You hear a faint muffled sound, as if it was far away in the distance. You slowly stir from your slumber and start to get a sense of your surroundings. You wake up in your bed but it’s still pitch black outside and you can hear the patter of light rain on the street. You wonder why you're awake when it's still dark and turn to your clock to notice that it’s only 4 in the morning. You remember going to bed early last night due to the long and tiring day you had at work.
You turn around in bed and now that faint sound you heard earlier begins to make sense. You see your partner sitting at the edge of the bed, his back and shoulders heaving frantically. Listening, you hear that he is crying and his breathing is fast and shallow.
0. [[“Baby, what's wrong,” you ask him with worry and sleep in your voice->Sorry Wake Up]]
0. (link: "Put your hand on his arm to comfort him")[(put:true into $Startled)(goto: "Sorry Wake Up")]
(if: $Startled is true)[Your touch startles him. He jumps at your touch and pulls away slightly. He was clearly deep in thought.]
He wipes his tears from his eyes and cheeks, giving you a slight smile as if to signify that all is well but you’ve seen this particular smile many times, and know that it's mearly a mask. He’s breathing calms down a bit but you can see from his eyes that he is far from fine.
“Sorry I woke you up, baby. I just had bad dream and couldn’t sleep,” he says to you with a shaky voice bereft of energy.
0. [[“Tell me about the dream,” you say with a tired voice as you pull yourself closer to him->Nightmare Specifics]]
0. [[You say nothing and just look at him with sleepy eyes->It's Nothing]]
0. (link: "You ask him: ”What was the dream about? Your mom again?”")[(put: true into $Guilty) (goto: "It's Nothing")]
He hesitates at first but begins describing the dream.
“I was back at my mom’s house and I was 15 again. I had just walked into the house and it’s completely dark except for a red light shining from my room at the end of the hallway.” He sighs and you can hear his voice beginning to shake. “I started walking towards my room and the red light, and with every step I started getting more and more nervous”
“I get to my room door, which is already open, and the red light is flooding in to the hallway. My mom is standing there in the middle of my room with a terrifying look of anger on her face. ‘What the hell is this,’ she yells with my phone in her hand.” He pauses to wipe the tears from his face. You notice that his voice is getting shakier.
“She found out that I had been calling my dad in secret for the past two months. She screams at me, calling me ungrateful, untrustworthy and a liar. She gets really close to me and yells at me that I’m worthless, like my father, and that I have no respect for others just like him.” At this point tears are freely streaming across his cheeks as he is deep in describing that dream to you.
“I started crying in the dream.” He pauses to regain his voice, which is now quivering and filled with anxiety, before continuing. “This made her angrier and she started screaming more, calling me names and just saying the most awful things.”
“I tried to grab the phone from her hand and tell her that she can’t control my life. We struggled for the phone for a while until she started hitting me over the head repeatedly. With every hit she increased the force she used until I let go of the phone and fell to the ground.” You can clearly see on his face how distressed he is, with tears streaming across his face, a look of powerful hurt coupled with rapid breathing.
“She then threw the phone against the wall," he says in a panicked tone, "smashing it into tiny pieces. ‘You do as you’re told in my house! You obey me here!’ she yelled at me before storming out of the room. That’s when I woke up, to my door being slammed shut.”
You can see that retelling this dream was extremely hard on him as he puts his head in his hands and cries.
0. [[“Oh baby,” you exclaim as you wrap your arms around him. “Don’t worry, I’m here. It was just a nightmare.”->Not Just A Dream]]
0. [[“Baby… This has been getting more frequent to where it’s happening almost every night,” you say with an exhausted tone in your voice. “We can’t continue like this!->I Want It to Stop]]
(if: $Guilty is true)[You notice him flinch at the mention of his mom. He clearly feels bad for waking you up.]
“It’s nothing, just a stupid dream. Go back to sleep, love.” He says, trying to brush the issue aside.
0. [[“No, I want to hear about it. It’s clearly important to you to have you so shaken up. Tell me.”->Nightmare Specifics]]
0. (link:"You go back to sleep while he gets up to go to the bathroom.")[(put: true into $NoConversation)(goto: "END")]
“But it’s not just a nightmare and you know it,” he says with frustration as he gives you a tired look. “My past with her keeps haunting me and it dominates who I am…” He looks defeated, like he’s reached a dead end and doesn’t know what to do. ”I’m just so tired of all this bullshit.”
0. [[“Talk to me, baby. Tell me what’s going through your head right now. I'm here for you.”->Thoughts]]
0. [[“She’s not in your life anymore, she can’t hurt you now.”->Not Normal]]
His eyes widen after hearing what you just said. You can see that what you said clearly upset him.
