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That night, Laura dreamed about BOB.

It was only a dream. He wasn't there, wasn't walking through her mind, through her body, visiting her when no one could protect her. Touching her where no one could save her. It was only a dream. BOB was dead, or at least, long gone. Still, it was the BOB her mind conjured up, just as grotesque, just as vile, just as dangerous, but the worst part was, she was sure this time that he was just her. Her fucked up thoughts. Her fucked up fantasies. He wanted to kill her. To fuck her. To have her, and just like always, she wanted him to.

It in the beginning, he was Chuck, touching her carefully, reverently, but when his kisses became rough, when his touch became bruising, she knew he wasn't really him. He was Him. Capital letters, Oh God, am I ever going to get away from this devil?

She woke up with a hand working between her thighs, frantic and clutching the sheets. It was the first time in a long time, and she came with a prolonged, sobbing scream. Thank God she didn't have any roommates.

Half an hour later, her hair was wet from a scalding shower. She was restless, and she knew that this was a bad time. A dark time. A bad Laura night. Dead girl walking. Still, she slipped out of the apartment in ragged jean shorts and an oversized t-shirt. No panties. No bra. She walked through empty streets, imagining all the monsters hiding in the shadows, and fantasized about what they might do to her.

In Twin Peaks, she might've gone to Bobby. He'd let her snort candy up her nose, he'd fumble with her clothes on the couch in his parent's basement. He'd cry a little when she rolled him under her and fucked herself on his cock, hard and impatient. In Twin Peaks, maybe she would've gone to Donna, guilty about the thoughts she had about her sweet, innocent friend. All the ways she wanted to corrupt her. Maybe she would've gone to Harold, because he worshiped her, and she wanted a little worship. Or Leo, because he was vile and awful, but fucked her like no one but BOB ever had.

In Darrow, she found herself outside Marianne's door. The apartment building was eerily quiet. It was barely four AM. She didn't know what she wanted. If she wanted a sympathetic ear, or something else. Could she ask for something else?

She didn't know, but she knocked anyway.

Laura Palmer didn't sleep.

All she did was dream, crashing awake ill-rested and haunted by images burned behind her eyelids. They weren't nightmares, she hadn't seen BOB in her dreams in years, but they left her equally unsettled.

She wrote in her journal until her hand cramped, needing to put her thoughts to paper in case they slipped away. So much seemed to be slipping away.

When she walked home from class, one of her last before graduation in May, Laura knew she looked pale and withdrawn, dark rings smudged beneath her eyes, but she was sober. She could claim that, at least.

She wanted not to be, but she was strong enough not to give in to herself.

Passing in front of a little bookstore not far from campus, Laura almost missed Marianne walking towards her. In something of a fog, she managed a faint smile, lifting a hand in a tentative wave.

She'd never gone to his apartment before.

It hadn't been a conscious decision on her part, but they always seemed to cross paths by accident. On the street. At parties. Neutral ground. Turning up at his door, where he lived with his daughter, seemed now like crossing some kind of unspoken line.

But she needed to see him. She needed to see someone, and while she'd considered seeking out Eponine, she knew that the only person who could really understand her in that moment would be him.

Approaching the callbox outside his building, she was gripped by a sudden, irrational fear. What if he was gone, too?

Bundled against the cold, she pressed the button, waiting for his answer. "Hopper, are you there?"

Laura sat in her apartment, flipping through a fashion magazine, when the phone rang. She'd gotten used to doing most of her communication through text, and she frowned at the unfamiliar number screen for the span of a few rings. With a sigh, she decided to answer, expecting it to be some kind of solicitor or wrong number.

"I'm looking for a Ms. Laura Palmer?"

Drawing in a breath, she said, "That's me."

"Right," the man on the voice said, the sound of rattling papers muffled over the phone's tinny speaker. "I'm the property manager at Hidden Oaks Apartments, and I've got an apartment full of abandoned belongings. Normally, we'd just trash it all, but I've got a note here to give you a call."

Laura sat up straighter, setting her magazine aside. "Wait, what? You're talking about Chuck's apartment? He wouldn't have abandoned his stuff, he's—"

"Ma'am, I—"

But then it dawned on her. Chuck hadn't abandoned anything. He was gone.

"I have to call you back."

Without waiting for an answer, she ended the call.

Chuck was gone. Gone...

He was gone.

