User blog:Corbierr/Control- A Patrina One-Shot

Patricia’s POV:

The sun was setting as Patricia tiredly walked out of the airport and hailed down a cab. She was exhausted, but she knew she’d never fall asleep. It didn’t matter how long the plane ride was from Liverpool to Dubois, or how much lugging around her suitcase was draining her physically. Until this was over...she doubted she’d ever sleep again.

The taxi driver asked for the address, and it took a few seconds for her to process his question, and even longer to remember the answer. Then they took off and she sat, staring out the window while her mind wandered. She didn’t hear the driver talking to her, nor did she pay any attention to the boring, American scenery going by. What she did pay attention to, however, was the horrible, sick feeling in her stomach, her aching head, her sweaty palms… she also noticed the tiny, but growing, voice needling at the very back of her mind. As hard as she tried, it wouldn’t go away. But Patricia already knew that.

Suddenly, the car stopped and she snapped to attention. “Here’s your destination, miss,” the driver said. She handed him the money and stepped outside.

In front of her was Nina’s house. Patricia’s stomach churned. Her friend did not know she was coming. But showing up uninvited would be the easiest part of the night. Swallowing her nerves down, she ringed the doorbell.

The door opened, but it wasn’t Nina.

“Oh, what a surprise!” Gran said. “We weren’t expecting you here.” The old lady sounded pleased and welcoming, of course, But Patricia wasn’t sure how long that would last with the situation she was having...chronic illnesses could very well be the least of her problems…

“I know.” She said awkwardly. “Can I speak to Nina, please?”

“Of course. Come inside.”

Patricia entered the small house and left her suitcase by the door. She waited with growing anxiety as Gran went to get Nina.

“Patricia!” She heard her friend yell moments before Nina appeared to give her a hug. “What are you doing here? There isn’t…” she glanced at her grandmother and lowered her voice. “A Sibuna thing, is there?”

She hugged back and simply shook her head, then whispered, “But I really do need to talk to you.”

Nina nodded and told Gran that she’d show Patricia her bedroom. The two of them went up together in an awkward silence.

Nina’s room was pretty much exactly how it was back at Anubis; just bigger and more spread out. There was also an abundance of stuffed animals and posters.

“Nice room.”

“Thanks.” They sat on her bed. “So...what is it?”

Now came the part of the night Patricia had been dreading.

“I...I should probably just tell you my full story.” She tried to keep her eyes on Nina, for fear of what she’d see if she didn’t. “When I was a little kid, about five or six, I found this weird old book in my uncle’s attic. I couldn’t read, so I don’t know what it said. But ever since I opened it up, this spirit has been haunting me.”

Nina’s eyes widened. “A spirit?”

“Yeah! It was dark gray with long, claw-like hands and glowing golden eyes. And every night, it would be there. Watching me. Following me. Controlling me.”

“...What do you mean, controlling you?”

Patricia swallowed hard. “It would get inside my head and tell me to do this. Awful things. I’d try to fight it off...but it would get the better of me...I once set my mother’s wedding dress on fire. And the things would keep getting worse, and worse…”

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something. She forced herself not to look away from Nina. “I tried to tell my family about it, but they just thought I was crazy! My mom said I had a very overactive imagination and all the things I was doing were just a cry for attention. They couldn’t see the spirit, after all. Only I could.” She couldn’t keep the sadness from getting into her voice.

They should have died.

“So, uh, anyways.” She tried to ignore the voice. “When I was about seven, Piper and I were staying with our aunt. She gave me this really weird doll… that thing was ugly! But somehow, it kept the spirit away. It’s like she knew it would help me…”

“Well, where is it?” Nina asked her.

“I lost it! Just two days ago, Nina! I’ve always had that thing with me. It’s never left me. Even when I was at Anubis House. Nobody knew...not even Joy. I didn’t want people to think I was...crazy. Or for them to fear me. But I guess that happened anyways.” Patricia let out a humorless, bitter laugh, as her friend just stared at her. “...An-anyways, now that the doll is gone, the spirit is back. And I don’t know what to do!... It told me to kill Piper last night.” Nina’s jaw dropped. “I didn’t!” She said quickly. “But...I did injure her. I injured her, and then I ran away. If I stayed...Piper really could have died. This is bad, Nina. Really bad.”

Nina looked just as horrified and shocked as Patricia expected.

She’s not going to believe me! She thought in alarm, when her friend took a few seconds too long respond. If Nina didn’t believe her, who else could she possibly turn to?

“Why did you come all the way here for my help? What about someone like Joy or Eddie?”

