Chapter 3 #2
Not a new hurt, though. Old. I know the difference. I’ve built enough of both inside nightmares to recognize the texture of them. The parents are fresh wounds. This guy hurt her in a way that’s been there long enough to scar over wrong.
So yeah, not a friend. Ex-boyfriend, maybe. Ex-husband? She looks mid-thirties, give or take a few years younger than me. It’s hard to tell when she’s crying hard enough to blur the details.
Before I can pin it down, the spotlight snaps off, he vanishes, and a low rumble rolls through the dark that sounds like… an engine?
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter around my lollipop. “What now, woman?”
Twin headlights blink into existence, eyes opening in the void. The beams intensify as a car materializes far ahead, aimed right at her, but she doesn’t move or even flinch. She stands there, trembling and looking tiny against the blinding wall of light.
“Move, Blondie.” I pull the lollipop from my mouth and take a slow step forward, but she doesn’t. Only her fear spikes so hard it makes the air hum.
It’s just a nightmare—normal dreams don’t hurt. Pain is a lucid thing. It only shows up when you’re awake enough inside the dream to feel it.
So, I know the worst this can do is slam her awake in a panic, but waking up feeling like you got flattened by a tree trunk is not an experience I’d recommend.
“Move!” I bark.
Still nothing.
Christ, she really is a crash-test dummy.
When the car is a few feet away from us, I drop the lollipop and lunge. My arms hook around her waist, and I yank her back just as it screams past us. The wind kicks up and slams into me, rattling the dream around the edges.
She thrashes in my hold, breath snatching around a word that sounds like, “Tessa?”
“You’re dreaming.” I tighten my grip and drag her against me, then lean down to murmur against her ear. “It’s just a dream.”
She goes still almost instantly, like someone pulled the plug on all that panic. The tension bleeds out in tiny tremors, her breath catching once, twice, before smoothing into calm.
Around us, the darkness begins to give in, and light fractures along her skin, breaking into drifting flecks that slip through my fingers as if I’m trying to hold on to dust in a sunbeam.
Her weight evaporates from my arms, leaving me clutching at nothing but warm air and the faint echo of her fear.
Somewhere behind me, I hear the distant clatter of my dropped lollipop hitting whatever counts as a floor in this place, the sound warped and stretched like the dream is swallowing it whole.
And then the place cracks open and away from under me—
I jerk awake, heart slamming hard enough that I expect to see cracks spreading across the ceiling plaster. The room is dark but familiar, yet my brain hasn’t caught up with the fact that I’m no longer in a place of someone else’s trauma anymore. It’s like I can still hear her sobbing. Wait…
That’s because I fucking can.
Through the wall to my left, barely there, comes one of her soft, small sobs. I sit up, straining for it, but after a few moments, the sound fades. I let myself fall back onto the mattress with a groan.
Am I still dreaming?
Dragging a hand down my face, I lift the other into the sliver of streetlight coming through the blinds. Five fingers.
Reality.
Derek gave her the apartment next to mine? Fantastic. He didn’t mention a damn thing earlier today when he and Melanie dropped by.
My eyes drift back to the wall where Blondie’s sob came from.
Who the hell is she, anyway?
I don’t know her name, her story, nothing, which would be precisely how I prefer my neighbors, silent, hypothetical, and not knocking my door down or sobbing through the wall in the middle of the night.
“A heads-up would have been nice, Derek.”
I wonder why the English language is so damn selective about murder. We’ve got fancy Latin words for offing your mom—matricide—your dad—patricide—even siblings are covered with fratricide and sororicide.
But cousins? Nothing. Zilch.
It’s like the ancients looked at family reunions and thought, Nah, those guys are great. Nobody would ever want to kill their cousin. No need for a special term.
It’s fucking rude, is what it is.
If I ever snap and take out Derek, history is going to call it homicide, like some basic bitch crime.
Where’s the poetry in that?
I clap my hands once, and the nightlight on my nightstand clicks on with a soft glow.
My gaze slides to my desk, and the newest pebble Melanie declared crystal.
It joins the army of other stones lined up like tiny soldiers, all gifts from a five-year-old with pigtails, sticky fingers, and way too much enthusiasm.
The first one she gave me was a chip of white quartz she found in the parking lot and carried in her fist all the way to me because she said it looked like a tooth and she thought I’d like it. They’re absolutely clutter, but I just… haven’t had the time to throw them out yet.
Reaching blindly toward my nightstand, I pop open the drawer and pull out a lemon lollipop.
My fingers tremble with leftover adrenaline as I unwrap it, shove it into my mouth, and let the sour punch me straight in the jaw.
The familiar sting drags me a little closer to Earth and anchors me in my body. It’s borderline painful, and I love it.
Consciousness confirmed a second time.
I sigh, an irritated exhale that feels like it comes from my soul, and grope for my phone with the other hand while the lollipop clicks against my teeth. The screen lights up my face, stabbing my tired eyes.
4:44 a.m.
Too late to be awake, too early to be alive.