And the last time they'd spoken. Well, it hadn't gone as badly as it could have, but wasn't one of her finer moments, either. She'd broken up with him, as maturely and gently as she could, but there'd been some yelling, and some accusations, and...

And she'd broken up with him, because she knew she needed to. Because if she held onto him for any longer, she was only going to hurt him. To make him miserable. Because she could.

But now, she couldn't do anything. Because he was gone.

Grabbing her coat and putting on her shoes, Laura hurried to the street to grab a taxi. Within fifteen minutes, she was making her way into his building, and meeting the landlord downstairs so that he could let her in to the apartment.

She'd left her key with Chuck weeks ago. A spare, not an invitation for the two of them to live together. But maybe it had been just that, only he hadn't known that he'd needed to say the words.

"You're welcome to anything," said the landlord, standing in the doorway as he let her move about the sparse living room.

"What about the dogs?" She asked, picking up a shirt draped across the arm of the couch.

Rifling through a clipboard of notes, the landlord said, "They were taken to the shelter."

"Oh," said Laura. For a moment, she wondered if she should go and get them, her stomach clenching at the thought of Max being in some unfamiliar cage, but she knew she couldn't. She couldn't look after a dog. She could barely look after herself.

"Can... Can I have a few minutes?" She asked, arms wrapped protectively across her chest. He looked reluctant for a moment, but finally sighed, stepping into the room to place the key down onto the small dining table.

"Sure. Just bring that down to the office when you're done," he said, glancing one last time over his shoulder before making his escape.

For a long time, she wandered the apartment, looking through drawers, picking up his abandoned toothbrush, her chest aching and her eyes stinging.

With a hiccuping breath, she sank down on the couch, finally, thinking of the very first thing she ever saw in Darrow...

His face.

Laura didn't expect him to come to her, but when the weeks turned to months without any sign of him, it began to dawn on her just how badly she'd fucked up.

Maybe in the vindictive, childish corner of her brain, she did want him to come crawling, begging, with some grand romantic gesture, even knowing how unfair it was. And how it wouldn't have fixed anything. Not in her, or in him.

They were both broken, and she used to think they were broken in a way that fit, but now... Now she was sure.

She missed him, but in the months since she'd seen him, she'd realized that she didn't need him. She didn't need anyone. She was somehow all in one piece, still sober, with only herself to count on.

And it was amazing. She couldn't remember a time when she'd actually been proud of herself for anything, really. But this... this mattered.

She still needed to talk to him. He deserved that. So, finally, she walked to his apartment, bundled up against the chill and looking up at the twinkling Christmas lights decorating the city here and there. The streets were full of last minute shoppers. People who were stressed and happy and lonely and in love. And despite the mess she'd made of everything, she didn't feel so apart from them all.

Outside his building, she drew in a breath and pushed the button to be buzzed up, leaning in to the intercom to say, "Chuck? It's me."

The music playing softly from the jukebox reminded her of Twin Peaks. Of Audrey Horne and her affected, kitchy strangeness. It's just so dreamy. Audrey, who'd resented her for attracting her father's attention, which she'd never wanted in the first place.

Or had she?

There was a middle-aged man at the bar. Grey hair. Dress shirt. His suit jacket lay draped over the stool at his side. She sat picking at a basket of fries and sipping on a coke with lime, and the whole time, he watched her. He watched with dark, beady eyes, like he wanted to drink her up. Laura's skin crawled, her stomach roiling, but as she shifted her weight, uncrossing and recrossing her legs, she realized that, under his covetous stare, she'd gotten wet.

"Are you going to stare all night, or are you going to buy me a drink?" She asked, and within minutes she had a whiskey sour sweating in front of her, that she wouldn't touch, and he had his hand up her skirt, his fat pinkie grazing the cotton of her panties.

It was disgusting. She was disgusting. As he leaned in to smell her neck, she imagined that he might smell rot. She imagined that she might open her mouth wide, wider, and swallow him up in the darkness inside of her.

There were lips on her neck, cold and too wet. She sighed, bored already, and hoped that one of the waiters would kick them out, soon, giving her an excuse to escape. But no one was watching, or maybe not one cared, in this dimly lit pub, near closing. And as this stranger touched her like he owned her, her eyes drifted towards the door, and she remembered as their eyes met that she'd called Chuck to meet her there.

Or maybe she hadn't forgotten at all.