Patricia let out another pained laugh. “Joy wouldn’t believe me! She barely believed me about Sibuna during the eclipse! And Eddie?...I don’t want him to see me…” Her voice cracked, “weak.”

To her surprise, Nina responded by pulling her into a hug. “You aren’t weak. You’re one of the strongest people I know, and you’re going to get through this. And I’m going to make sure of that.”

“You mean you believe me?” Her friend was the first person to ever believe her story. It was...touching.

“Of course! Your spirit just reminds me of Senkhara.” Nina told her, pulling out of the hug. “Don’t worry. You can trust me.”

And for that, Patricia found herself feeling unusually overwhelmed with emotion. She pulled her friend back into a hug, while tearing up “Thank you…”

But this didn’t stop her from seeing the floating gray body floating near the door, just within her sight. She closed her eyes tight, and tried to will herself to ignore it.

Choke her.

It was happening again! Patricia pushed away from the hug and ended up falling off the bed. She looked up, right into a pair of evil, glowing, golden eyes…

Nina’s POV:

“Patricia!” Nina gasped, watching her friend tumble onto the floor. For just a moment, Patricia was staring at something; but then she turned away immediately, shielding her eyes as if she was looking into the sun and not at an invisible spirit.

She got over to help Patricia get up. But she was pushed away instead.

“Don’t stand too close to me! You’ll get hurt!”

Nina hadn’t heard her friend sound this desperate since Joy was missing. The look of horror in her eyes was unmistakable. But she wouldn’t just give up on her.

“No.” She said firmly. “I’m going to help you. I can’t do that if I can’t get close to you. I know you’re afraid, but you have to calm-”

“I said get away from me!” Patricia shouted at her, shoving her onto the bed. Then she proceeded to rant. “Calm down? Oh, yeah right! Like that’s supposed to help me?! THIS ISN’T SOME SORT OF FAILED EXAM OR A STUPID BREAK UP! I MIGHT MURDER YOU TONIGHT! DON’T YOU GET IT?”

Nina stared at her in shock, and went utterly speechless as her friend looked away and took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry. But I don’t want to hurt you… this was a mistake. I should go.”

As Patricia turned to leave, Nina got off the bed and scrambled after her. “Wait up! Patricia!”

She was already halfway down the stairs. “I told you to leave me alone…”

Obviously they were serious, but Nina could not accept this. Not only five minutes earlier had she promised to help Patricia, and now Patricia was already changing her mind.

There was a small bang noise and a cry of what could have been pain as her friend fell down the last few steps. She got up, looking around wildly. After glancing upwards at Nina, she then seemed to wince and scrambled out of the door.

She followed her friend outside of the House. Patricia had ended up under the tree on her front lawn, hugging her knees, head resting in her arms, and trembling. Why hadn’t she just kept running? Then she remembered the fall her friend took. She was probably injured.

Or maybe the spirit was on the other side of the road.

When Nina got closer, she heard her whispering,

“Out of my head, out of my head, out of my head…No, no! I won’t do it! I won’t! I WON’T!” It devolved into desperate crying.

She knew Patricia was being told to kill her. And she knew that the spirit had enough power to make even a person as stubborn as Patricia unable to control themselves. But Nina also knew that she already made her promise to help, and to see a friend so scared was something she couldn’t deal with. So she came even closer.

“I know you won’t.”

Patricia snapped to attention. “Nina...please...get away from me…” She was crying now, and her hands were curling and uncurling into fists. The urge to do what the voice told her was getting stronger. “Please!”

“You are stronger than you think, Patricia.” Nina told her, watching her friend cautiously. “You can fight this off!”

But apparently the strength was gone for the moment, as Patricia then lunged at her, aiming for her throat. Nina dodged out of the way but Patricia just tackled her again, catching her off guard and pinned her down.

“Patricia...Patricia, please!” She begged, trying to lock eyes with her. She hoped that the eye contact could snap her friend out of it. “You can fight this off! Just look at me!”

Thankfully, Patricia held her gaze, and then a few seconds later, she got up and turned away.

“Now you see why you can’t be around me? I’m a monster!”

“I don’t think so.”

Her friend turned around to face her.

“You’re loyal, and smart, and tougher than anyone else I’ve ever met.” Nina said, trying to keep the eye contact going, because that apparently worked. “You’ve fought Rufus, Senkhara and even broke free of being a Sinner once.” She knew the last part from emails sent by Eddie. “You’re not weak. You can-”

“Shut up!” Patricia screamed, but Nina didn’t think she was responding to her speech, as her focus drifted towards the direction of the tree. “Shut up and leave me alone!”