“You think I don’t want these dreams and all this shit to stop! I can’t fucking control this,” he shouts at you, unloading his frustration
.
“This isn’t some random dream for me, this is my past!”
He gets up and starts pacing the room.
0. [[“Then please go see a psychologist about this! You don't have to bear all of this alone,” you yell back at him.->No Way]]
0. [[“Well deal with your past then.”->Magic It Away]]
“No fucking way! What the hell could a psychologist do,” he says in an almost knee jerk reaction to your suggestion. He’s no longer looking at you but focusing on pacing the room.
0. [[“They could help if you gave them a chance! That's what their job is. To help people with psychological issues!”->I Won't Do It]]
0. [[“I'm sorry... I just… I want you to be well”.->I Know]]
“Oh yeah, like I can just magic all this shit away! You say it like it's so simple,” he yells. You can tell that he’s very angry at you for saying what you just did.
0. [[“It would be simple if you didn't dwell on your fucking past so much!”->Fuck You]]
0. [[I'm sorry baby... I just want you to be happy again.”->I Know]]
He starts shaking his head rapidly from side to side.
“No! I won't fucking do it! I won't! They can’t fix this,” he says with an absolute rejection of your proposal.
“This conversation is over,” he says as he gets back into the bed and turns away from you.
0. [[You pull him back towards you->Shake Off]]
0. [[“Baby...”->No Response]]
(put: true into $NotDoing)
He shrugs off your hand and pulls further away from you.
[[Next->END]]
He doesn't respond to you anymore.
[[Next->END]]
(put: true into $Pissed)
He looks at you with fury filled eyes, unblinking.
“Fuck you! You have no understanding of the pain that I’ve felt through my life! I've had enough of this shit,” he yells in anger and sorrow filled tones.
He starts throwing on his clothes in a fit of rage and storms out of your apartment.
0. [[“Hey! Where are you going,” you scream after him.->END]]
0. [[“Get back here”, you command him.->END]]
He realizes what he just did and his face fills with regret.
“I know baby... I-I'm sorry I yelled at you...” The anger fades away from his face and is replaced with exhaustion and sadness.
“I just feel so tired... Let's go back to sleep,” he says with no more energy left.
He gets back in bed with you and turns away from you.
0. [[“Okay baby...”->END]]
0. [[“Yeah”...->END]]
(put: true into $SoTired)
(if: $Pissed is true)[The apartment door slams shut behind him. You know that you will still have to talk this out tomorrow which doesn’t exactly fill you with excitement. You go back to sleep more tired than when you woke up. Things have been tough for you the whole time you've been together but they've been getting worse recently.
You try to keep your cool in these situations but often lose it which makes you feel annoyed and guilty.
Your final thought before drifting off to sleep is that you hope that tomorrow is a better day for your relationship. However, there are no guarantees for that.
](else-if:$NotHisFault is true)[You lie down in the bed together, holding him in your arms. You stroke his head and give him soft kisses on his cheek. You know that the guilt that he is feeling won’t be gone just because of what you said, but deep down you hope that your words made at least a little difference.
As you drift off to sleep, you wish he wouldn’t feel so guilty about the past which is in no way his fault. However you know that you aren’t the one that can convince him. It has to come from himself. All you can do is be there for him. You hope tomorrow will be a better day.
](else-if: $KeepsHurting is true)[You lie together in bed and you keep soothing him by holding him in your arms and giving soft kisses while stroking his head. You feel the pain in his heart, and it tears you up in inside to see him like this, but you can’t take it away from him. You wish with all your heart that you could but only he can do it himself. You’ll of course always be by his side to help him every step of the way, should he choose to take those steps.
As you start falling asleep, you wish to see the day when he is no longer hurting like this. Hopefully tomorrow he will feel better.
](else-if: $NoConversation is true)[You hear him in the bathroom and think if you should’ve asked him about his dream after all. You hope that he’ll feel better tomorrow morning and that things would get easier for the two of you.
](else-if: $SoTired is true)[As he lies in bed with you, there is an uneasy tension left between the two of you. You exchange a brief good night but nothing more which feels very cold to you. As he turns away from you, you wish that things would be easier between the two of you. You wish that you could make him feel better and take this emotional exhaustion away from his life.
At the same time you also know that there isn’t much more that you can do than try to be more patient with him and be there for him. This one is one him more than you.
Tomorrow is a new day, hopefully a better one for you.
](else-if: $NotDoing is true)[You turn away from him as well, annoyed at his selfishness. You are angry that he can’t understand that you’re trying to help him to get better. Once your anger dissipates, you feel sad that he’s going through so much.
