If this didn't work, Nikki's next plan was to kill herself.
She really hoped she wouldn't have to. Or rather, she hoped she could stop wanting to have to. She had just escaped that… that thing, controlling her. To die, right after she got her life back…
No. That was a lie. Her life wasn't back, just ruined. Somehow, it was still better, but that didn't change the fact that her life was truly and completely over.
No friends. Everyone she knew thought she was insane. No idea how to process months of memories of her and— her and Bear, and him ignoring her whenever she finally broke through, and—
The gas revved. Her hands shook on the wheel. She couldn't look forward without seeing Sarah's face, the hope in her eyes, the way she'd looked with her skull bashed in, the blood and gore of the brick, her hand doing it—
Fuck. She wanted to puke.
If this worked, Nikki still might kill herself.
Bear, that short-sighted dick, didn't have any more of those stupid, stupid one wish willows. She had no clue if she could even use her wish. Did the entity take it from her too? Like her mind, her sanity, her friends, her life, her future— It wasn't Nikki who had broken that stick, but it was Nikki's body. Did this fucked up magic care?
Why would it? It hadn't cared about her before now either.
With a groan, she shut her eyes. Her face screamed at her. Everything hurt, not just emotionally but physically as well. At the time, when she'd just wanted to die, anything to make someone finally see her was more than enough. How could she know it'd hit her, all at once, like this?
She was right back where it started: Nikki just wanted to go home.
Nikki had exactly one hint as to where Bear could've bought a one wish willow. They were sold at that new weird witchy store, the one that she and Sarah had popped by once to look at the crystals and pretend they had any plan to buy one. While she'd seen them, there wasn't any reason for Nikki to believe they'd work, so she'd ignored them.
Crystals. Fuck. The entity gave Bear Nikki's tiger's eye. She— no, wrong, the entity had loved him. All Nikki had was the godawful memory of how that felt. He was like her little brother, and she remembered his dick inside of her. She hated him. She wanted to want to punch him, but all she felt was desperation. Part of her still cared about him, even now, and that made it hurt so much worse.
Why? Why did he do this? How could he ever, in a million years, think this was love?
Maybe Nikki would get lucky: in a best-case scenario, she'd never fall in love. All love can do is make someone into a monster.
The world blurred around her. She shouldn't be driving. In the back of her mind, she knew that she could get someone hurt— but did it matter? Why not add vehicular manslaughter to her list of crimes? The law was already against her, and every corner of her memory was irrevocably soaked in blood.
It was a miracle that she hadn't been pulled over, with all the reds she'd run. Logically, that'd slow her down, but she didn't care. Anything to keep her moving. Anything to distract her from the sky, the windshield, her hands, Sarah's face, the brick that she'd—
Fuck! How did it circle back there again and again and again and again and again?
It was unfortunate that Nikki failed to die on the way there. She parked, hands shaking, trying not to look at any of the mirrors. Sarah's clothes, Sarah's tattoos on her body, like she was wearing someone else's skin. Maybe she was. This wasn't the body of Nikki, the aspiring author who wanted to quit her job for her lofty dreams.
This wasn't the body of the entity, either, because it didn't get to have that. It didn't get to call Nikki's body its own. This was nobody's body. If it belonged to anyone, after all, that person would be Bear, wouldn't it? He'd made sure of that.
Anyway. Nikki didn't need to know what she looked like. She'd been that monster long enough.
She was done.
The store was closed. Normally, Nikki would at least hesitate before breaking a window and climbing in.
Normally, Sarah would be alive.
She flicked the light on. The store was too normal. Crystals, candles, and tarot decks lined the walls. In another life, she and Sarah would come back here, and maybe they actually would buy something, because Sarah would be a tattoo artist and Nikki would have gotten her first paycheck for her novels. It was all too easy to imagine being a normal customer here. All Nikki wanted was to ignore the fucked up bloody mess that she had to call her life.
Tempting as it was, that wasn't a privilege Nikki could afford.
It took a few scans, but she saw them. One wish willows. They worked; by now she knew they worked. The other Nikki had used up her wish. Nikki herself had not. It had to know the difference, it had to. The last thing Nikki wanted to see as she stabbed herself was an unbroken stick on the floor.
She picked it up. Why wouldn't her hands stop shaking? The dried blood along her fingers clashed miserably with the cheerful red of the box. The package let out some strange song as she opened it.
This was all it'd take.
Deep breath. In. Out. With her chin held high, Nikki forced out the first clearly-spoken words she'd managed in months. "I wish Bear had used his wish to kill himself, and left me out of it."
Snap.
The memories didn't disappear. Not hers, anyway. Everyone else's probably did.
Nikki was back outside her house. Bear had driven her home— ew, she'd let him drive her home. Him. Of all people.
Maybe Nikki should've wished he'd never been born.
For the first time in months, she opened the door to her own home. She looked back at the car. Would it work? It had to, right?
Nothing felt real. She was miles away, at Bear's house, looking at Sarah's dead naked body. She was at the bottom of the Mariana trench. Her head was slowly being crushed from the pressure. She was hooking up with Ian, and his body was cold, and he asked her why she did this to him, and she couldn't answer because she hadn't pulled the trigger but she had and she wore Nikki's face, killed him with Nikki's hands—
The entity didn't come this time. Nikki anxiously picked at her nails. Would it? What if someone else used their wish on her?
For so long she'd just wanted to sleep alone, in her own bed, in her own body. She finally had it. It didn't make the nausea disappear. It didn't erase the bodies burned into her pupils.
But. At the very least, she was in her own bed. She was at her own house, in control of her own body.
If she ignored that she'd have to grieve Bear, that nobody could ever understand how she felt about what he was going to do, that she was so incredibly relieved to never see him again…
If she could ignore all that, she could maybe feel a little bit okay.