“Look at me.” Nina told her. “Ignore the spirit.”

“If I look at you, you die!”

She was getting stubborn. “Patricia. Look at me.” Her voice was firm. “Trust me.”

Her friend turned back around to her, but was distracted. She kept avoiding her gaze and looking everywhere else instead.

“Please just look at me!” Nina insisted.

Patricia looked at her...with a glare.

“I’ve told you I can’t! Stop trying to tell me what to do! You can stop this! You’re so strong! SHUT UP!”

Nina didn’t flinch.

“You’re only weak when you think you are. Stop telling yourself you can’t do this! You think that helps you? You’re just hiding in fear! THAT’S why you’re weak! You’ve fought off more than this before, and you’ve won! Why is that so hard to understand?!” She was angry now. She didn’t want to yell at Patricia, but she couldn’t help it. “Why do you-”

“I SAID SHUT UP!” Patricia punched her in the stomach and she fell, clutching her gut in pain. “Now go inside and lock your door and leave me alone because then you’ll actually live!”

Nina stared up at her from the ground. “Seems to me like you are doing an O.K. job of not trying to murder me right now, though.”

“But that’ll end very soon.” And it didn’t seem like they were lying. Her voice turned from angered to worried, and she could she Patricia trembling and her hands moving around as if they desperately needed to do their job of choking her to death. Then there was the look in her eyes. A wild, nervous look. One like she had never see Patricia use since the Joy mystery.

Maybe there really wasn’t a way to solve this without the doll… The doll! Nina thought about it as Patricia continued to get agitated and was once again talking to the voices in her head. Was the doll really special at all?

“Patricia...what happened when you got the doll?”

“The doll?” She asked, in a surprised but frustrated voice. “I used it to protect me on the first night I had it, and the spirit never came back.”

“And you think it was because the doll was magic?”

“Well...don’t call me crazy, miss Chosen One!”

“I’m not.” Nina slowly got up, this time watching Patricia’s hands. “But I think the doll was a placebo. You believed you would be safe, and you were. And now that it’s gone...you were so afraid that you let the spirit come back. It’s not about magic, it’s about whether or not you will believe the spirit will hurt you!”

“Excuse me?” She came even closer. Her eyes were on Nina’s neck.

“It’s all in your head! YOU have the power to make her go away!” Nina backed away and covered her neck with her arms. “Patricia...fight back.”

“I...I…” She was about to lunge for her.

Nina willed her to break free, but was watching her friend very closely.

Patricia lunged again, but this time Nina did the same...and pulled her friend into a hug. She restrained her friend’s arms in her grip and tried to stop her from struggling.

“It’s okay...it’s okay...you can’t hurt me this way…”

“You know you aren’t strong enough to hold me back!” She said, in a threatening tone of voice. “In one second I can break free and strangle you. Be careful.”

“I know you can. But you don’t want to. Do you?”

Patricia was silent for a minute.

Nina smiled. It was going to work!

“I…I’m sorry, Nina.”

The hug was broken and Patricia’s arm tightened around Nina’s neck. She squirmed around in her grip, trying hard to communicate, to beg her to stop...right up until the world vanished.

Patricia’s POV:

Patricia dropped Nina a minute later.

What have I done? She asked herself, looking at the dying body of her best friend. What have I DONE?

She fell to her knees, and desperately checked Nina for a pulse. It was there, but it was getting weaker and weaker. Patricia immediately started the CPR, pressing as hard as she could. Please work, please work, please work…

But it didn’t, and she already knew that it wouldn’t.

“I killed her,” she said, numbly, as she stood up. Patricia expected to start crying...but instead, she just got furious. She turned around to face the direction of the spirit.

“You! You don’t scare me anymore! I just killed my best friend. Nothing scares me anymore. You won’t be coming back again… YOU CAN’T CONTROL ME ANYMORE!” She shouted. “...Nobody can.”

The spirit vanished.

Patricia took a deep breath. It was over...but over too late. She looked back at Nina. The breathing was gone completely.

Nina was dead.

Patricia sunk to her knees again, and stayed there, next to her friend’s body, until she fell asleep. In the morning, she’d tell the police of her murderous action and accept the consequences. She wasn’t afraid of them.

She no longer had anything to fear.

--

'''Thanks for readinggggg, everyone! Tell me what you think! Credit goes to Haley for all her help, especially with the bittersweet ending and the title. Yes...she's the Queen, I'll admit it! Anyways, more chapters of The Halloween Game coming soon! New Character Analysis coming tomorrow!'''