Maybe tomorrow will be better. Probably not though.
](else-if: $StillHurting is true)[As you lie in bed together, you want to just wipe away all those bad memories from his past and make him happy again. But you can’t. No one can take them away from him.
You are saddened and frustrated by your powerlessness to take all of this away from him. You’ll always be there for him, of course, but you wonder what you could possibly do to make it somehow faster or easier for him to heal.
Tomorrow you’ll talk with him about it. Maybe something can come out of it, but there are no guarantees.]
[[Start from the beginning?->Main Menu]]
“I keep reliving these moments: her hitting me, belittling me, telling me I’m worthless. All of these things that she kept repeating to me over and over during the years. How can it not be true?” His face is filled with despair when he says this, and he looks into the distance.
“It just wears me down and makes me feel so worthless. I feel like I can’t escape all of this, I feel trapped in my past. I’m just really tired and feel like I’ll never be rid of all this.”
“Every time I see her face in my head, I feel like I’m a kid again and I lose control and spiral down into anxiety. I don’t want to be this person.” As he utters those last words, you can hear them tinged with self-loathing.
0. [[You put your hands on his face and turn his gaze towards your eyes. “Hey, what she said all those years aren’t true. She was projecting her anger and pain onto you. She treated you like an emotional punching bag".->Not Hurting Less]]
0. [[“She did it because she was hurting a lot too, not because of anything you did.”->Defending Her]]
“Then why can’t I be a normal balanced person? Why am I still so broken?” As he says this, he looks at you with a sad and defeated look.
“Why can’t I shake her out of my head? I hate being like this!” He shakes his head in frustration while cluthing it with both of his hands.
0. [[You look him deep in his heart broken eyes and say: “What she did to you for those 10 years was horrible. She hurt you so much that it takes a long time to heal from all of that.”->My Fault]]
0. [[“I wish I could take all this pain away from you. I hate seeing you hurting like this.”->It Keeps Hurting]]
“I know...”
His voice breaks and trembles.
“But somehow it still feels like all of that was my fault... Like, why would she treat me like that if I was a good son?”
0. [[You look fiercely in the eye. “It is NOT your fault! You're mother is a sick fuck who hurt you because she was an inconsiderate asshole who was in a lot of emotional pain! You did nothing wrong!”->You're Right]]
0. [[“You were only 15! You were just a kid! Your mom should've protected you from all the pain of their divorce, not embroil you in it!”->You're Right]]
He looks at you with a faint smile on his lips.
“I know. You're such a wonderful person and I love you so much.
But it just keeps hurting and the pain won't go away,” he says but mid-sentence tears start rolling from his anxiety and exhaustion ridden eyes.
0. [[You look him deep in the eyes and grab him in your arms->END]]
(put: true into $KeepsHurting)
"Yeah... you're right, I guess."
He just sits there with all his emotional energy depleted.
0. [[You take him into your arms and hold him for a long while before kissing him.->END]]
(put: true into $NotHisFault)
He sighs deeply and shakes his head. He looks absolutely exhausted. He draws a long breath and says “I know but all of that doesn’t make it hurt any less…” After that he lets out another long sigh.
0. [[“No parent should hurt their child like that,” you say, followed up by a soft kiss.->She Did Though]]
0. [[“What she did to you is absolutely horrible! No one should suffer through that.”->It Is]]
(put: true into $StillHurting)
“Now you sound like you're fucking defending her.” He says scoffing and pulling away from you.
0. [[“No no, baby. I'm just trying to give context to why she treated you that way.”->Not Hurting Less]]
0. [[“No. There is no defending her. What she did to you is unforgivable,” you say with a vehement hate towards his mom->My Fault]]
“But she did! She hurt me a lot and messed me up!”
He bursts into tears and buries his face into his hands.
0. [[You lift his chin and meet his eyes. You grab him into your arms and kiss him.->END]]
“It is… But all of that happened to me and I can never make it go away…”
He starts crying and his breathing becomes rapid and shallow.
0. [[You lift his chin and meet his eyes. You grab him into your arms and kiss him.->END]]
<h1 class="intro">An interactive short story by @juleswhatevs</h1>
(set: $sec to 0)
(live:1s)[
(set: $sec to it + 1)
(if: $sec > 4)[(go-to:"Main Menu")]
]
(set: $Startled to false, $Guilty to false, $Pissed to false, $NotHisFault to false, $KeepsHurting to false, $NoConversation to false, $SoTired to false, $NotDoing to false, $StillHurting to false)
<h1 class="gameName">From Within</h1>
<div class="gameNameText">[[Start->Wake Up]]</div>