The unmistakable Miamo Disco vigorously blared from the phone speaker. Nathan's eyes were forcibly pried open by the song, as he quickly grabbed his phone from the bedside table and swiped to turn off his alarm, which was set to the 80's-inspired theme. His mind was focused on only one thing: Audrey, and the otherworldly horror she had subjected him to. Nathan quickly changed his alarm sound to the most generic, least musical tone he could find.
Nathan's first thought was to look at his wall; the whiteboard which usually hung across the room from his bed was still absent. He took a deep, nervous gulp, as he slowly slunk his way into the kitchen. His mind was still awash with the hope that he had imagined everything that happened last night, that perhaps it was all an elaborate dream-within-a-dream. The optimism deflated from his brain, however, as he set eyes upon the porcelain bowl and set of chopsticks, which were still on his table. His eyes moved their way upwards, about as slowly as they possibly could, until they locked onto his whiteboard.
Dear Morsel,
He didn't need to read anymore, and he didn't want to. Nathan was never one to skip breakfast, but a deep well of existential horror had filled his stomach, quelling his appetite that morning. Nathan spent the next hour scrubbing away at his name tag, trying to erase the 'L' at the end of his name, when he suddenly took notice of the time and realized he needed to get dressed and leave, lest he be late for work. He got his work uniform on, and clipped on his name tag, which now read 'NATHAN MORSEi', not much of an improvement.
He drove all the way to work in complete silence, not wishing to be cursed with another vivid macabre hallucination for Audrey's sick amusement. Nathan went about his uneventful work day, with the mask of a mentally sound person loosely covering his despair. He stocked shelves, assisted customers, and kept the parking lot clear of stray carts, all the while Audrey's disturbing comments from the night prior swam through his brain and gnawed at his sanity like a school of hungry piranhas.
While walking the aisles during a particularly slow time of day, Nathan ran into Cassie, who seemed offput by his presence.
"Hey, Cass." Nathan said with a feigned smile.
"Uh... Hey." Cassie said as she kept her eyes pointed at the ground, or the shelf next to her, or anywhere but Nathan's tired, heavy eyes.
"Uhm, I'm sorry if I freaked you out yesterday. I had this crazy weird, uhm, migraine? And it was hard to-"
"Migraine?" She asked, confounded.
"Yeah, my head felt like it was getting squeezed like..." Nathan pinched his thumb and forefinger together, then forced out an awkward chuckle.
"Right. So who were you, like, talking to?" Cassie asked with a biting delivery.
"Huh?"
"I walked to the next aisle over and it sounded like you were, like, talking to someone?" Cassie asked with condemnation.
"Oh, I was uh... Just singing. I was listening to music all night." Nathan forced out another awkward laugh, then looked at the ground.
"Right. Singing. Well, I gotta go. I'll see you later." Cassie stated plainly, before quickly retreating from the awkward conversation.
'Fuck'
6:30 PM, time for Nathan's lunch break. He knew he had to eat, but the black void in his stomach made it hard for him to have an appetite still. Not wanting to keep creeping his co-workers out, he decided to spend his 30 minutes sitting alone in his car.
Nathan pulled out his phone, taking notice of the crack in the screen. If Audrey isn't real, how could the crack be there? Was the crack even there? He rubbed his thumb over the cracked portion of the screen, and felt a noticeable little change in elevation. If this was all in his head, it was quite vivid indeed.
Scrolling through his music library once again, he nervously pressed play on his Synthwave playlist, pumping the soft, calming tunes into the car's speakers. It didn't take long for Audrey to take notice, as she crawled up to his car face first, and laid with her face held up in her hands as she longingly looked through the windshield at Nathan.
A few awkward seconds go by where neither of them spoke, Audrey was just bobbing her head back and forth to the beat of the music, and lightly humming the melody.
"Uh... Hi?" Nathan said with about zero percent confidence in his voice.
"You ever notice how so many of these songs sound so similar?" Audrey asked, ignoring his greeting.
"Wh-what?" Nathan stammered out.
"There's only so many times you can make a song with the same bass line before it gets a little obnoxious."
"W-well, I don't think that's fair to say. The bass may sound similar but there's so many other aspects to it."
"Pfft. Hey, check this out!" Audrey said excitedly, as she waved her finger like a magic wand.