It came to her in flashes, these dreams that lingered in her mind throughout the day. They weren't the nightmares that plagued her in her teens, leaving her gripped by terror and afraid to be alone at night. They weren't the dreams she used to have of the red room, of the old man in the suit, her lips brushing his ear.

I know who killed me...

These weren't dreams at all, she thought. They were memories, though she couldn't be sure that they were her own.

She remembered a room, leeched of color. Vaulted ceilings. A woman with a round face and glittering jewels in her hair. A tall man, his face gaunt and expressionless. She recalled the feeling of bright, blinding joy, and crushing, hollow ache of loss. She recalled the utter, chaotic destruction of an atom bomb, and the pain of rebirth after. Shades of grey and searing, beauteous gold.

The chaos of her living room, dirty and disordered in a way Sara Palmer never allowed it to be... and the constant, warbling scratch of a needle across vinyl.

She woke with a gasp, in the small hours of the morning, the taste of cigarette ash on her tongue. She sat, clutching at her throat, unsure whether the sound she made was an anguished sob or the clanging bell of hysterical laughter.

When Laura slept, she dreamed.

Her dreams, for as long as she could remember, were so vivid, often so clear and familiar, that she couldn't distinguish them from consciousness. She had memories she couldn't be sure had actually happened to her, both horrific and mundane. Evil things, greedy things, had visited her all her life in her dreams, and she often sought out the things she wasn't supposed to want during the safety of sleep.

Lifting her head, Laura wiped at her mouth, frowning at the dried piece of hay stuck to her cheek. Was she dreaming? It was dark, a glowing red flare of light piercing the blackness ahead of her, but she couldn't focus enough to tell what it was. Her vision swam, her head pounding with each heartbeat, and she prodded at her hairline with a wince. Her fingertips came away stained with her own blood.

"Am I dreaming?" She murmured to herself, swaying woozily as she pushed herself upright. She sat, wearing the pajamas she'd slept in the night before. It had been cold, even piled under blankets, and she'd burrowed under the covers in an oversized sweatshirt belonging to Chuck, and a pair of flannel pajama pants. Now, she was burning up, sweat prickling at the back of her neck. Groaning, she plucked at the front of her sweatshirt, peeling it away from her body, scrambling up onto her knees and shuffling forward until she was pressed against the bars of her cage.

A cage.

"Oh my God," she moaned, rattling the bars weakly. They were heavy, rusted metal, too narrow for her to fit through, and beyond, there was a huge, raging fire... A coal burning stove.

"Oh my God," she wailed, yanking harder on the bars, an angry sob caught in her throat. "Hello! Hello! Is anyone there? Hello! Let me out of here! Oh please, God, let me out!"

Chuck was there, but in that moment-- every moment that seemed worth remembering, Laura could've cared less whether he was or not. That night, she felt a scream building up in the back of her throat. She felt her skin crawling, a restlessness building in the deepest part of her, directionless and cold and impossible to soothe.

She wanted him gone. A vindictive, nasty part of her wished for him to vanish. That, she thought, might've been a relief. If he was gone, she wouldn't have to talk to him, wouldn't have to fess up to him, wouldn't have to fess up to herself that something was very, very wrong.

She wouldn't have to admit that she loved him, desperately, and that it seemed unfathomable that he might love her back. And if he did, didn't that mean there was something irrevocably damaged in him? Wouldn't they simply ruin one another: these two pathetic, broken people?

The only respite had been the music. She allowed herself to drift, to simply feel pleasure and sadness and hope, all wrapped up in the sound of Beth Greene's voice. She fell in love, a little, but once it was over, it turned off like a switch, the pure joy of it gone as if it never existed.

Turning away from the stage, she ordered another drinking, going through the motions of flirting with the bartender, even though she could feel Chuck's eyes on her.

With her beer in hand, she slipped away into the crowd, nearly bumping into Eponine through chance alone.

"Fancy meeting you here," she said, the words rolling off her tongue, low and sultry. She smiled a smile so wide that most wouldn't have noticed that it didn't reach her eyes.

Dear Diary,

How do you know if someone is the one?

I don't think I used to believe in all that. I'm sure I did, once, a long time ago. Before him, before BOB, before everything. When I still liked ponies and pink and thought a tiara was the height of fashion. When I had a little innocence left in me. Diary, I don't feel very innocent anymore, but sometimes... Sometimes he makes me feel like that's okay. I don't even have to hide from him, I don't have to pretend like I'm something I'm not. I don't even think he wants anything from me.

