Delirium (Creepypasta x reader)

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The bark of the tree was rough under your fingertips, what could be felt beyond the dirt that coated your hands. The night air smoothed over your skin, caressing what was not covered in clothing, what was exposed to the elements. You were grateful for the jacket on your back as it protected you from the chill. To feel it, but to not let it consume you.

Hunger scraped around angrily within your stomach, silent in its want but no less painful than if it rumbled. You hadn't eaten in more than a day, now. Low blood sugar brought the tremor to your limbs, made your thoughts scattered and harder to hold on to. More than once the pine needles on the trees were considered, but they wouldn't make good or easy food even if they were edible. You were likely to make the feeling worse.

The full moon beamed down onto the clearing, lighting it and its inhabitant in an ethereal glow. No flowers grew there, only ankle length grass, and thus it made a near perfect image of purity.

Cathy sat still in the middle of the field, save for her ever watchful eyes surveying the trees around her. A subtle noise drifted across the clearing; she seemed to be humming to herself. Light and soft, it was a tune you had no recollection of. Her hands fidgeted restlessly in her lap, disappearing into the long, dropping sleeves of her cardigan and out again.

There was no corpse laying in the clearing, no obvious scuffle. There didn't seem to be blood on her clothes, or smears to her makeup from what you could see. She looked as pristine as when she entered. Maybe finding the clearing was harder than you thought.

But somehow, the two of you had found it. Alone, unscathed (physically, at least).

And it mad you feel bad.

Bad in that incoherent, tangled mishmash of feelings that constantly warred whenever she was brought up, came up, was seen. Fear, first. Something that made you freeze when you saw her, or saw someone that looked like her in public. Anger second, at who she was and what she had done. To you, to her friends, to the people she deemed as lower than her. The manipulation- the abuse. Mental, emotional abuse at a constant radiation whenever you were in her proximity. That she leveled at others to get what she wanted, when she wanted it.

That last emotion was the worst. Somehow you yearned. There was no other word for it. You yearned for something from her- the way she made you feel important, wanted, needed. It felt so awful because you hated her truly, vitriolically. And yet... a small seed of you panged when you saw her. Made your heart beat heavily alongside fear when you saw red hair, burned alongside anger when you reflected on her actions, clenching your hands so tight you felt that the skin would split.

It was so fucked up that you missed her, and yet you still did. It wasn't what you wanted and it wasn't a conscious choice, just something that had made its home in your chest and refused to leave.

You felt cursed, somewhat, to have her consistently on the mind like that. It was like she didn't want you to forget she had been there, a part of your life. Her presence here in this field was testament to the complicated feelings in your heart and mind. She wouldn't leave you alone.

So, you sat there for a bit, looking. Crouching lower as her eyes swept over your patch of shadows. Thinking.

What would happen now? You were here, she was over there. Holding position and waiting for opponents. The night would last for many hours more, if not forever, until the game was concluded. Were you going to sit here forever, hoping that someone else would appear and finish her off? Bash her head in with a rock like that other guy? Would it even be easier that way?

This was fucked. This was so fucked.

She had been your friend for a couple of years, at a time in the last years of high school that were lonely. At a time when the first year of university was new and uncomfortable, and even more lonely.