The music abruptly changed to a low and slow paced death metal song. Nathan quickly looked at his phone screen to see that the song had indeed been somehow changed.
"How the fuck?" He said incredulously.
"Think that's impressive? Check this out." Audrey didn't even move her finger this time.
Nathan's phone vibrated, as he had a new text message. He opened his message inbox to see a new text from a contact named 'AuDrEy <3'. His heart practically stopped, as he hesitantly opened the text, but the message was simply a picture of a cartoon t-rex that said 'RAWR Means 'I love you' In Dinosaur'. He was so taken aback from the childishness of it all, he couldn't help but make fun of her.
"What is it, two thousand and fucking eight?" He asked with disdain.
"You didn't like my message, Morsei?" Audrey asked mockingly.
"Wha...?"
Audrey pointed at Nathan's chest. "Your name tag, looks like you didn't like my nickname for you either. Do you know how that makes me feel?" Her voice sounded genuinely upset.
"I can't be walking around with fake nicknames on my name tag, written by an imaginary person!" Nathan exclaimed in a hushed tone, afraid the judgmental ears of the parking lot would hear him.
"Hmph. I'm not real enough for you? Guarantee I'm more real than that fake bitch Cassie." Audrey said in an angry tone.
"Wh-what do you mean by that?" Nathan asked, fearing how she would answer.
"Do you really think she's your friend? Let's face it, you're the 'weird guy' of this place. Most of your friends only exist on the internet. They all may as well not be real either!" Audrey said mockingly.
"Does this have a point?" Nathan blurted out.
"Yes, that I'm the only real friend you have. Which is why you need to keep having these little listening sessions with me." Audrey said playfully.
"I'm not doing it by choice, you know." Nathan said angrily.
"What do you mean?" Audrey asked with offense in her voice.
"Audrey, you fucking ate me! Do you not remember all of that? What am I supposed to do, let you torture me in my dreams every night?" Nathan asked with his eyes beginning to water a little.
"Oh, now you think dreams are real too. You must really be losing it~!"
Nathan sat there with his mouth agape, not sure how to respond to such a person who seemed determined to mess with his mind. An alarm on his phone went off, it was 7 o'clock, meaning it was time to return to work. Nathan turned the music off, and got out of his car, where he promptly tripped and fell into a rather large, but shallow, hole. He looked up to see that the parking lot seemed as though it was scaled up to Audrey's size.
Nathan had no words for the surreality of it, the parking space his now tiny car was parked in was bigger than a football field. He looked up to see Audrey, looking bigger than ever, looming over him.
"Looks like you're everybody's little Morsel now~" Audrey said as she began to laugh.
"What the fuck did you do?!" Nathan said as he stood up out of the hole, backed up into the side of his car, and sunk down to the pavement.
"Nothing, you little idiot!" Audrey teased. "Now go back to work before you start looking even crazier!" She said as she disappeared into a thick cloud of pink smoke, that fell heavily to the ground and obscured Nathan's vision.
As the smoke cleared Nathan found himself to be normal sized again, still sitting on the ground next to his car, with several people staring at him as they walked by. He rushed to his feet, looking down to see the hole he had fell in seconds ago was no bigger around than a dime. Nathan continued with his work day, avoiding human contact like the plague, and at the end of the night he volunteered to gather carts from the parking lot again, so that he could breathe the fresh air of solitude.
Nathan punched out, and left for home. He managed to not listen to a single song the entire rest of the day. After going so long without eating he was starting to get too hungry to ignore it, so when he got home he prepared himself a packet of instant noodles. He was feeling rather cheeky, so he washed the mysterious bowl and chopsticks that Audrey had left behind, and used them for his ramen.
Nathan had no plans to sleep tonight, nor any plans to listen to music. He simply stayed at his computer searching the internet far and wide for a diagnosis of his mental condition. He scrolled through countless articles, both medical and otherwise, but came up empty handed. Out of desperation, he even found himself reading an article titled Heavy Metal and Demonic Possession of the Soul, but found no such information on a giant sadistic demoness named Audrey, only that apparently listening to Slayer would cause Satan himself to live inside of you.
After 6 cups of coffee, he managed to stay awake all night long, and it was now nearly time to go back to work. He hadn't even bothered to change out of his work uniform, so he took very little time to get ready and leave. Nathan went through the motions, and was able to make it through the work day, shuffling around like a shambling corpse. He never dared to listen to any music, for fear that he would just feed Audrey's ridiculous power even more. Every so often, he'd blink a little too long, and be met with visions of the dungeon-like opening of Audrey's mouth, yanking him back into reality.