Maybe I want him to want something from me. Maybe I'm done with casual. But how am I supposed to talk about those kinds of things?

Why are we both so stupid???

Laura underlined that final word three times, her pen digging deep into the paper of her journal, a habit she still hadn't completely outgrown. It made her feel like a little girl, made her think of things she'd rather not, but it was always better for her to get her thoughts out onto the page, than to keep them all bottled up.

With an angry groan, she tossed her pen aside, her nails tapping against the scarred top of her desk, a cheap, rickety thing that had been there when she'd moved in. Shoving her journal into the top drawer, no longer feeling like she had to hide it so carefully, Laura stood, pausing indecisively in the middle of her room for a long moment before marching over to her closet. She dressed quickly, a burgundy dress and a pair of black tights with an oversized sweater thrown over the top. Her hair had grown out again, falling loose from the messy bun she pulled it into. Pausing in front of a mirror, she grimaced. She was used to dressing well for her job, but she felt like she'd never be fashionable.

It shouldn't have mattered. Chuck had seen her ugly cry, he'd seen her vomiting all over herself, he'd seen her first thing in the morning and after a long, exhausting shift. But in that moment, she hated how she looked, and was convinced that he would hate it, too.

Her eyes watering, she blotted at them with a tissue, sniffling as she put on a little mascara and some lipstick to match her dress. With one last disgusted look in the mirror, her eyes never quite meeting her own in the reflection.

Catching a cab, she texted him on the way, her stomach in knots by the time the car pulled up outside his apartment. On her way up to his apartment, she almost fled more than once, seeing herself rushing down the stairs and out onto the street and just... disappearing.

But instead, she knocked on his door, her stomach fluttering as she heard the sound of his footsteps on the other side.

Once the screaming starts, I think it just might last forever.

It's what I've wanted, all this time. To open my mouth, unhinge my jaw, gulp down a big, big breath and scream. And scream. And scream. A real, ear-splitting, silver screen scream, you know? I've felt it building. Building up and up and up, down in the warm pit of my belly, this swelling pressure ready to break. A scream like an orgasm, and afterward, blissful calm and the first restful sleep I've had in...

In ages.

Once the screaming starts, I decide, really decide, that I all I want is for it to be over. I've been tired for five years. Longer. I can't remember a time when I wasn't tired deep in my bones. Even the coke doesn't help anymore.

It's better this way.

When the screaming stops, I'm bathed in warm, blue light. Surrounded in red. I've lived my whole life to die, I think. There's a ring on my finger. Was a ring on my finger. I felt it, the last lightening burst of pain, cold and bright and rattling my teeth, and then there was only light.

Then, there was nothing.

In the early hours of the morning, the sun cresting over the water, a clear plastic tarp floated along with the tide. It ran aground in a tangle of seaweed and ocean debris, settling in the wet sand. For a long stretch of time it was motionless. Then, with a jolt, the bundle of plastic lurched, flopped over almost comically, and pale arms emerged from the folds.

The girl, no longer dead but still wrapped in plastic, flailed, fighting against the tarp covering her face, and finally freed herself enough to gasp for air. She retched, vomiting sea water into the sand, and sobbed roughly. Her hands, bleeding, clutched reflexively at the sand, letting it squish wetly through her fingers. She shivered, squirming until her legs were free, and sprawled panting and nearly naked on the shore. The sun burned bright overhead. She watched a gull circle lazily. The air smelled salty and sweet. She breathed, in and out, and traced a finger along her ribs. Her skin was stained red but she was no longer bleeding. She'd bled all of it out, out, out. Lifting a hand, she blinked up at her palm, expecting her skin to be a sick, deathly blue. Instead, it was a healthy, if not waterlogged, pink.

Dragging in another breath, she let her hand fall with a plop into the wet sand, which caked in her hair and the flimsy silk of her panties, as the lazy tide swelled up around her. If she stayed long enough, she might just float away.

With that thought, and gazing up at the sky until her eyes began to burn, Laura Palmer opened her mouth, gulped down a big, big breath and shrieked with laughter. Violent, uncontrolled, terrified, joyous laughter. She cackled until her belly ached, until it exhausted her, until she could do nothing but giggle weakly, only for the shrieking to start all over again.

She laughed, and laughed, and laughed, even as she heard the sound of voices, of people coming closer. Once the laughing started, it wouldn't stop.

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Laura Palmer

June 2021

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