Chapter 1
The door creaked open, allowing the smallest bit of light enter the room. A little girl woke up from her light sleep. The sound of rain hitting the window combined with the howl of the wind, and she hugged the blanket tight under her chin to keep warm in the cold room. It was still dark. She still had a couple of more hours of sleep left. Footsteps approached the bed. “Mam? Dad? Who is it?” she asked sleepily, but before she could turn around to see who it was a large hand grasped her shoulder, and everything went dark.
Robyn woke up. She turned over and checked the time on her phone. It was eight-teen minutes past three in the morning exactly. She had woken up at this exact time every night for the past month, and every night she had experienced the same dream: a little girl who awakened one night to the groan of her bedroom door opening, and footsteps walking towards her. Each time Robyn woke up just after the hand touched the little girl’s shoulder, with her heart racing and her t-shirt covered in sweat. Robyn rolled out of bed and changed out of her wet t-shirt and threw on another top before slipping into her slippers. She walked out of her bedroom and turned on the light of her small apartment kitchen. She went over to the sink to pour herself a glass of water, with her heart rate slowly decreasing after every sip.
Robyn’s anxiety had reduced considerably and she was calm again, not that it mattered much because Robyn knew she would have the same dream and wake up in the same state of panic the next night. Her kitchen was small and unclean. The cup of tea she had two days ago still had the teabag in it and the take-away pizza box from the pizza she had the night before had found its way to the floor. But, she was used to her kitchen being dirty. It always was. She had other things on her mind at night instead of a dirty kitchen. The bloodstained razor blade in the bathroom sink called to her every night, offering her lonely soul the company she so desperately craved.
A pale, ghost-like face stared back at Robyn through her kitchen window, as she leaned over the sink, waiting for colour to fill up her freckled cheeks again. The red marks on her arms looked like a road map, each one leading to a destination of isolation and suffering. Robyn was fixated on her scars. Each one told its own story. “You wanna know how I got these scars?” Robyn said in her best Heath Ledger’s Joker voice to her reflection in the mirror. She pondered whether the Joker himself would shy away at the sight of her arms, or would he accept her, and they could run away together basking in the darkness of their chaotic world.
Mam? Dad? Who is it? Robyn shuddered hearing those words in her head. The had passed the first night she had heard them in her dream as her overactive imagination. The second and third nights were just an unlikely coincidence. But night four was the night she started to freak out. Surely it had to be more than just a dream. One month on since the first night of her dream and Robyn was both mentally and physically exhausted, she was on a merry-go-round of emotions that was never going to stop turning.
The choice of going back to bed and trying to get some sleep, or accepting a likely defeat and staying up was a tough one. Insomnia was an unkind acquaintance to someone living in Dublin city. Robyn was never a great sleeper. She was a generally anxious and cautious person, who awoke to the smallest noise in the apartment. In fact, ever since her first experiences with eating disorders, where she would rise in the middle of the night to exercise or throw up, Robyn’s sleep schedule wasn’t one that society would consider normal. But Robyn was used to that. Her life was anything but normal, and she was lucky to get three hours in a row of uninterrupted sleep. She wondered where it all went wrong, that something as basic as a good night’s sleep was so hard for her to get.
Robyn switched on the light of her makeshift art studio, which in reality was just her spare bedroom. Art was her passion, and she had her sights set firmly on becoming a successful and famous artist one day. Art gave her a sense of being, it art gave her a dream to hold onto and a reason to live for. Art was her refuge, a place where her and her mind could work together in harmony instead of being at war with each other.
It was four o clock in the morning, Robyn would most likely paint until her mind gave out and she would be forced to go back to bed where sleep would come easily. Sleep didn’t evade her for the whole twenty-four-hour day, just the darkest and loneliest hours of the night, when most sane minds were sleeping. It was a familiar routine to Robyn by now: she would wake up and eighteen minutes past three in the morning, with her t shirt drenched in her chest and her heart threatening to beat out of her chest, like a wrecking ball breaking through a wall. She would either stay up and paint, allowing her creative juices to flow and tire herself out naturally, or she could lie in bed awake, looking up at the ceiling counting down the minutes until she had to get up again. There was something about the hours between eighteen minutes past three and six or seven o’ clock in the morning, like she was subconsciously expecting something to jump out at her that she would have to be ready for.
Ever since she was a little girl Robyn preferred to live in the world of imagination and fantasy instead of the real world. In the world of imagination, she could be anyone she wanted. But the world she created was even blacker and more depressing than the one she hailed from. It was something her art buyer noticed the last time she sold a batch of paintings. “Your art, it’s very unusual. It’s not something we see a lot in the art world.”
“That’s because I paint the world how it is. I paint the truth.” Robyn had a special talent when it came to painting, but her one rule when it came to it was that she would only paint on her terms and what she wanted. Unicorns and rainbows weren’t something that you’d see in her work.
The man looked in fascination at the painting. A little girl walking away from the heart she took out of her chest and left in the middle of the road for the cars to drive over. “Where do you find the inspiration to paint such images?”
“I just close my eyes and they come to me. I never look for them.” The man gave Robyn one hundred and fifty euro for three paintings, which wasn’t nearly enough for work the quality of Robyn’s, but she wasn’t well known yet to get the price her paintings deserved and she was desperate for the money to pay her bills. Her time where she could walk away from her part-time job at the supermarket and make a living off her art would surely come. She just had to keep painting.
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye? So you think you can love me and leave me to die? It made no sense that Robyn was able to dance maniacally in just her t shirt and underwear only two hours after having a panic attack in bed, tossing her hair around as it covered her eyes and slapped her on the face, acting like she didn’t have a care in the world. But the combination of art and music allowed her to do that. It allowed her to play a character who she wasn’t, one who was free. In a life without art, she was a caged prisoner of her own mind, screaming hopelessly for a way out. Painting was her way out, and the canvas was the world in front of her she was yet to explore. Most sane people would have gone back to bed by now, and pray to the Gods they would find sleep without their prayers being answered. Robyn pondered whether like them she was sane, or was she delving further and further into insanity each night she had her dream, looking up into the blackness of the night hoping to fall into a state of unconsciousness at four or five o’ clock in the morning, each minute passing by quicker than the last until it was seven o’ clock in the morning and Robyn had failed in her quest to find sleep in the darkest hours of the night once again.
In the world Robyn had created, she was no longer the girl who turned to cutting as an escape or woke up every night in a state of panic from the recurring nightmare that provided her with more questions than answers. In her world, she was Robyn the artist, Robyn the entertainer, Robyn the leader. As Bohemian Rhapsody blared out from the speakers, the paintbrush was her microphone, the studio was her stage and the paintings were her audience. Music was a big factor for Robyn to disconnect from the on-goings of society and get in her zone. It allowed her to swim deep inside her mind and draw inspiration from her deepest and darkest fears and thoughts. If others didn’t find her work baffling then she hadn’t swam quite deep enough, and would have to go again.
Robyn climbed back into her bed and pulled the blankets over her. It was just after half six and it was still dark. The wind howled outside her window, while drops of rain began to softly knock on it, suggesting that a shower was on the way. She closed her eyes and tried to stop the running thoughts which were now taking over her brain. What is that dream about? And why can’t I get it out of my head? Who is the girl? Tiredness soon took over her, like a dark mist hiding all its surroundings, and Robyn feel into a deep sleep.