9:45 PM, Nathan finished with work a little early and punched out for the night. As he left the store, he walked off to the side and hid in a dark corner. Cassie came out of the store after a few minutes, and Nathan quickly intercepted her.
"Cass! Wait up!" Nathan called out from the shadows.
Cassie jumped from the shock. "Jesus Christ! Why would you sneak up on me like that?" She exclaimed.
"Sorry, but I really, really need your help! There's this girl, and she's following me and-"
"Nathan, slow down! There's a girl following you? L-like a stalker?" Cassie asked with concern.
"No! Well... I don't know what she is, but no one else can see... her...?" Nathan's words went limp as he realized how insane he sounded.
Cassie was an obvious mix of shocked and concerned. "Nathan... You need help. Serious help."
"Yes! That's what I'm saying! I need your help because-"
"No! You need like, a doctor or something! You're obviously having some sort of psychotic episode!" Cassie shouted impatiently.
"Wait!" Nathan said excitedly, and pulled his phone out. "Do you see the crack? On the screen?" He said desperately as he showed the screen to Cassie, running his finger over the cracked portion repeatedly.
"Yep, that's a crack. What does this have to do with anything?" Cassie responded with discomfort.
"This crack wasn't here, until Audrey showed up. She caused me to fall over and my phone hit the ground and cracked!" Nathan said excitedly, feeling like his delusions were finally being verified.
"So you're saying the imaginary girl pushed you over? Wait! Audrey? Like, she has a name?" Cassie asked with complete skepticism.
"Her name's not important. And no, she didn't push me! She uh... She stomped really hard and, and I fell over..." Nathan looked at the ground and began to tear up, but he choked the despair back enough as to not fall apart.
Cassie looked at Nathan with sadness in her heart and pity in her eyes.
"Wait! Wait, she also, she wrote stuff on my whiteboard!" Nathan perked back up.
"She wrote stuff? Are you sure you didn't write it?" Cassie asked skeptically.
"Yes! My handwriting isn't that good, and hers is really proper and-and sort of cute and-"
"Nathan." Cassie said softly.
"What?" Nathan replied sharply.
"Get some sleep." Cassie said, in an almost annoyed tone. "You have tomorrow off, right? I'll see if I can help you with whatever it is you need, but I can't guarantee anything." Cassie walked away before Nathan could reply.
Nathan watched on with hollow eyes as the only friend he thought he had walked away, thinking he was completely out of his mind. 'Sleep.' Nathan thought. 'Much easier said than done.'
Nathan laid in his bed, wide-eyed and staring at his ceiling. Every so often, he'd hear slight creaking noises from the wind, and his eyes would dart around the edges of the ceiling in a panic. Nevertheless, the overbearing grasp of insomnia was taking it's toll, and Nathan's grip on reality was loosening. It only took one short blink for Nathan to fall back down the rabbit hole, and into Audrey's wonderland.
Nathan sat atop a fancy velvet table cloth, which was draped over a big heavy oak table. He felt incredibly small, as he gazed up at Audrey sitting at the table, looking like she was practically 500 feet tall now.
"Oh, Morsel, didn't anyone ever teach you not to break a giant girl's heart?" Audrey said as she looked down on Nathan with disappointed eyes.
"Oddly enough, no, it never came up." Nathan snarked back.
Audrey laughed, and it echoed through the air with a demonic quality about it. Nathan's heavily sleep-deprived eyes began to prove to be too heavy as he struggled to keep them open.
"Oh, my little Nathan, what are you doing to yourself? Did you really think you could live without sleep? Or music, for that matter?" Audrey asked with some concern.
"Well, I was gonna try. It beats being your plaything forever." Nathan yelled out.
"That reminds me..." Audrey said devilishly. "Do you like milkshakes, Morsel?"
"Uh, don't most people? Who doesn't like milkshakes?" Nathan's voice had a heavy dose of sleepishness to it.
"Don't you dare answer my question with a question!" Audrey exclaimed in offense, as she gently pushed Nathan down onto his back with her finger tip. Nathan didn't even bother to try and get back up.
