained surreal.
She had been back in that white prison cell that was Kathleen’s pristine apartment, prior scarlet stains. Queen drifted in the background, Bohemian Rhapsody, but Renee did not feel very rhapsodic. She could feel the dread weighing upon her instead, stuck in a moment she felt an abnormal sense of foreboding doom, as if nothing in the future would ever be worth anything.
She heard a careless chatting, and directing her gaze over to the couch she found Kathleen sitting there, smiling that ironic smile of hers and sipping from a cup of Earl Gray tea, so milky and sweet it was almost unrecognizable.
Her heart pumped loudly in her ears. Thud... Thud... Thud... Rhythmically, it only acted to highlight how she was alive, while her sister was not. The back of her head throbbed, and that space behind her eyes smarted viciously. She wanted to sit down, and so she did, across the table from Kathleen.
“So... How’s school?” Kathleen asked slowly in a perfect imitation of nearly every conversation with her little sister. They always remained awkward and distant, never having anything to discuss.
“Oh, you know.” Renee’s dream-self responded automatically, as she always did, knowing full well that Kathleen didn’t know, because she never told her.
She continued inanely as she tended to do, rambling about school work and random bits and pieces, there was no point scraping any deeper below the surface. Their relationship was strictly superficial. Neither had the tendency to open up, which made the suicide journal all the more bizarre.
As she discussed the difficulties of having a wanker teach you science, she noticed a drizzle of bright red blood creep down Kathleen’s face, sliding along the pale skin in a stark contrast. Yet she continued to talk, as though there was nothing wrong, unable to stop.
The trickle grew, gaining momentum until it was a wild, angry river, or tears of mourning. Kathleen moved her head slightly, and the angle gave Renee a searing view of the side of her head, the growing wound, a black hole, an abyss.
The furniture began to grow blood, seeping patches in the exact geographical locations Renee had seen them on that fateful day. Spreading through the material, growing to the point of full bloom.
And still Renee did not cease the incessant chatter, it was as if she didn’t even notice.
“You could be me.” The cadaver opposite her stated coolly, and everything came to a halt.