Audrey continued her little game. "Now, let's say that I have a milkshake." She said as she pulled a milkshake out of thin air and set the colossal dessert drink next to Nathan.
"And... You have a milkshake." Audrey made another gigantic milkshake appear, setting it on the other side of Nathan.
Nathan looked up at the terrifyingly huge glass, which was about half the height of the real Audrey, assuming she really was 82.5 feet tall like she claimed.
"Audrey... Can't you give this shit a rest?" Nathan pleaded.
"Let me finish!" Audrey grabbed Nathan and dropped him onto the whipped cream topping of the second milkshake, before sliding it to the other side of the table, out of her reach. Nathan was so light in comparison, that the whipped cream hardly moved under him when he was dropped in.
"And I have a straw, see? Here it is." Audrey said playfully, as she pulled out a comically long red and white striped straw.
"You know this is fucking tacky, right?" Nathan yelled out to her in desperation.
"And my straw reaches acro~oss the room..." Audrey said as she pointed the end of her straw towards Nathan's desolate dessert island, and began moving it across the table, twirling it in playful circles.
"And I start to drink your milkshake." Audrey said before taking a small drink from the straw.
Nathan felt the strong pull underneath him, making waves in the sea of chocolate around him. "Audrey, stop!" Nathan cried out.
"I. Drink. Your. Milkshake!" Audrey yelled out in a crescendo, mustering up as much bravado as she could.
"I drink it up~!" Audrey said seductively, before taking a long and deep drink from the straw.
Nathan could feel the shake's surface plunging further and further towards the bottom, until the only things left were himself and small tufts of whipped cream. Audrey moved the straw around the bottom of the glass, making loud empty-cup gurgles with it.
"Well this is a little embarrassing. You were supposed to get sucked in! Oh well~" Audrey said as she got up and moved to the chair on the opposite side of the table.
The view of Audrey from inside the glass was obscured by a thin layer of milky chocolate and bubbles of white cream as she walked up. That is until she peered over the top of the glass, staring down longingly at her little chocolate covered soon-to-be snack. Nathan just sat at the bottom of the glass in the fetal position, shivering cold and awaiting whatever fate his malevolent goddess had in store for him.
"Looks like you get to be my proverbial cherry on top instead!" Audrey said playfully, as she looked down at her diminutive captive. "Well, I guess you're the cherry on bottom now..." She added.
"P-please... pl-" was all that Nathan managed to tremble out of his terrified lips.
"Oh, quit being so dramatic! It's just for fun." Audrey teased.
"F-fun? This is fun?! In what world is it fucking fun to eat people?" Nathan lashed out, tears swelling out of his eyes.
Audrey's eyes grew remorseful as she began to realize just how terrified Nathan had become of her. She leaned back in her chair and pondered what to do, and a few dead silent minutes went by as Audrey contemplated.
"A-are you scared of me?" Audrey asked sheepishly, as she loomed over the top of the glass once again.
"Wh-what? Is that even a question? Isn't that why you do all of this? To make me afraid of you? Is that what 'feeds and nurtures' you?" Nathan replied while choking back tears.
"No! Spending time with you feeds me. Real time, not this dream shit. That's why I need you to listen to music, it's the only thing that I can anchor to." Audrey explained with authenticity.
"Why would I want that, exactly? All you do in real life is fuck with me!" Nathan shouted.
"Oh, come on! That's all just playful banter. I don't want to hurt you, not for real anyway~" Audrey teased.
"What do you mean, 'not for real'? Like, you enjoy the fantasy of it or something?" Nathan's voice had grown angry and spiteful.
"Is that so wrong? I didn't choose to be like this, Nathan." Audrey said remorsefully. "Maybe I went a little too far last time, a-and I'm sorry. Really..." There was a genuine softness to Audrey's voice as she repented to Nathan.
"Audrey? Is this another fucking trick?" Nathan asked cautiously.
"No, I really am sorry! I just... Don't know how to show affection properly, I guess? Maybe you could teach me!" Audrey said excitedly.
"Teach you? Ok, step one: Don't fucking eat people!" Nathan shouted, his angry voice echoing off the insides of the glass cup.
"Well that's out of the question!" Audrey exclaimed.
"Audrey..." Nathan groaned.
"Joking! But seriously, you look like you're freezing. Maybe I can help with that~" Audrey said as she lifted the glass up to her lips.
"Audrey, stop!" Nathan pleaded.
Audrey hesitated. "What? You know how when someone is cold, and their boyfriend or girlfriend wraps them up in a big, warm hug? It's like that, except with my mouth~" Audrey lifted the glass to her lips again, and sharply tilted the bottom of it upward.
"Audrey, don't! Please!" Nathan cried out as he began sliding uncontrollably towards Audrey's soft lips, feverishly trying to grip the sides of the glass as he plummeted closer and closer to the terrifying maw.
Nathan slid inside Audrey's mouth with ease, and she began sucking all of the ice cold remnants of the milkshake off of his shivering body. Nathan wanted to protest, but even he could admit that it was quite warm in her mouth, and it even felt a little bit good. After a minute, Audrey spat Nathan back out onto a napkin, and gently dried him off.
"See? Nice and warm now, despite all your complaining~" Audrey said as she smiled down at Nathan.
"Audrey?"
"Hmm?"
"If you like me so much, then why do you go to such lengths to make me feel like I'm crazy?" Nathan asked with anger, as he looked up directly in Audrey's eyes.
"Well, there's no easy way to say this but... you are crazy, Nathan." Audrey said with sadness.
"What?" Nathan sounded as though all the spirit had been sucked from him by Audrey's words.
"Yeah. What did you think, that this was all magic? No, honey, you've lost it I'm afraid." Audrey's serious tone didn't let up, and for the first time it felt like she was a real person and not an evil demon hellbent on making Nathan's life miserable.
"B-but the bowl you left, and the chopsticks, and the note and-"
"And what? Do you really think those things are all there? Did you think I really carried you home?" Audrey replied.
"But I ate with the chopsticks and the bowl. Those have to be real. Right?"
"You ate out of the bowl I spat in? That's kinda hot." Audrey's tone finally became more playful again.
"I'm fucking serious! Is all of this in my head? That's it? I'm just fucking insane?" Nathan asked in anger as his voice broke.
Nathan looked down at the napkin he was sitting on and began to weep. All of the existential dread and mental anguish that he feared the most was coming true. There had been a tiny shred of hope that magic was real, or that Audrey was some sort of invisible shapeshifting alien, but all of that was shattered instantly. Nathan's only thoughts now were that Cassie was going to come over and see the extent of his mental illness.
The repentant Audrey gently placed Nathan in her hand and brought him close to her chest. "I-it's ok, Nathan. Don't cry please!" Audrey said as she cradled Nathan and gently stroked his back.
The inconsolable Nathan's heavy sob didn't let up as he clutched Audrey's shirt and buried his face into the fabric. Tears began slowly streaking down Audrey's face as well, as she couldn't bear to hear her tiny friend cry his eyes out in such a way.
"Oh, dear. I think you need some actual sleep. I'll leave you alone for now, my little Nathan." Audrey whispered solemnly, and her words echoed and dissolved away in the deep, black abyss of Nathan's mind as he faded back into sleep.
Nathan awoke to the sound of a generic alarm clock ringing into his ears, which he had set to 3 PM so he could sleep in and hopefully work off some of his mounting sleep debt. He knew Cassie was going to be there soon, and Nathan had no plan prepared, with the grave knowledge that he had imagined everything related to Audrey.
Nathan sat at his kitchen table, looking at the note on his whiteboard. He read the note, then reread it, then re-reread it just to be sure. The note was still the same as it was when he first saw it, and he couldn't grasp how it could possibly be imaginary. There was a sudden knock at the door.
"Hey." Cassie said awkwardly, as Nathan opened the door to greet her.
"Uhm, c-come in. I guess..." Nathan said nervously.
"Are you feeling... Any better?" Cassie asked with slight hopefulness in her voice.
"Yeah, uhm, well... No." Nathan responded in deadpan. "Not at all. Worse, in fact. A lot worse." He continued as he made his way to the kitchen and leaned on the wall across from the whiteboard.
Cassie followed Nathan in and stood at the wall opposite to him "What happened?"
"I saw Audrey again, in a dream. Sh-she told me that I'm, uhm... I'm crazy I guess." Nathan stammered out as though it were an admission to a crime.
"But that was just a dream, right? That doesn't mean you're crazy it-"
"No, just the invisible giant girl only I can see does!" Nathan snapped back at her.
"Uh, g-giant? You failed to mention that before." Cassie said nervously.
"Yeah, well, she's big. Really fucking big. She's terrifying, and every time I go to sleep she gets even bigger, and she-" Nathan's words stopped dead in their tracks.
"She what?" Cassie asked cautiously.
"She seems to enjoy... Eating me. She did it once already, then tried to do it again last night." A chilling silence fell over the room as both Nathan and Cassie stared at the respective space of floor in front of themselves.
The awkward tension flooded the room, threatening to drown Nathan, until he felt like he couldn't hold his head above water any longer.
"Can you see the note?" Nathan blurted out suddenly. "Uhm... on the whiteboard over there?" He said as he weakly gestured to the whiteboard on the wall behind Cassie.
Cassie turned and looked at the whiteboard, scanning it up and down, and left and right with her eyes repeatedly. She stood in stunned silence as she tried to conjure up the right words.
"You can just fucking say no if there's nothing there." Nathan barked.
"Nathan, it's just..." Cassie trailed off.
"Just what?!" Nathan demanded.
"A bunch of... Lines?" Cassie said, confounded. "Looks like someone scribbled all over it with their eyes closed or something." She said as she tried to rationalize the incoherent mess she was looking at.
Nathan's very being practically fell apart, one atom at a time. His brain turned to pudding, his tongue into dried jerky punctured by a thousand needles, his throat felt like sandpaper. He glanced at the whiteboard for the millionth time, hoping it had changed.
Dear Morsel,
Sorry if I gave you too much of a scare, but I was worried you were going to ignore me forever. I do hope you'll forgive me, I can't wait to talk with you again!
Love,
Audrey
P.S. I'm 82 ½ feet tall =P
Nope, still the same weirdly charming note.
"Wait! I know this is all really crazy, but one last thing?" Nathan asked desperately.
"What is it?" Cassie asked with worry, knowing it was probably going to be another psychotic delusion that Nathan had fallen for.
"Can you see this message, on my phone? She... somehow sent me a text yesterday." Nathan asked as he pulled up Audrey's message that she had sent, and handed the phone to Cassie. Cassie examined the screen for a moment, then started tapping curiously.
"What are you doing?" Nathan demanded, as he reached out to take his phone back.
Cassie's hand recoiled while firmly grasping the phone away from Nathan. "Nathan, look." She said as she slowly showed the screen back to him. "That contact? The one named Audrey? It's yourself. You renamed the self contact to Audrey."
Nathan's heart plunged off a cliff, and turned into hamburger meat on the sharp rocks below. His spirit evaporated into a gaseous cloud of suicidal thoughts and misery. Nathan took his phone back and slouched his hand at his side. He felt as though he wanted to crawl into a cave and die, so that mountain lions could pick at his flesh, and worms could eviscerate his remains, leaving no trace of his rotten brain for anyone to see again.
Suddenly, the awkward silence in the room was cut in half by a rather more awkward folk song playing:
Cold and wet and dirty, you're lookin' mighty perty, but I just don't understand, why a dead girl's gotta be the one true-
Nathan swiped the red icon on his phone to reject the call that was coming in, not even checking to see who was calling him. His breath became short, as he began scanning every square inch of the room with deep paranoia.
"Nathan, I'm not even gonna fucking ask what song that was, but why are you acting so scared suddenly?" Cassie asked.
"I haven't received any calls in the past few days... I-I forgot my ringtone was a song. Audrey only appears when I listen to music, remember? It won't be long before she shows up." Nathan said hopelessly.
Nathan wasn't concerned for his safety any longer, as he remembered how kind Audrey had acted last night, he just didn't want Cassie to see him interacting with the imaginary giantess.
"Maybe you should just go. Obviously I need to... Sort myself out, or something." Nathan said in a grayscale monotone.
Cassie reluctantly agreed, and left without so much as a consoling comment for her despaired friend. She merely looked at the ground and exited the apartment, while Nathan sat at the kitchen table in a dazed silence. His memories of the past few days and nights played in his head like a horror movie. Is this what his life was to be now? Audrey appearing every night? Not being able to listen to music without her changing it? Her harassing him with imaginary text messages all day?
Nathan had enough, and he felt like he was about to do something drastic. He paced endlessly through his apartment, his mind feeling like it was strapped to a suicide bomb. He didn't want to live his life this way, and he wanted to vanquish Audrey from his thoughts for good.
An orange extension cord was tied tightly around the base of the ceiling fan, and Nathan stood on a chair underneath it, fashioning the end of the cord into a makeshift noose. He stepped off the chair and went to his computer, where he began playing music from the speakers; a melodic black metal song aptly named The Departure. Audrey appeared in his living room, stuffed into the tight space despite being less than half of her usual height, her knees firmly pressed into her chest.
"Nathan? What the fuck are you doing?!" Audrey asked with fright in her voice.
"I'm getting rid of you. Forever. I can't live with this shit happening in my head all the time." Nathan said solemnly.
"Nathan, don't! Please!" Audrey began to cry.
Nathan stepped back onto the chair, and looked Audrey dead in the eyes as he stuck his head in the loop of his neon orange gallows. Tears were pouring from his eyes as he took a deep breath. Nathan's eyes closed slowly and he continued heavily breathing at a faster and faster rate. He was sure Audrey was still pleading for him to stop, but he had tuned her out enough that her voice had become only a vague abstraction. Finally, he stepped off the chair.
A loud snap followed by a dull thud was heard. Nathan was in the abyss as far as he was concerned, and his mind repeatedly echoed the phrase 'Am I dead yet?'. A large splash washed over his face, and Nathan's eyes opened sharply, with a bitter salty taste on his tongue. He laid on his back on the floor, and the makeshift noose was indeed around his neck, but it was no longer attached to the ceiling fan. Nathan looked up at the dangling cord, and saw that it was cleanly cut in two. As the scene unfolded before his eyes, they made their way to Audrey, who was crouched in the room right next to the chair with a pair of oversized scissors in her hand.
Audrey looked down at Nathan and smiled through her salty tears. Remarkably, the song had just arrived at the slow, acoustic bridge which was accompanied with clean and somber vocals:
Run into the night. Your snow-covered heart is drippin' away but mine... Is shatterin' in the coldest of winds.
"It's a good fucking thing your dumbass doesn't know how to properly tie a noose." Audrey mocked, with her words cutting through the beauty of the moment.
"No! You're not fucking real, Audrey! You didn't save me. I have to be dead, right? Please just tell me this is hell." Nathan pleaded.
"Don't you ever fucking listen? I'm as real as you want me to be, and you wanted to be saved. Nice dramatic song choice by the way, you fucking poser." Audrey said, furious about Nathan's selfish act.
"But why? Why save me? I just wanted it to end." Nathan said helplessly.
"Because, Nathan... You're my friend, and, and I... Love you." Audrey's anger deflated into sadness as she got choked up again.
Audrey swallowed her tears and sniffled a little. "Now get up so we can cuddle on the couch and watch There Will Be Blood." She demanded playfully.
Nathan sat up, and threw the noose off of his neck and down onto the floor. Audrey's massive body was parked on the couch, which buckled under her weight with a loud snap, as she sat cross-legged waiting for Nathan.
"Looks like there's no more room for you. Guess you'll have to sit on my lap, big guy~" Audrey teased.
"Don't fucking call me that." Nathan said begrudgingly, as he sat in between Audrey's warm thighs. Audrey giggled with delight as she grabbed Nathan and pulled him in closer.
Audrey's massive arms embraced Nathan lovingly as he turned the movie on with the remote. He laid his head back into Audrey's stomach, just a couple inches under her breasts, feeling a massive amount of affection he never thought possible. Nathan's heart fluttered as Audrey gently played with his hair and stroked his chest.
"See? Aren't you glad I didn't let you kill yourself?" Audrey said in a light-hearted tone.
"Oh god. You're not going to talk through the whole movie, are you?" Nathan replied with annoyance.
"You're welcome, by the way, little Morsel~" Audrey teased.
"You're not big enough to call me that anymore." Nathan quipped.
"Not yet. But I will be soon~" Audrey said, as she reached one finger down the front of Nathan's shirt and rubbed his chest seductively.
"Meaning... what?" Nathan asked with a slight concern.
"Meaning... that me and you are going to have a lot of fun in your bedroom later." Audrey said in a sultry voice, as she lightly pressed one finger into the crotch of Nathan's pants.
Nathan felt oddly turned on by her comments, but after everything he had been through, this was the least weird thing to happen to him in a few days.